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The crowning achievement of Jimmy Carter's presidency was the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, and he has continued his public and private diplomacy ever since, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his decades of work for peace, human rights, and international development. He has been a tireless author since then as well, writing bestselling books on his childhood, his faith, and American history and politics, but in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he has returned to the Middle East and to the question of Israel's peace with its neighbors--in particular, how Israeli sovereignty and security can coexist permanently and peacefully with Palestinian nationhood.
It's a rare honor to ask questions of a former president, and we are grateful that President Carter was able to take the time in between his work with his wife, Rosalynn, for the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity and his many writing projects to speak with us about his hopes for the region and his thoughts on the book.
A big thank you to President Carter for granting our request for an interview.
An Interview with President Jimmy Carter
Q: What has been the importance of your own faith in your continued interest in peace in the Middle East?
A: As a Christian, I worship the Prince of Peace. One of my preeminent commitments has been to bring peace to the people who live in the Holy Land. I made my best efforts as president and still have this as a high priority.
Q: A common theme in your years of Middle East diplomacy has been that leaders on both sides have often been more open to discussion and change in private than in public. Do you think that's still the case?
A: Yes. This is why private and intense negotiations can be successful. More accurately, however, my premise has been that the general public (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) are more eager for peace than their political leaders. For instance, a recent poll done by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem showed that 58% of Israelis and 81% of the Palestinians favor a comprehensive settlement similar to the Roadmap for Peace or the Saudi proposal adopted by all 23 Arab nations and recently promoted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Tragically, there have been no substantive peace talks during the past six years.
Q: How have the war in Iraq and the increased strength of Iran (and the declarations of their leaders against Israel) changed the conditions of the Israel-Palestine question?
A: Other existing or threatened conflicts in the region greatly increase the importance of Israel's having peace agreements with its neighbors, to minimize overall Arab animosity toward both Israel and the United States and reduce the threat of a broader conflict.
Q: Your use of the term "apartheid" has been a lightning rod in the response to your book. Could you explain your choice? Were you surprised by the reaction?
A: The book is about Palestine, the occupied territories, and not about Israel. Forced segregation in the West Bank and terrible oppression of the Palestinians create a situation accurately described by the word. I made it plain in the text that this abuse is not based on racism, but on the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land. This violates the basic humanitarian premises on which the nation of Israel was founded. My surprise is that most critics of the book have ignored the facts about Palestinian persecution and its proposals for future peace and resorted to personal attacks on the author. No one could visit the occupied territories and deny that the book is accurate.
Q: You write in the book that "the peace process does not have a life of its own; it is not self-sustaining." What would you recommend that the next American president do to revive it?
A: I would not want to wait two more years. It is encouraging that President George W. Bush has announced that peace in the Holy Land will be a high priority for his administration during the next two years. On her January trip to the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for early U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. She has recommended the 2002 offer of the Arab nations as a foundation for peace: full recognition of Israel based on a return to its internationally recognized borders. This offer is compatible with official U.S. Government policy, previous agreements approved by Israeli governments in 1978 and 1993, and with the International Quartet's "roadmap for peace." My book proposes that, through negotiated land swaps, this "green line" border be modified to permit a substantial number of Israelis settlers to remain in Palestine. With strong U.S. pressure, backed by the U.N., Russia, and the European Community, Israelis and Palestinians would have to come to the negotiating table.
1/18/2007
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From Publishers Weekly
The term "good-faith" is almost inappropriate when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a bloody struggle interrupted every so often by negotiations that turn out to be anything but honest. Nonetheless, thirty years after his first trip to the Mideast, former President Jimmy Carter still has hope for a peaceful, comprehensive solution to the region's troubles, delivering this informed and readable chronicle as an offering to the cause. An engineer of the 1978 Camp David Accords and 2002 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter would seem to be a perfect emissary in the Middle East, an impartial and uniting diplomatic force in a fractured land. Not entirely so. Throughout his work, Carter assigns ultimate blame to Israel, arguing that the country's leadership has routinely undermined the peace process through its obstinate, aggressive and illegal occupation of territories seized in 1967. He's decidedly less critical of Arab leaders, accepting their concern for the Palestinian cause at face value, and including their anti-Israel rhetoric as a matter of course, without much in the way of counter-argument. Carter's book provides a fine overview for those unfamiliar with the history of the conflict and lays out an internationally accepted blueprint for peace.
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Book Description
Following his #1 New York Times bestseller, Our Endangered Values, the former president, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, offers an assessment of what must be done to bring permanent peace to Israel with dignity and justice to Palestine.
President Carter, who was able to negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, has remained deeply involved in Middle East affairs since leaving the White House. He has stayed in touch with the major players from all sides in the conflict and has made numerous trips to the Holy Land, most recently as an observer in the Palestinian elections of 2005 and 2006.
In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences with the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many American officials avoid. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism.
The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy, and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal of a just agreement that both sides can honor.
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is a challenging, provocative, and courageous book.
Customer Reviews:
Disappointed.......2007-10-17
Jimmy Carter is a great humanitarian, Christian and scholar, but I was so disappointed in several of his statements in this book. I am a liberal Christian like Carter, but one who knows that what is going on between Palestine and Israel is not in the least like Apartheid in South Africa. I can only continue to pray that at some point Palestine's leaders will begin to truly negotiate for peace. Palestinian extremists are doing their own people a grave disservice.
Truth telling is not popular . . ........2007-10-16
Jimmy Carter has proven to be our best ex-President, by any standards. In this book he presents his point of view on one of the thorniest issues facing the world since the the Israeli State was born. One thing to know is that Carter, though sophisticated in world events, for sure, and politics, nevertheless sees the world through his own lenses which are coated with a scratch resistant brand of Christian morality. I don't say this in a perjorative sense at all.
Taken on its merits both Carter's recounted history of the problem and attempts at its solution are well ordered and expressed, and as someone who lived in Israel for a year, I believe accurate. What is most fascinating is the reaction of those ultra-Zionists from both the Jewish and the fundamentalist Christian worlds for whom Israel cannot be criticized. The reaction is all about the use of the term apartheid.
Whatever your reaction to the use of the word or the criticism of its use, this book is a must read for anyone that wants to understand the nature of the the intractable problems there and in the Palestinian territories. However, don't think that Carter's point of view is complete. It's not complete, no, but important. I would love to hear what Carter has to say about the geopolitical influence of Western prosperity in the middle east in general, and how it affects this 50 year old problem in particular.
I wonder, as I always do, how our policies would shift if we all paid taxes in direct proportion to our wealth so that the tax burden were more fairly distributed away from the suffering middle class and toward those who benefit most from our society and polical order.
A voice for peace and hope that must not be neglected.......2007-10-15
Jimmy Carter was perhaps the must successful US president in forging a lasting peace agreement in the Middle East, the fruits of which both Israel and Egypt enjoy to this day. In this book he explores the basic requirements for a 2-state solution between Palestine and Israel, and the major obstacles in the face of such a solution. The book is largely accurate, fair, and balanced.
The book's major strengths and weaknesses stem from Carter's character: He is a diplomat and not a visionary. He talks to and acutely listens to all parties, understanding and reconciling their complex points of view rather easily. This willingness to talk to everyone is what has made him so successful in making peace. Unfortunately the book does not stray very far from the hackneyed 2-state solution. It does not even discuss the one-state solution similar to what worked well for South Africa, Bosnia, Europe, and here in the USA. I recommend you augment your reading of this book with "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse", by Ali Abunimah, as well as the books by Mazin Qumsieh, Virginia Tilley, etc.
full of misrepresenations.......2007-10-10
this book should be labeled fiction. Jimmy has refused to debate (or even appear on the same stage) of critics who have questioned statements in the book he has presented as fact. very sad.
THE BRAVEST PRESIDENT EVER.......2007-10-10
In a country where a minimal critic against Israel would be labeled as "Anti-Semitism, " by writing this book, President Jimmy Carter shows his commitment to the principles of human rights. As usual, he is attacked by Israelis because of telling the truth.
GOD BLESS AMERICA, GOD BLESS JIMMY CARTER!
Book Description
Since the Holocaust, it has been almost impossible to hide large-scale crimes against humanity. In our communicative world, few modern catastrophes are concealed from the public eye. And yet, Ilan Pappe unveils, one such crime has been erased from the global public memory: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. But why is it denied, and by whom? The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery.
Customer Reviews:
Yet ANOTHER CASE of JEWISH SAVAGERY and HUMILIATION towards the"PALESTINIAN HOLOCAUST.".......2007-10-02
You will have to stop reading at times to wipe the tears coming from your eyes like Niagara Falls. Get a huge box of tissues for this gut-wrenching story of the daily brutal, humiliating and savage treatment against the women and children of Palestine. I started reading about the fate of the Palestinians with Carters book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Carter's book is a great and objective overview of the Palestinians Holocaust. Bush, Rice and Cheney will be rightfully humiliated in History books and in posterity for turning their backs and 'allowing' these atrocities to go on and on and on.... Right now as you read this review, The Palestinian Holocaust is in full terror. I'm 'not' giving up on the idea, that America will soon be "Good 'ole America again." Read this book.
What the U.S. Press Refuses to Show.......2007-09-30
A clear and concise view of the Palestinian holocaust, a view that the American media refuses to show.
Unspeakable evil finally expressed in words.......2007-09-26
The unspeakable evil that has been committed against the Palestinian people in 1948, and the unspeakable evil that is still being committed against the Palestinian people, has at last been expressed in words.
Amidst the vast zionist propaganda machine created to cover up horrendous atrocities, at last we have a book that gives us the truth. This book, with all its shocking details, is the best book I have read on the Palestine/Israel conflict, though it made very grim and painful reading. Ilan Pappe has given the world a wonderful gift in the writing of this book, one that could play a major role in bringing world peace, once all the facts that Pappe presents are known. His sources include the Israeli Archives and Ben Gurion's diaries, as well as eye witness accounts of what happened in 1948, and is continuing today.
If anyone wants to know what the conflict in the Middle East is all about, just read this book; every member of Congress, and every member of the general public should know how our billions of tax dollars that we send to Israel each year are being spent.
History you Must Know.......2007-09-15
If you have not read ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE you do not know the history of Palestine, nor can you understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As part of a new group of Israeli historians, Ilan Pappe reveals previously secret Israeli documents. The cleansing of Palestine of its Arab inhabitants began long before 1948, and continues today. Step by step the plans to cleanse the land, and the entire infrastructure with the cleansing details -- 1927 land surveys, The Red House, the Consultancy, Plan Dalet, Plan D -- is spelled out by Pappe. This is a painful read, but a necessary one to understand the Middle East.
Honest & Excellent.......2007-09-14
Very excellent book that shows part of the sufferings of Palestinians written by a very honest person
Book Description
In this long-awaited sequel to his international bestseller The Holocaust Industry, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an iconoclastic interrogation of the new anti-Semitism to a meticulously researched exposé of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein's answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted.
Finkelstein also scrutinizes the proliferation of distortion masquerading as history. Recalling Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial, published to great fanfare in 1984 but subsequently exposed as an academic hoax, he asks deeply troubling questions here about the periodic reappearance of spurious scholarship and the uncritical acclaim it receives. The most recent addition to this genre, Finkelstein argues, is Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz's bestseller, The Case for Israel.
The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz's assertions on Israel's human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community. Sifting through thousands of pages of reports from organizations such as Amnesty International, B'Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, Finkelstein argues that Dershowitz has misrepresented the facts.
Thoroughly researched and tightly argued, Beyond Chutzpah lifts the veil of controversy shrouding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Download Description
In this long-awaited sequel to his international bestseller The Holocaust Industry, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an iconoclastic interrogation of the new anti-Semitism to a meticulously researched exposé of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein's answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted. Finkelstein also scrutinizes the proliferation of distortion masquerading as history. Recalling Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial, published to great fanfare in 1984 but subsequently exposed as an academic hoax, he asks deeply troubling questions here about the periodic reappearance of spurious scholarship and the uncritical acclaim it receives. The most recent addition to this genre, Finkelstein argues, is Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz's bestseller, The Case for Israel. The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz's assertions on Israel's human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community. Sifting through thousands of pages of reports from organizations such as Amnesty International, B'Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, Finkelstein argues that Dershowitz has misrepresented the facts. Thoroughly researched and tightly argued, Beyond Chutzpah lifts the veil of controversy shrouding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Customer Reviews:
Jewish soul-searching and anti-Semitism........2007-10-11
As one can see from the enthusiastic celebrations around this book, it is indeed a long waited for delicacy for all those who are uneasy with the idea that the Jewish People are also entitled to their national sovereignty in their ancient-new homeland. These celebrating people do not like to consider themselves anti-Semites (today it is not considered bon-ton), and are deeply offended when somebody dares to suggest that they are, but nevertheless they are convinced that the rebuilding of the Jewish State in our times is an intolerable outrage. They are passionately trying to prove that the Jewish State is illegitimate, or at least its struggle to defend itself from its sworn deadly enemies is.
And now here comes this Jewish Guru who in his new book "scholarly and methodically" analyses and proves how right they are and gives them his stamp of approval, his certificate of Kosherness. They couldn't have asked for more, "the right thing at the right time" and hence this enthusiastic welcome.
Nevertheless, I would like to remind everybody a well known idiosyncrasy of the Jewish people, which may help to bring this whole issue in the right perspective. The Jews have a singular tendency to soul-searching which characterizes them since ancient times (remember the Prophets?). We have a strong tendency to demanding from ourselves uncompromising high standards of conduct which we are not always succeeding to live up to, and this leads to very harsh and very frequently unfair self-criticism. You can find it in articles written by Jewish reporters in Israeli newspapers as well as abroad. You can find it also in books like the subject one. Sometimes this self-criticism becomes unreasonably harsh and unfair, bordering with insanity, and sometimes it is outright insane. Even though the motives are diametrically opposite, this insanity is very similar to another soul pathology called anti-Semitism.
In a way, this insane level of the characteristic Jewish soul-searching and the anti-Semitic pathology are related, and feeding each other. On one side the anti-Semite is more than happy to concur with the Jewish self criticism, especially when it is sufficiently insane. On the other side, the insane Jewish leftist is convinced that as soon as we become angels, the anti-Semites will suddenly realize how nice people we are, and will instantly fall in love with the Jews.
This is in a nutshell my explanation to this biased, tendentious, one-sided and unfair anti-Semitic hate-pamphlet written by a deranged self-hating Jewish intellectual, and the enthusiastic way it is welcome by anti-Semites worldwide, Jewish and non-Jewish.
an attempt at analysis.......2007-09-19
this is an attempt at honest analysis of this issue.
however,the various author are so angry at each other that often are more
attent at respond to each other and the objectivity suffers.
this does not mean to imply that this particular book is misleading. it tries very hard to be impartial and it almost often succeeds
a must read.......2007-09-10
This is a must read, specially for those who support Israel and Zionism. Norman Finkelstein raises questions that we should all contemplate. Regardless of your political views, you can only gain from this book. Sadly, Prof. Finkelstein has already paid the price for his views.
Finkelstein vs. Chomsky.......2007-07-16
This reads like a thesis. Almost every paragraph starts with why Chomsky, another professor at a prestigious university, is wrong.
I couldn't stand it.
Some authors write books on history. Others re-write history in books. .......2007-06-21
Falsities, distortions, omissions, insults and biasness are things you'll find in this book. Objectivity, balance and honesty are things you won't find in Beyond Chutzpah, a book on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
For example, in regards to the Palestinian refugee problem, the author states that "The scholarly consensus is that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948." Yet there is no truth to this statement since various historians have reached various conclusions. The author also attempts to prove that there was no such thing as Arab radio broadcasts urging Palestinians to leave their homes prior to or during the 1948 war, summarizing it as a Zionist lie. However, there is other evidence, which shows that Arab authorities - through means other than radio broadcasts - urged Palestinians to leave their homes, which the author neglects to mention.
Another example of dishonesty is when the author refers to the Palestinian people as "indigenous", when in fact they originated from the Arabian Peninsula and other parts outside of Israel/Palestine. That's like claiming that Spaniards are the indigenous people of Mexico! Equally absurd is the author's fanciful and historically inaccurate comparison of Palestinians to American Indians, whose territories were conquered and colonized by Europeans, and the European conquerors, he compares to Zionists. This comparison is completely nonsensical, considering the fact that Jews have lived in Israel/Palestine for some 2,000 years before Arabs even settled there! In fact, the name "Palestine" was given by the Romans who ruled the region during the second century (five centuries before Arabs begin settling there) in order to wipe off the region's Jewish identity. Thus, the author has it all wrong: The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel/Palestine, not the Arabs. Sure enough, the author mentions the Arab population in Palestine before 1948, but entirely dismisses the Jewish population, as though Jews simply did not exist there, or as he puts it; "two millennia of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine." Now how could one publish such explicit lies and get away with it? These are not facts, but mere fabrications.
History shows us that the Jews have lived in Palestine longer than any other people, for some 3,500 consecutive years. Granted, the Jewish population greatly diminished to the point where Arabs outnumbered them, but at no time during the Zionist movement was Palestine ever an Arab nation. When the Zionist movement began in late 19th century, the Turkish Ottoman Empire ruled the region. After WW1, it was the British. Moreover, during those periods, Jerusalem's population was predominantly Jewish. But the author does not provide the reader with such information. His approach, instead, is to blame everything - literally everything - on Zionists and the State of Israel, even for "Sadam (Hussein) to embark on a nuclear weapons program"!
But these are not the only important facts the author omits. There are many others. Like the fact that in 1922, the British government gave some three quarters of Palestine to the Hashemite Kingdom to create an exclusively Arab state, or the fact that the 1948 war was initiated by six Arab nations. Nope. Instead, the author writes about how in 1948, under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, the Arabs were offered "only" half of Palestine, as though they should have been entitled to all of it and makes it sounds like Israel is the one who started the war.
Other examples of biasness, include the author's mentions of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, such as the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948, yet completely ignoring Palestinians atrocities against Jews, like the 1929 massacre in Hebron, or the 1938 massacre in Tiberias, or the killings between 1936-1939, or the 1970 school bus massacre in Avivim, or the 1974 massacre in Maalot, etc, etc. In addition to all of this, you will find insults and ridicule, like when the author ponders rhetorically, "Shouldn't Chesler (author of The New Anti-Semitism...) first have consulted the idiot's guide to the Middle-East?" Very funny. And of course, none of this would be complete without a few anti-Semitic clichés like; "Zionist fabrication," "Zionist propaganda," and "Zionist fairy tale."
Speaking of anti-Semitism, the author persistently asserts that Jews are and have been misusing anti-Semitism as a political tool to gain advantages, and therefore, somehow instigating anti-Semitism themselves. Yet at the same time, the author manages to downplay the reality of the new anti-Semitism. Granted, it is true that Jews have used anti-Semitism as a political tool, there's no question about that. But if you understand the history anti-Semitism and put things in proper context, it only makes sense for Jews to use anti-Semitism as a political tool. Being a tiny minority in every country outside Israel and having suffered so much throughout history, it is, to a certain extant, a tool for self defense; to ensure that they are treated properly without prejudice or hostility so that history does not repeat itself. Just as it is proper for African Americans to use the "race card", as whites call it, as a political tool to ensure equality and fair treatment in society, it's proper for Jews to do the same, as long as they don't go overboard. And sure, some individual Jews and Jewish Organizations have gone overboard, but the author takes this whole idea entirely out of context and blows it completely out of proportion making one feel like they are reading excerpts from The Protocols of The Elders of Zion.
Another issue I have with this book is that the author's attempt to compel the reader into believing that anyone who criticizes Israel is automatically labeled an anti-Semite. That is not true. In fact, if that were the case, then the majority of Israelis would be anti-Semites, according to the author's own logic (or lack of). However, there is a visible difference between criticism and attacks, which the author fails to see. When someone slanders and insults Jewish people, why can't it be called by its real name; anti-Semitism? The author is simply trying to play a game of reverse psychology in hopes to silence Jews from defending themselves.
Other subjects in this book include Israel's human rights abuses, which he greatly emphasizes. But when it comes down to Palestinian human rights abuses, he ignores it. He also ignores Lebanon's, Syria's and Jordan's human rights abuses towards Palestinians, which shows you how biased this book is. The author believes that the first Intifada was "largely non-violent" (sure, perhaps when compared to the second Intifada, where suicide bombing was a weapon of choice) but Israel's response he calls a "brutal repression." Yet the author refuses to mention Palestinians' own brutal repression towards their own people, like when hundreds of Palestinian civilians suspected of "collaborating" with Israel were tortured and executed by Palestinian militants during the first Intifada.
But providing such detail would ruin the author's squeaky-clean image of Palestinians, which brings us to another fine virtue the author exemplifies; Hypocrisy. He accuses Joan Peters' book Time Immortal of being a "colossal hoax" where "sources were mangled, key numbers in demographic study falsified, and large swaths plagiarized from Zionist propaganda." Sounds to me like he learned a lot from Peters' alleged tactics, since Finkelstein himself mangles sources. For example, he quotes from Benny Morris (also a controversial author who calls himself a "new scholar" and who has been accused of twisting facts and even fabricating them) who Finkelstein calls a racist psychopath! Yet Finkelstein has no problems quoting "facts" from a racist psychopath. Ironically enough, this racist psychopath later complained that Finkelstein misused his sources through selective quoting!
The second half of the book deals specifically with Alan Dershowitz (not exactly an acclaimed scholar either) and his book "The Case for Israel." Here, the author's role here is to expose Dershowitz as a complete fraud. I admit that when one looks at the content of his analysis at face value, it looks very impressive. Yet when you read very closely, you will notice that the author uses a very simple method of boldly dismissing everything and anything Dershowitz wrote and replacing it all with his own personally revised "corrections" - through selective sources and quoting, of course. The author's superbly confident, often arrogant, and bully-like tone is sure to convince anyone of anything he writes. His attempt to prove that Dershowitz plagiarized is not all that fantastic either; whenever Dershowitz quotes from Peters, he uses quotation marks or citations, or at least makes some sort of attributions in one way or another.
So there you have it: A spectacular one-sided book on the Israel-Palestine conflict. If you are looking for an all-out attack on the State of Israel to serve for your hungry appetite, Mr. Finkelstein will provide you with the most satisfying meal.
Book Description
The enormous changes in the 1990s throughout the Middle East have necessitated this thoroughly revised edition of the standard introduction to the subject. Offering a balanced history of both Israeli and Arab goals, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict covers the history of Palestine before Israeli independence in 1948 and brings the story forward to the breakthrough Arab-Israeli Accord of 1993 and its troubled aftermath.
Customer Reviews:
Good with excellent primary sources.......2006-02-10
The Arab-Israeli conflict is one that touches on so many painful emotions and biases that no book will be deemed fair or unbiased by all concerned. However, Smith's book does a very good job of attempting to be as close to unbiased as possible. It is often used as a textbook in upper-level modern Middle East history courses for just that reason. It is good choice for someone who is new to the subject (other than the inescapable news coverage) and really wants to understand some of the issues invovled throughout the history of the conflict.
One of the strongest things about Smith's book is the inclusion of a number of primary sources. Other than disputing the translations, no one can deny that primary sources are as close to an honest look at history as we can get. Documents are included from many sides of the issues involved and no side comes out either squeekly clean nor as pure evil.
Another strength I found, to differ with another reviewers opinion, is that the book starts quite far back in the history of the conflict. As the mythologizing of the roots of Israel as a nation has been worked into the official stance of all sides, each for their own purposes, understanding what happened at the beginning is of utmost importance if you really want to grasp the subject. This is a good book that does it's best with a difficult subject and goes into some depth in addition to excellent primary source material.
Read with care and caution.......2005-06-04
Like some other reviewers, I too bought this book for a college course and I too find it overly biased toward the Arab point of view. The author has the right to draw his own conclusions, but like any non-fiction book, readers must use their own judgement to evaluate those conclusions carefully. I don't know if there is an author without bias on this topic due to its sensitivity.
It is also horribly dry in my opinion. I know it's supposed to be, but certain sections just drag on and on, it seems, uneccessarily.
Read critically, not literally. If you have a choice (i.e. don't have to buy this particular book for a course or something) choose a more balanced author, if you can find one.
A Good Historical Overview But More Recent Events are Biased.......2005-04-25
The book is a fairly concise and accurate overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It covers ancient Jewish history, the beginnings of Zionism, the emergence of Israel, the Arab Wars and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most of the coverage is well researched and documented.
The closing chapters of the book are undoubtedly biased towards the Palestinian account. One example is the coverage of the Barak-Arafat-Clinton negotiations in 2000. Smith portrays Barak as a man whose intentions were not to conduct honest negotiations but rather "carefully calculated, intended to appear more amenable to the United States." Smith writes that "there was never an Israeli offer." Further, Smith asserts that Barak was manipulating the media in order to force them to present a positive account of Israeli negotiations. Arafat's refusal to make any counter offer, or contribute to the negotiations -- as asserted by President Clinton and the U.S. chief negotiater -- are not mentioned. Smith also does not fault Palestinian terrorism -- the systematic, often daily suicide bombings experienced by Israel -- for turning Israeli public opinion against further peace talks. According to Smith, the blame lies solely on Sharon and his visit to the Temple Mount and Palestinian frustration.
Smith's discussion of the Intifada speaks in terms of Israeli attacks and Palestinian "armed response." In fact, Israel had been initially very reserved in its replies to suicide bombings. Israeli interests do not lie in a military occupation of the Palestinian territories, unless necessary to alleviate security risk.
Admittedly, I have an opinion about whose fault the failure of the Camp David II was. It is acceptable for the author to take an opposite view. However, in a book that claims to be a non-biased textbook for college use, the topic should be presented with acknowledgement of differing opinions. Especially, when the book presents an account that is largely a contrast to the established narrative (a narrative that there is no reason to believe is inaccurate).
My rating is still positive because the book is a valuable resource in its coverage of earlier time periods. However, this book should be used with other materials for balance.
Read this book.......2005-04-15
A perfectly balanced, non-biased, facts only, well documented, concise and detailed account. An excellent book to be read by all who wish to have an in-depth knowledge of what went and goes on in that part of the world.
A great survey of the everlasting conflict.......2005-02-23
Great book...easy to read for a history text. Read it over a weekend and actually stayed awake. Up to date discussion and documents add value to the study of the topic.
Highly recommend.
Book Description
In Resurrecting Empire, Rashid Khalidi dissected the failures of colonial policy over the entire span of the modern history of the Middle East, predicted the meltdown in Iraq that we are now witnessing with increasing horror, and offered viable alternatives for achieving peace in the region. His newest book, The Iron Cage, hones in on Palestinian politics and history. Once again Khalidi draws on a wealth of experience and scholarship to elucidate the current conflict, using history to provide a clear-eyed view of the situation today. The story of the Palestinian search to establish a state begins in the era of British control over Palestine and stretches between the two world wars, when colonial control of the region became increasingly unpopular and power began to shift toward the United States. In this crucial period, and in the years immediately following World War II, Palestinian leaders were unable to achieve the long-cherished goal of establishing an independent state-a critical failure that throws a bright light on the efforts of the Palestinians to create a state in the many decades since 1948. By frankly discussing the reasons behind this failure, Khalidi offers a much-needed perspective for anyone concerned about peace in the Middle East.
Customer Reviews:
Good historian, stolid writer.......2007-04-18
I will not duplicate the excellent summations of this important work by Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi. Nor do I challenge his research or analysis of a complex situation. What I will add (and concur with another reviewer) is that it is a very slow and tedious read -- repetitious, lacking in vivid narration, and plagued with ackwardly constructed and convoluted arguments that make it difficult to even skim. The Iron Cage is worth reading to glean the important points the author makes about why Palestinians have achieved so little in their long, sad history, and their failure to achieve sustained good leadership. But, to be honest, reading this book was an uphill battle. I was very motivated because of my interest in the topic, otherwise I would have put it aside and looked for another well informed book written by a person with a better feel for the written language. (That being said, I heard the author discuss his book on C-SPAN and found him more compelling as a speaker.)
Outstanding book which reveals the truth regarding Palestinians & the nightmare called "Israel".......2007-03-15
I am Jewish and the "state" of "Israel" is an embarrassment to worldwide Jewry. More and more Jews are waking up to this fact. This book does an excellent job of exposing the cruelty which Jews inflicted (and continue to inflict) on the indiginous Palestinians after Jews stole their land in 1948.
superb overview of the Palestinians from a terrific historian.......2007-03-14
Khalidi does it again! Like in his previous books, he informs the general reader about the real story behind the headlines. Smear campaigns against Khalidi by groups like Campus Watch seem to be part of a strategy to convince the US public that there is no such thing as a rational, reasonable Palestinian. That is precisely what New-York-born-and-raised Khalidi is - and an important voice for the public debate in America. His former colleagues at the University of Chicago (many of them Jewish) hold him in high esteem.
Fine account of the Palestinian people's struggle for national self-determination.......2007-03-08
Professor Rashid Khalidi, a historian at Columbia University in the City of New York, has written a brilliant account of the Palestinian people's struggle for national self-determination.
He shows how in the 1920s and 1930s, the British Empire deprived the Palestinians of all democracy to stop them defeating the Zionist project. The Mandate for Palestine, like the Balfour Declaration, made no reference to Palestinians or Arabs, only to `non-Jewish communities' who had only civil and religious, not national or political, rights. By contrast, both Mandate and Declaration asserted that the `Jewish people' had the right to a `national home'.
Khalidi notes the British Empire's `vast experience in thwarting the will of majorities in different countries'. He shows in detail how it divided, diverted and distracted all opposition to its rule. The Empire's rulers always presented the colonies as made up of incompatible religious and ethnic communities, who would be at each other's throats without the benevolent presence of the British.
Khalidi dissects the Zionist myth that `seven Arab armies' invaded Israel in 1948-49. The fiercest fighting was the Jordanian army's defence of areas assigned by the UN to the Arab state, and of the UN-defined area around Jerusalem, against Israeli offensives.
He records that in 1991, the first Bush Government pledged "to oppose settlement activity in the territories occupied in 1967, which remains an obstacle to peace." But the US government broke its word: it backed the Israelis throughout the 1990s building new settlements to reinforce their illegal occupation.
Finally, he shows how, at the behest of the Israeli government, the USA imposed rules for negotiations on the Palestinians which "indefinitely froze dealing with any of the issues of substance between the two sides (the final status issues: occupation, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees, water, and permanent borders), while there was no concomitant freeze on the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem." In April 2004, Bush II openly tore up his father's pledge when he wrote to Sharon recognising the `new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers'.
Coming to Terms with a Hard Situation.......2007-02-17
Khalidi poses the question of why Palestinian political development is so weak, certainly not up to the standards of contemporary high-income republics.
By itself, this question might not be very interesting, as the high-income countries' level of political development is so difficult to achieve that its absence hardly needs explanation. People who think that England and France set the norm may not remember those countries' internal wars of religion in the 1600s and the ruthless methods used to integrate their territories. Thus, the Palestinian experience should hardly surprise us.
Khalidi's purpose in answering the question about political development, however, is to show what the Palestinians' efforts have been.
Khalidi's main point is that there was no sustained effort to create a coherent Palestinian political structure in the first forty years after the early 1920s, when partition first created a territory termed "Palestine." He relates that Palestinians initially tried to work through the British rather than to set themselves up as independent. Then, after Israeli forces expelled them in the 1947-48 run-up to Israel's formal independence on May 15, 1948, Palestinians' lives were simply too disrupted for political organization.
In the subsequent period from the early 1960s on, Khalidi gives the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) credit for three essential achievements in political organization: (1) winning most Palestinians' recognition of the PLO as their first-ever central point for political cooperation, (2) winning Arab countries' recognition of a Palestinian national cause, and (3) finally winning global recognition that the Palestinian nation existed.
At the same time, Khalidi also identifies three failings: (1) not setting up internal democracy and efficient service bureaucracies, (2) not being categorical enough when they gave up armed resistance to the Israelis after the mid-1970s, and (3) neglecting Palestinians outside the West Bank and Gaza when Israel allowed the PLO leadership to return in the mid-1990s.
Khalidi's final chapter is a separate essay on Israel's progress toward absorbing the West Bank, the role of the peace process in promoting this, and the likelihood that it has made a Palestinian state impossible.
Returning to the history, it is unfortunate that Khalidi does not clarify the impact of partition, which separated Palestine from the rest of the Arab nation, including the political centers -- Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo. Khalidi points out that the Arab provisional government in Damascus opposed partition and wanted a unified nation. But Khalidi does not say what the people suddenly isolated in Palestine thought about the Arab nation. In particular, did they have the sense that building separate Palestinian political institutions would work against Arab goals and play into British hands?
Indeed, given the degree of longstanding social interaction across the borders partition created, is it objectively reasonable to speak of Palestine in 1920 as a nation? Or was it rather one portion of a partitioned nation?
The writing in Khalidi's historical chapters is indeed somewhat repetitive (a carryover from Arabic poetry's style?), but interested readers will persevere.
Book Description
“Perhaps one day I may forgive you for putting
us under curfew for forty-two days, but I will never forgive you for making us live with my mother-
in-law for what seemed, then, more like
forty-two years.”
Irreverent, darkly funny, unexpected, and very unlike any other writing on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Sharon and My Mother-in-Law describes Palestinian architect Suad Amiry’s experience of living in the Occupied Territories.
Based on diaries and e-mail correspondence that Amiry kept to maintain her sanity from 1981 to 2004, the book evokes, through a series of vignettes, the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah, with its curfews, roadblocks, house-to-house searches, and violence. Amiry writes about the enormous difficulty of moving from one place to another, the torture of falling in love with someone from another town, the absurdity of her dog receiving a Jerusalem identity card when thousands of Palestinians could not do so, and the impossibility of acquiring a gas mask from the Israeli Civil Administration during the first Gulf War in 1991. There are also the challenges of shopping during curfew breaks, the trials of having her ninety-two-year-old mother-in-law living in her house during a forty-two-day curfew, and thoughts on Israel’s Separation Wall.
With a wickedly sharp ear for dialogue and a keen eye for the most telling details, Amiry gives us an original, ironic, and firsthand glimpse into the absurdity——and agony——of life in the Occupied Territories.
Customer Reviews:
Superb book - you can't put it down........2007-07-04
I read this book within a day, I just couldn't put it down, it was so beautifully written, and so easy to read.
Suad Amiry has a remarkable ability to say in one sentence what other writers take three pages over. A single sentence can be so thought-provoking, you consider all the many implications that follow from just one statement.
Despite the misery of her situation, Suad's defiance of her occupiers is hilarious - what a courageous and spunky woman! Her frankness and honesty of her own feelings, including her failings, are also very impressive.
Well done to Suad Amiry, I eagerly look forward to her next book - I hope she will write one!
arafat and my hot flashes.......2006-12-26
Arafat and my hot flashes - an Israeli response to Suad Amiry's Sharon and my Mother-in-Law.
After reading Suad Amiry's novel Sharon and my mother in law I was extremely moved ... as an Israeli, living in Tel-Aviv at ta time when all around me people were "bursting at the Seams" or merely committing suicide at their leisure while taking other people's lives, limbs, children and women with them, I could identify myself with her agony at not being able to move freely...
It was Saturday eve; I always felt weird on Saturday eve, uneasy. On a verge of a panic attack. Maybe it was to do with the gloom I experienced at home, as a child on Sat. eve (My mother was a BA -graduate of Auschwitz). It was exactly 2 years ago, me and my not-such-a-great-hero, husband, who was an extremely gifted and intelligent man but the biggest coward if there's ever was one, were having a row, after a long week ... I wanted to venture out. Out of doors...out of our building; living in Tel Aviv had become a Russian roulette ... the streets were very quiet and empty ... not a dog in sight, the stray cats had totally disappeared, everyone was waiting for the next one, and we didn't know where it would come from. I wanted to go to the movies.
"Are you out of your mind?!!!" Gideon screamed. I couldn't sit at home anymore I had to go out. To a coffee place, "A coffee place?!!! Now?!!" Only yesterday one of the most popular coffee places in Tel Aviv blew up.
"Ok then, the bar around the corner is always empty! Why would a suicide bomber come there, to kill us and the barman?". I thought that was reasonable enough.
"I don't know why?" argued Gideon back "he might just get fed up half way to the Hilton, did you think about that?".
I tried the movies, again.
"Crowded places?!!! Hello? Anybody home?", pointing at my head.
"but we never had a suicider at the cinema!!", I tried to reason.
"Exactly!!!", exclaimed Gideon with a big smile, winning the argument.
I felt a hot flash coming on. It was August and I just had to have some air. "I don't care!!!", I screamed, "I am going out!!! Now!"
All of a sudden a siren was heard, and another one and another one, a string of sirens always meant a suicide bomber, and the ambulances were rushing to the scene. We looked at each other with terror and turned on the TV. There was a suicide bomber at Michael's Pub, a few minutes away from us. It was my son's favorite hang out; thank God he had been living in Holland for the last few years. He didn't even come home for a visit; I wouldn't let him, my only son...
Gideon, quickly rushed to the phone to ring his three children (from his 2 ex wives) they were all in their twenties ... that was his usual routine, every time a bomber hit the town. Then he would take his clooney (Cloonex - a tranquilizer) I was always angry when he took it, being a practitioner of Chinese medicine, it was totally against my principals. But he couldn't care less. He was slowly becoming addicted to clooney.
We stayed at home glued to the TV watching the horrible scenes of children, women, blood, screaming, etc etc. Gideon began his usual snores beside me, the clooney had knocked him out!
The next day we heard on the news that Palestinians were under curfew ....
There are always three sides to every divorce: the wife, the husband and the truth...
We are having a terrible, endless bloody row: it's time to stop talking about the past. I would expect an educated person like Suad not to live in the past, but to accept our existence in Israel and to start talking from that point. We have no where else to go, and the experience of living as a Jew outside Israel has not been very successful ... I could attach a picture of my mother's green number tattooed on her arm, she is only 74, she was 12 when they took her to the camps, one of the last survivors in the world ... Tell me Suad, the truth: this is not about the occupied territories. Barak begged Arafat to take it back. This is about Jaffa...according to your book. Do you expect my mother to go back to Czechoslovakia? And look for her confiscated home? And what about me? I was born here, am I to take a dive in the sea?
Yours sincerely,
Yael Stern O'Dwyer
Worth reading with some caveats for the uninformed reader.......2006-09-16
I enjoyed reading this book but was chilled at the author's inclusion of "1929" as a year of Palestinian "pride" without mention of the atrocities of the Hebron pogroms. "Text without context is pretext" as the PLO's old friend Jesse Jackson used to remind us. Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (which alot of Amazon reviewers think has an anti-Zionist bias) would be a good corrective for the reader new to these issues.
Amiry is not a fanatic or a fundamentalist and this is her P.O.V. and her life. Can she address the moral failures of the Palestinian leadership, beginning with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and ending in Hamas? Maybe, but this is not that book.
Our hope for peace? We're in trouble.......2006-09-03
I picked up this book at Ben-Gurion airport at a time when I could have used an uncommonly witty look at life under the Occupation, but alas, I found nothing witty or uncommon about Suad Amiry's wonderfully named but lazily written screed -- and if you are a thinking person, you'll find nothing funny about her bigotry.
Some parts rattled me, but it wasn't her so-called reportage, which anyone familiar with the region will recognize as the usual embroidering. I am not saying that life under occupation is not difficult and sometimes brutal. However, my editor's antenna went up more than once. Naturally, Amiry's stories are impossible to verify.
No, it was her attitude throughout the book that unnerved me. For instance, Amiry dismisses out-of-hand the very public military inquiry into reports of looting by Israeli soldiers. And yet she cheerleads without shame for Palestinian thievery, and even opines that Palestinians aren't stealing enough from Jews.
And the child-free Amiry treats us to a charming vignette, her tacit approval ringing loud and clear, of Arab mothers warning their mischievous children: "Behave or the Israeli soldiers will shoot you."
Interestingly, on my flight to Israel, just in time for the Israel-Hizbollah war, I read Amos Oz's new book, an essay, really, called "How to Cure a Fanatic." And one of his cures is humor. If you can laugh at yourself, you are in no danger of becoming a fanatic. Sadly, Amiry can make fun of her neighbors and relatives, and she can indulge in the most racist of rants against Jews, knowing someone will find them funny. But she cannot laugh at herself. I suppose we should be grateful that she left out the hilarious phenomenon of suicide bombers.
In the end, I pitied Amiry -- an obviously unstable middle-aged woman who I suspect would have been unstable even if she had stayed in her native Jordan. If the Israeli occupation hadn't driven her to distraction, something else most assuredly would have. But if you can blame the Occupation for your woes, so much the better. How good and pleasant it is to be a victim. How little responsibility you bear.
Life OVER the Occupation.......2006-07-09
Suad Amiry's book is very witty and easy to read. The book is based on a compilation of emails, letters and Amiry's recollection of the various events. Amiry offers a portrayal of life of a relatively well off Palestinian family under Israeli occupation. The Israeli occupation and the siege of their city feature prominently in the book but almost as natural disasters or "Act of God" ..so they are there thrown into the mix making ordinary complex life even more complicated. The politics of the occupation are touched upon but clearly what is central is just the day to day life.
The title of the book is very much a reflection of the light hearted style of the book but also of the very menacing undertones. In the United States Sharon largely has(d) the reputation of being a tough minded and determined leader and with the Gaza withdrawal in 2005 as a peacemaker; whereas in most of the world outside of the US Sharon is seen as a ruthless cruel man responsible for the death and destruction of many who was sanctioned by his own country and was even wanted for trial on war crime charges in Europe. For the Palestinians I imagine Sharon had simply been a brutal merciless monster; the title Sharon & My Mother in Law with that background is therefore very ironic! A daughter - mother in law relationship in a middle eastern environment is never straight forward ..the very words mother in law carry a whole world of conations. The very title of the book comes across funny to any Middle Eastern; equating or even putting Sharon & mother in law in the same sentence carries with the wit and the determination that comes across in Amiry's words.
Many reviewers of this book talked about the book illustrating the humanity of the Palestinians, I doubt if that has been on Amiry's mind; for those who doubt the humanity of the Palestinians better read John Grisham or watch Pirates of the Caribbean; this book celebrates the humanity of the Palestinians and the triumph of their spirit.
Book Description
An urgent and searing exposé of the "peace process" by a prominent Israeli thinker.
The Road Map to Nowhere is a devastating and timely book, essential to understanding the current state of the Israel/Palestine crisis and the propaganda that infects its coverage. Based on analysis of information in the mainstream Israeli media, it argues that the current road map has brought no real progress and that, under cover of diplomatic successes, Israel is using the road map to strengthen its grip on the remaining occupied territories. Exploring the Gaza pullout of 2005, the West Bank wall and the collapse of Israeli democracy, Reinhart examines the gap between myth—the Israeli leadership's public affairs achievement that has led the West to believe that a road map is in fact being implemented—and bitter reality. Not only has nothing fundamentally changed, she argues, but the Palestinians continue to lose more of their land and are pushed into smaller and smaller enclaves, surrounded by the new wall constructed by Sharon.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant study showing how to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.......2007-06-14
Tanya Reinhart was a professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University until her recent untimely death. This book examines the last four years of Israel's 40-year illegal occupation of Palestine. She shows how, under the pretence of ending its occupation, the Israeli state has reimposed military control of the occupied territories.
Gaza and the West Bank are a system of prisons, sealed enclaves. The Israeli state controls all movements of goods, services and people. It plans to retain control of these enclaves, from the outside, retaining the army's `freedom of action'.
This is in defiance of the two-thirds of the Israeli people who have consistently backed ending the occupation. 100,000-strong demonstrations have demanded, "Leave the Territories - Save the Country."
Reinhart describes the Palestinians' struggle against the illegal Separation Wall, which the Israeli state wants to be its permanent, unilaterally-decided border. The Wall annexes 40% of the West Bank. If completed, it would rob 400,000 Palestinians of their land and livelihoods.
On 25 June 2003, Palestinian organisations, including Hamas, announced that they would cease fire for three months. The Israeli and US governments immediately responded by rejecting the ceasefire and demanding the `dismantling' of Hamas and other organisations; the Israeli army killed two Palestinians, including a woman. After six weeks' ceasefire, the Israeli state resumed its policy of assassinations, killing 14 Hamas leaders in the first half of August 2003. The EU helped by placing Hamas' political leadership on its list of terrorist organisations.
In February 2004, Sharon unveiled his disengagement plan, which was a feint to cover building the Wall. In September 2005, the British Presidency of the EU demanded that the Palestinian Authority rein in the militants, while allowing Israel full freedom of action, saying, "The Presidency recognises Israel's right to act in self-defence." This is the formula that the USA usually employs to back the Israeli state's assassinations policy and aggressions.
In January 2006, Hamas won the elections. Israel, the EU and the USA at once demanded that it recognise Israel, accept all existing agreements and renounce violence. They did not make similar demands of Israel, yet Israel does not recognise Palestine, respect existing agreements or renounce violence.
There is a road to peace, a simple, unilateral solution available to Israel - end the occupation.
Reinhart's Must Read: a Reality Check for US media.......2007-05-18
Reinhart compares and contrasts what we read in the media with the reality on the ground. It is a stunning indictment of western -- and particularly American -- media, as well as an indictment of those who are relentlessly pursuing a genocidal treatment of those whose deeds they covet.
Israel/Palestine in black & white.......2007-03-29
A "must read" book for those interested in an analysis of a complex situation rendered in black & white by a colorblind Ms. Reinhart. The book will give you many reasons to hate Israelis/Jews. If you prefer to learn about the conflict, you may want to read Tom Segev's and Raja Shehadeh's books instead.
The truth about the "peace process".......2007-02-22
Tanya Reinhart's latest book is a worthy successor to her Israel/Palestine: How to end the War of 1948. This is must reading for Americans, especially for those who do not speak or read Hebrew. Prof. Reinhart's searing analysis of Israeli media reveals the full extent of Israel's failure to comply with even the most basic requirements of the "Roadmap", Further, her revelations will be news to anyone who relies on information from the US press, though they are not surprising to those who have witnessed the daily tragedy that is enacted under Israel's Occupation of Palestine. While her analysis is unflinching and therefore not very optimistic, she ends her book on a note of hope. The basis for this hope is the unwavering commitment to reconciliation by some in the Israeli Peace Movement and the dedicated steadfastness of Palestinian communities like Bil'in , who have resisted the Wall and the confiscation of their lands.
The best book on Israel-Palestine current situation.......2007-01-04
Tanya Reinhart's former book: Israel/Palestine - How to End the !948 War, was the best account and analysis of the Oslo Years and the Second Intiphada. The new book, The Road Map to Nowhere, covers the Years 2002-2006, and contributes as no other book, in information, analysis and assesment of the current situation.
Average customer rating:
- Thoughts on Oz
- There is more in heaven and earth. Mr. Oz, than is dreamnt of in your prophecies
- A great deal of wisdom in a very small package.
- Poor packaging for great content
- An Important and Excellent Read
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How to Cure a Fanatic
Amos Oz
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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ASIN: 0691126690 |
Book Description
Internationally acclaimed novelist Amos Oz grew up in war-torn Jerusalem, where as a boy he witnessed firsthand the poisonous consequences of fanaticism. In two concise, powerful essays, the award-winning author offers unique insight into the true nature of fanaticism and proposes a reasoned and respectful approach to resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict. As an added feature, he comments on contemporary issues--the Gaza pullout, Yasser Arafat's death, and the war in Iraq--in an extended interview at the end of the book.
Oz argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute--one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise. As he writes, "The seeds of fanaticism always lie in uncompromising righteousness, the plague of many centuries."
The brilliant clarity of these essays, coupled with Oz's ironic sense of humor in illuminating the serious, breathes new life into this centuries-old debate. He emphasizes the importance of imagination in learning to define and respect other's space, and analyzes the twisted historical roots that have led to Middle East violence. In his interview, Oz sends a message to Americans. Why not, he proposes, advocate for a twenty-first-century equivalent of the Marshall Plan aimed at preventing poverty and despair in the region? "What is necessary is to work on the ground, for example, building homes for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have been rotting in camps for almost sixty years now."
Fresh, insightful, and inspiring, How to Cure a Fanatic brings a new voice of sanity to the cacophony on Israeli-Palestinian relations--a voice no one can afford to ignore.
Customer Reviews:
Thoughts on Oz.......2006-11-04
This is a short book, but what it lacks in length it more then makes up with in the depth of the story. Oz's writings examines the problems in the Middle East, without getting into an scapegoating. He is focused on identifying what is wrong and what needs to be done. He does not suggest any re-drawing of maps, or other policies but the need to imagine.... and to understand that you must read the book.
There is more in heaven and earth. Mr. Oz, than is dreamnt of in your prophecies .......2006-04-17
Amos Oz, is in my judgment, one of the greatest contemporary writers. His memoir " A Tale of Love and Darkness" is a literary classic of tremendous power.
However Oz is also a 'political prophet'. And often holds forth in a way as if to suggest he feels himself taking upon himself the mantle of his Biblical namesake. Here he should perhaps have been a bit more cautious and remembered the Jewish teaching that in our time 'prophecy' is given to 'children' and ' fools'.
In this small gathering of small works Oz reiterates his well- known analysis of the Israeli- Arab conflict. It is as he understands it a 'dispute over land' between two peoples each of whom has a legitimate claim. The fanatics on one side( A fanatic in Oz's term is one for whom every means even the most bloody justifies the end) are those who say ' all is mine, and nothing is the others'. The reasonable people of which Oz is as he understands it preeminently one( though he makes it clear he too was raised as a little fanatic in pre- Jewish state 'Palestine') understand that there has to be a painful, reasonable compromise. The end of fanaticism is as he understands it the end of the Arab- Israeli conflict. A divided Holy Land, two states, one predominantly Jewish, and one Arab.
This analysis is of course not simply Oz's but has been the analysis of the moderate left in Israel, a good share of Western European Governments, and successive U.S. administrations.It now is the 'dream' of the vast majority of Israelis. It is on the basis of this analysis that US diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East has been conducted for more than half - a - century.
The problem however is that the analysis is drawn along too broad, too symmetrical and at the same time too limited lines. It is not right to say that the conflict is 'primarily' about land. Such a position was more credible three decades ago, but today given the rise of a worldwide pan-Islamic movement , it misses the mark.
The truth is that what Oz calls 'fanatics' are the great majority on the Islamic Palestinian side. ( He denies this, but the recent 'Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections suggests he is once again ' sweeting' Palestinian positions) . The fact is that there is no symmetry between the ' fanaticism' of the Islamic world and the alleged 'fanaticism' of the Jews even those Oz calls ' settlers'. There is no Jewish Literature no settler Literature calling for the extermination of Palestinians, as there is daily Palestinian and Arab propaganda calling for the murder and elimination of Jews.There has never been deliberate Israeli effort at murdering Palestinian civilians, while murdering of Israeli civilians is a generally accepted Palestinian tactic.
Oz misleads and presents a false picture in harping on an alleged an unreal symmetry between Israelis and Palestinians.
One question of course is why he would want to do this? One answer is very simply that the kind of answer he gives makes a reasonable solution possible. Another answer is that it of course puts him above , makes him the good guy with the Europeans the Americans the Nobel Prize Committee , everyone else who would like to see the conflict resolved in this way.
Perhaps what I have just said is unfair, though Oz's tendency to preach his own views becomes increasingly irritating as they diverge with the years from the 'reality on the ground'.
Had Oz' had a bit more honesty he would have given up certain familiar 'socialist egalitarian 'mantras of his youth- and understood that there is a tremendous assymetry between the Jewish Israeli position and the Islamic Palestinian one. He would have had the honesty to understand that one very vast civilization, the Islamic, has a set of problems , which are endangering other human beings throughout the world. One such leader of that civilization , a leader who considers himself the great protector of the Palestinians, Mohammed Ahmadinejad has been continually threatening to wipe 'Israel ' from the map.
Perhaps Oz's analysis on ' fanaticism' would have been more convincing had it focused on Mr.Ahmadinejad and his ilk.
i.e. Willy- nilly whether it likes it or not , Oz's country Israel is involved in the conflict of those who champion freedom and democracy against those Totalitarian- Terrorist- Islamic Regimes which would make the 'Koran' our sole bed-time reading.
A great deal of wisdom in a very small package........2006-03-05
I usually do not find books written by Israelis or Palestinians about past or present events in the land whose very name is a matter of perspective and politics to be very interesting or enlightening. The authors usually either have an agenda or are engaging in pure propaganda. This book (along with David Grossman's "Death as a Way of Life") is a rare exception.
In lucid, eloquent and sensitive language, Oz presents the situation and the necessary cures not for Israelis, not for Palestinians, but for human beings. If you do not like this book, you are probably a fanatic, and not subject to logical persuasion.
Poor packaging for great content.......2006-02-22
Amos Oz is plain-spoken, lucid, brilliant. But Princeton UP did a disappointing job with the production of the book. The 2 essays and 1 interview that make up this book are short, and you can't change that. But what kept them from using larger paper? With exactly the same type-setting but wider margins, we would have gotten a beautiful small book. Instead, it looks like one of those over-priced mini books of bad poetry.
An Important and Excellent Read.......2006-02-16
Two very short, thoughtful essays and an interview on the conflict between the State of Israel and the (inevitable)Palatinian State; it is about real estate (and economics) stupid; read it and, then, join the Order of the Teaspoon.
Book Description
James L. Gelvin's new account of the century-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians presents a compelling, accessible and up-to-the-moment introduction for students and general readers. Placing events in the disputed area within the framework of global history, the book skillfully interweaves biographical sketches, eyewitness accounts, poetry, fiction and official documentation into its narrative, including photographs, maps and an abundance of supplementary material as well. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century in Palestine, it traces the evolution and interactions of the two communities from their first encounters up to the present conflict.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding analysis of the roots of the Israel-Palestine question.......2006-01-14
Like Gelvin's other general readership work, The Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2005), this is more an analytical essay than traditional textbook. In a field of study that is almost impossibly broad, this work aims to center on central themes and problems rather than a step-by-step narrative of events. More than anything else, reading this work is like sitting down with a very smart, very knowledgeable person for many cups of coffee: you learn a lot, but a lot gets breezed by as well. And the time passes quickly.
This emphasis on the "big picture" is both the book's greatest strength and its most significant weakness. Although aimed at undergraduates and a general audience, without recourse to other works, the reader may not feel that they have a sufficient grasp of chronology or of major actors. For this reason, readers may well find a basic textbook like those by Charles Smith or Mark Tessler to be of value. At the same time, what this work offers - far more than any other work that I know of - is an understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict as rooted in the very modern problem of nationalism. In a field that often gets caught up in the details or polemics, this broad approach is both engaging and intellectually provocative, offering the reader a means of seeing the Arab-Israeli conflict in a broader context than is generally offered.
Gelvin's breezy style is, at times, too dismissive and, while he argues that both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are both modern constructions, his fundamental sympathy for the Palestinian cause is clear. This "imbalance" will, no doubt, engage some readers and annoy others. Regardless of political inclinations, however, there are few readers, either novice or specialist, who would not benefit from a careful reading of this engaging and important survey.
A Historian's Historian; A Reader's Writer.......2005-12-17
As an amateur historian, I appreciate it when I read a book that takes an over-exposed subject and makes it fresh. Gelvin is a superb historian and writer as well as a polymath who is entirely comfortable writing about politics, literature, international exhibitions, poetry, and world history. He uses a short story by the Jewish-Austrian writer Joseph Roth to investigate how and why European Jews turned to nationalism, archaeological evidence to describe how nationalisms like Zionism remake national histories, Palestinian poetry to elaborate the experience of exile, and biographical sketches (Theodor Herzl, Ariel Sharon, Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Darwish) to make history come alive. His writing is fluent, witty, and never pedantic. I almost felt guilty reading a book this enjoyable about such a bloody and endless conflict.
BRILLIANT and ENGAGING.......2005-09-08
I've read many books on the Israel/Palestine conflict (Smith, Tessler, Bickerton/Klausner, etc.) but this one is by FAR the best. First, it's actually fun to read. Gelvin writes as if he is there in the room having a conversation. The book is peppered with jokes and wry observations, and although Gelvin obviously knows his way around the academic world, there is none of the usual academic jargon. Second, most historians present history as one disconnected thing after another. Gelvin states a theme at the beginning of the book and sticks to it. For Gelvin, the conflict has had three phases: the first involved the initial encounter between two peoples (Jewish settlers and Arabs); the second began in 1948 when it was defined as an interstate "Arab-Israeli conflict" and the Palestinian question dropped off the map for most of the world (except the PLO); the third began in 1993 when Israelis and Palestinians recognized each other and brought the conflict full circle. This should be obvious, yet no one else I've read has said this directly. Also, the author keeps reminding the reader of the global context for the conflict, from the emergence of nationalism in Europe and its impact on Jews and Arabs in the nineteenth century to the impact of the end of the Cold War.
This is definitely a five star book, but I can see how it will drive some people nuts (i.e. those who can't bring themselves to use the words "Palestine" or "Palestinian" in their reviews). Zionists claim their nationalism is special, but Gelvin points out that it is pretty much a typical 19th century nationalism: it reconstructs Jewish history in its image, it insists that Jews have a right to establish a sovereign state on a piece of land they ruled thousands of years ago, etc. But all nationalisms do the same thing. What will really drive people nuts is that Gelvin shows how much Zionism and Palestinian nationalism resemble each other: both invent traditions, both claim to fulfill their peoples' national destinies, both have used terror to accomplish their goals. Gelvin doesn't let the Zionists off the hook, but he doesn't let the Palestinians off the hook either. Just read his analysis of the PLO doctrine of armed struggle or his profile of Arafat. His argument here is simple: while both national movements have a lot to answer for, if you accept the right of Jews or Palestinians to self-determination, you really can't ignore the right of the other side to self-determination either.
One small criticism: I read another book by this author (The Modern Middle East) in which he added inserts with anecdotes and stories that were related to points raised in the main text. They were a really good read, and I wish he did the same in this book.
Misleading.......2005-08-20
Gelvin is a professor who knows plenty of facts. But that does not stop him from misleading his readers in this piece of propaganda.
This book does have some really interesting material in it. Some of it is about Masada. Here, the author complains that the traditional Masada story is pretty far off. I tend to agree with much of what Gelvin says here. But I also feel that Gelvin is wrong to imply that Masada is being used as an excuse by Jews for the policies of Israel. I think Israeli policies are typically driven by a desire of Israel to protect the rights of its citizens.
The author discusses Golda Meir's comments about the Levantine Arab nation not having existed prior to 1967. Gelvin and I disagree here: he says that Meir's claim was absurd, while I say it was accurate. As a matter of fact, I think the Levantine Arabs still do not behave like a nation. They do not ask for rights for themselves. They do not ask for land. They ask only for less rights for Jews. They are more like the Sudeten Germans, who did not ask for independence, but merely for an end to Czech independence. Or the Ku Klux Klan, which does not ask for freedom for Whites, but an end to freedom for Blacks.
Gelvin spends some time discussing the Levantine Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. This exhibit looked like an idealized Jewish "tower and stockade" construction. And I found the whole section quite interesting. But I was shocked that Gelvin did not appear to take a strong stand against the way the British were treating the Jews at the time. As I see it, the British White Paper of 1939 was one of the most obviously evil acts of a rather wicked twentieth century. I can't imagine why anyone would want to appear to be neutral about it. But Gelvin implies that the Jews should have been more moderate, at a time when we can all see that moderation was totally unsuccessful in preventing a truly huge disaster in which millions of Jews were murdered. That's quite a view to take.
Just to make sure that we readers can be sure where Gelvin stands, he then whitewashes the "poetry" of racist thugs such as Mahmoud Darwish. And he casually mentions that the Jews took land that belonged to the Arabs. But wait a second. Does all land belong to the Arabs? Even land that wasn't Arab before, or was sold by the Arabs to others? Gelvin is misleading his readers quite badly here by implying that all of the Levant was (and is) rightfully Arab land. And he has to know better than that.
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III
The Power of Israel in the United States
