Book Description
The very name of Judas raises among Christians an instinctive reaction of criticism and condemnationThe betrayal of Judas remainsa mystery. Pope Benedict XVI, October 2006 The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot sheds new light on the the mystery of Judasincluding his motives for the betrayal and what happened to him after the crucifixionby retelling the story of Jesus through the eyes of Judas, using the canonical texts as its basic point of reference. Ostensibly written by Judass son, Benjamin, and following the narrative style of the Gospels, this re-creation is provocative, compelling, and controversial. The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot is the result of an intense collaboration between a storyteller and a scholar: Jeffrey Archer and Francis J. Moloney. Their brilliant workbold and simpleis a compelling story for twenty-first-century readers, while maintaining an authenticity that would be credible to a first-century Christian or Jew.
Customer Reviews:
nice effort, unfortunately dull.......2007-09-25
I was waiting for something interesting to happen, some insight... I didn't really come across anything new.
Overall, a bit disappointing, luckily not a big book.
For much more illuminating Biblical historical fiction, I highly recommend the Kingdom & the Crown Series by Gerald Lund (3 books) and the Women of Genesis books by Orson Scott Card.
It actually has nothing to do with 'mysteries' of Judas.......2007-07-06
Oh come on people:
"The unlikely partnership of Jeffrey Archer and Francis J. Moloney was formed after Archer had sought advice from Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini on who should guide him through this demanding project. Among his many past students of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Cardinal Martini singled
out Professor Moloney, a graduate of that institute in 1972, who had completed his doctoral studies at Oxford University in 1975.
The project was as bold as it was simple: Archer would write a story for twenty-first-century readers, while Moloney would ensure that the result would be credible to a first-century Christian or Jew."
And that's EXACTLY the case. An interesting read.
Judas the Ensnared.......2007-06-28
I've been reading Archer since Kane and Abel and when I saw that he was writing a fictionalized account of the life of Judas as told by his son, I thought, wow, this could really be a great read and a little controversial. Neither came true. Basically, it's formatted like the gospels (nothing wrong with that), but just not an exciting read this time around. I was actually kind of bored reading it and the only reason I kept going was because it came in at around ninety pages so I persevered with it. The last chapter or two is when the basis of the story comes out and nothing earth shattering here. Judas was the victim of the religious zealots at the time to get rid of Christ. Maybe, maybe not. Does it change my point of view or my beliefs, probably not. Just something more to ponder about; the Bible, its writers (Did they embellish the truth from generation to generation before writing it down, whether on purpose or by accident. Kind of difficult to keep the same exact story going for tens or even hundreds of years orally without some of it being changed on the next telling), and the facts that surround it that science today continues to try to prove happened. I expected Archer to put this into more story form like all his other works and I think then he could have gone into more depth with this alternate theory and really provoked the reader's imagination. But he chose not to, giving us instead this lackluster rendition of what could have been a great story about Judas Iscariot.
The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot.......2007-06-21
The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot
Where Do I begin. Lets start with the title, The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot by Jeffrey Archer, come on!! It should be the fictional story of The Gospel According to Judas by Jeffrey Archer as Benjamin Iscariot.
A Relevant Story:
A friend of mine recently told me of a Pastor who liked to make hot fudge, apparently he used all organic ingredients. One day the Pastor's daughter wanted to see PG parental guidance rated movie, that only had 5%, swearing/drug use or sex scenes. After much insistence the daughter when to see the movie, the next day the Pastor decided to make some hot chocolate fudge the aroma filled the house the Pastor stated that he'd used 5% of a special organic source and kept the matter a secret until all the fudge had been consumed. Then he asked did you notice any difference in the quality/flavour? No.. they replied, well the 5% special ingredient was organic it wont do any REAL harm, it was only dog p##h. lol
If you take a solid truth as the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus and you contaminant 5% to 10% of it with a special 'organic substance' what do you have in the end - dog p##h. I felt the tone and reason for the book was a Jewish backlash hardliner trying to have some justification why Jesus wasn't who he said he was the Son of God. The book was written from the sour grapes attitude, "[Jesus wasn't] ...the long-awaited Messiah."p1, on the betrayal of Christ, Archer says, "...Judas knew that he was innocent of such an accusation, as his only purpose was to save Jesus from an unnecessary death." After Jesus' Death, the sorrowful Judas goes a lives amongst the Essenes then a Masada as a "marked man". And the book concludes with "Judas died as Jesus did. He was crucified by the Romans." It's all a bit desperate!
The whole story Gospel of Judas is unbalanced what about Isaiah 53 The Sin-bearing, Suffering Servant? The Gospel of Judas omits the 30 pieces of silver, and suicide of Judas. The Gospel of Judas is nothing more that fragments of quotation out of context in Holy Bible blended together (very poorly) it just doesn't stick!
Let us set aside a few things, just say by chance that this gospel of Judas was right, and the whole of the New Testament wrong. Ok we've been deceived by the BIGGEST hoaxes since man made fire. We could be waiting for the Messiah to still come as the Gospel of Judas indicated, unhappily Israel still waits, they missed the boat. Not one Holy Prophet has been around for over two thousand years.
Israel is one of the most violent, sad and godless places on earth. There is no peace, the temple has gone, the glory has gone, as a nation they forsook the Lord time and time again and were taken off to captivity. Jesus said in Matt 23:37 "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city the kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See your house is left to you, desolate..."
Now let's just say that the Gospel of Judas is false piece of fiction. Look at the people in New Testament who believe and were change by it and gave their lives for it (Peter & Paul), they did not write empty words by words of someone who knew and walked and talked with Jesus. The story of people in Bible give us hope, in a world where we are saturated with Hollywood, sexism, drugs and alcohol, domestic violence (rape/guns) the list keeps on going on. I want freedom from all that this world offers because it like hot sweet chocolate fudge one isn't enough and one piece is too much.
In closing a quote from James 3:13, "Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.
What was Archer really trying to achieve by the release of this book?
Lacks Impact.......2007-05-28
In spite of the clever packaging---this small 100+ page novel appears to be an ancient leather-bound journal complete with built in ribbon bookmark--- Jeffrey Archer's "The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot" fails to deliver the punch needed to smack it into the significance realm of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I expected some grand revelation---perhaps Judas and Jesus had concocted the whole betrayal bit; Judas gladly takes the hit and for two millennia is thought to be the ultimate 30 pieces of silver traitor. As I read this little gospel formatted tome, I am thinking, Judas's legendary despicable actions were all part of his Master's ultimate plan, right?
Wrong.
Supposedly, in "The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot" Archer and Moloney collaborate to formulate a tale believable to both Biblical scholars and modern laymen readers. The format definitely bespeaks of their desire to create something that resembles a gospel rendering complete with chapter and verse and the Jesus quotations (most of which are familiar from evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) highlighted in a red italicized font. Nevertheless, the story itself disappoints as it is far too similar to the actual gospels from which it is based to excite any degree of controversy. The supposed mystery of the real Judas simply neglects to properly mystify.
Bottom line? Years ago, I had read Frank Yerby's novel, "Judas, My Brother." Believe me as scandalous as the plotline of this older book seemed to me then, it could far more captivate its audience now than this Archer-Moloney collaboration. Sadly, "The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot" attempts to retell the story of Christ's ministry utilizing a fifth evangelist format that simply doesn't work. Why read this when the original four authors of the New Testament gospels have already told the tale and have told it the best way possible? Not recommended.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
Book Description
Winner of the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction, this extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and now the Foreign Affairs columnist on the op-ed page of the New York Times, drew on his ten years in the Middle East to write a book that The Wall Street Journal called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook... an engrossing journey not to be missed." Now with a new chapter that brings the ever-changing history of the conflict in the Middle East up to date, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness. "If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it." -- Seymour Hersh. "From Beirut To Jerusalem is the most intelligent and comprehensive account one is likely to read." -- New York Times Book Review.
Download Description
Winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction, this extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Foreign Affairs Columnist for The New York Times, drew on his extensive experience in the region to write a book that The Wall Street Journal called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook . . . an engrossing journey not to be missed." As the conflict in the Middle East continues unabated, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness.
Customer Reviews:
From Beirut to Jerusalem.......2007-09-17
Best intellectual book on the Middle East that exists. Friedman is an experienced, thoughtful genius. A must read.
Still relevant.......2007-08-29
Tom Friedman occupies a unique place in the American Foreign Policy establishment elite. Not since Walter Lippman has the voice of a journalist been more influential in Washington DC. "From Beirut to Jerusalem" was his first foray into full-length treatment on critical international issues -- and it is still his best. Moreover, although it was written two decades ago and during a very different time, it is still incredibly relevant to current events.
What makes Friedman's narrative so powerful is his liberal use of personal anecdotes from his time as a New York Times coorespondent in the Middle East in the early 1980s. The story crackles with life as Friedman reconstructs the events of the Lebanonese civil war and Palestinian intifada from a broad spectrum of perspectives, from ultra-ortodox rabbis to American Jewish peace activists, Yasir Arafat and Palestinian schoolchildren, Washington policymakers and enlisted Marines. Friedman's description of life as a journalist at Beirut's Commodore Hotel is especially noteworthy and, on occasion, hilarious.
At the core of Friedman's analysis is the contrast between American naivete and the almost primordial savagery of tribal relations endemic to the Middle East. Friedman uses "Hama Rules" (after Syrian president Hafez al-Assad's brutal 1982 repression of a nascent Muslim Brotherhood insurgency in the Syrian city of Hama) as short-hand for the nature of power politics that shaped the flow of events in the region during his time there. The common demoninator in group identification is religion (by sect and by clan) and the gravest sin is to show weakness to your enemies. Friedman argues that the Reagan administration completely failed to understand this fundamental nature to life in Lebanon in the early 1980s when they committed Marines to help bolster the newly elected Maronite Christian president Gemayel, who was, in fact, more the leader of the Phalangist militia than true representative leader of the polyglot country.
Interestingly, Friedman writes that Israeli leaders often make the same mistakes as the US about the region, although some Israelis, such as Ariel Sharon, understand Hama Rules and act accordingly. Friedman describes the Israeli army reaction to the kaleidoscopic factional environment they found in Lebanon after their 1982 invasion as quite similar to the US army experience upon entering Baghdad in 2003.
Indeed, comparisons to Iraq are what struck me most when reading this book. After reading "From Beirut to Lebanon," I was amazed how optimistic Friedman was about the Iraq invasion in early 2003. He was relatively supportive of the war -- a position most likely held out of a deep desire and hope that it would succeed in bringing democracy to the Middle East, a position he passionately promotes, rather than any reasoned belief that the mixed Iraqi population would welcome a new US-installed regime. The civil war in Lebanon in many ways mirrors the intense factionalism of warfare in Iraq where religious identification -- Maronite, Druse, Shiite -- defines the membership of warring militias and undermines any attempt to use a national army to provide stability and bolster a central regime.
Many of the details about the war in Lebanon or the intifada make the book feel outdated, but the central underpinnings of conflict and discord in the region so lucidly explained by Friedman will not change anytime soon. The reader gets a sense of division and pure hatred that divides the people of that troubled land and seem to guarantee that the "peace process" is a meaningless charade.
Friedman's habitual "cuteness" thankfully absent here.......2007-06-28
As of this writing, 168 reviewers have reviewed this book, so I will be brief. Thomas Friedman, for all his real acumen and gifts with language (both spoken and written) tends to be cute or trite too much for comfort. That said, this book suffers from precious little of this. It is definitely in the genre of "New Journalism" now quite old, where the reporter is part of the story, maybe even the story itself at times, but this does not detract from the boldness of this work in the form of its written style, which is free, easy, yet complex, handling each topic with a certain grace and style and formal beauty. Friedman brings a complex topic to a general audience without sacrificing nuance (in fact, this is his main thrust) to show both Lebanon and Israel as cultures of almost impossibly subtle nuance, where small difference of sects and creeds can be the difference between war and peace, bliss and pain
Just not very good at all........2007-06-08
The writing wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't good either. Much of the book read as if it was filler and stories he heard from someone else. The author's account of his time in Beirut was not informative and rather bland. I have read other accounts that really go in depth into either the political, military or personal experiences of those on the ground, but this book did not add anything to what's been written. His analysis of the Beirut conflicts left much to be desired.
I remember a part of the book where Friedman writes about his time in the Commodore Hotel and how this hotel was the place to be for any journalist in Beirut, and then reading Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation where he talks about all the hack journalists hiding out in the Commodore writing their stories from second hand accounts instead of going out and reporting the story with their own accounts. I don't know if Fisk was right, but I thought his book was much better than Friedman's.
I did find his writing on Israel to be informative (still bland though). His analysis of the psychology of the Israeli people I found to be highly insightful, and it gave me a perspective which I had never seen before. The only way to understand the Israeli people is to try and understand how the Holocaust and being surrounded by hostile people has affected their national psyche. The Israeli perspective was the best thing I took away from this book, but not even this was able to redeem the work for me.
One of the reasons I like reading reporter's books is that they are usually well written, entertaining and written with a passion or flare that the academics usually lack. This book had none of that. I felt bored and found myself having to concentrate pretty hard to stay in touch with what I was reading. I would have been fine with the shoddy writing had the analysis or the history been better but it just wasn't. There are just many books out there that treat the subject with much more competency.
If you're looking for a good book to learn more about this topic, keep looking.
The Middle East Illuminated.......2007-06-05
Tom Friedman is a master at using charming, funny and fascinating anecdotes to illustrate broad historic events and cultural phenomena. His grasp of history is profound, and his observations are always spot on. The events he describes in this book may, indeed, be limited to only a very small part of the planet, but the human dynamics involved are universal and have profound implications for us all.
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
|
History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
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ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Book Description
The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people - one Israeli, one Palestinian - that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East.
In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly twenty years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir Al-Khairi, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited them in.
This act of faith in the face of many years of animosity is the starting point for a true story of a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the regio. In his childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, Bashir sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia, who arrived as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. As both are swept up in the fates of their people, and Bashir is jailed for his alleged part in a supermarket bombing, the friends do not speak for years. They finally reconcile and convert the house in Ramle into a day-care centre for Arab children of Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. Now the dialogue they started seems more threatened than ever; the lemon tree died in 1998, and Bashir was jailed again, without charge.
The Lemon Tree grew out of a forty-three minute radio documentary that Sandy Tolan produced for Fresh Air. With this book, he pursues the story into the homes and histories of the two families at its center, and up to the present day. Their stories form a personal microcosm of the last seventy years of Israeli-Palestinian history. In a region that seems ever more divided, The Lemon Tree is a reminder of all that is at stake, and of all that is still possible.
Customer Reviews:
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew and the Heart of the MIddle East.......2007-10-03
This book is a poignant story of the people drawn up into the Arab-Israeli conflict. It takes the premise that both sides have committed atrocities and both sides have been victimized. It does so by following both a Palestinian and Jewish family, linked together by residence of the same home during different periods. Each family learns to understand the other, but still a inpenetrable barrier remains between them.
The Lemon Tree.......2007-10-02
THE LEMON TREE, by Sandy Tolan, is a historical perspective of the Palestine/Israel problems viewed from two lives, one Arab man and one Israeli woman. Their factual stories are given from the history of the land and the divisions made by outside influence. The U.N. and Great Britian were very involved in the partition and resettlement of the people of this area.
The two personal lives were intertwined by having consecutive lives in one house as "one home" for the two families. Both of these lives reflect on people of great faith, great education, and great involvment in the situation.
The author uses much research, factual relativity, and impartiality to his report. A very complicated situation exists and the book allows the information to understand the impossibility of the area and future peaceful settlement.
A biased view of the Middle East conflict.......2007-08-23
Although when I began The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, I believed this book would be a balanced and nuances work about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. The book opens with a description of a home which had been built and inhabited by Palestinians and in which Israeli Jews live after the 1948 war. Great, I thought! We'll see two sides of the dreadful tensions and violence in the region. I was disappointed by the time I finished reading because Tolan loads the argument in favor of the dispossessed Palestinians, barely mentioned the horrific consequences of suicide bombings and attacks on innocent civilians. One example is the reference to the problems in Gaza. Tollan describes the attacks by Israel as violent and gratuitous on the Gazans, and actually suggests that the rockets Hamas fired into Israel (after the Israelis pulled out) are harmless. Surely, the author doesn't believe that the intention of Hamas was to fire "harmless rockets" into enemy territory. Throughout the book, we see very little about the wars the Arab nations began, especially the one that immediately followed the establishment of the state of Israel. The 1967 war was initiated by the Israelis, true, but Egyptian forces were massed on the border. If that wasn't provocation, I don't know what is.
I am not sorry I read the book. I enjoyed much of it, and I was certainly more sympathetic with many Palestinians who suffered so much after having read Tolan's presentation of their lives and losses. The book would have been more successful for me had it been more balanced and honest.
The Lemon Tree.......2007-08-07
This is an excellent book - extremely well documented. It affords the reader greater understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It arouses sympathy for those who have suffered injustice - also admiration for people on both sides for their resilience and determination to seek the truth. This book also inspires a feeling of hope through the compassion shown between Jew and Israeli. Would that more people could strive for understanding and peace!
good read.......2007-08-01
This is well written and easy to read book that gave me a new perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict using personalized research,including historical,familial comments and quotes from both Arab and Israeli sources.
Amazon.com
This is the exciting and highly literate story of the real Lawrence of Arabia, as written by Lawrence himself, who helped unify Arab factions against the occupying Turkish army, circa World War I. Lawrence has a novelist's eye for detail, a poet's command of the language, an adventurer's heart, a soldier's great story, and his memory and intellect are at least as good as all those. Lawrence describes the famous guerrilla raids, and train bombings you know from the movie, but also tells of the Arab people and politics with great penetration. Moreover, he is witty, always aware of the ethical tightrope that the English walked in the Middle East and always willing to include himself in his own withering insight.
Book Description
The monumental work that assured T.E. Lawrence's place in history as "Lawrence of Arabia." Not only a consummate military history, but also a colorful epic and a lyrical exploration of the mind of a great man who helped shape the Middle East as it exists today.
Customer Reviews:
A Unique Masterpiece.......2007-09-25
This is one of the great books of the 20th century. That it could be written at all is almost a miracle in itself. Take a brilliant Oxford student trained in the old classical tradition, place him in the Arabian desert as advisor to the wild Bedouin tribesmen during their revolt against the Turks and have him write with an acute sensitivity and unparalleld insight into what was transpiring before him and you may have some notion of what the book is like.
It's a long book. You will learn a great deal about blowing up a railroad bridge in the desert, about camel rides, thirst, and hunger and the heroism and brutality of war. The portraits of Sheik Auda, Sherrif Ali and Prince Faisal of the two Arab boys who Lawrence takes under his wing are masterpieces in and of themselves. The nobility and savagery of the desert tribesmen contrasted with the cold stoicism of the British and the inculcated cruelty of the Turks are just some of themes addressed during the course of the work. There are brilliant passing insights as to the Semitic inspiration for all the revealed religions and their relation to the desert beautiful descripitions of the terrain the weather and the obstacles encountered. When Lawrence says that from the beginning he believed the Arab revolt would succeed because it grew out of a sympathetic population was opposed by a modern army that could not garrison the territory occupied one wishes that President Bush had read it instead of just seeing the movie. Read it yourself.
The Hejaz War.......2007-06-10
The Hejaz War of 1917 was written by Colonel T.E. Lawrence at the Paris peace talks in 1920 -21. Lawrence understood the Arabs thay did not conquer territory but they brought the Arab tribes together to conquer the Ottoman Turkish Army whom they considered poor soldiers. The Hejaz is the Red Sea coast parallel to the extinct lava fields of the 3,000m high Hejaz mountains. The Hejaz railway, linking Damascus with Medina, was attacked by Lawrence's Hejaz army until the Turks could no longer repair it. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the bible of Guerilla Warfare and should be read by General Petraeus US Armed Forces Commander, Iraq.
The taking of Damascus intact in 1918 by the arab army before General Allenby's allied army at least ensured Sheikh Feisal became King of Iraq. The Sykes -Picot treaty of 1916 ensured the Middle East was divided up by Britain and France directly leading to the present Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Stylistic autobiography with insight.......2007-01-09
Mr. TE Lawrence was not only a gifted tactician/strategist but also a scholar of the highest order. His writing style is rich and descriptive avoiding the dry pitfalls sometimes associated with autobiographies. The story of the Arab revolt from the man who helped shape and guide it is an invaluable resource to have. TE Lawrence's thoughts on irregular/unconventional warfare are insightful and still lessons to be rememembered today. An enjoyable and insightful read- perfect for any military history collection.
Learning the Arab way.......2007-01-05
For me, the complexity of the Middle East seemed unfathomable. By reading this book, carefully, delving into the author's text, I have a better understanding of the people of the Middle East and their many tribes and cultural ways. I also can begin to understand their rivalries and methods of dealing with each other. It is a very complex society that will take the USA years to understand and deal with.
Extraordinary - History and the Man.......2006-11-10
At a critical time, the right man steeped forward (if somewhat indirectly) to encourage an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. This classic war novel is more than the usual, as it reveals a character tortured with self analysis.
Highly recommended.
Book Description
Written by a non-Jewish analytic philosopher, this book addresses the issue of whether, and to what extent, current opposition to Israel on the liberal-left embodies anti-Semitic stances. It argues that the dominant climate of liberal opinion disseminates, however inadvertently, a range of anti-Semitic assertions and motifs of the most traditional kind. It advocates a return to an unrestricted anti-racism which would allow liberals to defend Palestinian interests without demonizing Jews.
Customer Reviews:
Very thoughtful and well-written.......2007-06-24
This is a careful work on the nature of the resurgence of anti-Semitism. We see the ill will, the falsehoods, and lack of logic displayed by the anti-Semites, and there's some speculation on what gets some folks to behave in such a manner.
Bernard Harrison starts by discussing some of the properties of political anti-Semitism. He says that it generally includes, as a minimum, the proposition that Jews are a mysterious, depraved, and conspiratorial society which threatens the well-being of any nation which harbors them. And he reminds us that many of the accusations made against "the Jews" are simply self-inconsistent or incoherent. For example, the blood libel accusations are generally of the form that observant Jews commit ritual murder for religious reasons, something which is, of course, expressly forbidden by their religion. We also generally see anti-Semites simultaneously claim (or imply) that Jews are so powerful as to be responsible for the bulk of the evil in today's society yet are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity (I tend to believe that those who make such claims are more serious about the latter one).
We also see discussions of the preposterous claim that mere criticism of Israel is sufficient to get one automatically branded as an anti-Semite. As well as another ridiculous claim that almost anyone who finds anything about Israel that is worthy of support is Jewish, and that pretty much anyone who is Jewish supports Israel. And the even more absurd claim that Israel is basically a colonial enterprise is also quickly refuted.
Harrison also is careful to distinguish between explaining why Israel exists and justifying Israel's existence. I agree. The fact that Jerusalem had been (and still was) the Jewish capital city in the 19th century helps explain why many Jews tried moving to the region once they had the opportunity to do so. The White Paper of 1939 helps explain why the number of Jews who demanded a Jewish state quickly became a majority once World War Two broke out. But these facts, by themselves do not "justify" what happened, nor do they "establish" Israel's "right to exist."
The author does write about fascism and the concept of "total war," including war against civilians. Here, he makes an excellent point, namely that claims about the "guilt" of such civilians make no sense. As he explains, even if one assents to the idea of capital punishment, "punishment" makes no sense without the concept of desert, desert makes no sense without a practicable and practiced system of laws, laws require some general acquiescence in their operation, acquiescence requires reconciliation, and reconciliation requires all sides to admit their own errors and as a minimum the right of their adversaries to exist. Obviously, any bunch of gangsters can go around murdering people, but we ought to remind ourselves that they are not necessarily "punishing" those who "deserve it."
There is a discussion about whether or not there ought to be a "Holocaust Day" for remembering that societies can make some terrible moral mistakes. Here, Harrison is careful to explain that the emphasis on the suffering of the victims is probably misplaced, as plenty of people have suffered in all sorts of tragedies. No, the emphasis ought to be on the terrible results, systematic annihilation of groups of people, of a certain kind of corruption which springs from a philosophy of racial superiority. Again, I agree. I'm not so sure we need a Holocaust Day, but I certainly do not buy the argument that such a day makes the Jews special, or makes Jewish blood worth more (or less) than the blood of non-Jews. The author makes the point that some people are envious of the sympathy that they think some Jews receive for the Holocaust and wish to use that word (often without its actual meaning) to get some sympathy for themselves. I find such an idea doubly misguided, as I tend to agree with Herzl that even appeals for sympathy by the genuinely oppressed are futile and dishonorable.
Some folks do insist on "dismantling" Israel, and Harrison discusses this at length. Here, he makes another good point, namely that the would-be dismantlers do not seem to worry much about how to protect the rights of the Jews in the region after the "dismantling." Instead, we see one anti-Israeli claim to be worried about the "fate" of the Jews, as if the Jews ought not have rights and as if whatever happens to the Jews is not only the fault of the Jews, but something the rest of us can't possibly prevent or be responsible for.
The lack of logic of some anti-Semitic claims does get exposed. We see the "mysteriousness" of the Jews used as a means to explain how the Jews can accomplish vast crimes even when they lack both motive and opportunity. Of course, when it gets to claims that "the Jewish lobby" has managed to reduce "the entire American political establishment to a state of bemused sleepwalking" for the past forty years, Harrison explains that we're not only talking about Jews doing the impossible, but about the American people being quite a bit stupider than they really are.
Near the end of the book, the author asks if anti-Semitism matters. Does it matter that the Guardian spouts a fair amount of it? Well, yes, it does. The terror we see is not helping Arabs, Jews, or anyone else. And responsible people ought to feel bound by a duty to support truth and facts. Harrison says that while one can live without understanding world affairs, one can't "live perfectly well on a diet of murderous lies. Europe tried that in the 1930s. It would do well not to try it again."
I highly recommend this book.
Focused, well-argued, important.......2007-01-15
I write as a long-time leftist, writer on Marxist theory, and charter member of the New Left.
Harrison brings a precise philosopher's intelligence to the vexing, frightening, and at times disgusting phenomenon of left-wing anti-semitism. If his history is at times one-sided and his account of the left simplistic, he has nailed the many failures of left moral clarity and intellectual imagination. If you've ever wondered why and how seemingly liberal, left, anti-racist, nice people can hold such distorted views on Israel, this is an excellent book for you. If you think of yourself as progressive and think Israel has no right to exist, or is the sole cause of the conflict, you'd better read it immediately.
Book Description
Though it lasted for only six tense days in June, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war never really ended. Every crisis that has ripped through this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to the ongoing intifada, is a direct consequence of those six days of fighting. Michael B. Oren’s magnificent Six Days of War, an internationally acclaimed bestseller, is the first comprehensive account of this epoch-making event.
Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. And the balance of power changed—in the Middle East and in the world. A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation.
Customer Reviews:
Needs more synthesizing.......2007-09-25
Accurate, detailed, long, too long. All the information you need and more is here, put in chronological order, from all sides, the planning and the making, the would-be's and the were, the personal interviews and recollections and the reporting. But it reads more as a police report than as an author book.
When it dwells into diplomacy and he-said and the other-said, its interests plummets, it becomes boring and frustrating. It's a huge work of collecting data all right, doing interviews to tens of people, etc, but I think readers would appreciate a more synthesized book than this one. Be specific, get to the point, don't just pour information like from a broken faucet. The author may use this as a lecture tool or as a text book in some college course, but for the general audience it's not fun.
Excellent hsitory.......2007-08-04
Great history, very readable, explains politics and is generally quite unbiased. Not a detailed military history.
Nothing like it.......2007-07-15
Pick up this book it's just amazing. it gives you details in a very understandable way. it's full of drama and a great page turner.
Slouching Toward the Apocalypse.......2007-07-14
If you only have time for one book about the Six Day War, make it this one. One may choose to quibble with this or that to show off one's discernment, but quibbles quiver before the stern mountain of fact piled up by Mr. Oren. Un-spun facts are the most valuable thing to a history buff. This book has them. Read why the war started. Read how the Superpowers set out their pawns. Learn the real meaning of the "arab street" and why it is important. Watch what happens when national leaders get caught up in their own propaganda. One caution, after reading how the brightest and best, from all of the countries involved, acquitted themselves, you may be tempted to follow the biblical injunction to "put not your faith in princes" with renewed conviction.
Must read!.......2007-06-27
This is an excellent book about the six-day war. The author is fair and impartial in his description. I Highly recommend it.
Amazon.com
In the global search for culprits and causes in the rise of terrorism, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold shines a spotlight on a nation many think of as a close ally of the United States: Saudi Arabia. As he explains in Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, Gold believes that the Saudi government is greatly influenced by the Islamist sect known as Wahhabism and, he explains, that influence has lead to Saudi support of terrorism in the Middle East, Europe, the United States and around the world. The historical portion of Gold's argument, where he traces the emergence of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the changing face of Saudi leadership, is admirably extensive and detailed. His modern research is a little more uneven, relying on statements by various Muslim clergy members, letters to the editors of newspapers, opinion pieces, and other evidence that is rarely damnable. Curiously, mentions of Israel and the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict are much more infrequent than one would expect from an Israeli diplomat and scholar. But regardless of one's opinion of Gold's research or his alarming conclusions, the book offers something not often found in modern political nonfiction: a coherent structure, exhaustive research, and a clear and consistent perspective on the ongoing threat of terrorism. --John Moe
Book Description
Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. and internationally known Middle East expert, uses previously unpublished intelligence documents to piece together the links between the current wave of global terrorism-from the World Trade Center to Bali, Indonesia-and the ideology of hatred taught in the schools and mosques of Saudi Arabia.
Customer Reviews:
waste of time.......2007-05-10
Dore Gold has written a brave and honest book that, in previous civilizations, would have alarmed the populace and surely spurred them to action. All the evidence you need is right there in the appendices: photocopies, facsimilies, letters, what not. The case is airtight.
But what's the point?
Honestly. Saudi Arabia has been exposed to death. As exposed as anything can be. Everybody knows the score. Even the most mentally impaired village idiots in the backwaters of the Kalahari know that the Saudis have been encouraging and financing global terrorism for years, denying it all the while. This isn't news: anybody who was going to do anything about the situation has already done so, or made up their minds not to.
What would have made the book better is if Gold had gone beyond the mere reporting of non-news into an analysis of why the situation is the way it is. In other words, what exactly are the forces that compel or enable the people involved, from the illiterate Sri Lankan navvy sweeping the streets of Riyadh all the way up to well-informed advisors in the highest levels of U.S. government, and everybody in between, to keep their mouths shut?
The bets have all been placed. Everybody's hoping they can just stick it out and make their pile before the whole thing implodes, praying all the while it won't splatter on them.
Excellent and Enlightening.......2007-04-25
Contrary to some of the criticism leveled toward this book, I found this author to be very balanced and fair toward Islam. For example, Gold identifies the aspect of Wahabi theology that justifies jihad toward non-Wahabi Muslims, such as Shi'ites and Sufis. By labeling the latter as 'polytheists', extremist Wahabi groups have justified violence toward these groups as well as desecration of sacred Islamic sites. Gold documents both historic and modern examples of this, such as the intrusion of Wahabi jihadists into the Balkans.
I found it valuable to learn the symbiotic relationship between the Saudi Royal Family and the Wahabi clergy and how the royal family gives the latter power and influence in order to maintain favor. Also, how oil money has funded the export of radical Wahabi ideology and the terrorist activities conducted by the latter. And paradoxically, because of Western dependence on oil, the money came from the very countries the Wahabi ideology holds in contempt!
Sometimes the book is dense and hard to follow but I think every member of government who has a role in international affairs should read it.
Sadly, in reading this and other studies, it becomes apparent that Western democracies ended up supporting many terrorist regimes in their attempt to fight the Cold War. Supporting the 'bad guys' just because they are against one's current enemies is a dangerous and risky strategy indeed and makes us look like hypocrites. Jimmy Carter referred to Khomeini as a 'holy man'. We supported Sadaam Hussein. Look where it got us!
Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism by Dore Gold.......2007-02-24
An excellent, comprehensive discussion of the roots of Islamic terrorism.
A history buff gets shamed..........2006-07-30
I am embarrassed to realize the extent of my own ignorance regarding the Wahabi menace. As a lover of history and one who could draw a fairly accurate survey of the events that shaped the West during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I was grievously unaware of the monstrous theology and murderous campaign of Ibn `Abd Al-Wahhab. One wonders how the terrors of the crusades could compare to the genocidal murder of "impure" Muslims by the fanatical armies of Wahab. One wonders still why the West fails to see the ever-present and growing threat posed by the Wahhabi poison which spans out from Saudi Arabia (our allies?) to infect Muslims around the world. This book is required reading for every American who feels the need to make some progress toward understanding why some Muslims cultivate hatred above all other "virtues." Want to know why supposedly godly people feel compelled to murder innocent women, children, and men? Want to understand why they have no difficulty murdering their own kinsmen and fellow Muslims? It's the poisonous Muslim heresy of Wahhabism. Where does it come from and how is it funded and propagated across the globe? Saudi Arabia is Hatred's Kingdom as Dore Gold has dubbed it. This book is a good starting place and a dreadful portent of things to come as long as Saudi Arabia is not held accountable. The Saudi mission to spread Wahhabism has been incredibly "successful" in Indonesia, Chechnya, Bosnia, America, and of course, Palestine where their PLO has become the center of a maelstrom of Islamic hatred. One stat that might be instructive for all those who think the extremists are a small minority is that 79% of Palestinian children state that they want to be suicide bombers when they grow up. It would seem the "extremists" are the few who want peace. If you think this is all an academic discussion for Americans consider that 70% of the Mosques in America teach the Wahhabi doctrine. Get this book and learn what those "friendly" neighborhood mosque-goers really think about you.
Good start, weak finish.......2005-11-29
I found the historical chapters of the book (up until about 1960) to be most useful section. As we pass into King Fahd's reign, the reasoning becomes much more speculative. Nonetheless, the author presents a plausible scenario. Careful documentation of the links between the major players is useful, and however you slice it, the latter chapters show the razors' edge the political leaders of Saudi Arabia must walk.
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:
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.
Finkelstein Shines.......2007-06-18
The brave and embattled Prof. Norman Finkelstein shines in his latest book exposing how The Holocaust Industry (his previous book) has been used to rewrite history in a manner favorable to the Israelis.
He also exposes how the banner of "antisemitism" is used to quash meaningful debate on Israeli policy. Critics of Israeli foreign policy are called antisemitic in the same virulent fashion that critics of American policy are labeled "anti-American".
Finkelstein pummels Harvard Professor Alan Dershowvitz's book The Case for Israel by pointing out the numerous factual innacuracies. Finkelstein shows how Dershowvitz has falsified court records from the Israeli Supreme Court in order to deny Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
In Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein dances scholarly circles around Alan Dershowvitz's work, embarassing the Harvard Professor greatly. So it is no surprise that Dershowvitz, realizing that he cannot dispute Finkelstein factually, has resorted to the tactics of a twelve-year old: he has called Finkelstein a dirty name, an "anti-semite".
Book Description
David Pryce-Jones believes that France has done more damage to the Middle East than any other country. France encouraged the mass immigration of Arabs and that huge and growing minority in the country now believes that it has rights and claims which have not been met. This minority also believes that Israel should not exist. Middle East geo-politics are spreading from French soil to an increasingly Islamized Europe.
Customer Reviews:
Boring but important.......2007-06-25
A weekly magazine I read has a category of news that it calls "boring but important." This book could be categorized in the same way. This is a history of French foreign policy in the Near East. The author does seem to be unnecessarily hostile to the French, but he also shows how French intrigues and chauvinism have contributed to the turmoil in the area. But both those words have French derivations, don't they?
I do recommend this book to help understand the situation in which we have become embroiled. The more we know, the more likely we are to find a way out.
The Quai d'Orsay's Anti-Semitism.......2007-06-19
David Pryce-Jones has written an insightful and incisive history of the anti-Semitic abd pro-Arab mindset of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the past two centuries. Based on original archival research, Pryce-Jones shows how the Ministry's career officials came from similar conservative, Catholic, anti-Republican backgrounds with similar prejudices and predilections. They steered a consistent foreign policy despite the changes of political regimes in France which to this day tries to position France as the Islamic and Arab world's European friend and the opponent of putative Anglo-Saxon and Zionist designs in North Africa and the Middle East. The book is engaging and well written.
Mind Numbingly Boring.......2007-06-14
In Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, David Pryce-Jones chronicles the convoluted machinations of French foreign policy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, this important material is presented in a manner that renders it almost unreadable.
On page 20, for instance, we make the acquaintance of Jonathon Frankel, Adolphe Thiers, Ulysse de Ratti-Menton, Paul Frederic-Jean Grunebaum, Louis Herbette, Edouard Drumont, and The Marquis de Mores. On page 21 they are joined by Monsieur Kahn, Paul Blanc, M. Hanotaux, Mr. Almond, Madame de Schwartz and J.-B. Barbier.
Keeping track of this growing and obscure cast of characters represents a challenging chore, and after fighting through page after page of this I found myself befuddled and exhausted.
And then there is the writing itself.
Try to get your mind around this whopper of a sentence: "It was not possible for him to guarantee the authenticity of the enclosed document, he explained in a sentence revealing his belief in conspiracy, but it could be linked to information the department had received a few years earlier `on the subject of the preparation in the United States of the bolshevik movement whose trace it might be possible to recover' (M.A.E.-C.P.C/E-Levant/Palestine/1918-1929/Vol.15)".
It's like quicksand - you just get bogged down, you sink in, and eventually you give up.
This is unfortunate.
The author's argument that France's cynical exercise of power in the region has borne and will continue to bear bitter fruit is inherently sound. This message contributes to an understanding of the growing alienation and unrest of the very constituency that the French have sought to court.
Too bad that only the most determined of readers will be able to cut through Pryce-Jones' ponderous prose so as to be able to absorb what he is trying to say.
An interesting introduction but lacks depth.......2007-05-03
The subject of France's relationship and attitude towards Jews and Israel is surely one worthy of study, and David Pryce-Jones does a fair job in detailing the historical origins and patterns of bias within this history. To his credit, he here quotes documents never before made public detailing the depth of the anti-Semitism to be found in France's governing elite. He further does a good job detailing the degree to which France's desire to retain a fig leaf of its vanished glory as a great power and therefore insinuates itself into the conflict in the Middle East in order to confront the United State.
That said, Pryce-Jones does come up short in a number of ways in this thin work. On the subject of anti-Semitism among French elites in the 19th and pre-war 20th century he fails to contextualize how pervasive these attitudes were through out the Western World. Bendersky's "The Jewish Threat" does an excellent and exhaustive job of demonstrating these same attitudes in the US Army just as David Orren does regarding the diplomatic core. In Britain, such prejudices were likewise widespread. Granted, in France they mixed with militant Catholicism to form a particularly noxious brew, but still a discussion of this context would certainly have added to this book.
On the subject of the political ramifications of the presence of a large Muslim population in France, Pryce-Jones again does not delve sufficiently deeply. For example, that the center right candidate David Sarkozy derives support from attacking this portion of the population and arguing for a closer relationship with Israel. Again, a more thorough work would have provided interesting insights on the history and ongoing evolution of this social phenomenon.
Lastly, Pryce-Jones does not give sufficient attention to France's role in the EU and how it has managed to make the Union adopt is strategic vision regarding the Middle East despite other nations which tend to have differing outlooks.
That French policy is arrogant, perfidious, and self serving comes as a surprise to no one with any familiarity of the subject. Pryce-Jones does a good job indicting France's leaders with their own words and details their often serpentine and a moral strategy. For all of that, a subject of such importance deserved a more thorough examination. While this provides a good instruction, another longer work on the subject is surely required.
ignorant political fanaticism.......2007-04-06
David Pryce-Jones is a British neo-con who suffers from the well-known disease of "Franophobia". He has produced a book that is totally at odds with history and is little more the propaganda.
Reading this book, you would have no idea the role France had in the 1950s and 1960s in providing Israel with weapons. The Mirage jets that Israel fought the 1967 war with came from a collaborative relationship with France. France also collaborated with Israel in the 1950s and beyond in the area of nuclear technology and yes even nuclear weapons. In 1956, the French fought with the British and Israelis in a coordinated plan during the suez war. But out of hate, David Pryce-Jones erases the long relationship between Israel and France from history.
He also doesn't quite catch on the fact that France fought a bloody, devistating war in Algeria for many years or how the Crémieux Decree in 1870 gave all Algerian Jews full french citizenship even if they had been in Algeria for generations and had no tie to France. Or explain given his claims about how pro-arab/anti-jewish French diplomats and governments have always been, why such a decree was granted.
The author bashes france for having too many muslims living the country. Of course he has nothing to say about why the UK for decades allowed itself to openly serve as the worldwide base for the worst and most dangerous muslim political groups. Much easier to bash france than it is to accept the grim reality of what goes on at home. Everything he says about muslims in france can be said about almost every country in europe. Immigration is a reality. And the grim reality is that while David Pryce-Jones and his conservative friends whine over the issue, they are unwilling to give up the advantages that a cheap migrant labor underclass provides them.
France plays the "game" in the middle east in exactly the same way that the US, the UK and every other country does. Anyone concerned about the morality of French conduct would best not look at the American role in Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Jordan or any number of other states that the US props up. It would also be best not to look at American-Iraqi relations in the 1980s or Iran-Contra or any number of other sensiative subjects.
The author doeesn't understand France or the French view of the world at all. He is an outsider looking into something that doesn't have the ability to even begin to understand. After the Americans took over the role of being Israel's financial and military backers in the early 1970s, for all their contributions to the security of Israel they were pushed out of the way. If that situation changed, France would change. Like every other country, the relationships of France with the rest of the world are driven by its own interests.
David Pryce-Jones misinterpretes French political culture. He doesn't understand the long tradition in France of asslimilation of all groups into a broader French Culture and the importance of that within the society. That religion and ethnic identity should not play a part in the public sphere. He sees views expressed along these lines as evidence of hatred.
He draws up sinister conspiracies in the French diplomatic corps. But provides little evidence to support his ideas.
He is also upset that Ayatollah Khomeini was in France for four months before he returned to Iran. He doesn't seem to remember that Khomeini spent most of his time in exile in Iraq and Turkey...not France. He also sees the French as somehow putting Khomeini in power but offers nothing beyond conspiracy theory.
He blames France for Mohammad Amin al-Husayni not being put on trial as a war criminal after the second world war. What he leaves out is British role in that decision and British concerns about opinion in the muslim parts of their empire.
There is nothing useful in the book. David Pryce-Jones displays nothing but his own ignorance and fanaticism while being blind to what goes on in his own British back yard.
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