"An excellent tool in Middle Eastern politics classes [and] an intellectual resource for experts who want to learn more about the complexities of Israel."— Reading ReligionAmericans debate constantly about Israel, its place in the Middle East, and its relations with the United States. Essential Israel examines a wide variety of complex issues and current concerns in historical and contemporary contexts to provide readers with an intimate sense of t...

This book concentrates on the formative period of the Gaza Strip and the bordering Israeli Gaza Frontier Area, considering them as a distinct geographic region that might best be understood as an integral unit of analysis.Based on abundant Israeli, British and American documentation, articles from the contemporary Arab press and other sources that reflect Arab perspectives, the book deals with the formation of the Gaza Strip between the initial drawing of the boundaries of the 1947...

A liberal Muslim and critically acclaimed author explores the historical, political, and theological basis for centuries of Muslim animosity towards Jews, debunking long-held myths and tracing a history of hate and its impact today.More than nine years after 9/11 and 60 years after the creation of the state of Israel, the world is no closer to solving, let alone understanding, the psychological and political divide between Jews and Muslims. While countless books have been written o...

The Case for Israel is an ardent defense of Israel's rights, supported by indisputable evidence.Presents a passionate look at what Israel's accusers and detractors are saying about this war-torn country.Dershowitz accuses those who attack Israel of international bigotry and backs up his argument with hard facts.Widely respected as a civil libertarian, legal educator, and defense attorney extraordinaire, Alan Dershowitz has also been a passionate though not...

Winner of the Jewish Book of the Year AwardThe first comprehensive yet accessible political history of the state of Israel from its inception to present day, from Daniel Gordis, "one of the most respected Israel analysts" (The Forward) living and writing in Jerusalem.In the landscape of Middle East history, Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world’s attention, aroused its imagination, and lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a s...

A landmark manifesto issuing a bold call for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict.The reigning consensus in elite and academic circles is that the United States must seek to resolve the Palestinians' conflict with Israel by implementing the so-called two-state solution. Establishing a Palestinian state, so the thinking goes, would be a panacea for all the region’s ills. In a time of partisan gridlock, the two-state solution stands out for its abil...

Part of the Jewish Encounter seriesIsrael’s current president gives us a dramatic and revelatory biography of Israel’s founding father and first prime minister.Shimon Peres was in his early twenties when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the “Old Man,” as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabine...

"Closely argued and conditionally apocalyptic . . . Gorenberg outlines many reasonable steps Israel should take to disentangle religion from the state." —Jeffrey Goldberg, The New York Times Book ReviewProminent Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg offers a penetrating and provocative look at how the balance of power in Israel has shifted toward extremism, threatening the prospects for peace and democracy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensifies. Inf...

The New York Times bestselling author of The Case for Israel takes on the greatest threats faced by Israel todayIn addition to Hamas, which provoked the recent war and Gaza with its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, Alan Dershowtiz argues that Israel's most dangerous enemies include Jimmy Carter and other western leaders who would delegitimize Israel as an apartheid regime subject to the same fate as white South Africans; Israel's academic enemies, led by profe...

The definitive one-volume history of Israel by its most distinguished historianFrom its Zionist beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century through the past sixty, tumultuous years, the state of Israel has been, as van Creveld argues, "the greatest success story in the entire twentieth century." In this crisp volume, he skillfully relates the improbable story of a nationless people who, given a hot and arid patch of land and coping with every imaginable...

1948: As Jewish refugees, survivors of the Holocaust, struggle toward the new State of Israel, Arab refugees are fleeing, many under duress. Sixty years later, the memory of trauma has shaped both peoples' collective understanding of who they are.After a war, the victors write history. How was the story of the exiled Palestinians erased -- from textbooks, maps, even the land? How do Jewish and Palestinian Israelis now engage with the histories of the Palestinian Nakba ("Catastrophe...

“What is so striking about Morris’s work as a historian is that it does not flatter anyone’s prejudices, least of all his own,” David Remnick remarked in a New Yorker article that coincided with the publication of Benny Morris’s 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. With the same commitment to objectivity that has consistently characterized his approach, Morris now turns his attention to the present-day legacy of the events of 1948 and the concrete options for the fu...