Israel Middle East

As a teenager in Palestine, Sami al Jundi had one ambition: overthrowing Israeli occupation. With two friends, he began to build a bomb to use against the police. But when it exploded prematurely, killing one of his friends, al Jundi was caught and sentenced to 10 years in prison. It was in an Israeli jail that his unlikely transformation began. Al Jundi was welcomed into a highly organized, democratic community of political prisoners who required that members of their cell read, engage in political discourse on topics ranging from global revolutions to the precepts of nonviolent protest and revolution.

Through a blend of memoir and history, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Kai Bird recounts the Western experience in the Middle East and just why it has been so turbulent. Through Bird ’s Zelig-like presence, the reader experiences the Suez War of 1956, the June 1967 War, and the Black September hijackings of 1970 that led to the Jordanian Civil War. Bird ’s memoir also shows how all of these momentous events led to the rise and tragic downfall of a secular Arab nationalist ethos.

Esta es la historia de Balduino IV de Jerusalén, llamado el Leproso o el Santo (Jerusalén, 1.161 – 1.185), hijo del rey Amalarico que murió a los treinta y tres años de edad, un adalid de la cristiandad, un joven que luchó contra la adversidad dedicándose en cuerpo y alma a su reino. A la muerte de su padre, el niño Balduino fue coronado rey, Guillermo de Tiro tutor del joven monarca se percató de la grave enfermedad del infante.

The Olive Branch from Palestine provides a new narrative of the Palestinian effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offers a bold plan for ending this conflict today, a proposal that focuses on Palestinian agency and the power of the Palestinians to bring about the two-state solution, even in the absence of a fully committed Israeli partner.

A feminist biography of the only woman to become prime minister of Israel In this authoritative and empathetic biography, Pnina Lahav reexamines the life of Golda Meir (1898-1978) through a feminist lens, focusing on her recurring role as a woman standing alone among men. The Only Woman in the Room is the first book to contend with Meir’s full identity as a woman, Jew, Zionist leader, and one of the founders of Israel, providing a richer portrait of her persona and legacy.

As the morning sunlight crept over the limestone walls of Jerusalem's old city, two young Americans flagged down a bus and got on. It was 6:45 a.m., February 25, 1996, and Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld settled into their seats as the door closed on Jerusalem's Number 18 bus which would take them across the spine of this ancient city. After a few more stops, their bus turned on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road and rolled up a slight hill and stopped again. A young man, who seemed to be a student and was carrying a black duffle bag, got on. No one paid much attention to him, witnesses said later.

We know David Grossman's voice of ringing moral clarity from way back: since the late 1980s and The Yellow Wind, his classic work on the urgency of the two-state solution and the price paid by both occupier and occupied, he has been criticizing his country's government and pushing for paths to a lasting peace. Just after October 7th, 2023, he retreated inwards to ask himself anew these difficult and necessary questions about his beloved nation:

Blending science and technology studies, sociology, and geography with a host of archival material, in-depth interviews, and ethnographies, The Politics of Maps explores how the geographical sciences came to be entangled with the politics, territorial claim-making, and nation-state building of Israel/Palestine.

Since ancient times the promised land has been a place of testing, revival, and fellowship with the God of Israel. God promised His land to the Jewish people as an everlasting possession as part of an eternal covenant He made with their forefather, Abraham. After two exiles and centuries of dispersion, millions of Jewish people have been drawn back to the land—and since the establishment of the modern State of Israel on May 14, 1948, millions of Christians have been welcomed as pilgrims to experience it for themselves.

On October 7th, 2023, David-Seth Kirshner woke up excited to celebrate his 50th birthday. Instead of eating cake, Rabbi Kirshner was glued to the news as the horrible attack by Hamas upon innocent Israelis began to unfold. Emotions flooded him from all directions. Anger, rage, surprise, fear, hope, frustration, anxiety, confidence and grief were just some of what inhabited his mind and body.

By the son and intimate confidant of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon comes an unparalleled look at the life and work of one of the world’s most powerful leaders. “A multifaceted picture of an Israeli patriot, military leader, and family man” (Kirkus Reviews). From his youth as a soldier to his service in government, Ariel Sharon has personified Israel’s unyielding drive for security. He revolutionized the Israel Defense Forces and established the anti-terror commando Unit 101. His leadership during the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars made him a national hero....

Der Angriff der Hamas vom 7. Oktober 2023 markiert einen tiefen Einschnitt in der Geschichte Israels. Joseph Croitoru erklärt konzise, wie die Hamas seit 2007 ihre islamistische Herrschaft im Gazastreifen etabliert hat und welche Organisationen und Staaten ihren Terror gegen Israel unterstützen. Sein Augen öffnendes Buch, das auf langjähriger Beobachtung der Hamas basiert, lässt den neuen, schrecklichen Krieg in Israel und Palästina besser verstehen.

Israeli storyteller Noa Baum grew up in Jerusalem in the shadow of the ancestral traumas of the holocaust and ongoing wars. Stories of the past and fear of annihilation in the wars of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s shaped her perceptions and identity. In America, she met a Palestinian woman who had grown up under Israeli occupation, and as they shared memories of war years in Jerusalem, an unlikely friendship blossomed. A Land Twice Promised delves into the heart of one of the world’s most enduring and complex conflicts.

The Road to Nablus is the true story of a boy who fought to escape from a hardscrabble refugee camp in Palestine and a wretched destiny in store for him in the aftermath of World War II. He was seven years old when United Nations Resolution 181 was enacted in November of 1947 to partition Palestine and to allow displaced Jews into the region after the war. The young boy's family suffered greatly in the ensuing violence. He was eight years old when soldiers showed up at his family's house in Lydda in the summer of 1948 and evicted them at gunpoint.

For centuries travelers have been drawn to the stunning and mysterious Dead Sea and Jordan River, a region that is unlike any other on earth in its religious and historical significance. In this exceptionally engaging book, Barbara Kreiger chronicles the natural and human history of these storied bodies of water, drawing on accounts by travelers, pilgrims, and explorers from ancient times to the present.

Foretelling Jacob’s Trouble: whose side are you on? unveils the overarching spiritual battle for Jerusalem, and explains the necessary legal framework that will deliver everlasting peace, despite fierce opposition. Who has not wondered what’s really happening in Israel and Gaza, or why a peaceful solution appears so difficult? Why is the world so divided, taking sides with either Israel or Palestine? Foretelling Jacob’s Trouble: whose side are you on? digs deep into these questions, with stirring results.

In David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy, Nir Kedar offers a poignant study of the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel. Kedar provides an explication of the making of Israeli democracy in terms of its institutional-legal structures and social-cultural underpinnings. David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy connects the formal structures of democracy to the fundamental principles that they were constructed to serve—human freedom and dignity.

Access to water has played a pivotal role in the Israel-Palestine dispute. Israel has diverted the River Jordan via pipes and canals to build a successful modern state. But this has been at the expense of the region's cohabitants. Gaza is now so water-stressed that the United Nations has warned it could soon become uninhabitable; its traditional water source has been ruined by years of over-extraction and mismanagement, the effects exacerbated by years of crippling blockade.

Dr. Elisha Waldman's years at Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center were filled in equal measure with a deep sense of accomplishment, with frustration when regional politics sometimes got in the way of his patients' care, and with tension over the fine line he would have to walk when the religious traditions of some of his patients' families made it difficult for him to give these children the care he felt they deserved. Navigating the baffling Israeli bureaucracy, the ever-present threat of war, and cultural clashes, Waldman learned to be content with small victories.

Using previously unpublished documents, Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, exposes how the deeply ingrained hatred that has provoked the new terrorism has its roots in Saudi Arabia's dominant religious creed, a radical Islamic offshoot known as Wahhabism.