Israel Middle East

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ruth Elias, a Jewish woman who was taken to Auschwitz while several months pregnant, recounts her challenging and unthinkable story of confronting perhaps the most agonizing choice so that she and her newborn infant would not die. Taken for Nazi medical experimentation, she confronted the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele and saved the life of not only herself but her child as well.

An American, secular, diasporic Jew, Lis Harris grew up with the knowledge of the historical wrongs done to Jews. In adulthood, she developed a growing awareness of the wrongs they in turn had done to the Palestinian people. This gave her an intense desire to understand how the Israelis’ history led them to where they are now. However, she found that top-down political accounts and insider assessments made the people most affected seem like chess pieces.

In Israel and Palestine, religious and political tensions are boiling, threatening to explode an untenable status quo. A renowned baker and his son are at odds, one turning his back on Allah, the other determined to prove himself worthy of God’s love. A rich playboy shatters his life in the States and joins Israel’s special forces searching for purpose and meaning. An Israeli vixen with a tragic past and a penchant for violence finds herself torn between her work for the Russian mob and the people she loves.

Join Jesus, or rather Yeshua, as he walks up to Jerusalem for his climactic confrontation with the Temple authorities. Discover his Jewish context through the daily dramatic encounters with friend and foe.

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.

A groundbreaking collection of essays by celebrated international writers bears witness to the human cost of 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

A groundbreaking collection of essays by celebrated international writers bears witness to the human cost of 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In Kingdom of Olives and Ash, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, two of today's most renowned novelists and essayists, have teamed up with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence and a host of illustrious writers to tell the stories of the people on the ground in the contested territories.

Ehud Diskin's mother wanted him to play it safe when he was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces. Instead, he volunteered for one of the IDF's most dangerous assignments in a move that altered the course of his life. In Yes, It's Possible, a compelling new translation of his Hebrew memoir, Diskin recounts his fascinating and tumultuous life story growing up and maturing alongside the State of Israel.