Israel Politics

Fights about the fate of the state of Israel, and the Zionist movement that gave birth to it, have long been a staple of both Jewish and American political culture. But despite these arguments' significance to American politics, American Jewish life, and to Israel itself, no one has ever systematically examined their history and explained why they matter. In We Are Not One, historian Eric Alterman traces this debate from its nineteenth-century origins.

In tracing the life of Golda Meir, acclaimed author Deborah E. Lipstadt explores the history of the Yishuv and Jewish state from the 1920s through the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all while highlighting the contradictions and complexities of a person who was only the third woman to serve as a head of state in the 20th century.

On September 6, 1970, twelve-year-old Martha Hodes and her thirteen-year-old sister were flying unaccompanied back to New York City from Israel when their plane was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced to land in the Jordan desert. Too young to understand the sheer gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Martha coped by suppressing her fear and anxiety. Nearly a half-century later, her memories of those six days and nights as a hostage are hazy and scattered.

The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale that had never been seen before.

Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children reportedly took their own lives rather than surrender to the Roman army. This dramatic event, which took place on top of Masada, a barren and windswept mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, spawned a powerful story of Jewish resistance that came to symbolize the embattled modern State of Israel. Jodi Magness, an archaeologist who has excavated at Masada, explains what happened there, how we know it, and how recent developments might change understandings of the story.

David Ben-Gurion cast a great shadow during his lifetime, and his legacy continues to be sharply debated to this day. There have been many books written about the life and accomplishments of the Zionist icon and founder of modern Israel, but this new biography by eminent Israeli historian Anita Shapira strives to get to the core of the complex man who would become the face of the new Jewish nation. Shapira tells the Ben-Gurion story anew, focusing especially on the period after 1948, during the first years of statehood.

In the summer of 2000, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history - Ehud Barak - set himself a challenge as daunting as any he had faced on the battlefield: to secure a final peace with the Palestinians. He would propose two states for two peoples, with a shared capital in Jerusalem. He knew the risks of failure. But he also knew the risks of not trying: letting slip perhaps the last chance for a generation to secure genuine peace. It was a moment of truth.

Instead of being trained to fight, the few soldiers each year selected for Talpiot are taught how to think. In order to join this unit they have to commit to being in the army for 10 years, rather than the three years a normal soldier serves. Talpiots are taught advanced level physics, math, and computer science as they train with soldiers from every other branch of the IDF. The result: young men and women become research and development machines.

In this bold examination of the Israeli-American relationship, Walter Russell Mead demolishes the myths that both pro-Zionists and anti-Zionists have fostered over the years. He makes clear that Zionism has always been a divisive subject in the American Jewish community, and that American Christians have often been the most fervent supporters of a Jewish state, citing examples from the time of J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller to the present day.

At a time when Israel is under persistent attack - on the battlefield, by international organizations, and in the court of public opinion - Alan Dershowitz presents a powerful case for Israel’s just war against terrorism. In the spirit of his international best-seller, The Case for Israel, Dershowitz shows why Israel's struggle against Hamas is a fight not only to protect its own citizens, but for all democracies. The nation-state of the Jewish people is providing a model for all who are threatened by terrorist groups.

In the Lion's Den is a book about the life events that encouraged Danny Danon to pursue his chosen career path and take his distinct and direct approach during his time as Knesset Member and later on in his political career. It is a book that tells the story of his journey to the United Nations and the key events that occurred during the five years he served as Israel's 17th Permanent Representative to the UN.

Shimon Peres was in his early 20s 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 cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.

Without a doubt, Schopenhauer is one of the giants of Western philosophy. He represents a turning point from the quest to define the external world as something apart from our experience to a recognition of our experience as the medium of our world. Philosophy is a discourse, a conversation spread out over centuries that explores and develops different lines of thought. Schopenhauer embodies the moment in Western philosophy where the snake begins to eat its own tail, where the unreasoning insistence upon an external world is finally examined with due criticism and care.

On August 4, 2020, a huge explosion in the heart of Beirut killed hundreds of people – it is the apocalypse of a sequence of events that have led to Lebanon’s unprecedented collapse. Journalist Dalal Mawad has interviewed tens of Lebanese and foreign women - victims of the explosion, and those stuck in Lebanon - and weaves an extraordinary story of survival, corruption and impunity.

"Property is theft." This quote is perhaps one of the most widely known phrases delivered by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a man known as the father of anarchy. In The Philosophy of Misery, he examines the nature of economy and gives his thoughts about the subversive influence of capitalism. Before the rise of corporate giants, Proudhon recognized the potential for the state and the economy to enslave humanity to profit and accumulation.

America’s anti-gun lobby wants you to “leave guns to the professionals.” The police and military will protect you, they say. Really? Ask the people of Israel how well that worked out for them. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis in cold blood. Civilians waited in anguish for the army or police to rescue them. Why? Because the country’s restrictive gun laws left most people unarmed. The Israeli government made an immediate about-face after October 7. They loosened gun laws to allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves.

In 1977, Natan Sharansky, a leading activist in the democratic dissident movement in the Soviet Union and the movement for free Jewish emigration, was arrested by the KGB. He spent nine years as a political prisoner, convicted of treason against the state. Never Alone reveals how Sharansky's years in prison, many spent in harsh solitary confinement, prepared him for a very public life after his release. As an Israeli politician and the head of the Jewish Agency, Sharansky brought extraordinary moral clarity and uncompromising, often uncomfortable, honesty.

The Antichrist was aptly named. It is not so much aimed at the expression of any new perspective or in support of the expansion of knowledge but rather represents an effort to undo the religious interference Nietzsche believed worked against the advancement of culture and knowledge. In many ways he was the mouthpiece for the most unfavorable logical conclusions that rose to the fore in the meeting of the scientific and Christian perspective.

Without a doubt, Schopenhauer is one of the giants of Western philosophy. He represents a turning point from the quest to define the external world as something apart from our experience to a recognition of our experience as the medium of our world. Philosophy is a discourse, a conversation spread out over centuries that explores and develops different lines of thought.

Le Tao Te King est un livre qui est célèbre pour deux raisons : la première est qu'il est reconnu depuis des millénaires comme le texte fondateur du Taoïsme, qui est un courant de la pensée religieuse chinoise et qui fait partie des trois principaux courant de pensée qui participèrent aux fondements de la culture chinoise et de sa civilisation. C'est un enseignement unique et philosophique, naturaliste et monothéiste.