Israel Politics

Modern Israel's founding fathers provided some of the boldest and most principled leadership of any nation. Now Israel needs their example more than ever. At a time when the political destiny of Israel is more uncertain than at any moment since its modern founding, Be Strong and of Good Courage celebrates the defining generation of leaders who took on the task of safeguarding the country's future.

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.

The AudioLearn version of The Critique of Judgment is preceded by a biography of the author and an exploration of the background of the piece. Also included are an overview, synopsis, and analysis, as well as an examination of the historical context, social impact, and criticisms of the work.

The Theory of the Leisure Class was written by Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the 20th century. It delves deeply into the nature of economics and the social institutions, exploring the forces that create and maintain class division, how these forces evolved through history, and how they influence the economy. In this work, Veblen presents a critique of capitalism on the basis of "conspicuous consumption", a term that he himself coined. He examines economics as a function of evolution, tracking the division of labor and stratification of class during the development of society.

In addition to Hamas, which provoked the recent war, and Gaza with its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, Alan Dershowitz 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 professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who would accuse supporters of Israel of dual loyalty and indeed disloyalty to America.

Three people living in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem embark on distinct journeys that converge at "the file"; their efforts to admit Palestine to the Olympics in the early 20th century. Their pivotal roles in history have been purposely omitted from official record, kept secret, or forgotten. Why? Because of the "Nazi Olympics" in 1936 in Berlin. And because of the death in 1972 of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes in the Munich Massacre. This book narrates the previously untold history of a Palestine Olympic Committee recognized before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Über kaum ein anderes Land wird in Deutschland so viel geredet und gestritten: Zu Israel hat jeder eine Meinung. Warum ist das so? Wieso hat der Nahostkonflikt eine solche Bedeutung? Und warum ist die Debatte so emotional – und oft so vergiftet? Als Meron Mendel vor zwanzig Jahren nach Deutschland kam, stellte er überrascht fest, welche Bedeutung Israel im öffentlichen Diskurs hat. Nahezu alle, mit denen er sprach, konnten sehr klare Positionen zu Israel und seiner Politik formulieren.

Criminal Psychology was published by Hans Gross in 1910, and stands to this day as the definitive manual for applied psychology in the legal field. With this book Gross re-examined the basic assumptions of the legal profession and rebuilt them from the ground up. His approach to psychology is as meticulous as his approach to the field of law, accepting and incorporating only those aspects of psychology which could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and applying them in a specific, focused manner.

April 13, 2006. A Jerusalem Post headline reads: "Jericho man murdered over home sale." The 42 year-old father of eight was kidnapped, shot seven times, thrown into his car, and set on fire, because he had sold his Jerusalem apartment to Jews. Radical Islam has long desired to seize Jerusalem and make it off limits to Christian and Jewish believers. In this revealing book, Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, reminds us that the war on terror is also a war on faith.

"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.

Diary of a Crisis explores the past tumultuous and traumatic year in Israel-Palestine. The eminent historian Saul Friedländer began a diary of Israeli politics in January 2023 as the country was convulsed by protests against Netanyahu's attempt to overhaul the judiciary. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against this threat to democracy. But the protests said nothing about the Palestinian question—the "elephant in the room," according to Friedländer, who resumed his diary after Hamas's October 7 assault on southern Israel.

Many important figures in Israeli history played a part in the establishment of the new state, and among the most iconic is the nation’s first female premier, Golda Meir. Known as the “uncrowned queen of Israel” and “Mother Courage”, Meir was an activist for many years, lobbying for a Jewish state in the Mandate of Palestine. She served in numerous capacities before her appointment as prime minister and remains one of the most revered Israeli leaders from the pre-state years through the long-sought dream of a Jewish 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.

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.

Rousseau was one of the key figures of the Enlightenment, a period in history when all aspects of politics and human rights underwent dramatic reinterpretation. His discourse on inequality is one of his earliest works, an examination of the state of nature of mankind and the way in which current society fell short of both its ideals and its potential. Rousseau was the most influential French writer of his age. His works gave rise to the ideals espoused during the French Revolution, and in no small part contributed to the American Revolution as well.

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals was published in 1751 by Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume, a man who revolutionized our understanding of philosophy. Hume uses this work to explore the foundations of morality, asserting that our ethical nature is based upon sentiment rather than reason. He delves deeply into the subject of morality, expanding upon the perspective expressed initially in his Treatise of Human Nature.

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.

Uri Bialer lays a foundation for understanding the principal aspects of Israeli foreign policy, from the early days of the state's existence to the Oslo Accords. In addition to identifying important state actors, Bialer highlights the many figures who had no defined, diplomatic roles, but were influential in establishing foreign policy goals. He shows how foreign policy was essential to the political, economic, and social well-being of the state, and how it helped to deal with Israel's most intractable problem - the resolution of the conflict with Arab states and the Palestinians.

The Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” vision for the Middle East was unveiled on January 28, 2020. What followed over the next eleven months was one of the most fascinating and consequential periods of US foreign policy in a generation, leading to five normalization agreements between Israel and Muslim states. The Abraham Accords achieved what had seemed impossible for decades and set the Middle East on a trajectory toward a broad regional peace.

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.