Makes the case for the Jews of the diaspora to make common cause with the forces of reason in Israel.

The False Messiah is Volume I of a monumental history of the Israel-Palestine conflict , Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, by a seasoned reporter with a vast first-hand knowledge of the Middle East. It is the first book to put the struggle for Palestine into its global context-to show how all the pieces of a complicated jigsaw puzzle fit together. It’s also the first ever account of events to address the motives, needs, and dilemmas faced by all sides: diaspora Jews’ real fear of Holocaust II; the Palestinian right to justice and self-determination; the legitimate anger of the Arab masses at American support for Zionism right or wrong; and the inevitable corruption and repression of the regimes of the existing Arab Order who, fearing harsher Israeli assaults, have tried to contain them. From the beginning, the conflict pitted a well-financed First World nation of European colonialists who held the upper hand in terms of military hardware, air power and capability against an essentially feudal Third World Arab nation. The False Messiah sheds new light on: · The early Zionist relations with UK, German and US governments. · Zionism’s contribution to bringing the US into World War I. · Zionism’s role (and that of domestic non-Zionist Jews) in the diversion of Jewish refugees, first from Russia, then from Germany, to Palestine rather than to the US, UK or elsewhere, sabotaging, inter alia, Truman’s efforts to provide visas to the US for 100,000 Jewish immigrants. ·· Truman’s belabored decision-making processes leading to his recognition of the State of Israel, against the advice of 3 US Secretaries of State and his Secretary of Defense who all asserted the US’ best interest was alignment with the Arab world. · The expansion of the Israeli state beyond its UN-recognized borders immediately upon its creation, and how it was made possible by Israel’s military superiority even from its pre-creation. At no point throughout its history, Hart contends, has Israel ever faced an “existential threat” to its existence. As a former BBC Panorama and ITN Middle East correspondent, Alan Hart knew and interviewed most of the main players in the Israel-Palestine conflict (Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat and other PLO leaders, George Habash, Nasser, King Hussein of Jordan, King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, and many others). He also exhibits a wealth of research into a full spectrum of viewpoints.

Makes the case for the Jews of the diaspora to make common cause with the forces of reason in Israel.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

A sophisticated analysis of how the Zionist understanding of the Holocaust shaped the development of American Jewish policies and political activism. Aaron Berman takes a moderate and measured approach to one of the most emotional issues in American Jewish historiography, namely, the response of American Jews to Nazism and the extermination of European Jewry.In remarkably large numbers, American Jews joined the Zionist crusade to create a Jewish state that would finally end the problem of Jewish homelessness, which they believed was the basic cause not only of the Holocaust but of all anti-Semitism. Though American Zionists could justly claim credit for the successful establishment of Israel in 1948, this triumph was not without cost. Their insistence on including a demand for Jewish statehood in any proposal to aid European Jewry politicized the rescue issue and made it impossible to appeal for American aid on purely humanitarian grounds. The American Zionist response to Nazism also shaped he political turmoil in the Middle East which followed Israel’s creation. Concerned primarily with providing a home for Jewish refugees and fearing British betrayal, Zionists could not understand Arab protests in defense of their own national interests. Instead they responded to the Arab revolt with armed force and sought to insure their own claim to Palestine, Zionists came to link he Arabs with the Nazi and British forces that were opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state. In the thinking of American Zionists, the Arabs were steadily transformed from a people with whom an accommodation would have to be made into a mortal enemy to be defeated. Aaron Berman does not apologize for American Jews, but rather tries to understand the constraints within which they operated and what opportunities-if any-they had to respond to Hitler. In surveying the latest scholarship and responding o charges against American Jewry, Berman’s arguments are reasoned and reasonable.

"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." These words by the poet Leonard Cohen could aptly describe this book, which takes history as a witness to the exceptional nature of Zionism in Jewish history. It explains many points of discord between the political ideology of Zionism and what most people consider Judaism. It also shows how Jewish traditional conscience offers a hope for the solution of the Middle East crisis. The conflicts in Israel/Palestine acquire a different meaning when seen in the context of Jewish opposition to Zionism. This book has attracted Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike who find this story inspiring in today's world of mobile identities.

The former chief of Israeli military intelligence provides a timely and compelling analysis of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians and presents an alternative for improved relations.

In late summer 1929, a countrywide outbreak of Arab-Jewish-British violence transformed the political landscape of Palestine forever. In contrast with those who point to the wars of 1948 and 1967, historian Hillel Cohen marks these bloody events as year zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict that persists today. The murderous violence inflicted on Jews caused a fractious - and now traumatized - community of Zionists, non-Zionists, Ashkenazim, and Mizrachim to coalesce around a unified national consciousness arrayed against an implacable Arab enemy. While the Jews unified, Arabs came to grasp the national essence of the conflict, realizing that Jews of all stripes viewed the land as belonging to the Jewish people. Through memory and historiography, in a manner both associative and highly calculated, Cohen traces the horrific events of August 23 to September 1 in painstaking detail. He extends his geographic and chronological reach and uses a non-linear reconstruction of events to call for a thorough reconsideration of cause and effect. Sifting through Arab and Hebrew sources - many rarely, if ever, examined before - Cohen reflects on the attitudes and perceptions of Jews and Arabs who experienced the events and, most significantly, on the memories they bequeathed to later generations. The result is a multifaceted and revealing examination of a formative series of episodes that will intrigue historians, political scientists, and others interested in understanding the essence - and the very beginning - of what has been an intractable conflict.

“Comprehensive and compelling...a landmark study” of the Arab-Zionist conflict, told from both sides, by the author of Israel’s Secret Wars (Sunday Times, UK). Setting the scene at the end of the nineteenth century, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources—from declassified documents to oral testimonies to his own vivid-on-the-ground reporting—to illuminate the most polarizing conflict of modern times. Beginning with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government promised to favor the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, Black proceeds through the Arab Rebellion of the late 1930s, the Nazi Holocaust, Israel’s independence and the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), the watershed of 1967 followed by the Palestinian re-awakening, Israel’s settlement project, two Intifadas, the Oslo Accords, and continued negotiations and violence up to today. Combining engaging narrative with political analysis and social and cultural insights, Enemies and Neighbors is both an accessible overview and a fascinating investigation into the deeper truths of a furiously contested history.

"The False Messiah" is the first volume in a new 3 volume series that takes readers on an epic journey through the monumental history of the Israel-Palestine conflict led by a seasoned reporter with a vast firsthand knowledge of the Middle East.