A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, by Gudrun Kramer, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, xiii þ 357 pp., ISBN 978-0-691-11897-0 This work is an overview of the history of Palestine up to 1948. The author, Gudrun Kra¨mer, a distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies in Berlin, … Read more
Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography Anita Shapira. Translated by Evelyn Abel University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, Pp.385, £32.50, ISBN 978-08122-4028-3 Following the sudden demise of Yigal Allon in February 1980, a draft outline for the beginning of an autobiography was discovered in his papers. In the intervening period, Allon’s image has become more complex, … Read more
1948: The First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris Published by Yale University Press, 524pp. Benny Morris has the unique distinction of being criticised and often vilified by both Israelis and Palestinians because of his interpretation of the war of 1948 – and especially his appraisal of the exodus of around 6-700,000 Palestinian refugees. Thus, … Read more
A Sense of Purpose: Recollections By Suzy Eban Halban Publishers 384 pages; $29.75 Suzy Eban’s recollections encompass almost the entire breadth of Israeli history – from her first meeting in Ismailiya in 1943 with Aubrey Eban, then a British army officer, until his death in November 2002. With the exception of the chapter on the … Read more
The Koch Papers: My Fight against Anti-Semitism By Edward I. Koch with Rafael Medoff. Palgrave MacMillan 256 pages; $24.95 Ed Koch is known internationally as the outspoken mayor of New York between 1978 and 1989. Before that, he was a US congressman for almost a decade. Since his public career ended, Koch has reinvented himself … Read more
Giora Goldberg, Ben-Gurion against the Knesset (London: Routledge, 2003). Pp 338. $150.00 cloth. Ben-Gurion, of course, helped to construct and shape the state of Israel, but his actions in the arena of the Knesset, according to Giora Goldberg, led to unforeseen consequences in later years. In the early years of the state, Ben-Gurion wielded tremendous … Read more
Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship By Martin Gilbert Henry Holt 359 pages; $30 Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft By Michael Makovsky Yale University Press 342 pages; $35 In 2002, the BBC ran a phone-in competition to discover who was the greatest Briton of all time. Nearly half a million people voted for … Read more
A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism by Yakov M. Rabkin, published by Zed Press There is a tradition of Jewish opposition to Zionism, but this book only deals with a section of it. There is a difference between Jewish opposition which includes sections of the Left and Judaic opposition – … Read more
Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis Bat Ye’or Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005 384 pp., pb. $23.95/£17.50, ISBN 083864077X; hb. $49.50/£36.50, ISBN 0838640761 The Israel–Palestine conflict is an obstacle placed in the path of Jewish-Muslim dialogue in Europe. But in this book there is no indication that there are two narratives to this tortuous conflict … Read more
Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, believes there has been a concerted attempt to label his paper as a receptacle for liberal anti-Semitism due to its criticism of current Israeli government policies.In Daphna Baram’s incisive new book, “Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel,” (Guardian Books, £17.99), he is quoted as saying: “And, of course, once … Read more