Customer Reviews

Arabs and Israel For Beginners

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this book to learn. Wow! It definitely is an eye-opener.

The author is clearly pro-Arab, but after reading the book and checking several of his facts, I think it may be hard to not at least consider the Arab position. Read it with a grain of salt and draw your own conclusions.

Arabs and Israel for Beginners is, bar none, the best introduction to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict currently available. Some reviewers hate it, others love it, and it isn't hard to understand why. This book documents a painful reality that is hated by those it condemns but loved by seekers of truth and justice. If we identify this book's critics with their ideological prejudices we quickly realize each of their cries of protest, rather than representing a valid criticism, in fact validates the truth of the content. As John Toland once wrote, "This conduct, on the contrary, will make them suspect all to be a cheat and imposture, because men will naturally cry out when they are touched in a tender part . . . no man will be angry at a question who's able to answer it. . . ." And "answer it," they most certainly do not. None of this book's detractors refute the well-documented facts presented therein, for the simple reason that they cannot. Truth stands firm against deceit.

Arabs and Israel for Beginners should not be rated five stars, but 220 stars -- one for each page. Furthermore, the authors deserve recognition for their bravery in standing up to one of the greatest disinformation campaigns of the modern age. Considering how the discussed issues are reshaping our world, this book is not simply an informative read: It's a must-read!

ARABS & ISRAEL FOR BEGINNERS tells the truth, plainly and simply, without fancy talk and without evasions. Statements about Israel's origin usually begin with "Israel was 'established'..." Of course nobody knows exactly what is meant by "established"--so I will tell you exactly what that intentionally evasive word means.
In 1896, because of anti-Semitism in France, Theodor Herzl wrote the book "The Jewish State" in which he argued that Jews would never be allowed to assimilate, so they should build their own country.
He suggested that they build their new country in Palestine, a place that only a handful of Jews lived in since the time of Christ.
Jews, following Herzl's plan (and paid for by wealthy guys who pay others to take the risks involved in stealing someone else's country) began moving to Palestine by the hundreds and demanding that Palestine be turned into a Jewish country.
In 1919, after World War 1, US President Woodrow Wilson sent a fact finding group, The King-Crane Commission, to Palestine to "ascertain the wishes of the people." In accordance with the principles of Democracy, President Wilson sent the commission to count the population of Palestine--and ask them what THEY wanted.
Fact: Even after 25 years of intensive immigration to Palestine, Jews constituted less than 10% of the population of Palestine.
Fact: 90% of the population was (to state the obvious) PALESTINIAN!
Fact: The King-Crane Commission reported to President Wilson that 90% of the population of Palestine were Palestinian--Arabs--who had lived in the same place for hundreds of years and did NOT want their country turned into a Jewish country.
The King Crane Commission recommended that: 1) Jews must find another place to put a Jewish country; 2) To put a Jewish country in Palestine would trespass on the religious and civil rights of the existing population; 3) Proof of the unfairness of the situation (they said) was the fact that it could only be maintained by a large military or police force.
90 years later and the country Israel "borrowed" from Palestine still has to be maintained a large military/police force--Israel's occupying army.

President Wilson passed on his commission's recommendation--the Jewish people must find another place to put their country.
That was in 1919.
The Zionists (the Jewish zealots) ignored President Wilson and kept moving Jews into Palestine and putting pressure on anyone they could.
In 1948, the United Nations voted to "partition" Palestine, giving two-thirds of it to Zionists/Israel--DESPITE THE FACTS THAT: 1) The Palestinians had a two-to-one majority in population; 2) Jews owned less than 7% of Palestine; 3) the Palestinians had lived in Palestine for hundreds of years.
Giving two-thirds of Palestine to Zionists was an insult to Democracy.
It was blatant stealing, legalized theft.

Please don't take my word for it. All of the population numbers I have given, along with the basic facts of the King Crane Commission and the United Nations document partitioning Palestine are publicly available documents that anyone can read.
The only way that 10% of a population can take over a country is by stealing it. I would gladly take a polygraph test to prove that every word in this book is as true and accurate as I could make it.
Ron David--the author

This book brings an argument of old saying "There is or was no such thing as Palestine" and goes into great detail of history both biblical and historical facts. Thing is people want to believe what they want to believe because their minds are made up before they read the book. If they even read it fully. The only agenda the author is using is telling the truth. Only thing is...the truth hurts. Many will deny it and only a few will accept it.

This is an illustrated work. But it's no comic book. It will begin to shake your faith in America's knee-jerk support of Israel. This is a book written by a Jew that takes on Zionism, Israel and his own people. His most important point is that Arabs hate the two-century-old land-grab of the Zionists in Palestine, and not necessarily the Jewish people. While I (and the author) have the most profound empathy/sympathy for the Jewish experience (including the pogroms in Russia, the millennium-old hatred of the Jews by Europeans and Hitler's Holocaust), when it comes to the situation in the Mideast, Israel and the Jews are not innocents. Zionists had their sights on Palestine since 1850's. Did you know that up until the founding of the state of Israel, Jews and Arabs lived mostly in peace? Did you know that Europeans have killed more Jews than Arabs ever have?

I remember first reading this book many many years ago.
After reading it I ended up taking several courses in Political Science and Middle East history at university, and have read all of the classic academic works from Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein to Edward Said, Israel Shahak, Charles Smith and Ilan Pappe.
I now know my Middle East history back and forth, and have spent years researching and reading on this topic.

This book is an absolutely excellent introduction onto the subject. Easy to read and fast. I'd recommend it for ALL interested people with little knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli history. It is the perfect stepping stone onto larger more academic works.

The only fault in this book is that the writing is slightly emotionally loaded, which isn't 'proper' for an academic or scholarly work. But that does not take away from the facts that this book is replete with, and it achieves its objective to be a beginner's run-through of the history of the area from ancient times to present, and that is why I give it 5 stars.

... to a complicated matter that it may be impossible to be neutral about. Being of Jewish extraction, I have tended to be more sympathetic to the Israel side of things, particularly after reading much Holocaust literature over the years. Still, it is not responsible to look at only one side of an issue and clearly the unending heartache in the Mideast begs for a much clearer examination than will ever be presented in mainstream media.

Thus I launched into this book eagerly. To the author's credit, he states his frame of mind upfront, as well to answer deceptively simple questions that are almost never answered elsewhere- what is an Arab? Where is Palestine? The bibliography and references for further reading are also helpful. And he tries very hard to point out why there is unending cycles of violence in the Mideast that are not artifacts of ancient history, but are the direct result of events that happened in the lifetime of many of this book's readers.

Still, he crams too much in this book. While somewhat interesting, the ancient history of the Mideast is not nearly as relevant as the specifics of the creation of the modern Israeli state. And the comic book format gets tiring. A more conventional, and tightly edited book would better explain the complexities of this situation.

Still, you'll never understand what is going on in the Mideast if you are only relying on your local newspaper and evening news; the author states that the more you watched TV, the less you knew about what was going on. Books such as this are a useful cure for this.

This is one book in a series "... For Beginners." Ron David does an excellent analysis of the Arab and Israeli confrontation. It is well researched and well written. Mr. David lays the ground work by looking at popular beliefs and then subjects them to critical evaluation. For example, there are those who believe that the Arabs conquered Palestine/Syria in the 7th century from the resident Jewish inhabitants. In fact, the area was under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire--identified as Byzantium in the West. The book covers the story from around 2000 BC to the early 1990's. It is well illustrated which adds to the pleasure of reading this book. It is quick reading, and easily referenced. The Table of Contents will get you quickly to a particular topic. Mr. David uses maps, tables, and quotes to great effect. He also includes a bibliography for further reading. For example, Mr. David examines the Holocaust, the failure of Western countries to open their borders to Jewish survivors, and the issue of Palestine by suggesting books like Leonard Dinnerstein's America and the Survivors of the Holocaust and Henry L. Feingold's The Politics of Rescue. At the end of the book, Mr. David provides two pages of further readings for those who become more interested in the topic. This book is a must for anyone unfamiliar with Arab-Israeli dilemma. It will help put in balance a great many misconceptions about the problem.

If you are looking for a primer on the conflict in Israel/Palestine, you can't do better than this. I chose it in large part because the writer is Jewish and could be expected to put the case for Israel in the best possible light. Readers may be surprised, and some even angered, by the author's conclusions, but he doesn't stray far from the facts. Not overly verbose (it is illustrated), the book can be read in a couple of hours.

Mr. David is correct in his own personal review about the many facts in his book. Many of the figures, documents and the like are perfectly legitimate. My problem isn't the facts. It is how they are presented.

They are recorded as just plain facts without the historical context in a form in which anyone can interpret them any way they choose to and present their version of them as gospel. Mr. David has done a marvelous job at taking his own slanted interpretation of events and recording it as history in his book.

Lets take his theory that Middle East terrorism had its genisis with pre state Jewish underground organizations and movements. To anyone that knows the history of any of these groups, Mr. David's assertion must appear to be absolute rubish.

The Haganah was founded in the aftermath of Arab violence against Jews. 1920 and 1921 saw horrific riots against the Jewish community in Palestine. It is against this backdrop of Arab violence that the Haganah was created and an organization from which the Stern Gang and the Irgun would later split.

The violent actions the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang did take were against British military targets and not an innocent populace of women and children. It is true that later on a few officials not associated with with the British military were murdered by some extremist elements within the Stern and Irgun.

It is also suggested that Israel invented the art of plane hijacking in 1954 when a Syrian airliner was hijacked by Israelis. It is true that the Israeli airforce did force to land a Syrian plane. No one was harmed and the plane was allowed to return to Syria in days. The tactics used had nothing in common by the tactics used by the PLO in plane hijackings. No one was ever threatened and no goals were achieved by it. This is in stark contrast to the aircraft hijackings carried out by Palestinian terrorists.

Mr. David appears to have a little bit of an anti-semitic attitude as well. His final demand at the end of his book is that prominent Jews admit that "we stole Palestine." He mentions several non-Israeli Jews that do not live in Israel, have never served in the IDF and do not participate in Israel's political system. In his mentioning of the protests of Israeli Jews after the Sabra and Shatila massacres he mockingly writes that the "Jewish people" cry about Sabra and Shatila while being indifferent to the Palestinians. He doesn't refer to Jews as individuals and he clearly sees us as collectively guilty for the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestine and that this "ethnic cleansing" was the "end of Jewish innocence."

Mr. David does an incredible job of misrepresenting the King-Crane Commission as well.

The King-Crane Commission was made up of people who were decidedly anti-Zionist to begin with. That is specifically why they were chosen by Wilson for the job. One feature for which the report is still remembered today was an early statement skeptical of the viability of a Jewish state in Syria. The logic of the commission went along the lines that the first principle to be respected must be self-determination. Since the commission had a very "maximalist" view of Syria - what would today encompass Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and the Gaza Strip - it pointed out that a majority of Syrians were against the formation of a Jewish state. It is important to remember that at this time there was no distinct Palestinian nationist movement and most Arabs living in what would become Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip saw themselves as Syrians and were proponents of reuniting with an independant Syria.

What is telling about this "affront to democracy" is that three years after the King-Crane commission was sent to Palestine the American House and Senate voted on a resolution favoring the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

The Author also ignores that the facts on the ground changed tremendously between 1919 when the King-Crane Commission studied Palestine and 1948 when Israel declared it's independance and that several other studies were done on the population after 1.) Syria and Jordan were independant states in charge of their own populace. 2.) Substantial Jewish immigration to Palestine had occured and 3.)Substantial Arab immigration had occured to Palestine in the wake of the economic oppertunites created by Jewish immigration and settlement.

I am running on the assumption that Mr. David is an American or possibly Canadian. As an American or Canadian, I would assume he is ashamed of himself for continuing to live in a land that literally was stolen from it's native population. Maybe he should write a book entitles "Whites and Native Americans for beginners" and discuss America's ethnic cleansing of an entire continent. Maybe he should seek residency in Europe so he does not remain on stolen land and his conscience will be clear.