Arabs & Israel for Beginners (Writers and Readers Series) [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Ron David (Author), Susan David (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Series: Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book | Publication Date: December 1993

DESCRIPTION: Most of the literature on the Middle East is so distorted in favor of Israel that it bears virtually no relationship to the truth. Anyone who wants the truth must dig through daunting works by people like Chomsky, Lilienthal, Said and a handful of other scholarly writers. But when it comes to books written in plain English for regular people there is virtually nothing, just a huge gap. ARABS & ISRAEL FOR BEGINNERS, part of the 30-year running "Beginners Series," was written to fill that gap. The very identity of the series (which could be described in a word as "anti-footnote") is to communicate complex subjects with clarity and wit so that regular people can understand them. It is a concept perfectly suited to Democracy, especially when it is as painstakingly researched as this book.

In the simplest, most general terms the author’s sources for ARABS & ISRAEL were as follows: 1) The sections on Early (pre-Israel) Palestine are primarily from "Encyclopedia Britannica" under the heading of "Palestine." An interesting secondary source for Early Middle Eastern History is Larry Gornick's "Cartoon History of the Universe," amazingly accurate for all of its humor. 2) A major source on the creation of modern Israel is Noam Chomsky's "The Fateful Triangle," which documents everything of importance up to and including Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. 3) The details of Israel's invasion are from "Israel's Lebanon War," written by Israeli reporters Schiff & Ya'ari, and pre-approved by the Israeli Army. 4) "Taking Sides," an astonishing book by Stephen Green, covers the period from pre-Israel through the 1967 Six Day War by using only recently declassified U.S. State Dept. documents. 5) "While Six Million Died" by Arthur Morse is a prime source for Holocaust information. 6) "A Concise History of the Middle East" by Arthur Goldschmidt is the source for much of the info from Muhammad to the end of the 19th century.

Since it was the author’s goal to learn the real truth (not one side’s version of it), he never settled for only one source on anything. If he couldn’t corroborate it he didn’t use it. In virtually every case, the author used Israeli or Jewish sources (including Israeli newspapers) to "prove" the Arab side of the story; or irrefutably "white bread" sources (like "Britannica") that, if they bent the truth, would NOT bend it to favor the Arabs; or official documents available to anyone (Wilson's King Crane Commission Report; U.S. State Dept. documents uncovered by Stephen Green; facts [population, etc.] underlying the UN's 1947 partition of Palestine, etc.).

ARABS & ISRAEL FOR BEGINNERS tells the plain truth in plain English – with a sense of humor! In the words of John Mahoney, Executive Director of Americans for Middle East Understanding: "Take the research of Noam Chomsky, enliven it with skillful drawings, then trace 12,000 years of turbulent history with the irreverence of Saturday Night Live, and you have Ron David’s ARABS & ISRAEL FOR BEGINNERS."

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

EXCERPT: THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE When WW-I ended, no one could reconcile the claims of Arabs, Zionists, British & French, so in 1919 Woodrow Wilson and his democracy-mad Americans "dispatched the King-Crane Commission to the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire to ascertain the wishes of their inhabitants regarding the postwar settlement of their territories." ["Britannica"] The King-Crane report stated: 1) 90% of Palestine's inhabitants were non-Jewish & did NOT want a Jewish state in Palestine. 2) If they were given Palestine, "Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants." 3) a Jewish state in Palestine would violate the Palestinian Arabs' right to self-determination. They recommended that Zionists respect the wishes of Palestine's inhabitants & find another place to plant the Jewish state. The Zionists were furious! (This is the part where I raise hell about highlighting the wrong events.) The usual versions of Israel's history either don't mention The King-Crane Report or they minimize its importance. In my opinion, any lover of Democracy must consider the King-Crane report a major event. The King-Crane report is definitive proof that: 1) The Zionists knew they were acting against the will of the people. 2) The Zionists knowingly subverted Democracy. 3) The Government of the United States confirmed the legitimacy of the claim that Palestinians make today. THE FORMER HEAD OF THE BOY SCOUTS VS THE FUTURE PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL On May 20 [1947], the United Nations appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator between Israel and the Arabs. (Jews were pleased: Count Bernadotte, the head of the Swedish Red Cross, had risked his life to save thousands of Jews from concentration camps.) Count Bernadotte did everything in his power to stop the war between Zionists and Arabs.

I say "Zionists" because Bernadotte insisted that there was not yet any such country as Israel. He said that the November 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine was "provisional", temporary, intended only to see if partition was a feasible solution and, as any fool could now see, it was not feasible. Bernadotte reminded them that UN General Assembly resolutions were not binding. Bernadotte insisted that if the Zionists accepted the UN's authority, then they must return to the UN to establish where--and IF--Israel would be. If the Zionists rejected the UN's authority, then they must ALSO reject the UN's authority to partition Palestine in the first place. Therefore, in either case, as of this moment, there IS no Israel. (The logic is flawless: the only way to refute that argument is with a very large gun.) On September 15, in the "Bernadotte Plan," Count Bernadotte proposed that, IF Zionists were eventually given part of Palestine, in the interest of human decency, Palestinian refugees must be given two options: One, they should be allowed to return to their homes in Palestine at any time in the future; Two, if they chose not to return to Palestine, they should be compensated by Israel for all that was taken from them. In summary: ALL Palestinians, at ANY time, should have the choice of either Return or Compensation! With Count Bernadotte's war record, it would have been silly to accuse him of anti-Semitism. So the next day the Zionists murdered him. You think this is bad? It gets worse: Count Bernadotte, who had saved 20,000 Jews from Hitler, was killed on orders from Yitzhak Shamir, whose Stern Gang had offered to help the Nazis! (Doubting Thomases should consult the ugly January, 1983 article in HA'ARETZ, the Israeli N.Y. TIMES.) A 1941 Stern Gang proposal even offered to form a Jewish state "on a national and totalitarian basis, which will establish relations with the German Reich" and protect Nazi interests in the Middle East!)

Product Details

• Paperback: 210 pages
• Publisher: Writers & Readers; illustrated edition edition (December 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0863161618
• ISBN-13: 978-0863161612
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #824,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crucial reading as the West starts another Middle East war, September 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Arabs & Israel for Beginners (Writers and Readers Series) (Paperback)

As someone who worked as a UN-employed doctor in the Gaza Strip for two years, I have first hand experience of life under Israeli military occupation. Although this book does not cover the very recent history of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs, it is probably the best summary I have read in the forty years since I began reading books and articles about the history and politics of the Palestinian/Israeli tragedy.

As the West prepares to start a second war in the Middle East, there is now open discussion within and outside Israel about the need to ethnically cleanse the territories that Israel has occupied illegally and colonized since 1967. Apologists for the policies of Israel - a nation with weapons of mass destruction, which flouts international law and ignores its responsibilities under the 4th Geneva Convention - do nothing to secure the long term future of Israelis.

A common tactic used to respond to critics of Israeli policies - including Jewish critics - is to suggest that they are anti-semites! This book will help people to understand just how cheap a tactic this is. It does nothing for the image of Jews and Judaism to imply that the interests of the religion and its adherents coincide with the interests of a colonialist state created in the 20th century.

For people who want to understand the expansionist nature of the Zionist project, there is no better place to start than Ron and Susan David's excellent book. I hope they publish an updated edition, and that their work does not become yet another victim of censorship and suppression of views questioning the moral credentials of Zionism.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read! (The other side of the story), September 18, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Arabs & Israel for Beginners (Writers and Readers Series) (Paperback)

This fantastic and remarkably concise narrative of the long conflict should dramatically alter the perspective of any open-minded reader. While the style is certainly popular, the bibliographical sources are scholarly and impressive (Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky, etc.). This is the first time many people will hear the Palestinian version of the story, and it only takes 2 or 3 hours! The Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War are here; but, have you ever heard of the Two Week War or Deir Yassin? Clearly, the purpose of this book is to offer the facts through the eyes of the Palestinian people, who view some Israeli leaders as little better than Milosevich. In fact the author actually offers clear examples of ethnic cleansing by Israel. Balanced? Well, this book should help readers balance the popular version of history. The truth likely lies somewhere between the extremes. If you've spent years reading books like "Exodus" and "Oh, Jerusalem", spend a COUPLE OF HOURS reading the other side of the story. T

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flawed...but still outstanding, April 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Arabs & Israel for Beginners (Writers and Readers Series) (Paperback)

I grabbed this book off the shelf almost on a whim. I had read others in the series and, although the documentary comic book style doesn't really work for me, I couldn't decide which of the dozens of more "serious" books on the subject to start with. I'm glad I chose this one. . He opens VERY strong, an does a really nice job of sorting out the ancient history. He is similary clear and strong at sorting out the more recent stuff, with the accusations and counteraccusations that fly back and forth in this troubled part of the world like Scud missiles. And, yes, as another one of the reader-reviewers notes, he is clearly anti-Zionist, without ever being anti-Semitic. That said, he makes it very clear that the book presents its facts to arrive at the conclusion, not that it was intended solely to be an anti-Zionist diatribe, regardless of the facts. I, like the author himself, and many readers of the book, had always assumed that the Israelis were the "good guys" (at least MOST of the time). I, too, had always had doubts about some things, little scraps of information and tidbits of history that didn't fit into what I understood to be the larger picture. I appreciated the book helping me to reshape the larger picture -- and, like the other books I have read in the series, helping to point me in the right direction with regard to further reading and study. . Is the book disturbing? Unsettling? Yes. I suspect that shattered illusions are as painful, and take as long to heal, as broken bones. . So why, if I liked it so much, do I only give it a "7"? The last twenty pages or so are a mess. The slow and progressive build of arguments more or less breaks down, and I saw too much of the author and not enough of the topic. It was one of the few times in the book that I felt he was TELLING me what to think, rather than giving me the facts and letting me decide for myself. That said, I couldn't help but notice the raw pain (and anger, and outrage) of these pages, as the author tried to deal with the horror of what he thinks has happened in Palestine, but at the same time not become the sort of self-loathing Jew that a couple of these other posts imply he is. This might be a really interesting topic for another book, but it distorted the end of this book a bit. . So, is the book anti-Zionist propaganda? NO. And the fact that some readers almost inevitably accuse it of being this merely proves his argument that our understanding of this region is hugely influenced and distorted by pro-Zionist propaganda. The book tries to avoid being propaganda for either side, and, as such, is bound to upset some -- especially because he does very clearly take sides stating that, in his opinion, an historical injustice has been committed (and continues to be committed). . Since reading this book, I have tackled some others on the subject (including Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem, which he doesn't mention, but which I found brilliant) -- and hope that other readers, too, will use this brief introduction as a gateway to further reading and study. As an introduction, it's very, very good. It can't, however, hope to be definative.