Customer Reviews

Burning Issues: Understanding and Misunderstanding the Middle East: A 40-Year Chronicle

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BURNING ISSUES is an excellent publication from 2007, anniversary of the 1967 six-day war and the forty years since, with collected articles by various knowledgeable authors. I bought it after borrowing a copy from a friend with connections to the Lutheran Mission in Jerusalem. It's an excellent addition to our personal Middle East library, both as fascinating reading and as a source of historical references carefully researched.

In this book, nineteen authors have gone to town in a remarkable display of anti-Israeli propaganda, where truth is pretty much ignored. But I think that the authors will not be able to fight against the tide of human rights and freedom forever. Right now, plenty of people are intent on being arbitrary and are trying to make sure that Jews have very limited rights at best in the Middle East. But it is likely that one day, people will focus on other issues. Jews (and other minorities) are likely to wind up with their fair share, give or take, just like everyone else. And that fair share will be less than many of the authors imply that the Jews want. But it will be far more than the Jews have now, and vastly more than most of these authors appear to think that the Jews deserve.

Jane Adas starts with a hilarious timeline of "events" in the region. John Mahoney continues with more of the same historical nonsense. Both ignore most of the genuine history and write as though it were a Law of Nature that Jews must not have human rights. Richard Curtiss follows with a misleading article on U.S. aid to Israel, totally overlooking any comparison with the funds we give to NATO nations, Japan, and Korea. Phyllis Bennis mentions some U.S. vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions, as if the problem were with the U.S. and not the resolutions. Ron Bleier discusses terrorism as if it were basically Israel's fault. He says that "Israel's original sin is Zionism." That's outrageous; it is like saying that human rights are sinful. I'm a Zionist because unless one is a Zionist, one can not support human rights for all.

Daniel McGowan supplies us with a misleading account of the Jewish victory at Deir Yassin, in 1948. This was one of the battles that helped break the Arab siege of Jerusalem, but McGowan offers no applause for this! War is not pretty, and we should not pretend that people were not injured and killed at Deir Yassin, but we ought to seek truth here, not just propaganda. I'm not in favor of "balancing" truth with lies. What we need is truth. That means showing ugliness on both sides of a war, and it means telling the truth about both.

Ron Driver tells of his attempts to run ads and run for Congress. Once again, he'd be better off if he were to focus on truth. Plenty of people like truth and are offended by lies.

Jane Adas has a long anecdotal chapter on Hebron. Next is Cindy Corrie, who writes about her daughter, Rachel. Rachel died in an accident while interfering with Israeli counter-terrorism operations, but Cindy is doing no one any favors by praising Rachel's misdeeds. I know that it is terrible to lose a child, but that's not a good response. And I'll add something. Plenty of men seem to be very territorial, and even though they do not like to lose their children in wartime, they can be more willing to fight over land than many women. When women are asked to sacrifice their children in wars for more land, they often refuse. But when women are asked to cede land so that their children can be murdered, they can be as furious as the men, if not more so.

David Neuneubel has the next article. I have a question for him. If Jews have a right to exist, should Arabs have a right to destroy them?

Some of the media have tossed journalistic standards to the winds in order to propagandize against Israel. But it isn't enough for some of these intrepid authors, namely Colin Edwards, Donald Neff, Tom Hayes, and Alison Weir. Guess what my reaction is? Yes, it's simple. If you make a genuine effort to tell the truth, I'll take you seriously. If not, then please try to be more sincere and honest.

Grace Halsell writes that in the "Land of Christ, Christianity is Dying." Well, to a large extent, that's true. But the Muslims, not the Jews, are responsible for that, and Halsell ought to say so. The late Michael Prior writes about "ethnic cleansing" as if the Jews had an Empire of 5,500,000 square miles and were threatening to get rid of the Arabs, not the other way around. And he refers to Bethlehem as a "Bantustan" as if Israel were not the entity that most looks like a Bantustan in the region.

Yvonne Haddad writes about Islam. But she's not helping matters by mischaracterizing Zionism and Israel or referring to the Israeli "occupation" of Jerusalem. Audeh Rantisi writes about an actual Jewish eviction of Arabs during the 1948 war, at Lydda. That's fair. What isn't fair is the implication that the Jewish defenders against Arab aggression were in fact the problem.

James Ennis, Jr. writes about the USS Liberty. This boat was nearly sunk during the 1967 war, with numerous casualties, by the Israelis, who made a big error in trying to identify it. The evidence is now overwhelming that the incident was in fact an accident, and there's nothing to indicate any motive for Israel to have attacked the Liberty on purpose (nor evidence that Israel did it on purpose, motive or not), but this article is in this volume anyway. And it has nothing new to support its disagreement with all this.

Jane Adas, John Mahoney, and Robert Norberg then give another biased "timeline." And Robert Norberg states in an epilogue that Humphrey Walz, James Abourezk, Francis Boyle, Norman Finkelstein, Muhammad Hallaj, Ilan Pappe, Cheryl Rubenberg, and Jack Shaheen did not contribute to this anthology. I suspect that these eight people would have merely written the same sort of counterproductive nonsense as did the actual authors.

I do not recommend this book.