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73 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Passionate, moral evaluation of the facts re Mid-East., December 22, 2003
This absorbing, well written, impassioned study by a historian and director of Israel's Holocaust museum, is extremely well presented, providing what could be called a "moral evaluation" of the facts surrounding the historical context pertaining to the ongoing situation in the Middle East. A study which exposes how the present, "flawed" perception of the Arab-Israeli conflict permeating the International community is shown to have fanned the flames of an ever increasing hatred of the Jewish people and their nation. The book is quite powerful and transports the reader into the experience & world of the Jew with the sense of frustration being almost palpable from the text. A study that will hold the reader's attention throughout . The title of this work ("Right To Exist") speaks volumes in itself and is described as a damning indictment upon much of modern day society where many intellectuals & public figures (including University professors, media distorters, anti-Semites and alleged "peace activists") are said to have used their positions as platforms from which to unjustly vilify the State of Israel. The implications of their actions are discussed at various places in the text. The book in no way objects to criticism of the Jewish State as long as that analysis of Israel is "comparative, contextual, and fair". However the book contends strongly that the Jewish nation is the only one criticized for faults that are far worse among other nations and that this criticism crosses the line from being acceptable to blatantly anti-Semitic. The source of this work describes himself as a "lifelong liberal, peace activist and a seeker of justice", critical of some Israeli Government policies, but someone whose attitude changed following the increase of Palestinian terrorism etc. and who eventually found himself voting for the "hardline" Israeli leader Ariel Sharon. The book begins with a description of how many innocent Jewish civilians including women, children and the elderly are murdered by Palestinian terrorists whilst the Arab World responds with more cries of "death to the Jews" whilst the rest of the World simultaneously looks away or pretends not to hear. The resounding silence being described as endorsement and support for the killers of these Jews to continue with their murderous policies. The study proceeds to argue that there is no "cycle of violence" in the Middle East in which each side is morally culpable and moves to destroy what are described as numerous lies and myths about the history as well as the ongoing Arab-Israeli issue. The reader is provided with quite a detailed context surrounding the beginning of the "second intifada" in relation to the offers made by Israel at the Clinton/Barak/Arafat summit and also what are called the true facts surrounding the beginning of the ensuing violence. Another matter addressed is what is cited as the "impossible task" of appeasing the Palestinian populace. Reference provided as to how lightening restrictions upon Palestinian movement for security purposes has always been accompanied by a sharp rise in Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. The effects of all these issues on the writer are also presented together with some advice for those who consider that "peace" will result from Israel giving to the Arab world (Palestinians) the territories of the ancient Jewish homeland re-captured in 1967. The book traces the long struggle to establish and defend the Jewish State in the face of Arab resistance and International hostility arguing that it is impossible to understand the conflict in the Middle East without accepting the reality that from the very beginning the overt strategy of the Arab leadership has been to eliminate the existence of any Jewish state and to destroy the Jewish population. The text mirrors this International hatred with reference to the vast number of Arab/Muslim sponsored UN Resolutions against the Jewish State described as being out of all proportion to other nations and issues etc. and which has seen Israel uniquely singled out for censure, divestment and boycott . By way of comparison the reader is shown from the text that there existed a blatant disregard for any UN Resolutions within the Arab world whilst it pursued the genocide of the Jewish people from their midst during the Arab-Israeli wars which the writer proceeds to analyse in some depth throughout a large part of this study. The reader is shown how nations are often called upon to defend their policies, and sometimes even their history, but few if any need to actually justify their existence. A process which the book cites Israel as having been mired in through the past 55 years of Palestinian terrorism and Arab rejection with nearly all of the Arab world still refusing to recognise the mere right of Israel to even exist. As an evangelical Christian my own personal perspective in relation to the Jewish people and their Land differ somewhat from that described in this work . However, I have not allowed this to prejudice my review on this book which indeed contains a wealth of material bearing an enormous amount of merit which is worthy of reading irrespective of the individual's stance on the subjects covered. Thank you.
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36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very good book by a very thoughtful man, March 28, 2005
I am not a Jew myself, nor a particularly religious person. I come from an Iranian Muslim family. This fact, in and of itself, would ordinarily be irrelevant were it not for the depressing reality that Muslim attitudes toward Israel are drearily predictable in their mendacity and barbarically ignorant racism. Having already absorbed more than a few helpings of Islamofascist and radical leftist sewage on the subject of Israel, I found this book an immensely refreshing contrast. Lozowick is not a "right wing" Israeli of the kind committed to the settlements (though even if he were, that in and of itself would not make him a bad person, especially given that even the most militant Jewish settlers still seem quite civilized when compared to the Palestinian thugs who would like nothing better than to "finish the job Hitler started.") He is often critical of Israeli policies, and is willing to acknowledge the basic justice of the Palestinians' desire for political independence. That being said, he does a wonderful job of exposing the truly grotesque hypocrisy inherent in the way pompous and self-righteous leftists, especially in Europe, present the Israeli-Palestinian struggle (and I will bet good money that every "one-star" reviewer of this book is either a neo-Nazi, an Islamic fascist, or a leftist, the differences between these groups being largely cosmetic). These sycophantically pro-Palestinian Western leftists must rank with the most disgustingly absurd people on the planet. But for the fact that their mouths are eternally open in vitriolic condemnation of Israel, one might think their lips had been surgically attached to the rear ends of Hezbollah representatives. Apparently, for some of our "bien-pensants," Jew-hatred is acceptable if it can be tarted up as multiculturalist concern for some "poor, oppressed people of color" du jour. The fact that the "people of color" we are dealing with here are the Palestinians makes the hypocrisy of the Israel-haters even more nauseating, for if there was ever a people who have contributed mightily to their own misery it is the Palestinians. When you BEGIN with the premise that the other guys, namely the Israelis, don't even have a right to exist; when your principal negotiating tactic is essentially reducible to the formula of "give us whatever we want or we'll suicide-bomb you into submission," then it is clear that your oppression is more self-inflicted than imposed from without.
Anti-Israel belligerents like to propagate the sophistry that Israel is the aggressor because she is militarily more powerful than the Palestinians. But as any student of history can see, aggression is not a function of how many weapons you have. It flows from hatred and the desire to do violence in the human heart. When the Nazis marched into the Rhineland in 1936, they were in no military position to withstand the 100 French divisions on their border had the French chosen to respond militarily. Militarily the Nazis were considerably weaker than the French in 1936; yet no one disputes that they were the aggressors. So too in the Middle East, it is the militarily weaker Palestinians who are the aggressors, for they are the ones who teach their children racial hatred of Jews; they are the ones who glorify acts of terrorist murder. For their part, if the Israelis want anything, it is to be left alone, and most of them would gladly give up the West Bank if the Palestinians ever became sincere about wanting only a compromise. Indeed, the very fact that the Palestinians are constantly resorting to terrorism to pick a fight with the militarily superior Israelis is an ironic admission that the Israelis, for all their flaws, are immensely superior to the Palestinians not only militarily, but above all, morally. If Israel's behavior even remotely resembled that of the typical Arab state, the Palestinians wouldn't dare provoke them in so barbaric a fashion, for to do so would be tantamount to inviting their own annihilation.
All of this is demonstrated very effectively by Lozowick, a man who nevertheless comes across as having more genuine sympathy for the Palestinians than in my estimation the latter have ever deserved. And although I don't think Lozowick intended to place Israelis on some kind of pedestal, his book nicely illustrates the fact that a people, like the Israelis, can be far from perfect and yet still remain infinitely preferable to their morally Neanderthal antagonists. So even if you ARE a critic of Israel, assuming you have at a minimum a rudimentary capacity for fair-mindedness, try reading this book. Unless you are a committed anti-Semite, or the sort of leftist buffoon who may not hate Jews per se, but who must always take the most virulently anti-Israeli stance as an oblique way of expressing your anti-American hatred, "Right to Exist" SHOULD challenge your assumptions. If Lozowick's arguments cannot get through your skull, then short of a direct hit from a cruise missile I suspect nothing will.
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Israel Has Earned the Right, July 19, 2005
This is a good book for someone like me. I realize that Israel's cause is just and that, as one of the few democracies in the Middle East (and the only one until very recently), it deserves my support. I also find it hard to articulate just how disgusting the all out Jew-hatred is among too many Muslims and Western intellectuals and how stomach-turning the Palestinians have become with their tactics. Even without every detail at my disposal, I know the Palestinians have rejected their own state at least twice and now blame Israel for their present circumstances. Yet I wanted more information on these subjects and RIGHT TO EXIST by Yaacov Lozowick provided it.
The book is a bit slow going at first by taking us through the history of Zionism and how it developed into a burgeoning movement in the late 19th to early 20th Centuries. For people not of a Jewish background, many of the Hebrew terms and place names can be a tad difficult to keep straight. But groundwork must be laid and here it is.
The middle sections of the book pick up steam and discuss the particulars of Israel's various wars. Lozowick is exceptionally impressive here as he in no way attempts to sidestep numerous mistakes Israel has made in her history in the conduct of these wars. Yet the point is never lost that these mistakes were made within the context of just wars inflicted upon Israel by neighboring Islamic states that simply refuse to recognize a Jewish state. Further, the mistakes Israel has made have been the exceptions. For the most part, Israel recognizes how to fight its fights in a moral fashion and has done so even in the absence of one scrap of reciprocity.
Lozowick is persuasive in his argument that the main sticking point with those Muslims that would like to see Israel destroyed is not due to some mistreatement of the Palestinians. For most of its history, the Palestinian issue was a minor one in the Arab world which wanted to destroy Israel anyway. Rather the issue is the refusal of many Muslims to see Jews as anything other than a helpless minority. Jews who can pack a punch are a serious threat to the Muslim mentality.
Far from expelling Palestinians, most Palestinians voluntarily left at Israel's creation to join fellow Arabs in their initial attempt to destroy the nascent country. They fully expected to return to their land after wiping the Jews out and now cry buckets when the Jews not only won but have kept the land that they won fair and square. Further, we rarely hear of the much larger number of Jews expelled from their homelands throughout the Islamic world who then headed to Israel because they had nowhere else to go. What about their so-called right of return? Lozowick discusses this hypocrisy and places it in the proper context of anti-Jewish sentiment.
The final third of the book absolutely redeems its slow start. Lozowick discusses Israel's current crisis involving the Palestinians and provides the reader a lot to chew on. What, he asks, can Israel possibly offer the Palestinians that has not already been offered? And exactly how does one trust a negotiating partner that promised in front of the entire world to put an end to the violence only to escalate it immediately? How could Israel have responded to the second intifada except to take the fight to the terrorists themselves? Even if one were as sympathetic as could be to the Palestinian cause, one cannot help but reach the conclusion that much of their misery is of their own making.
Some of the anecdotes Lozowick employs are deeply troubling. A group of Israel liberals placed an advertisement in a weekly magazine recognizing all those killed in the previous year due to violence. They controversially included the suicide bombers themselves. Yet when they asked their Palestinian counterparts to also print the ad, the Palestinians refused. They could not mourn the death of Jews lost in the conflict even given the barbaric ways in which they died. What is striking about this is that these Palestinians were not the extremists, nor were they even the moderate middle (whatever that means in this context). These were the enlightened elite of Palestinian society! These were the ones most willing to build a bridge with the Israelis! If they would not publish the ad, what does this tell us about the rest of their society? At the least, it should open the reader's eyes to exactly what the Israelis are dealing with.
One final point is worth noting as I never saw it anywhere else and it was really rather interesting. Let us assume that an independent state of Palestine is created. Israel would almost certainly have to divide Jerusalem and so people would be living in the same city who were not only of different backgrounds but literally citizens of different states. Putting aside all the specific factors that make the Israeli-Palestinian issue so complex, there would still arise another issue. Israel is an affluent nation and would become even more successful if it could devote more of its energies to commerce. But what of Palestine? Every non-oil producing Arab state is a third-world country with a corrupt government. Perhaps Palestine would be the exception (it would have Israel right next door as a good example of the benefits of free enterprise) but perhaps not. Putting aside all other issues, citizens living in a poor and corrupt country are often quite hostile to citizens of more successful nations. Are we to presume that this hostility would do anything other than increase if the citizens of the rich nation are not only in the neighboring country, but are literally living across the street? The situation would be one combining the tensions between successful and non-successful nations with the tensions of extreme proximity. A thought, again, to chew on.
It is fair to say that solutions are a long way off. In the meantime, the best that can probably be done is to educate ourselves on the issues so that we know what we are talking about. RIGHT TO EXIST may not have all the answers, it may not even have some of them, but it does what it can. At this point, that is more than enough.
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