Customer Reviews

Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement

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I admit that I have been one of those Americans who find the whole Israeli-Palestinian thing just too boring and I didn't want to know. I mean, the Jews I know are smart and funny and Israel has lots of Nobel Prize winners so why shouldn't they be able to do what they want in the land that God gave them...except I never really believed that last part.

Friedman interviewed settlers and much of the book is in their own words. If you want to know the history of the settlement movement and what the settlers themselves think about what they are doing and if you don't mind reading a really well-written book, this book is for you.

American's must not take heed to calls for an uneven handed solution to the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.

This book gives an unbiased, real, scary, and detailed overview of settler intentions in 'sharing and co-inciding together' with their arab counterparts.

As this conflict between the two becomes a political tool for 'molding opinion', this insider takes the courage and strength to share a story of a 'fundamental'cause that will effect every nation in the planet and bring a majority of societies to the brink of war.

A MUST READ FOR EVERY FREEDOM LOVING AMERICAN

This book is written by a journalist, so it's more focused on stories than wider history or analysis. Still, I found the writer to be a great storyteller who was deeply interested in the subject and fair to his interviewees despite disagreeing with them. I found this book quite useful in researching settlement in the West Bank. If you're looking for more historical and analytic books, try On the Border of Fire: Origins of the National Religious Settler Movement in Israel andThe Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977.

This book, unless I am mistaken, was one of the first books written on the subject of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The author has a genuine desire to learn about them and write about them in a clear and coherent way. He does his best considering circumstances to be balanced considering the issue. He, like others since, have put a human face on the generally political movement of settlers. He visits many settlers and settlements and allows them to speak freely. I think he should have tried to visit some more settlements but this was the early 1990s, so they were smaller and more cohesive, so perhaps I am being to modern on it. The book has its limitations such as being written during a time where you really had to go out of your way to get factually correct information on the subject. Meaning the New Historians were still in the making and many "alternative" sources we hidden. So I understand his broad assumptions at points and his narrative following in others, but do not excuse them. Worth a read, 40 Years in the Wilderness is a modern version of this book, but encompasses more types of settlers and is written by Israelis.

Since the book was published, the plight of the Palestinians has only gotten worse. As the author makes clear, Jewish settlers aren't courageous heroes. They're zealots, filled with hate for an entire group of people. Everyone loses when zealots of any religion or philosophy are allowed to run roughshod. As Americans, our money is given to these irrational zealots by the billions. Why do we allow this? The author provides a fascinating look at this issue much ignored by our country.

This was an extremely one-sided book pertaining to a very complex issue. Don't even waste your time!

Israels west bank settlements, for all the ire they cause, are an extension of the 5 thousand year Jewish existance in the holy land, an existance that waqs almost cut short in 1948.

For example take the most steadfast settlers of Kiryat Arba outside of Hebron. THe author rags on these people beyond beleif in an unbiased manner which smacks of his dislike and knee jerk reaction to the term 'settler'. But the very brave Jews who live in hebron today are merely extensions of the jewish community that has always existed in hebron. Unfortunatly this age old community was virtually whiped out in the Arab riots of 1929 and they have only recently returned, standing up to those that beleive they should be thrown into the sea.

THis book is a biased account of these Jewish pioneers who settled a wild land and made it productive. THis is the account of the extension of Zionism into the West Bank and Gaza. In 1948 the Jordanian army and its arab militias whiped out the Jews of the Etzion Bloc in the West Bank and closed the Old Jewish quarter of Jerusalum. Yet the author condemns the Jews who wished to return to their ancestral lands following the 67' war. THis book, one of the few on the subject deserves some merit because it does shed light on these people, unfortunatly its a biased light.