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Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

Author : Yossi Klein Halevi

Publisher : HarperCollins

Page : 200 pages

File Size : 35,69 MB

Release : 2019-06-18

Category : History

ISBN : 0062968661

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Book Description

New York Times bestseller Now with a new Epilogue, containing letters of response from Palestinian readers. "A profound and original book, the work of a gifted thinker."--Daphne Merkin, The Wall Street Journal Attempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes. I call you "neighbor" because I don’t know your name, or anything personal about you. Given our circumstances, "neighbor" might be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dream, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors? Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli’s powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians and into the hearts of "the enemy." In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi explains what motivated him to leave his native New York in his twenties and move to Israel to participate in the drama of the renewal of a Jewish homeland, which he is committed to see succeed as a morally responsible, democratic state in the Middle East. This is the first attempt by an Israeli author to directly address his Palestinian neighbors and describe how the conflict appears through Israeli eyes. Halevi untangles the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. In lyrical, evocative language, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel, using history and personal experience as his guide. Halevi’s letters speak not only to his Palestinian neighbor, but to all concerned global citizens, helping us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately help determine the fate of the region.



Like Dreamers

Author : Yossi Klein Halevi

Publisher : Harper Collins

Page : 580 pages

File Size : 41,28 MB

Release : 2013-10-01

Category : History

ISBN : 0062274821

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Book Description

“Powerful. . . . beautifully written . . . . There is much to admire . . . especially Mr. Halevi’s skill at getting inside the hearts and minds of these seven men” —Ethan Bronner, New York Times Following the lives of seven young members from the 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade, the unit responsible for restoring Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War, acclaimed journalist Yossi Klein Halevi reveals how this band of brothers played pivotal roles in shaping Israel’s destiny long after their historic victory. While they worked together to reunite their country in 1967, these men harbored drastically different visions for Israel’s future. One emerges at the forefront of the religious settlement movement, while another is instrumental in the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. One becomes a driving force in the growth of Israel’s capitalist economy, while another ardently defends the socialist kibbutzim. One is a leading peace activist, while another helps create an anti-Zionist terror underground in Damascus. Featuring eight pages of black-and-white photos and maps, Like Dreamers is a nuanced, in-depth look at these diverse men and the conflicting beliefs that have helped to define modern Israel and the Middle East. “A beautifully written and sometimes heartbreaking account of these men, their families, and their nation.” —Booklist, starred review “Halevi's book is executed with imagination, narrative drive, and, above all, deep empathy for a wide variety of Israelis, and the result is a must-read for anyone with an interest in contemporary Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Mr. Halevi’s masterly book brings us into [the] . . . debate and the lives of those who live it.” —Elliott Abrams, Wall Street Journal



At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden

Author : Yossi K. Halevi

Publisher : Harper Collins

Page : 337 pages

File Size : 21,41 MB

Release : 2002-06-18

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0060505826

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Book Description

A brilliantly observed memoir of an unprecedented and remarkable spiritual journey. While religion has fuelled the often violent conflict plaguing the Holy Land, Yossi Klein Halevi wondered whether it could be a source of unity as well. To find the answer, this religious Israeli Jew began a two–year exploration to discover a common language with his Christian and Muslim neighbours. He followed their holiday cycles, befriended Christian monastics and Islamic mystics, and joined them in prayer in monasteries and mosques in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden traces that remarkable spiritual journey. Halevi candidly reveals how he fought to reconcile his own fears and anger as a Jew to relate to Christians and Muslims as fellow spiritual seekers. He chronicles the difficulty of overcoming multiple obstacles注eological, political, historical, and psychological注at separate believers of the three monotheistic faiths. And he introduces a diverse range of people attempting to reconcile the dichotomous heart of this sacred place柠struggle central to Israel, but which resonates for us all.



The Words of My Father

Author : Yousef Bashir

Publisher : Haus Publishing

Page : 286 pages

File Size : 26,39 MB

Release : 2018-09-28

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1912208180

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Book Description

In the Gaza Strip, growing up on land owned by his family for centuries, eleven-year-old Yousef is preoccupied by video games, school pranks, and meeting his father’s impossibly high standards. Everything changes when the Second Intifada erupts and soldiers occupy the family home. Yousef’s father refuses to flee and risk losing the house forever, so the army keeps the family in a state of virtual imprisonment. Yousef struggles to understand how his father can be so committed to peaceful co-existence that he welcomes the occupying Israeli soldiers as ‘guests’, even in the face of unfair and humiliating treatment. Over time, Yousef learns how to endure his new life in captivity – but he can’t anticipate that a bullet is about to transform his future in an instant. Shot by an Israeli soldier at the age of fifteen, and taken to hospital in Tel Aviv, Yousef slowly and painstakingly confronts the paralysis of his lower body. Under the ceaseless care of Israeli medical professionals, he gains a new perspective on the value of co-existence. These transformative experiences set Yousef on a difficult new path that leads him to learn to embody his father’s philosophy, and spread a message of co-existence in a world of deep-set sectarianism. The Words of My Father is a moving coming-of-age story about survival, tolerance and hope.



Dear Zealots

Author : Amos Oz

Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Page : 161 pages

File Size : 34,28 MB

Release : 2018-11-13

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 1328987566

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Book Description

The acclaimed author presents “three passionate lectures about the state of politics in Israel” in this “humorous, mournful, enraged, and uplifting” volume (Kirkus). A National Jewish Book Award Finalist Israeli author Amos Oz has won numerous awards for his novels capturing the cultural and political complexities of his country, including the Frankfurt Peace Prize, the Primo Levi Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award. But these essays on the universal nature of fanaticism and its possible cures, on the Jewish roots of humanism and the need for a secular pride in Israel, and on the geopolitical standing of Israel in the wider Middle East and internationally, “may contain his most urgent message yet.” (Ruth Eglash, Washington Post). These essays were written, Oz states, “first and foremost” for his grandchildren: they are a patient, learned telling of history, religion, and politics, to be thumbed through and studied, clung to even, as we march toward an uncertain future. “Concise, evocative . . . Dear Zealots is not just a brilliant book of thoughts and ideas—it is a depiction of one man’s struggle, who for decades has insisted on keeping a sharp, strident and lucid perspective in the face of chaos and at times of madness.” —David Grossman, winner of the Man Booker International Prize



Enemies and Neighbors

Author : Ian Black

Publisher : Atlantic Monthly Press

Page : 578 pages

File Size : 29,56 MB

Release : 2017-11-07

Category : History

ISBN : 0802188796

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Book Description

“Comprehensive and compelling...a landmark study” of the Arab-Zionist conflict, told from both sides, by the author of Israel’s Secret Wars (Sunday Times, UK). Setting the scene at the end of the nineteenth century, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources—from declassified documents to oral testimonies to his own vivid-on-the-ground reporting—to illuminate the most polarizing conflict of modern times. Beginning with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government promised to favor the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, Black proceeds through the Arab Rebellion of the late 1930s, the Nazi Holocaust, Israel’s independence and the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), the watershed of 1967 followed by the Palestinian re-awakening, Israel’s settlement project, two Intifadas, the Oslo Accords, and continued negotiations and violence up to today. Combining engaging narrative with political analysis and social and cultural insights, Enemies and Neighbors is both an accessible overview and a fascinating investigation into the deeper truths of a furiously contested history.



Israel

Author : Noa Tishby

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 352 pages

File Size : 19,39 MB

Release : 2021-04-06

Category : History

ISBN : 1982144955

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Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A “fascinating and very moving” (Aaron Sorkin, award-winning screenwriter of The West Wing and The Social Network) chronological timeline spanning from Biblical times to today that explores one of the most interesting countries in the world—Israel. Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts? Here to fill in the information gap is Israeli American Noa Tishby. But “this is not your Bubbie’s history book” (Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher). Instead, offering a fresh, 360-degree view, Tishby brings her “passion, humor, and deep intimacy” (Yossi Klein Halevi, New York Times bestselling author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor) to the subject, creating an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, Tishby chronicles her homeland’s evolution, beginning in Biblical times and moving forward to cover everything from WWI to Israel’s creation to the disputes dividing the country today. Tackling popular misconceptions with an abundance of facts, Tishby provides critical context around headline-generating controversies and offers a clear, intimate account of the richly cultured country of Israel.



Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist

Author : Yossi Klein Halevi

Publisher : Little Brown GBR

Page : 260 pages

File Size : 29,76 MB

Release : 1995

Category : Children of Holocaust survivors

ISBN : 9780316498609

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Book Description

"When Yossi Klein Halevi was a boy, his father told him stories - not fairy tales, but stories of his own harsh past, of living in a tiny hole in the ground to hide from the Nazis, of the nightmarish experience of the Jewish people. He grew up, his father's stories grew within him, and Halevi found himself identifying more and more with the persecution and suffering of his people. Even as a boy, he wanted justice, retribution, and action." "By the sixth grade, Halevi was learning how to handle a gun, handing out leaflets, joining right-wing movements. Soon he was swept away by the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane and was on the front lines of every protest, hoping to see his face and raised fist on the television news reports. At the climax of his activism, he led an unprecedented demonstration in Moscow to force the world to free Soviet Jews. But then Halevi began questioning the basic premises of his life, repudiating rage as a worldview, and trying to free himself from the bitter accounts of history. He wished for a life that embraced a world different from his father's." "In Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, Halevi looks back on his youth with wry affection, reflecting on who he was - and why - and seeing his hotheaded and passionate fellow activists from the perspective of time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved



The War of Return

Author : Adi Schwartz

Publisher : All Points Books

Page : 176 pages

File Size : 40,95 MB

Release : 2020-04-28

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1250252989

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Book Description

Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group—unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts—has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf—both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution—reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.



Catch-67

Author : Micah Goodman

Publisher : Yale University Press

Page : 262 pages

File Size : 17,72 MB

Release : 2018-09-18

Category : History

ISBN : 0300240783

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Book Description

A controversial examination of the internal Israeli debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a best-selling Israeli author Since the Six-Day War, Israelis have been entrenched in a national debate over whether to keep the land they conquered or to return some, if not all, of the territories to Palestinians. In a balanced and insightful analysis, Micah Goodman deftly sheds light on the ideas that have shaped Israelis' thinking on both sides of the debate, and among secular and religious Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Contrary to opinions that dominate the discussion, he shows that the paradox of Israeli political discourse is that both sides are right in what they affirm—and wrong in what they deny. Although he concludes that the conflict cannot be solved, Goodman is far from a pessimist and explores how instead it can be reduced in scope and danger through limited, practical steps. Through philosophical critique and political analysis, Goodman builds a creative, compelling case for pragmatism in a dispute where a comprehensive solution seems impossible.