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Israel Academia Monitor

Current Affairs Digest

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Book Reviews

Shlomo Sharan
on

Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam
by Andrew Wheatcroft, England: Penguin Books, 2004

Wheatcroft’s book demonstrates enormous scholarship with an uncanny eye for detail. It also wear’s the author’s personal views on its sleeve, or, at times, expresses them in a cleverly covert fashion. This reviewer’s clear, but not unequivocal, impression is that the author’s attitudes are pro-Muslim, at least somewhat anti-American (he likens George W. Bush to Pope Urban II who initiated the First Crusade) and somewhat anti-Semitic. He discloses no small amount of distaste for Christianity, although he was born and raised (in Scotland) as a Christian. However, I surmise that Wheatcroft’s extensive travels in Muslim countries, as well as his study of Islam, appears to have tilted his values and attitudes in favor of Islam. On occasion, he makes statements that are blatantly pro-Islamic, even at the cost of sacrificing reality in favor of his personal opinions.

For the complete article (in PDF), click here.


Moshe Dann
on
 
Lords of the Land: The War over Israel’s Settlements
in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007

 by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, NY: Nation Books, 2007, 531 pp., $30

Disagreements about the legitimacy and efficacy of Israeli settlements, their effect on Israeli politics, and if they are “obstacles to peace” are hotly-debated issues, especially in Israel where the topic sometimes seems obsessive. A fair-minded, honest and accurate discussion of the issues, therefore, would be welcome. Zertal and Eldar, however, despite seemingly impressive documentation, offer a thoroughly one-sided perspective...

For the complete article (in PDF), click here.
 

Moshe Dann
on
 
Lords of the Land: The War over Israel’s Settlements
in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007

 by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, NY: Nation Books, 2007, 531 pp., $30

Disagreements about the legitimacy and efficacy of Israeli settlements, their effect on Israeli politics, and if they are “obstacles to peace” are hotly-debated issues, especially in Israel where the topic sometimes seems obsessive. A fair-minded, honest and accurate discussion of the issues, therefore, would be welcome. Zertal and Eldar, however, despite seemingly impressive documentation, offer a thoroughly one-sided perspective...

For the complete article (in PDF), click here.
 


Raphael Israeli
on
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948
by Hillel Cohen, UC Press, 2008, 268 pp + notes, bibliography and index

 At a time when Palestinian “collaboration with the Zionist enemy” has reached its lowest ebb of condemnation and resentment among Palestinians, following the various Israeli withdrawals which either abandoned the collaborators or has tried – unsuccessfully – to resettle them in friendly territory in return for their past services, this timely and welcome volume which recounts the story of collaboration might fill in the large gaps of our knowledge on this otherwise unpleasant and embarrassing issue.

For the complete article (in PDF), click here.


COMBATTING MURDEROUS ISLAMIC FANTASIES
Yonatan Silverman
on
Jihad and Jew Hatred
by Matthias Kuntzel, Telos Books 2008

Six Arab personalities play central roles in the argument of this book: Haj Amin El Husseini, Hassan al Banna, Sayid Qutb, Yasser Arafat, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and Osama bin Laden. But the first two are more central than the others.

Matthias Kuntzel’s premise is that through the hands of Haj Amin El Husseini, as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1930s, and Hassan al Banna, as founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, Nazi style Jew hatred impregnated itself in the Arab world, and the seed thereby spread in particularly vicious manifestations throughout the Arab world...

For the complete article (in PDF), click here.

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Israel Academia Monitor


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