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yeehaw6996 · 2 months

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How absolutely kind of Israel to let Palestinians know when their homes are gonna be bombed. Maybe if Israel wasn’t a terrorist state hamas wouldn’t exist. If during the process of “eliminating” Hamas you are bombing and orphaning children you’re creating so many more Hamas members

the victims of october seventh weren’t as lucky. if there’s any terrorist state it’s the ‘state’ of palestine, considering they actually commit acts of terror. walking into cafes with bomb vests, constantly raining rockets onto civilian targets, the like.

israel is the most successful landback movement in history. if you look up the international criteria for ‘indigenous people’, the jewish people fit, and the palestinians don’t. the arabs colonized the area a long time ago and no matter how hard the various colonizers tried, they were unable to remove a jewish presence from the region. israel is a small space. it’s about the size of new jersey. what confuses me is why the ‘palestinians’, a cultural identity that did not emerge until after the ‘67 war, can’t be absorbed into the other arab nations in the region - oh, wait, they antagonized them all by overthrowing two governments (jordanian and lebanese).

the palestinians are the most privileged refugees in the world. they’re also the most entitled. they are the only group to have received generational refugee status. they receive the most aid in the world per capita, much of which is from israel, the people they terrorize. however, i saw a palestinian man on twitter film a video and post it to tiktok complaining about the mre he’d gotten - keep in mind, that’s the food that american service members eat? it’s a higher quality food package than typical disaster relief food?? the fuck??

now they insist the indigenous people move aside? automatically forgive the past century, past milennia, of terror and oppression, just so some overprivileged people who refuse to assimilate anywhere and demand land that doesn’t belong to them can get away with mass rape, terror, and hypocrisy?

let me ask you this - what exactly do you think the gazans would do with an airport?

don’t get me wrong, i’m not jewish. no need to throw slurs or accusations at me. i’m american, not israeli. i came into this conflict with little to no knowledge of the region and, after extensive research, came out a zionist. i leaned left before this. however these days, on this issue specifically, ben shapiro makes more sense than hasan. do you know how much that pisses me off? i hate the right! fuck republicanism in general! why do i have to agree with them? once the left starts making sense again i’ll come back, but it’s been made abundantly clear that leftists want the destruction of the jewish people like every fascist group before them.

regarding making new hamas members - i get where you’re coming from. however you underestimate the effect that a peaceful protest movement could have on the people of israel. these are not awful people, and believing such is antisemitic - and their government listens to them. why do you think they’re bombing gaza instead of extensive ground operations? they don’t want to lose soldiers and deal with their families voting against them. the jewish people can absolutely be convinced into palestinian statehood, you just need to convince them, instead of killing them. what’s the incentive for them to create another enemy state in the region?

do your own research and stop listening to the people around you. look into the jewish religion and their connection to the land. i know it’s easy to get sucked into what others think of an issue, but it’s your responsibility to form opinions for yourself. benny morris has some good books. a concise history of a nation reborn by daniel gordis is also a good one. rise above the hate around you and see the situation for what it is, and don’t shrink your historical knowledge to the past century - learn about the land if you insist on wasting the oxygen necessary for life, why don’t you.

#war in israel #israel palestine conflict #israel #i/p #i/p conflict #i/p war #anti zionisim #zionism #jumblr #landback #republicans #democracy #democrats #hasanabi

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paranormalworld8888 · 6 months

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Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn

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sylvielauffeydottir · 3 years

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Hello, it is I, your friendly neighborhood historian. I am ready to lose followers for this post, but I have two masters degrees in history and one of my focuses has been middle eastern area studies. Furthermore, I’ve been tired of watching the world be reduced to pithy little infographics, and I believe there is no point to my education if I don’t put it to good use. Finally, I am ethnically Asheknazi Jewish. This does not color my opinion in this post — I am in support of either a one or two state solution for Israel and Palestine, depending on the factors determined by the Palestinian Authority, and the Israeli Government does not speak for me. I hate Netanyahu. A lot. With that said, my family was slaughtered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have stood in front of that memorial wall at the Holocaust memorial in DC for my great uncle Simon and my great uncle Louis and cried as I lit a candle. Louis was a rabbi, and he preached mitzvot and tolerance. He died anyway.

There’s a great many things I want to say about what is happening in the Middle East right now, but let’s start with some facts.

In early May, there were talks of a coalition government that might have put together (among other parties, the Knesset is absolutely gigantic and usually has about 11-13 political parties at once) the Yesh Atid, a center-left party, and the United Arab List, a Palestinian party. For the first time, Palestinians would have been members of the Israeli government in their own right. And what happened, all of the sudden? A war broke out. A war that, amazingly, seemed to shield Benjamin Netanyahu from criminal prosecution, despite the fact that he has been under investigation for corruption for some time now and the only thing that is stopping a real investigation is the fact that he is Prime Minister.

Funny how that happened.

There’s a second thing people ought to know, and it is about Hamas. I’ve found it really disturbing to see people defending Hamas on a world stage because, whether or not people want to believe it, Hamas is a terrorist organization. I’m sorry, but it is. Those are the facts. I’m not being a right wing extremist or even a Republican or whatever else or want to lob at me here. I’m a liberal historian with some facts. They are a terrorist organization, and they don’t care if their people die.

Here’s what you need to know:

There are two governments for the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. In April 2021, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas postponed planned elections. He said it was because of a dispute amid Israeli-annexed East Jerusalum. He is 85 years old, and his Fatah Party is losing power to Hamas. Everyone knows that. Palestinians know that.

Here’s the thing about Hamas: they might be terrorists, but aren’t idiots. They understand that they have a frustrated population filled with people who have been brutalized by their neighbors. And they also understand that Israel has something called the iron dome defense system, which means that if you throw a rocket at it, it probably won’t kill anyone (though there have been people in Israel who died, including Holocaust survivors). Israel will, however, retaliate, and when they do, they will kill Palestinian civilians. On a world stage, this looks horrible. The death toll, because Palestinians don’t have the same defense system, is always skewed. Should the Israeli government do that? No. It’s morally repugnant. It’s wrong. It’s unfair. It’s hurting people without the capability to defend themselves. But is Hamas counting on them to for the propaganda? Yeah. Absolutely. They’re literally willing to kill their other people for it.

You know why this works for Hamas? They know that Israel will respond anyway, despite the moral concerns. And if you’re curious why, you can read some books on the matter (Six Days of War by Michael Oren; The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinovich; Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergmen; Antisemitism by Deborah Lipstadt; and Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis). The TL;DR, if you aren’t interested in homework, is that Israel believes they have no choice but to defend themselves against what they consider ‘hostile powers.’ And it’s almost entirely to do with the Holocaust. It’s a little David v Goliath. It is, dare I say, complicated.

I’m barely scratching the surface here.

(We won’t get into this in this post, though if you want to DM me for details, it might be worth knowing that Iran funds Hamas and basically supplies them with all of their weapons, and part of the reason the United States has been so reluctant to engage with this conflict is that Iran is currently in Vienna trying to restore its nuclear deal with western powers. The USA cannot afford to piss off Iran right now, and therefore cannot afford to aggravative Hamas and also needs to rely on Israel to destroy Irani nuclear facilities if the deal goes south. So, you know, there is that).

There are some people who will tell you that criticism of the Israel government is antisemitic. They are almost entirely members of the right wing, evangelical community, and they don’t speak for the Jewish community. The majority of Jewish people and Jewish Americans in particular are criticizing the Israeli government right now. The majority of Jewish people in the diaspora and in Israel support Palestinian rights and are speaking out about it. And actually, when they talk about it, they are putting themselves in great danger to do so. Because it really isn’t safe to be visibly Jewish right now. People may not want to listen to Jews when they speak about antisemitism or may want to believe that antisemitism ‘isn’t real’ because ‘the Holocaust is over’ but that is absolutely untrue. In 2019, antisemitic hate crimes in the United States reached a high we have never seen before. I remember that, because I was living in London, and I was super scared for my family at the time. Since then, that number has increased by nearly 400% in the last ten days. If you don’t believe me, have some articles about it (one, two, three, four, and five, to name a few).

I live in New York City, where a man was beaten in Time Square while attending a Free Palestine rally and wearing a kippah. I’m sorry, but being visibly Jewish near a pro-Palestine rally? That was enough to have a bunch of people just start beating on him? I made a previous post detailing how there are Jews being attacked all over the world, and there is a very good timeline of recent hate crimes against Jews that you can find right here. These are Jews, by the way, who have nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. They are Americans or Europeans or Canadians who are living their lives. In some cases, they are at pro-Palestine rallies and they are trying to help, but they just look visibly Jewish. God Forbid we are the wrong ethnicity for your rally, even if we agree.

This is really serious. There are people calling for the death of all Jews. There are people calling for another Holocaust.

There are 14 million Jews in the world. 14 million. Of 7.6 billion. And you think it isn’t a problem the way people treat us?

Anyway (aside from, you know, compassion), why does this matter? This matters because stuff like this deters Jews who want to be part of the pro-Palestine movement because they are literally scared for their safety. I said this before, and I will say it again: Zionism was, historically speaking, a very unpopular opinion. It was only widespread antisemitic violence (you know, the Holocaust) that made Jews believe there was a necessity for a Jewish state. Honestly, it wasn’t until the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that I supported it the abstract idea too.

I grew up in New York City, I am a liberal Jew, and I believe in the rights of marginalized and oppressed people to self-determine worldwide. Growing up, I also fit the profile of what many scholars describe as the self hating Jew, because I believed that, in order to justify myself in American liberal society, I had to hate Israel, and I had to be anti-Zionist by default, even if I didn’t always understand what ‘Zionism’ meant in abstract. Well, I am 27 years old now with two masters degrees in history, and here is what Zionism means to me: I hate the Israeli government. They do not speak for me. But I am not anti-Zionist. I believe in the necessity for a Jewish state — a state where all Jews are welcome, regardless of their background, regardless of their nationality.

There needs to be a place where Jews, an ethnic minority who are unwelcome in nearly every state in the world, have a place where they are free from persecution — a place where they feel protected. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that place being the place where Jews are ethnically indigenous to. Because believe it or not, whether it is inconvenient, Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. I’ve addressed this in this post.

With that said, that doesn’t mean you can kick the Palestinian people out. They are also indigenous to that land, which is addressed in the same post, if you don’t trust me.

What is incredible to me is that Zionism is defined, by the Oxford English Dixtionary, as “A movement [that called originally for] the reestablishment of a Jewish nationhood in Palestine, and [since 1948] the development of the State of Israel.” Whether we agree with this or not, there were early disagreements about the location of a ‘Jewish state,’ and some, like Maurice de Hirsch, believed it ought to be located in South America, for example. Others believed it should be located in Africa. The point is that the original plans for the Jewish state were about safety. The plan changed because Jews wanted to return to their homeland, the largest project of decolonization and indigenous reclamation ever to be undertaken by an indigenous group. Whether you want to hear that or not, it is true. Read a book or two. Then you might know what I mean.

When people say this is a complicated issue, they aren’t being facetious. They aren’t trying to obfuscate the point. They often aren’t even trying to defend the Israeli government, because I certainly am not — I think they are abhorrent. But there is no future in the Middle East if the Israelis and Palestinians don’t form a state that has an equal right of return and recognizes both of their indigenousness, and that will never happen if people can’t stop throwing vitriolic rhetoric around. Is the Israeli Government bad? Yes. Are Israeli citizens bad? Largely, no. They want to defend their families, and they want to defend their people. This is basically the same as the fact that Palestinian people aren’t bad, though Hamas often is. And for the love of god, stop defending terrorist organizations. Just stop. They kill their own people for their own power and for their own benefit.

And yes, one more time, the Israeli government is so, so, so wrong. But god, think about your words, and think about how you are enabling Nazis. The rhetoric the left is using is hurting Jews. I am afraid to leave my house. I’m afraid to identify as Jewish on tumblr. I’m afraid for my family, afraid for my friends. People I know are afraid for me.

It’s 2021. I am not my great uncle. I cried for him, but I shouldn’t have to die like him.

Words have consequences. Language has consequences. And genuinely, I do not think everyone is a bad person, so think about what you are putting into the world, because you’d be surprised how often you are doing a Nazi a favor or two.

Is that really what you want? To do a Nazi a favor or two? I don’t think that you do. I hope you don’t, at least.

That’s all. You know, five thousand words later. But uh, think a little. Please.

#jumblr #free palestine #zionism #gaza #signal boost #antisemitism #jew tag

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deadlinecom · 3 years

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thetotalcio · 5 years

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I am reading the book Israel: "A Concise History of a Nation Reborn" by Daniel Gordis.

I've prepared this summary of the founding of Zionism, which I have briefly summarized above.

Hope this is helpful to those interested in the origins of the founding of the modern State of Israel.

(Credit Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

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itunesbooks · 5 years

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Israel - Daniel Gordis

Israel A Concise History of a Nation Reborn Daniel Gordis Genre: Middle East Price: $12.99 Publish Date: October 18, 2016 Publisher: Ecco Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS Winner of the Jewish Book of the Year Award The first comprehensive yet accessible history of the state of Israel from its inception to present day, from Daniel Gordis, "one of the most respected Israel analysts" (The Forward) living and writing in Jerusalem. Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world’s attention, aroused its imagination, and lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel’s people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse—but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation. With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on the Israel’s past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn. http://bit.ly/2VGddiE

#Middle East

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vugnosidro907727 · 5 years

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history of audiobooks : Israel by Daniel Gordis | History

Listen to Israel new releases history of audiobooks on your iPhone, iPad, or Android. Get any BOOKS AUDIO by Daniel Gordis History FREE during your Free Trial

Written By: Daniel Gordis Narrated By: Fred Sanders Publisher: HarperAudio Date: October 2016 Duration: 16 hours 19 minutes

#Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn #Israel Audiobook #Audiobook #History #Daniel Gordis #Fred Sanders

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teeky185 · 5 years

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(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s tempting to say about an election in any country that this is the election that really matters, that this time, the results will determine the fabric of society for generations to come. In Israel, on the day after the second election of 2019, that’s not bombast.Had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu achieved the solid victory that he sought when he had the Knesset dissolve itself almost immediately after a hair-thin victory in April, Israel could have become a different country. He had promised to annex portions of the West Bank — first the Jordan River valley, which would remain under Israeli control under any prime minister, but other places as well — which would erode any hope of an accommodation with Palestinians.He’s likely to be indicted for corruption, and had thus pledged to have the Knesset give him immunity from prosecution. Since it’s almost a foregone conclusion that the Supreme Court would invalidate such an action, he and his colleagues were openly discussing making the court subservient to the Knesset, essentially ending judicial review in Israel.To bolster the number of votes his right-leaning bloc would receive, Netanyahu also essentially endorsed a racist party that draws from the intellectual legacy of Rabbi Meir Kahane, whom the Supreme Court ruled in 1988 was too dangerous to be allowed to run for office. Netanyahu, in short, was willing to shred Israel’s democracy to stay in power and out of jail.Netanyahu, though, is a charismatic personality and political genius, and he has long had a spellbinding hold on the Israeli electorate. Most Israelis understood at least some of the dangers he represented, but they also knew that though he is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, he has almost never taken his country to war. He has kept them and their children safe. He has managed belligerents like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with Syria and Iran. He’s bonded with U.S. President Donald Trump, who moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and tore up the Iranian nuclear agreement, which Netanyahu despised. Many Israelis, Netanyahu was sure, would hold their noses and vote for him again, because Israelis vote security first and economics second.But it seems that Netanyahu didn’t pull it off. The Kahanist party he essentially endorsed did not get enough votes to win seats in the Knesset, where they might have given Netanyahu the support he needed to form a government.As of Wednesday morning, with just over 90% of the votes counted, Blue and White, the party created and led by former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, is ahead by a slim margin. Gantz may end up prime minister, or Netanyahu could again, if the results shift or Gantz cannot form a coalition. Whatever the outcome, however, Netanyahu does not have the votes to get himself a government that will pass the immunity law or tinker with the Supreme Court. Annexation is probably on hold. Israelis have apparently voted to end the Netanyahu era, deciding to trust a former general even if untried in the political world, and to save their democracy.Assuming that these results hold, pundits will quarrel about what cost Netanyahu his political hegemony. Was it Trump’s flirtation with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani? Was it the revelations in the Israeli news media that Netanyahu was about to take Israel into a military operation in Gaza a week or two ago without consulting the cabinet until he was prevented from doing so by the attorney general? Was it worry about democracy? We may never know, but we do know that Israelis appear to have voted to save themselves and their country.American Jews will hail this result, because they hate Netanyahu, whom they associate with Trump. But they should be prepared to be disappointed. Gantz appears to be honest, will not pass an immunity law, will not dent the Supreme Court, will stop the race-baiting of Israeli Arabs, and will be a more palatable Israeli leader for American Jews. But he is not going to end the occupation of the West Bank or reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, because the Palestinians have no interest in the compromises required to reach such a deal at the moment.What a Gantz administration would show American Jews is that the occupation wasn’t Netanyahu’s doing — it is the product of a world in which Israel tragically has no good alternatives. Gantz the general may not be as reticent about hitting back at Gaza as has been Netanyahu; he may actually decide to batter Hamas, the radical faction that governs that benighted sliver of Arab territory, because he understands that the violent status quo is untenable.If these results do hold, Israelis will have much to celebrate. American Jews, who tend to imagine an Israel that acts in accord with their progressive values, may find that Netanyahu’s defeat is just the beginning of an even more complex relationship between American Jews and the Jewish state.To contact the author of this story: Daniel Gordis at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at [email protected] column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Daniel Gordis is senior vice president and Koret distinguished fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem. Author of 11 books, his latest is "Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/30aJJQI

#latest news #Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

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courtneytincher · 5 years

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Israelis Just Saved Their Democracy

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

September 18, 2019 at 02:31PM via IFTTT

#Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

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paranormalworld8888 · 6 months

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Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn

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worldnews-blog · 5 years

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(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was speaking at a campaign event in Israel’s coastal city of Ashdod on Tuesday, the “code red” alarm – signifying incoming rockets from Gaza – went off. Netanyahu’s bodyguards hustled him off the stage, while in the skies, the Iron Dome missile-defense system destroyed the incoming rockets. Like most of the thousands of missiles Hamas has fired at Israel over the years, these caused no damage. For many Israelis, though, the image of the prime minister fleeing incoming Hamas fire was a metaphor for his political condition.In much of the West, Netanyahu is perceived as a tough guy, cozying up to strongmen in European capitals and to President Donald Trump in Washington, but many Israelis understand there is a good deal of bluster behind this image. Though he is now unwilling to discuss a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu has also done little to preclude it; he has authorized far less settlement construction than prime ministers who preceded him. Now Israel’s longest-serving PM, Netanyahu has also been very reticent to go to war. Aside from the 2014 Gaza war with Hamas, Netanyahu has never taken Israel into major conflict. For that, he is both lauded and rebuked; Israelis admire him for keeping their casualties down, but residents of communities near the Gaza border lambaste him for having done nothing to improve their quality of life.Benny Gantz, the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces who is Bibi’s top rival in next week’s national elections, has vowed to punish Hamas much more severely. Many Israelis suspect he means it. While Netanyahu accuses Gantz of being a leftist, Gantz accuses Netanyahu of being weak. As Bibi was being hustled off the stage in Ashdod, the latter accusation seemed more apt.Another dimension of Netanyahu’s “Mr. Security” image - carefully cultivated because Israelis tend to vote more on security matters than on economics or any other domestic issue - has been his relentless drive to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. He alienated President Barack Obama by addressing a joint session of Congress in 2015, unsuccessfully pleading with U.S. lawmakers to kill the Iran Nuclear Agreement. It was Bibi who delighted in showing the world the treasure of CDs, DVDs and thumb drives that the Mossad had stolen from Tehran, ostensibly proving that the Iranians had been lying about their nuclear program all along. The prime minister has often intervened in U.S. politics to further his Iran policy: He supported Mitt Romney in his campaign against Obama, because he thought Obama was soft on Iran; he has delighted in Trump’s tough stance on the Tehran regime, boasting that his unique relationship with the unpredictable president made Israel safer than ever.But many Israelis see that Netanyahu’s Iran strategy may be crumbling. Trump has recently been making noise about negotiations with Tehran; when those rumors first surfaced, the Israeli press reported Bibi was desperately trying to get Trump on the phone, while Trump refused to take the call. Just hours after the firing of National Security Adviser John Bolton, perhaps the most pro-Israel figure in Trump’s close circle, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Trump was willing to speak with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani without preconditions. Many Israelis will not be surprised if Trump ultimately signs a deal with Iran very similar to the nuclear pact reached under Obama that Trump derided and ripped up.The international news media made much of Netanyahu’s announcement yesterday that if re-elected, he would annex much of the Jordan River Valley. In Israel, that was much less momentous a moment. It has always been obvious to Israelis that, in any future deal with the Palestinians, Israel was going to keep control of the western side of the Jordan River. Otherwise, any Palestinian state would be open to arms smuggling from the east. To many Israelis, therefore, Bibi’s announcement, with elections only a week away, simply looked desperate.To add reputational insult to injury, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Bibi’s stalwart U.S. financial supporters, are reported by the Israeli press to have told authorities investigating Netanyahu’s alleged corruption that the prime minister’s wife, Sarah, is “crazy” and “decides everything.” That will not help the PM at the polls.Lastly, on Monday, the Knesset smacked down a law Netanyahu was trying to ram through, against the advice of senior judicial figures in the government, that would have permitted video cameras in some (mostly Arab) polling places. The proposal was another reminder to Israelis that Netanyahu will do virtually anything to Israel’s democracy to try to stay in power, and that the man known as the master political operator who could get anything done now seems to be flailing, running out of tricks.Are Netanyahu’s days over? Though he is now slightly trailing Gantz’s Blue and White coalition in the polls, what matters is who will be able to put together a coalition. That is utterly unclear. What the numbers do make clear, though, is that Bibi may not be invulnerable, and his recent behavior demonstrates that he knows it. A political quip making its way across Israel yesterday was telling. Almost all Israelis despise Hamas, but, some were saying with a wink, maybe Hamas’s small attack yesterday got one thing right – getting Bibi off the political stage.To contact the author of this story: Daniel Gordis at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at [email protected] column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Daniel Gordis is senior vice president and Koret distinguished fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem. Author of 11 books, his latest is "Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Israel:a concise history of a nation reborn by Daniel Gordis

This book covers a lot of ground in terms of the facts of Israel’s statehood and is a good primer on what you are likely to hear about the history of Israel from a right-wing perspective. The facts it cites aren’t flagrantly incorrect and in some sense it gives an outside reader a lot to think about in terms of the long history of arguments about Zionism within Israel and it will definitely tell a person more than a more general book on current struggles—it goes all the way back to the nineteenth century and the birth of Zionist thought.

However, I have beef with how this author writes history. Here are my two major criticisms of this book:

1. Gordis writes history as propaganda and leaves out facts that don’t support his viewpoint/which depict people on his side in a bad light .

I appreciate that the majority of people looking to read this book support the existence of the state of Israel and frankly I am not sure that this is a problem. A historian can direct his book at a particular audience and even hold specific beliefs and state his argument for these beliefs in his work. However, Gordis does not limit himself to making reasoned arguments in favor of Israeli policy or arguing that his position is the correct one (as opposed to opponents’). Rather he behaves as if he is giving an unbiased history but leaves out details on the deaths of Palestinian civilians, the racism of early Zionists, and war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers in history and the present. These are deeply irresponsible things for even a propagandist to do, because it leaves him with an argument that only stands if one ignores the huge gaps. Gordis even uses adverbs and adjectives like “savage” to describe dissenting political groups within Israel, and doesn’t present any of the various reasons Israeli Jews or Jews in the American diaspora might be uncomfortable with settlements or with the marginalization of Arabs within Israeli society or a whole host of issues. It is basically the same issue as reading a history of the Vietnam War which presents America as a just democratic nation fighting for freedom and creating prosperity—it isn’t just biased, it completely obfuscates the historical picture and doesn’t show the intelligent opponents of state policy. Fundamentally, Gordis doesn’t seem to recognize that people who have materially suffered under the state of Israel might access his book or read it and be able to refute his blatant refusal to engage in discussion. This makes me uneasy. It is a pity because I have heard good things about the religious works written by Gordis.

2. He only uses secondary sources.

While general purpose surveys of History are necessary for popular consumption, Gordis doesn’t really add anything here. He is just picking and choosing from longer and more detailed narratives of different parts of Israeli history in order to craft a condensed narrative. I don’t appreciate his brevity or how he selects his facts and I think this book would have more merit if he did any primary historical research at all.

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