Middle East Politics

The Palestinian Delusion is unique in situating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict within the context of the global jihad that has found renewed impetus in the latter portion of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Briskly recounting the tumultuous history of the "peace process", Robert Spencer demonstrates that the determination of diplomats, policymakers, and negotiators to ignore this aspect of the conflict has led the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world down numerous blind alleys. This has often only exacerbated, rather than healed, this conflict.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.

In this definitive history of the modern Arab world, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan draws extensively on Arab sources and texts to place the Arab experience in its crucial historical context for the first time. Tracing five centuries of Arab history, Rogan reveals that there was an age when the Arabs set the rules for the rest of the world. Today, however, the Arab world's sense of subjection to external powers carries vast consequences for both the region and Westerners who attempt to control it.

In a cloak-and-dagger story of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents, Kinzer reveals the involvement of Eisenhower, Churchill, Kermit Roosevelt, and the CIA in Operation Ajax, which restored Mohammad Reza Shah to power. Reza imposed a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection.

In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War or, simply, as "the Setback". Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, and the rise of Palestinian terror are all part of the outcome of those six days.

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial. How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country's most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise - now more than 30 years old and with no end in sight.

While Israel Slept tells the gripping inside story of how Hamas, Israel’s weakest enemy, succeeded in launching a surprise attack on one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Through a detailed examination of the events leading up to October 7, 2023, the book exposes the intelligence and strategic failures that enabled this devastating invasion.

In Goliath, New York Times best-selling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens. Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's war on Gaza in 2008/9, which brought into power the country's most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process.

From the first cannonballs fired by American warships at North African pirates to the conquest of Falluja by the Marines, and from the early American explorers who probed the sources of the Nile to the diplomats who strove for Arab-Israeli peace, the United States has been dramatically involved in the Middle East. For well over two centuries, American statesmen, merchants, and missionaries, both men and women, have had a profound impact on the shaping of this crucial region.

The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. All of these conflicts are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. Author David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all seemed possible, he delivers in this sweeping and magisterial book the definitive account of this defining time.

In The Truth about Muhammad, New York Times best-selling author and Islam expert Robert Spencer offers an honest and telling portrait of the founder of Islam - perhaps the first such portrait in half a century - unbounded by fear and political correctness, unflinching, and willing to face the hard facts about Muhammad's life that continue to affect our world today.

Acclaimed Israeli intelligence analyst Avi Melamed has spent more than 30 years interpreting Middle East affairs. His long-awaited Inside the Middle East challenges widely accepted perceptions and provides a gripping and uniquely enlightening guide to make sense of the events unfolding in the region. Melamed considers all the major power players in the Middle East, explains the underlying issues, and creates a three-dimensional picture, an illustration that connects the dots and provides a fascinating road map.

A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history - the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East. Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.

Published on the 15th anniversary of the Six-Day War that culminated in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Pappe offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the world's most prolonged and tragic conflicts. Using recently declassified archival material, Pappe analyses the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians-and the decision-making process itself - that laid the foundation of the occupation. Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world's largest "open prison".

Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region's Christian minorities, who had previously accounted for 20 percent of the population. By 1924 the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks had been reduced to two percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. This is the first account to show that the three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia's Christian population.

This book describes the turbulent lives, loves, and perilous missions of the greatest Mossad lohamot, the female warriors of the Israeli Secret Service. The stunning feats of these strong, bold women prove that they are equal to men, and often even better. Beside the nation's enemies, they had to fight a painful solitude, an awkward attitude of their male colleagues, and often give up their dream of marriage and children. And still, they brilliantly carried out their missions.

Since October 7, many students—and their parents—have been reeling. Hamas’s rampage through Israel unleashed waves of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Americanism—which had been building for decades, especially on campus. In these letters to his students, Professor Gil Troy, American presidential historian and Zionist activist, pushes back against the growing despair regarding America and the assault on Zionism, Israel, and the Jews.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish state - and to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.