Palestine War

Imagine a war without battlefields. There are no uniforms. Civilians and combatants are indistinguishable. Homes, schools, hospitals, and religious buildings are used as command and communication centers, and for the warehousing of weapons. Apartment rooftops are launching pads; the civilians who live inside . . . human shields. There are over 300 miles of reinforced tunnels, all outfitted with weapons and passageways for terrorists to take hostages and travel freely.

It is the year 1915, and the British and Ottoman Empires clash in a deadly struggle in the Middle East. Tasked with keeping the Ottomans out of Suez Canal, Major Andrew Selkirk discovers that his real assignment is to retrieve a Bengali spy working for those who vow to see British rule out of India. After landing on the west coast of Palestine, Selkirk discovers the Ottomans have taken the spy captive. Even more troubling are the plans by Ottomans and Germans to draw Afghanistan and Persia into the war against Great Britain.

The product of painstaking research and countless interviews, A High Price offers a nuanced, definitive historical account of Israel's bold but often failed efforts to fight terrorist groups. Israel's debacles in Lebanon against groups like the Lebanese Hizballah are examined in-depth, as is the country's problematic response to Jewish terrorist groups that have struck at Arabs and Israelis seeking peace.

LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “I am forever changed after reading this book.” —Javier Zamora, author of Solito From the renowned Palestinian scholar, a memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return...

Welcome to the Middle East conflict, a conflict that is technically 63 years old and counting but has its roots in over 2,000 years of history. With so much time and history, the peace process has become laden with unique, politically sensitive concepts, like the right of return, contiguous borders, secure borders, demilitarized zones, and security requirements, with players like the Quartet, Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, the Arab League, and Israel. Over time, it has become exceedingly difficult for even sophisticated political pundits and followers to keep track of it all.

Dopo saggi considerati pietre miliari della storiografia del conflitto araboisraeliano, lo storico israeliano Ilan Pappé rivolge qui la sua analisi al futuro di Israele e della Palestina, riflettendo sui rischi e sulle opportunità che emergono dagli orrori di questo momento storico. Il libro è suddiviso in tre parti.

From 1951 to 1967 Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader President Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemünde and elsewhere. These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv.

A Palestinian-American activist recalls his adolescence in Gaza during the Second Intifada, and how he made a strong commitment to peace in the face of devastating brutality in this moving, candid, and transformative memoir that reminds us of the importance of looking beyond prejudice, anger...

As it prepared to ward off an invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies in 1948, newborn Israel lacked the weapons to defend itself. Enter Al Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran who feared a repeat of the Holocaust. He created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the US War Asset Administration, fixed them in California and New Jersey, and sent his pilots - Jewish and non-Jewish WWII aviators - to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia.

Argentina, 1960. A car speeds through the streets of Buenos Aires. Inside are four Israeli secret agents and their prisoner: Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious war criminals of Nazi Germany. In this detailed memoir, Rafi Eitan tells the story of his remarkable life and career. He describes how as a teenager, he smuggled Jewish refugees into Palestine, and how, as a spy in the newly established Mossad, he swam through sewers to blow up a British radar station. He goes on to describe in detail his involvement in the extraordinary hunt for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

The history of Jerusalem is one of conflict, faith, and empire. Few cities have been attacked as often and as savagely. This was no less true in the Middle Ages. From the Persian sack in 614 through the bloody First Crusade and beyond, Jerusalem changed hands countless times. But despite these horrific acts of violence, its story during this period is also one of interfaith tolerance and accord. In this gripping history, John D. Hosler explores the great clashes and delicate settlements of medieval Jerusalem.

The State of Israel was founded in conflict, and in the first ten years of its existence, it was involved in two major wars with its Arab neighbors. The First Arab-Israeli War began almost the moment that the new state was announced in May 1948. Although it barely had time to create armed forces, somehow Israel survived a simultaneous invasion by armies from four Arab states during that conflict. In 1956, Israel found itself at war again, this time fighting alongside Britain and France, who had launched an invasion of Egypt after fears that the Suez Canal might be closed.

In 1973, Israel would face the greatest challenge to its very existence. Egypt and Syria launched massive simultaneous invasions intended to recapture territory occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War. Israel was taken completely by surprise by this attack, launched on the day of one of the most important Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur. Israeli intelligence, which had proved so effective in previous conflicts, failed to provide any warning, and the armed forces of Israel were completely unprepared to face this onslaught on two fronts. This is the story of the Yom Kippur War.

When conflicts become entrenched over generations, the language of war infiltrates everyday life, concealing destruction and hardening positions. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East. Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create - legal and cultural - that confine today's Palestinians just like the borders, checkpoints and so-called "Separation Barrier".

A propulsive, incendiary novel about faith, race, class, and what it means to have a home, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Netanyahus “A Jewish Sopranos . . . utterly engrossing, full of passionate sympathy . . . Cohen is an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the...

Suppose one day, your son or husband, while serving in the military or working as a journalist, is taken hostage by a terrorist group - and you have no idea whether your loved one is dead or alive. It’s a nightmare scenario. Here for the first time is the story of Ory Slonim, the one man in Israel who, for more than two decades, was known as the “door knocker.” He had been a private Israeli lawyer when he was asked to undertake, on behalf of the Israeli government, secret negotiations to find out the whereabouts of Israeli soldiers who were taken alive.

Ron Leshem ist Autor, Journalist und ehemaliger israelischer Geheimdienstoffizier, Verwandte von ihm wurden ermordet oder entführt. Hier schildert er ein zutiefst gespaltenes Land, den Tag des Terrors und seine unabsehbaren Folgen. Am 7. Oktober 2023 überzog die Hamas Israel mit Terror, seither hält die Welt den Atem an – und überschlagen sich die Ereignisse. Ron Leshem zeichnet in seinem bewegenden Text jenen Tag und die Entwicklungen seither nach – und führt ein zutiefst gespaltenes Land vor Augen. Gerade der liberale, auf Verständigung bedachte Teil der Gesellschaft wurde getroffen.

Após o fatídico 7 de outubro de 2023, estopim de mais uma sangrenta etapa do conflito entre Israel e Palestina, estatísticas e uma profusão de imagens em torno da escalada de vítimas fatais inundam o noticiário global, num processo em que crianças, homens e mulheres se tornam conhecidos somente a partir da morte — e não da vida.

In 1948, Stan Andrews left a comfortable postwar life in Los Angeles to travel to the war-torn Middle East, where a four-front Arab invasion threatened to destroy the newly-declared State of Israel. There he joined the Israeli Air Force and became one of its first fighter pilots. Andrews was an unexpected volunteer for the fight for a Jewish state. He had previously been aloof from the struggle for Jewish independence but found himself so roused by the anti-Semitism of 1940s America that he decided to go to Israel and risk everything.

Colmadas de datos y análisis históricos, estas páginas transparentan el contexto del conflicto árabe-israelí, el rol del fundamentalismo islámico promovido por Irán y Qatar, y la violencia de quienes, con desconocimiento o mala fe, se manifiestan contra Israel y los judíos con un antisemitismo permisivo y mordaz, desatado con virulencia a partir del 7 de octubre. Hoy, advierte la autora, están en juego las libertades y los valores democráticos de Occidente.