Bookstore
Journalists
Books by journalists who have covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A History of Modern Palestine : One Land, Two Peoples
By Ilan Pappe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (November 3, 2003), 333 pages
Ilan Pappe's book is the story of Palestine, a land inhabited by two peoples, and two national identities. It begins with the Ottomans in the early 1800s, the reign of Muhammad Ali, and traces a path through the arrival of the early Zionists at the end of that century, through the British mandate at the beginning of the twentieth century, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent wars and conflicts which culminated in the intifadas of 1987 and 2000.
A Season in Bethlehem: Unholy War in a Sacred Place
By Joshua Hammer
Publisher: Free Press (September 8, 2003), 288 pages
A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus.
The Body and the Blood: The Holy Land at the Turn of a New Millennium: A Reporter's Journey
By Charles M. Sennott
Publisher: PublicAffairs (October 16, 2001), 512 pages
This journalistic pilgrimage seeks out the forgotten people of the Holy Land-its Christians-and shows how their dwindling numbers offer a sober lesson in understanding the modern Middle East.
Drinking the Sea at Gaza : Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege
By Amira Hass
Publisher: Owl Books (June 1, 2000), 400 pages
Drinking the Sea at Gaza maps the zones of ordinary Palestinian life. From her friends, Hass learns the secrets of slipping across sealed borders and stealing through night streets emptied by curfews. She shares Gaza's early euphoria over the peace process and its subsequent despair as hope gives way to unrelenting hardship. But even as Hass charts the griefs and humiliations of the Palestinians, she offers a remarkable portrait of a people not brutalized but eloquent, spiritually resilient, bleakly funny, and morally courageous.
Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel
By Tom Segev
Publisher: Metropolitan Books (April 23, 2002), 192 pages
Tom Segev, Israel’s best-known journalist-historian, here confronts cherished assumptions about the country today, in the process tipping a number of sacred cows. Drawing on personal experience as well as all kinds of artifacts from Israeli popular culture—shopping malls, fast food, public art, television, religious kitsch—he puts forward his controversial view that the sweeping Americanization of the country, rued by most, has had an extraordinarily beneficial influence, bringing not only McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts but the virtues of pragmatism, tolerance, and individualism.
1949: The First Israelis
By Tom Segev
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; (April 15, 1998, reprint edition), 379 pages
Segev reveals the lofty aspirations that guided the state's leaders as well as the darker side of the Zionist utopia: the friction between the early settlers and the immigrants, the lack of good-faith negotiations with the Arabs; the clash between religious and secular factions; the daily collision of the Zionist myth with the severe realities of life in the new state. Unflinching in its observations, this bold chronicle is indispensible for understanding the dilemmas that continue to confront--and divide--Israeli society.
The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East
By David Hirst
Publisher: Nation Books (Second Ed. March 2003), 627 pages
More than a decade before Israel's New Historians revolutionized the study of Israeli history, English journalist David Hirst wrote The Gun and the Olive Branch, a classic, myth-breaking general history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hirst, former Middle East correspondent of the Guardian, traces the origins of the terrible conflict back to the 1880s to show how Arab violence, although often cruel and fanatical, is a response to the challenge of repeated aggression.
Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948
By Tanya Reinhart
Publisher: Seven Stories Press (October 1, 2002), 280 pages
Israeli journalist Tanya Reinhart provides a primer on the current Israeli/Palestinian crisis. She details the roots of the conflict, presents compelling evidence that Israel has been working to undermine the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, and discusses how the crisis is linked to America's war on terrorism.
One Palestine, Complete : Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate
By Tom Segev
Publisher: Owl Books (October 1, 2001), 624 pages
Drawing on untapped archival materials, Tom Segev reconstructs an era (1917 to 1948) of limitless possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces an array unforgettable characters, tracks the steady advance of Jews and Arabs toward confrontation, and puts forth a radical new argument: that the British, far from being pro-Arab, consistently favored the Zionist position, out of the mistaken--and anti-Semitic--belief that Jews turned the wheels of history. Rich in historical detail, sensitive to all perspectives, One Palestine, Complete brilliantly depicts the decline of an empire, the birth of one nation, and the tragedy of another.
Palestine
By Joe Sacco
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (January 2002), 288 pages
Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist.
Reporting from Ramallah : An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land
By Amira Hass
Publisher: MIT Press (July 20, 2003), 209 pages
The daughter of concentration camp survivors, Hass has chosen to live in a Palestinian town to provide a firsthand description of what daily life is like for the population, in particular, how the Israeli army behaves and the effects of the army's presence.
Read EI's review of Reporting from Ramallah here.
The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust
By Tom Segev
Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub (Reprint edition April 1994)
This controversial and powerful history is the first to show the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel. Drawing on diaries, interviews, and thousands of declassified documents, Tom Segev reconsiders the major struggles and personalities of Israel's past-Ben-Gurion, Begin, Nahum Goldmann-and argues that the nation's charged legacy has, at critical moments-the Exodus affair, the Eichmann trial, the case of John Demjanjuk-been molded and manipulated in accordance with the ideological requirements of the state.
Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002
By Charles Enderlin
Publisher: Other Press, LLC (May 2003), 308 pages
As Middle-East Bureau Chief of the French public television network France 2, Charles Enderlin has had unequaled access to leaders and negotiators on all sides. Here he takes the reader step-by-step along the path that began with the hope of agreement but led only to the ultimate collapse of the peace process
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