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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Discuss Israel With Me-First Read These Books

Nadene Goldfoot
If you want to speak intelligently with me about Israel, you must read "From Time Immemorial" first by Joan Peters. It's a must on my list. She was a newspaper reporter who thought the Palestinians were getting a bad rap and did some business-like journalism of investigative work and changed her mind. I love this woman for uncovering the facts that she did, but this was not enough for Noam Chomsky and his pal Norman Finkelstein who have berated her book. I think they're just jealous and mad that she has uncovered these facts, spoiling their thesis.

Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer, is my next favorite writer. First I read his 2003 "The Case for Israel" and now I'm reading his 2008 "The Case Against Israel's Enemies". He had been friends with Jimmy Carter and had worked with and for him, but has learned the error of his ways and exposes so much about this ex-president and his hatred for Israel. One thing that surprised me was that Carter takes it out on Israel because we're not living up to his religious standards for us, we're too secular. Good grief! Here I thought we only had to answer to G-d and didn't know that first we had to be screened through Jimmy Carter.

He covers quite a few of Israel's enemies (there are so many) but I love the name of his last chapter in the book; The Case against Simple-Minded, One-Sided Solutions to Complex, Multifaceted Problems. This fits so well the problems Israel is facing today with the Biden-affair of building in Jerusalem. For a lawyer, he writes very well and backs up his comments with lots of facts. I wish more people would read these books.

I'm so tired of people who think they're know-it-alls and authorities by reading an article in a biased newspaper. It takes a very self assured newspaper today to say something positive about Israel, it seems. What comes off the wires without a little bit of individual curiosity has been quite negative. Where are the Joan Peters? Asking people to read books is like asking for pie in the sky. Then there's the Palestinian websites that are full of lies, and too many people are anxious to believe every word without checking out any of the facts.

I've found out that this problem even exists in some high school classes in our country. Teachers are using Saudi-Arabian slanted material to teach about Israel. You can imagine what that is like. Whatever happened to classes that teach how to find information on both sides of a topic to make rational decisions? This is too much like the Palestinian teaching that there is no Israel; it's all Palestine.

Other books that are a must are:
1. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict by Mitchell Bard
2. Myths and Facts:  A guide to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Idem 1991, a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict 1992
3. Battle Ground:  Fact and Fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz
4. The Secret War Against the Jews by Loftus and Aarons
5." The Case Against Israel's Enemies-Exposing Jimmy Carter and others who stand in the way of peace" by Alan Dershowitz
6. The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz
7. "The Case for Peace-how the Arab-Israeli conflict can be resolved" by Alan Dershowitz
8. In Defense of Israel by John Hagee
9. Big Lies:  Demolishing the myths of the propaganda war against Israel by David Meir-Levi from David Horowitz Freedom Center
10. Right to Exist by Yaacov Lozowick

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