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A review by lpm100
Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby
funny
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
5.0
Book Review: "Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth."
Noa Tishby
5/5 stars
"An articulate defender of Israel steps up to the plate; there are far fewer Jewish people like her than there should be."
******
This is a most interesting book, because it has all of the elements of the Israeli conflict with the Arabs in one place. (I refrain from using the word "Palestinian.")
Honestly, this book only takes several hours to read through and could probably be finished in a week's worth of lunch breaks.
I've read a number of other books about the formation/current local politics of Israel, and I have to say that: this does not disagree with any of them.
1. "My Life," by Golda Meir
2. "The History of the Jews," by Paul Johnson
3. "Real Jews," Noah Ephron
4. "Start Up Nation," by Dan Senor, Saul Singer
New information/interesting thoughts:
1. Offers for a state have been made to the Arabs in 1922, 1947, 1948, 1967, 1973, 1994, 2000, 2008, and 2019.
About 9 times over the past century; on average, once every 11 years.
Every single offer has been met with rejection.
None of them would accept the "end of negotiations" clause that comes with such peace deals.
2. UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency), for bureaucratic reasons, has expanded the refugee problem from an initial 3/4 of a million people up to 5.6 million. Never before has there been a refugee population that went on for so long.
3. Arab Israelis and Arabs in the disputed territories are two very different things. The former is fairly well integrated into Israeli society, and 77.4% of them are not interested in living in any future Palestinian state.
4. The creation of a "Palestinian" identity is only something that has happened in the past several decades (p.169); Palestine was, for the last 20 centuries up until that point a geographic descriptor. So, it is similar to the way that people conflate US citizenship with being American. Canadians are Americans (because they live on the North American continent), but not US citizens. Jews and Arabs are both Palestinians, because they lived in that geographic region. But, Palestine was never a state. The same way "America" is not a state.
5. BDS is a well-funded, obscurantist movement that has links with the Muslim brotherhood / various Islamist groups, and it is moderately skillfully concealed in its US incarnation.
6. Israel had Black Panthers (p.233), except that the "blacks" are Moroccans?
7. New mathematical concept: Josephus permutation. Yosef Ben Matisyahu haKohen= Josephus.
8. Recapitulation of the formidable Israeli tech sector.
Second order thoughts:
1. A lot of people don't understand the Arab conceptual space: things are true only because of perspective. (This concept was dealt with in Leslie Hazelton's "After the Prophet").
And if you know that, then it explains why they have all collectively decided to talk a "Palestinian" people into existence--because of course they have to be if that's what the general perspective is.
This type of thing happens more than you think, and it will join the pantheon of other such things. ("Black Egypt,"/ "the 1619 Project").
2. This determination to talk "Palestinians" into existence also seems to be a particular fixation of (In addition to the ego-wounded Arabs) Kooky White People.
I don't know where they get their ideas from, or why they become prisoner of them--but, they do.
1,001 territorial conflicts in the world, and this seems to take up more energy / ink /bandwidth than all others combined.
3. This situation really makes me think about my penchant to study history.
To wit: if a whole history can be invented in the space of less than 50 years, how much of what we think to be true about long-past events might be a figment of some number of active imaginations?
-The Great Famine happened because of bad weather.
-5,000 years of history for a place that was consolidated around the 2nd century BCE. (aka, China)
-Did Confucius really exist? Or is he a compilation of people?
-The Virgin Mary is something that was just invented in the last 50 years--At least, if you believe Richard Dawkins.
4. Jewish people have such formidable verbal skills. Why do they not choose to use them in service of the Israel cause?
The State of Israel is of central importance to Jewish people, and people who are the best communicators on the planet largely will not use that gift in order to send a positive message and counteract all of the negative falsehoods spread by the Red-Black-Green axis.
This is a good book and it is well selling, but honestly: a version of this book should come out four times per year so that people start to hear it just by coincidence.
How can there be Jewish Anti-Zionists, like the knuckle-dragging Neturei Karta/ Satmar? (And honestly, most of the Haredi places are not much better; I have never been to a single such shul that would insert prayers for the state of Israel / the Israeli Defense Forces as part of the service.)
5. If somebody is looking for a political stooge, it seems like their first stop is always and everywhere...... Black people.
The BLM movement has links with, and has been pursued by the BDS movement.
I live right next door to the densest Arab-Muslim infestation in the United states (Dearborn, Michigan).
I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black-Arab couples together, and not even on a single episode of the reality TV show based in Dearborn ("American Muslim," on the TLC channel).
In the days before I kept kosher, I would commonly eat at the Arab restaurants, and I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black people working there in any capacity-- ever.
To say that the Arabs don't care for black people would be to observe something as profound as the sky being blue.
Interesting, because the majority of Muslims in the United States are actually..... black.
These (BLM) guys are just dumb enough to be duped into supporting a political movement of people who *don't even like them* and are pressing a conflict that has *nothing to do with them.*
6. The role of the rabbinate vis-a-vis the state is something that has not been sorted out for at least the last 20 centuries. And if you believe in Lindy's law, it can keep on going for another 20 centuries.
7. The story of the destruction of the Second Temple is told as one of sinat chinam (baseless hatred).
It is retold here slightly differently, which is: Jewish people were easy to be knocked over by the Romans because they had weakened themselves by so much internal fighting.
History does not necessarily repeat itself, but it does rhyme: If the beginning of the end of the Jewish state comes with Haredim (as I suspect that it will), then will just be a repetition of Zealots fighting each other.
It may be a little bit better, because we have people (Haredim) that are educated in ways that are probably more appropriate for the 11th century--and that is at least a thousand years ahead of the people who were fighting during the Roman Jewish War.
8. The author is ever so slightly self-aggrandizing, but she has made a living as an entertainer and so that can be overlooked.
Verdict: Strongly recommended.
Noa Tishby
5/5 stars
"An articulate defender of Israel steps up to the plate; there are far fewer Jewish people like her than there should be."
******
This is a most interesting book, because it has all of the elements of the Israeli conflict with the Arabs in one place. (I refrain from using the word "Palestinian.")
Honestly, this book only takes several hours to read through and could probably be finished in a week's worth of lunch breaks.
I've read a number of other books about the formation/current local politics of Israel, and I have to say that: this does not disagree with any of them.
1. "My Life," by Golda Meir
2. "The History of the Jews," by Paul Johnson
3. "Real Jews," Noah Ephron
4. "Start Up Nation," by Dan Senor, Saul Singer
New information/interesting thoughts:
1. Offers for a state have been made to the Arabs in 1922, 1947, 1948, 1967, 1973, 1994, 2000, 2008, and 2019.
About 9 times over the past century; on average, once every 11 years.
Every single offer has been met with rejection.
None of them would accept the "end of negotiations" clause that comes with such peace deals.
2. UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency), for bureaucratic reasons, has expanded the refugee problem from an initial 3/4 of a million people up to 5.6 million. Never before has there been a refugee population that went on for so long.
3. Arab Israelis and Arabs in the disputed territories are two very different things. The former is fairly well integrated into Israeli society, and 77.4% of them are not interested in living in any future Palestinian state.
4. The creation of a "Palestinian" identity is only something that has happened in the past several decades (p.169); Palestine was, for the last 20 centuries up until that point a geographic descriptor. So, it is similar to the way that people conflate US citizenship with being American. Canadians are Americans (because they live on the North American continent), but not US citizens. Jews and Arabs are both Palestinians, because they lived in that geographic region. But, Palestine was never a state. The same way "America" is not a state.
5. BDS is a well-funded, obscurantist movement that has links with the Muslim brotherhood / various Islamist groups, and it is moderately skillfully concealed in its US incarnation.
6. Israel had Black Panthers (p.233), except that the "blacks" are Moroccans?
7. New mathematical concept: Josephus permutation. Yosef Ben Matisyahu haKohen= Josephus.
8. Recapitulation of the formidable Israeli tech sector.
Second order thoughts:
1. A lot of people don't understand the Arab conceptual space: things are true only because of perspective. (This concept was dealt with in Leslie Hazelton's "After the Prophet").
And if you know that, then it explains why they have all collectively decided to talk a "Palestinian" people into existence--because of course they have to be if that's what the general perspective is.
This type of thing happens more than you think, and it will join the pantheon of other such things. ("Black Egypt,"/ "the 1619 Project").
2. This determination to talk "Palestinians" into existence also seems to be a particular fixation of (In addition to the ego-wounded Arabs) Kooky White People.
I don't know where they get their ideas from, or why they become prisoner of them--but, they do.
1,001 territorial conflicts in the world, and this seems to take up more energy / ink /bandwidth than all others combined.
3. This situation really makes me think about my penchant to study history.
To wit: if a whole history can be invented in the space of less than 50 years, how much of what we think to be true about long-past events might be a figment of some number of active imaginations?
-The Great Famine happened because of bad weather.
-5,000 years of history for a place that was consolidated around the 2nd century BCE. (aka, China)
-Did Confucius really exist? Or is he a compilation of people?
-The Virgin Mary is something that was just invented in the last 50 years--At least, if you believe Richard Dawkins.
4. Jewish people have such formidable verbal skills. Why do they not choose to use them in service of the Israel cause?
The State of Israel is of central importance to Jewish people, and people who are the best communicators on the planet largely will not use that gift in order to send a positive message and counteract all of the negative falsehoods spread by the Red-Black-Green axis.
This is a good book and it is well selling, but honestly: a version of this book should come out four times per year so that people start to hear it just by coincidence.
How can there be Jewish Anti-Zionists, like the knuckle-dragging Neturei Karta/ Satmar? (And honestly, most of the Haredi places are not much better; I have never been to a single such shul that would insert prayers for the state of Israel / the Israeli Defense Forces as part of the service.)
5. If somebody is looking for a political stooge, it seems like their first stop is always and everywhere...... Black people.
The BLM movement has links with, and has been pursued by the BDS movement.
I live right next door to the densest Arab-Muslim infestation in the United states (Dearborn, Michigan).
I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black-Arab couples together, and not even on a single episode of the reality TV show based in Dearborn ("American Muslim," on the TLC channel).
In the days before I kept kosher, I would commonly eat at the Arab restaurants, and I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black people working there in any capacity-- ever.
To say that the Arabs don't care for black people would be to observe something as profound as the sky being blue.
Interesting, because the majority of Muslims in the United States are actually..... black.
These (BLM) guys are just dumb enough to be duped into supporting a political movement of people who *don't even like them* and are pressing a conflict that has *nothing to do with them.*
6. The role of the rabbinate vis-a-vis the state is something that has not been sorted out for at least the last 20 centuries. And if you believe in Lindy's law, it can keep on going for another 20 centuries.
7. The story of the destruction of the Second Temple is told as one of sinat chinam (baseless hatred).
It is retold here slightly differently, which is: Jewish people were easy to be knocked over by the Romans because they had weakened themselves by so much internal fighting.
History does not necessarily repeat itself, but it does rhyme: If the beginning of the end of the Jewish state comes with Haredim (as I suspect that it will), then will just be a repetition of Zealots fighting each other.
It may be a little bit better, because we have people (Haredim) that are educated in ways that are probably more appropriate for the 11th century--and that is at least a thousand years ahead of the people who were fighting during the Roman Jewish War.
8. The author is ever so slightly self-aggrandizing, but she has made a living as an entertainer and so that can be overlooked.
Verdict: Strongly recommended.