Reddit reviews Catch The Jew!
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Catch the Jew! recounts the adventures of gonzo journalist Tuvia Tenenbom, who wanders around Israel and the Palestinian Authority for seven months in search of the untold truths in today's Holy Land.
ELI5 Israel....
> Why is it bad to not allow Israel to build settlements in Palestinian territory
Lots of fake news in one sentence, because people don't know history. But I'll try, anyway.
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What is the "West Bank"? It was territory controlled by the Kingdom of Jordan between 1948 and 1967. Prior to Israel's founding in 1948, it was just another part of the Palestine Mandate (now divided into Israel and Jordan), controlled by the British Empire on behalf of the UN as part of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. Over 2000 years ago, before Rome conquered the Middle East, the West Bank area constituted the heartland of the Kingdom of Israel, which split into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah after King Solomon's death. Because the Northern Kingdom's capital was at a place called "Shomron" ("Sebastia," according to the Romans), I and many like me, refer to this region as Yehuda/Shomron.
Israel's War of Independence ended with the Jordanian army controlling the mountainous highlands of the West Bank, and the eastern half of Jerusalem, while Israel retained control of the coast plain.
In 1967, Israel beat the Jordanian Army, the Egyptian Army, and the Syrian Army. Territory that had been controlled by them, from the Suez Canal to the Golan Heights and Jordan River Valley became integrated into Israel. The Israeli government made a policy that it would be willing to return control of the newly-captured land in return for peace treaties and an end to all hostilities with its neighbors. In 1979, Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt and returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian control in 1981.
In 1993, under the auspices of the Oslo Accords, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, but also relinquished all of its claims to the West Bank, leaving the whole of West Bank to Israeli control. Under the Oslo Accords, an organization called the "Palestinian Liberation Organization" (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat would be given administrative control over predominantly-Arab cities in the West Bank, because the Israeli government did not want to govern these places, because the population of these cities (Ramallah, Shechem/Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Jericho, Bethlehem, and most of Hebron) were generally resistant to Israeli governance (though you'll never hear them complain about the paved roads, running water and electricity that Israel installed for them between 1967 and 1993). Naturally, this wasn't good enough for Yasser Arafat, so he orchestrated a series of bus bombings in order to pressure Israel for more territorial concessions. Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack offered Arafat nearly everything he asked for at Camp David in July 2000, and Arafat walked away. In October 2000, Arafat ordered the beginning of the Second Intifada, a 5-year campaign of terrorism against Israeli civilians. The intifada ended with Arafat's death (whether from AIDS or some other ailment, who knows-- that he was diseased is evident in every picture of him), the IDF policing the cities under PLO control, and a succession of right-wing Israeli governments who were elected with the mandate that they would not give any concessions to the PLO as long as the Arabs continued to support terrorism.
The PLO was initially founded in 1964, as a terrorist organization and foreign policy tool under the joint control of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in order to be a perpetual thorn in Israel's side. After the Six Day War ended, the PLO tried to hide among the population of the aforementioned ungovernable Arab cities. Over the next three years, the IDF chased the PLO into Jordan, where, in 1970, they hijacked several international airliners and tried to overthrow the King of Jordan. In a massacre that became known as Black September, the Jordanian army ejected the PLO, who then fled to Lebanon and ignited the bloody Lebanese Civil War, which lasted from 1975 until 1990 and directly led to the rise of Hezbollah (which murdered more Americans than any other terrorist organization before 9/11), who made their debut by driving a bomb-laden truck into the peacekeeper barracks in Beirut, murdering 241 American servicemen.
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What are "settlements"?
Remember at the beginning of this wall of text, that I mentioned that Jews have roots throughout the West Bank? Regardless of whether you believe G-d exists, the Old Testament explicitly states that Abraham lived in Be'er Sheva, and is buried in Hebron with his wife, son and grandson. Isaac was bound and nearly offered to G-d on Mt. Moriah, where a retaining wall from the Second Temple still stands. Jacob's daughter Dina was raped near Shechem/Nablus, where Josef's body is buried. Rachel died on the road to Hebron, and was buried near Efrat, just outside of Bethlehem, where King David was born. The mobile temple from the 40 years of wandering in the desert was placed at Shiloh for over 300 years before King Solomon built the first temple in Jerusalem. Jericho is at the place where the Jews crossed the Jordan River into Israel. It's all there in the book. And these are some of the places that are now called "Settlements," where Jews built suburban towns, in order to maintain access to their heritage. As long as these places had been under Jordanian rule, Jews were forbidden entry. Even now, if you are Jewish, then you can only access Josef's tomb with a military escort because Shechem/Nablus is controlled by the PLO. In the case of any peace deal, the existence of these "settlements" reminds the Israeli government that Jews can't trust Arabs to let them visit their heritage, and that Jews are not willing to part with their heritage for the sake of a peace that would already exist if the Arabs behaved like normal human beings instead of being brainwashed by their leadership to support terrorism.
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Here is the book list that I recommend to anyone looking to learn more about Israel:
Six Days of War by Michael Oren <---- Nothing happens in a vacuum. The first half of the book describes the events leading up to the war, from 1956 to 1967. The author is a former Israeli ambassador to the USA.
The Revolt by Menachem Begin <---- Excellent discussion of the War of Independence, the events before and after it, and how Israeli politics evolved once the State coalesced. The author led Etz"L during the War for Independence, and served as the first non-Labor-party Prime Minister from 1977 to 1983.
The Arab-Israeli Wars by Chaim Herzog <------- Excellent summary of all of Israel's military actions. The author is a former Israeli president.
Like Dreamers by Yossi Klein HaLevi <---- The different ways that everyone all over the Israeli spectrum believe in Zionism.
The Israelis by Donna Rosenthal <----- snapshot of Israel's diverse population. This book is from 2005, so the description of certain events and especially their outcomes is a bit dated.
Catch the Jew by Tuvia Tenenbom <----- All the different ways that international organizations meddle in Israeli affairs, looking for ways to blame Israel for malfeasance, as well as all the different ways that the Arabs can't keep their story straight.
Voice of Israel by Abba Eban <------ The author was Israel's ambassador to the UN.
Letters from Tel Mond Prison by Era Rapaport <---- The schizophrenia of post-1967 Israeli policy in Yehuda/Shomron, and how Israeli citizens dealt with it.
I think the problem comes from people that claim to be SJW such as yourself, when in reality they do encourage violence or lie to cover it up. Read the book Catch the Jew for an interesting look at this phenomenon. Basically, he went to Israel and Palestine and pretended to be German (well technically he was German, but also Israeli). He went around with these Nordic "peace activists" only to find many of them say blatantly anti-Semitic and violent things to him when they thought he was German.
I'm sorry for being blunt, but this has been asked before.
You're not going to get strictly unbiased books, just some that are more factual and that deal with opposing views, and some that are less so.
In any case, check out these threads:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/7si3cq/any_book_recommendations_on_the_history_of_the/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/7m3ibu/book_recommendation_on_the_israeliarab/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/8adpuj/what_books_do_you_recommend_about_israel_andor/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/8i3mu8/lately_i_found_great_interest_in_the_modern/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/77frgx/looking_for_history_book_recommendations/
My comment from the thread in the last link:
I don't endorse or even know any of the following, I've just aggregated a few from the previous times this was asked:
Recommended by /u/Jiveman7
"The Case for Israel" by Allan Dershowitz
Recommended by /u/scisslizz:
Six Days of War by Michael Oren <---- Nothing happens in a vacuum. The first half of the book describes the events leading up to the war, from 1956 to 1967. The author is a former Israeli ambassador to the USA.
The Revolt by Menachem Begin <---- Excellent discussion of the War of Independence, the events before and after it, and how Israeli politics evolved once the State coalesced. The author led Etz"L during the War for Independence, and served as the first non-Labor-party Prime Minister from 1977 to 1983.
The Arab-Israeli Wars by Chaim Herzog <------- Excellent summary of all of Israel's military actions. The author is a former Israeli president.
Like Dreamers by Yossi Klein HaLevi <---- The different ways that everyone all over the Israeli spectrum believe in Zionism.
The Israelis by Donna Rosenthal <----- snapshot of Israel's diverse population. This book is from 2005, so the description of certain events and especially their outcomes is a bit dated.
Catch the Jew by Tuvia Tenenbom <----- All the different ways that international organizations meddle in Israeli affairs, looking for ways to blame Israel for malfeasance, as well as all the different ways that the Arabs can't keep their story straight.
Voice of Israel by Abba Eban <------ The author was Israel's ambassador to the UN.
Letters from Tel Mond Prison by Era Rapaport <---- The schizophrenia of post-1967 Israeli policy in Yehuda/Shomron, and how Israeli citizens dealt with it.
Recommended by /r/AskHistorians:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/middleeast#wiki_israeli_history
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2a8mnf/i_want_to_know_everything_about_the/
> Just because Islamic terrorism exists doesn't mean that Israel gets a blank cheque.
Sure, no nation state under heaven is perfect. For a deep dive into imperfections and strange quirks of the Israeli political scene, you might want to read Catch The Jew!. Be advised the work is very satirical in it's approach to the subject, but none the less quite accurate. Enjoy the chuckles as you read, it is as funny as it is enlightening.
> Errors are: the wildly inaccurate map…
Yep, you're right. I read the words and didn't pay attention to the pictures. That map is more than a bit silly. Especially because the creator of the map makes the all too common error [among Westerners] of conflating "Arab" with "Muslim" to the point of using the terms interchangeably. Also, big chunks of the map that are marked in red for "Arab/Muslim" are relatively unpopulated such as the interior of the Sinai Peninsula which also makes no sense.
> In short it is contrary international law to settle your people in occupied territory in order to demographically alter the region, which is exactly was Israel is doing.
*Sigh.* Jerusalem is not a settlement anymore than Moscow is settlement. The regions of Judea and Sumeria aren't settlements either. They have been occupied by Jews since very ancient times.
The fact is, as I suspect you well know, the "Palestinian state," already exists: Jordan. A second concurrent "Palestinian state" is not needed.
> …calling people who have lived in Palestine for centuries "squatters" and "brutal terrorists".
I'll concede this point too, but I do not think you'll like the result. Non-Jewish residents of these regions should be brought into the fold and offered full Israeli citizenship. If they cannot stomach Israeli citizenship they may voluntarily relocate if that is truly their wish. The most efficient path to peace therefore would be The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East. Wouldn't you agree?
Before dissenting from the One State solution, please consider this: virtually every time Israel has extended an olive branch along "two state" lines both the Israelis and residents of the Palestinian Territories have been made to suffer. Just look at Gaza. Israel seeded control and militants promptly moved in and began shelling Sderot. (Irony of ironies: the first Qassam rockets were made using "recycled" materials from greenhouses the State of Israel left in Gaza to the Gazens get on their feet, economically.) Israel, having a moral obligation to protect its people, was forced to act with an embargo and, at times, limited military strikes.
The very sad truth is: Palestinians are made to suffer because their own leadership reckons them as useful political pawns than as settled and naturalized Israeli citizens. The optics of the situation are then exploited to create the appearance of a moral crisis that would not otherwise be present if Israel held unchallenged autonomy over its borders. This is also why residents of Palestinian territories don't relocate, they're generally prevented from doing so by neighboring powers perpetuating the "crisis."
What are your thoughts /u/TeoKajLibroj?
It may sound interesting because I understand from where you come from. As a jew I feel very butthurt and conflicted when I see jews (specially jews powerful in the media) spouting all sort of leftist, self destructive discourses, ignorant how this is only evidence of their deepest neurosis. Some have a gun pointed to their heads, some have their sons attacked in university for being jewish, some reside behind gated communities in majority brown/black cities, yet they still think they are living in a multiculti fantasy.
I have my own theories regarding why so many jews are pants of head retarded leftists, but they are long and lack confirmation. If you find the topic interesting, you'll enjoy reading Catch the Jew!. The author pretended to be a german journalist and interviewed a lot of leftist israeli jews, the result was hilarious. Some truly believe they are fixing the world with their superiority.
And no, there isn't any anymosity between israeli jews and diaspora jews, not besides political: J-Street, funding for human rights ongs, breaking the silence, etc. What I felt by my brief stay in Israel is that american jews treat the place as if they owned it, they find everything besides Tel-Aviv barbaric, there is even a term for them, complanglos. Yet most of the americans who make aliyah, specially religious, are the opposite and very sincere, intelligent people. Many religious people in Israel are insufferable, yet all the religious americans in Israel mix the better of the diaspora and Israel, they are religious without being closed minded, they are educated without being degenerate post-modernists... At least this was my impression.
> catch the jew
https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Jew-Tuvia-Tenenbom/dp/9652297984
So there are three that I always recommend to people wanting to learn about Israel and the conflict. Righteous Victims by Benny Morris and Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert are two lengthy, sometimes dry, but incredibly comprehensive overviews that have been praised by people on both sides for their historical accuracy. And Six Days of War by Michael Oren is the best (imo) summary of the 1967 war which is crucial for understanding how Israel came to occupy the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Gaza. Which is vital for understanding the current situation. After that much intensely historical reading, I recommend Catch the Jew by Tuvia Tenenbom for a lighthearted but thought-provoking view of the the oddities of both Israeli and Palestinian society.
Everyone with an interest in this should read the book "Catch the Jew" by Tuvia Tenenbom. https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Jew-Tuvia-Tenenbom/dp/9652297984