Reddit reviews Israel: A History

It isn't the narrative of the country, it's just part of the current thought process post-WWII. It's impossible to not be affected by something like that on a cultural level, and reinforced by the weight put on it by basically everyone, Jewish or not. Israel did have a lot of refugees from WWII but they were also actively being limited by Britain, like refugee ships being intercepted and diverted away from Israel, because they were trying to adhere to an immigration limit to appease the Arab population.

Re: books, I'm currently reading this one that I highly recommend. It talks about all this stuff in great detail.

Israel: A History, by Martin Gilbert

Great choice of interest - I have studied Israel for the last couple of years and it has been very interesting.

There are two books I would recommend:

Martin Gilbert, Israel: a History. Almost 800 pages, but you could read it selectively. I recommend this because I often find that in order to understand something about Israel you need to know something about its background. The conflict starts a long time before the formation in 1948 when Jews bought land from the locals.

David Hirst. The gun and the olive branch. More focused on the conflict(s), but also sets out from the time before the declaration of state. Slightly shorter and more readable than Gilbert's book.

Both of them are well known books on the subject and perhaps more likely to be available from a nearby library. They also come as reasonably priced paperbacks.

I always recommend three books for people who want to start learning about the subject:

Righteous Victims by Benny Morris

Israel, a history by Martin Gilbert

and Six Days of War by Michael Oren

Between those three, you have a good introduction. The Morris and Gilbert are both comprehensive histories covering everything from the early Zionists to modern day. They have very different interpretations; it's not that either one is wrong, they just place emphasis on different aspects. And the Oren is the best overview of the six day war which was the most important war in terms of causes of the present day conflict.

> What does the United States have to gain from lying about Gaza being occupied? What do the EU and UN have to gain?

The UN is a membership organization made up of countries and some organizations (in a consultative position). Look up who the voting members of it are and make a list with your own classifications along the lines of "democratic", "authoritarian", "totalitarian". Put each voting country in one of the columns. Think about whether you see a pattern in the voting behavior.

The EU - oil, a sense of "Maybe if we vote their way terrorism won't reach our country."

The US - perhaps the same. Perhaps landing rights for its planes in the war on terror. Perhaps diplomatic support on other issues.

I'm not saying that they are the only countries that have what might be called a 'deceitful' or a 'hypocritical' foreign policy (or that they even have such). And I'm not saying that they don't have other concerns or interests other than what I've listed here.

> The only conclusion I can come to with only information from the IDF and no information from anywhere else is "I don't know."

It doesn't seem to me that you are taking an "I don't know" position. It seems that you are taking a "The IDF is wrong, but I don't know how it is wrong and I'm not sure if it wrong here, but I will disbelieve them anyway."

> > Hamas is highly secretive due to the nature of the organization itself, not as a result of the state that Gaza has been in for some time. Hamas is an authoritarian (at the very least) organization that wants to impose a theocratic state on the people that live in the territory it rules.

> You don't think it has anything to do with reasonable paranoia from decades of having to deal with spies and other state of the art intelligence services?

Hamas is an offshoot of The Society of the Muslim Brothers (aka The Muslim Brotherhood, or The Brotherhood). It as been like that for years before Israel was even founded.

> > By self-sufficiency, do you mean having the funds to carry out social welfare and infrastructure-building? If so, you should do some research and find out just how much money the world community has supplied the PA with over the past 10 years or so. (Hint: well over $500,000,000 since the beginning of 2010!)

> Of course.

Well, what are your findings on how much money the PA has received from the world community in the past 10 years or so?

***

With all respect, I think that you are basing your opinions on an idealized notion of what you would like the situation to be, rather than what it is.

If I may be so bold, may I suggest some reading for you?

A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel, by Walter Lacquer

Israel: A History, by Martin Gilbert

Palestine Betrayed, by Efraim Karsh

Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, by Jeffrey Herf

The Flight of the Intellectuals, by Paul Berman

I don't have any connection to Amazon and don't get paid to shill for them.