This book was chosen by my book club recently. If not for that then I might not have picked it up. It’s so hard to find a book about Israel that gives all the facts and none of the hype.
A quick summary of this book. Jews and Arabs are indigenous to Israel and various other Middle Eastern countries. Both cultures have been living there for thousands of years. While there has been some antagonism between them there have also been some periods of peace. When the area was divided up, thus deleting the British Mandate, the UN allocated an area for the Jews (Israel) and an area for the Arabs (Palestine? Possibly, I forget the name). The Arabs refused as they didn’t want an area for them if the Jews had a country. And that was the start of the wars between Israel and the Arabs. There have been some peace deals between Israel and various other countries. However, there are organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas who are dedicated to elimating all the Jews in the Middle East and Israel.
These organisations have been declared as terrorist organisations. Both Egypt and Israel have declared them persona non grata and put up walls between their countries and Gaza. But only Israel’s wall makes the news. I’ve only seen two mentions of Egypt’s wall and one of those is in this book.
There are many examples of how the world treats Israel differently to every other Middle Eastern country. And also many examples of how Israel has changed the world. Some of them are because the country is very dry and the settlers needed to be very innovative about using water.
I found this book very readable. Tishby writes well, in a conversational manner. She gives us all the information we need. It does feel as if we’re being beaten over the head with it, but that’s only because she goes so far back and there are so many examples of antisemitism throughout history. One thing Tishby does which I found very useful was to give a precis of what she’s just said. So we’ll be given lots of information over a number of pages and then a summary of what we’ve just read. And she does this several times to help the reader stay on track.
I know I’ve said this book is readable, but… And this is an illustration of how hard Jews have had it over the centuries. There were so many, many examples of how and when Jews and Israel have been discriminated against, or slaughtered wholesale, or evicted from countries. That is the bit I found a bit of a struggle. There was very little break from all of these examples. Very little positive to balance out the negative. The writing helped make it readable but the content made me struggle with it.
Would I recommend this book? Absolutely yes. I would recommend it to everyone, whether you’re Jewish or not, whether you think you’re antisemitic, or whether you think you’re not. Even if you have Jewish or Israeli friends and you think that means you’re not antisemitic, you should read this book. You might find yourself surprised.
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