Download or read book Canada and the Birth of Israel A Study in Canadian Foreign Policy written by David J. Bercuson and published by Heritage. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Bercuson's study reveals Canadaas having established a middle east policy during the 1930s, not on moral or ideological grounds, but on the basis of the politicians' view of its own national interests."
Download or read book Canada and the Birth of Israel written by David Jay Bercuson and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Canada and the Birth of Israel written by David J. Bercuson and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1985-12-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canadian Zionists of the 1930s were anxious to involve their government in the Palestine question. The pressure they brought to bear was fuelled by a new urgency when British policy in Palestine denied entry to Jewish refugees from the Nazi terror. Today there is a widely held impression that the Canadian government responded quickly and sympathetically to that pressure. Jews and Arabs alike, each for their own purposes, have created the image of a Canada friendly to Zionism, and of Canadian policy directed by such pro-Zionists as Lester Pearson. But as David Bercuson demonstrates, the truth is far more complex. In fact, Zionist efforts to involve Canada in the Palestine question met with considerable resistance from Ottawa, even when Canada was elected to membership on the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in 1947. The partition of Palestine was eventually supported by Canada, but begrudgingly. Ottawa viewed partition as the ‘least lousy’ solution to a problem that was acutely sensitive both diplomatically and politically. Hardly the champions of Zionism that it has generally been considered, Canada is revealed in Bercuson’s study as having established a middle east policy, not on moral or ideological grounds, but on the basis of the politicians’ view of its own national interests.
Download or read book 1948 written by Benny Morris and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. Besides the military account, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Historian Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side--where the archives are still closed--is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials. Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. He examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. He looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world--a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.--Résumé de l'éditeur.
Download or read book The Star and the Scepter written by Emmanuel Navon and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-11 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first all-encompassing book on Israel’s foreign policy and the diplomatic history of the Jewish people, The Star and the Scepter retraces and explains the interactions of Jews with other nations from the ancient kingdoms of Israel to modernity. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Emmanuel Navon argues that one cannot grasp Israel’s interactions with the world without understanding how Judaism’s founding document has shaped the Jewish psyche. He sheds light on the people of Israel’s foreign policy through the ages: the ancient kingdoms of Israel, Jewish diasporas in Europe from the Middle Ages to the emancipation, the emerging nineteenth-century Zionist movement, and Zionist diplomacy following World War I and surrounding World War II. Navon elucidates Israel’s foreign policy from the birth of the state in 1948 to our days: the dilemmas and choices at the beginning of the Cold War; Israel’s attempts to establish periphery alliances; the Arab-Israeli conflict; Israel’s relations with Europe, the United States, Russia, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the United Nations, and the Jewish diasporas; and how twenty-first-century energy geopolitics is transforming Israel’s foreign relations today. Navon’s analysis is rooted in two central ideas, represented by the Star of David (faith) and the scepter (political power). First, he contends that the interactions of Jews with the world have always been best served by combining faith with pragmatism. Second, Navon shows how the state of Israel owes its diplomatic achievements to national assertiveness and hard power—not only military strength but economic prowess and technological innovation. Demonstrating that diplomacy is a balancing act between ideals and realpolitik, The Star and the Scepter draws aspirational and pragmatic lessons from Israel’s exceptional diplomatic history.
Download or read book My Promised Land written by Ari Shavit and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today Not since Thomas L. Friedman’s groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land. Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family’s story, illuminating the pivotal moments of the Zionist century to tell a riveting narrative that is larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and national, both deeply human and of profound historical dimension. We meet Shavit’s great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine’s booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe’s Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv’s booming club scene; and today’s architects of Israel’s foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country. As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape. Praise for My Promised Land “This book will sweep you up in its narrative force and not let go of you until it is done. [Shavit’s] accomplishment is so unlikely, so total . . . that it makes you believe anything is possible, even, God help us, peace in the Middle East.”—Simon Schama, Financial Times “[A] must-read book.”—Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times “Important and powerful . . . the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read.”—Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times Book Review “Spellbinding . . . Shavit’s prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear.”—The Economist “One of the most nuanced and challenging books written on Israel in years.”—The Wall Street Journal
Download or read book Israel written by Daniel Gordis and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jewish Book of the Year Award The first comprehensive yet accessible history of the state of Israel from its inception to present day, from Daniel Gordis, "one of the most respected Israel analysts" (The Forward) living and writing in Jerusalem. Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world’s attention, aroused its imagination, and lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel’s people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse—but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation. With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on the Israel’s past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn.
Download or read book Spies of No Country written by Matti Friedman and published by Signal. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning and critically-acclaimed author of Pumpkinflowers, the never-before-told story of the mysterious "Arab Section": the Jewish-"Arab" spies who, under deep cover in Beirut as refugees, helped the new State of Israel win the War of Independence. In his third non-fiction book, Matti Friedman introduces us to four unknown young men who are caught up in the fraught events surrounding the birth of Israel in 1948 and drawn into secret lives, becoming the nucleus of Israel's intelligence service. The tiny, amateur unit known as the "Arab Section" was conceived during WWII by British spies and by Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Consisting of Jews from Arab countries who could pass as Arabs, it was meant to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations. When the first Jewish-Arab war erupted in 1948 and Palestinian refugees began fleeing the fighting, a small number of Section agents disguised as refugees joined the exodus. They fled to Beirut, where they spent the next two years under cover, sending messages back to Israel over a radio antenna disguised as a clothesline. Of the dozen men in the unit at the war's beginning, five were caught and executed. Espionage, John le Carré once wrote, is the "secret theater of our society." Spies of No Country is not just a spy story, but a surprising window into the nature of Israel--a country that sees itself as belonging to the story of Europe, but where more than half of the population is native to the Middle East. Starring complicated characters with slippery identities moving in the shadow of great events, Spies of No Country tells a very different story about what Israel is and how it was created.
Download or read book Saving Israel written by Boaz Dvir and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-06-14 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible true story of a WWII veteran’s renegade operation to help Israel defend itself during the First Arab-Israeli War. Shortly after Israel was created in 1948, it faced the threat of invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies. Though the United States opposed supplying arms to either side of the conflict, American World War II veteran Al Schwimmer was determined to do whatever it takes to help Israel defend herself. Schwimmer created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the government, and sent his pilots to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia. Schwimmer and his team risked their lives, freedom, and US citizenship to prevent what they viewed as an imminent genocide. They evaded the FBI and State Department, gained the support of the mafia, smuggled weapons—mostly Nazi surplus—across hostile territories, and went into combat in the Middle East. This book vividly tells the story of this little-known yet historically significant mission.
Download or read book Leaving Zion written by Ori Yehudai and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores Jewish emigration from Palestine and Israel during the critical period between 1945 and the late 1950s by weaving together the perspectives of governments, aid organizations, Jewish communities and the personal stories of individual migrants.
Download or read book The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger written by Carolyn Gammon and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the Nazi period, 25,000 Jewish people lived in Tarnow, Poland. By the end of the Second World War, nine remained. Like Anne Frank, Israel Unger and his family hid for two years in an attic crawl space above the Dagnan flour mill in Tarnow. Their stove was the chimney that went up through the attic; their windows were cracks in the wall. Survival depended on the food the adults were able to forage outside at night. Against all odds, they emerged alive. Now, decades later, here is Unger’s “unwritten diary.” At the end of the war, following a time as people sans pays, the Unger family immigrated to Canada. After discovering a love of chemistry, Israel Unger had a stellar academic career, married, and raised a family in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger is as much a Holocaust story as it is a story of a young immigrant making every possible use of the opportunities Canada had to offer. This revised edition includes a reproduction of Dagnan’s List, a list of Jewish slave labourer similar Schindler’s List, made famous in the Steven Spielberg movie. The name of Israel Unger’s father appears on the list, in which Dagnan declares that Unger is an “essential worker”—a ruse that may have saved the father’s life. This recently discovered document proves that Israel Unger’s memory of this key part of the story was accurate. A new postscript details the importance of this startling document.
Download or read book A Safe Haven written by Allis Radosh and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[This] revelatory account of Truman's vital contributions to Israel's founding. . .is told. . . with an elegance informed by thorough research." —Wall Street Journal "Even knowing how the story ends, A Safe Haven had me sitting on the edge of my seat.” —Cokie Roberts A dramatic, detailed account of the events leading up to the creation of a Jewish homeland and the true story behind President Harry S. Truman’s controversial decision to recognize of the State of Israel in 1948, drawn from Truman’s long-lost diary entries and other previously unused archival materials.
Download or read book Canada and the Middle East written by Paul Heinbecker and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada and the Middle East: In Theory and Practice provides a unique perspective on one of the world’s most geopolitically important regions. From the perspective of Canada’s diplomats, academics, and former policy practitioners involved in the region, the book offers an overview of Canada’s relationship with the Middle East and the challenges Canada faces there. The contributors examine Canada’s efforts to promote its interests and values—peace building, peacekeeping, multiculturalism, and multilateralism, for example—and investigate the views of interested communities on Canada’s relations with countries of the Middle East. Canada and the Middle East will be useful to academics and students studying the Middle East, Canadian foreign policy, and international relations. It will also serve as a primer for Canadian companies investing in the Middle East and a helpful reference for Canada’s foreign service and journalists stationed abroad by providing a background to Canadas interestsand role in the region. Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation
Download or read book Israel s Moment written by Jeffrey Herf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine in the United States and Europe from 1945 to 1949.
Download or read book The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel written by Andrew Tobolowsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel is the first study to treat the history of claims to an Israelite identity as an ongoing historical phenomenon from biblical times to the present. By treating the Hebrew Bible's accounts of Israel as one of many efforts to construct an Israelite history, rather than source material for later legends, Andrew Tobolowsky brings a long-term comparative approach to biblical and nonbiblical “Israelite” histories. In the process, he sheds new light on how the structure of the twelve tribes tradition enables the creation of so many different visions of Israel, and generates new questions: How can we explain the enduring power of the myth of the twelve tribes of Israel? How does “becoming Israel” work, why has it proven so popular, and how did it change over time? Finally, what can the changing shape of Israel itself reveal about those who claimed it?
Download or read book Treacherous Alliance written by Trita Parsi and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This award-winning study traces the shifting relations between Israel, Iran, and the U.S. since 1948—including secret alliances and treacherous acts. Vitriolic exchanges between the leaders of Iran and Israel are a disturbingly common feature of the news cycle. But the real roots of their enmity mystify Washington policymakers, leaving no promising pathways to stability. In Treacherous Alliance, U.S. foreign policy expert Trita Parsi untangles to complex and often duplicitous relationship among Israel, Iran, and the United States from 1948 to the present. In the process, he reveals shocking details of unsavory political maneuverings that have undermined Middle Eastern peace and disrupted U.S. foreign policy initiatives in the region. Parsi draws on his unique access to senior American, Iranian, and Israeli decision makers to present behind-the-scenes revelations that will surprise even the most knowledgeable readers: Iran’s prime minister asks Israel to assassinate Khomeini; Israel reaches out to Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War; the United States foils Iran’s plan to withdraw support from Hamas and Hezbollah; and more. Treacherous Alliance not only revises our understanding of the recent past, it also spells out a course for the future. An Arthur Ross Book Award Silver Medal Winner A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title
Download or read book A State at Any Cost written by Tom Segev and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist "[A] fascinating biography . . . a masterly portrait of a titanic yet unfulfilled man . . . this is a gripping study of power, and the loneliness of power." —The Economist As the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion long ago secured his reputation as a leading figure of the twentieth century. Determined from an early age to create a Jewish state, he thereupon took control of the Zionist movement, declared Israel’s independence, and navigated his country through wars, controversies and remarkable achievements. And yet Ben-Gurion remains an enigma—he could be driven and imperious, or quizzical and confounding. In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around the man. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels, and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades. Along the way, Segev reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion’s secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel’s independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbors, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional “nutty moments”—from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. Segev also reveals that Ben-Gurion first heard about the Holocaust from a Palestinian Arab acquaintance, and explores his tempestuous private life, including the testimony of four former lovers. The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state “at any cost”—at times through risk-taking, violence, and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation, and reason. Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but rather a historical actor who belongs in the company of Lenin or Churchill—a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.
