A History of Modern Palestine Book Report
A History of Modern Palestine is a textbook written by Ilan Pappe that focuses on the history of Palestine and the developments of Zionism in the state. The book is written in a straight forward manner that is able to inform the reader about the history of Palestine and the conflicts that arose between Muslims and Jews. Oftentimes he includes his own opinion on certain issues and events that are provided with ample evidence to support his arguments. The book is written in a unique way that challenges the typical ways in which the history of Palestine has been published. The substantial new evidence that Pappe provides keeps the reader engaged throughout the book because he challenges the reader to think differently and question what is typically written in books and taught in schools.
Pappe caters to a wide audience that ranges from scholars to amateur historians. He writes from a different approach that is unique to textbooks outlining the history of Palestine. The manner in which he writes is from a Muslim point of view focusing on Zioni...
Elias Chocour’s novel, Blood Brothers, represents his point of view on the contemporary Palestinian position regarding the holy land of Israel. The book traces the transformation of Chocour’s life, from a Melkite Christian Palestinian boy into a powerful spiritual leader and innovative agent in facilitating better race relations in the region. He shows how Palestinian’ needs were left out during the formation of the State of Israel, and how their plight is highly misunderstood, and often grossly distorted because of ignorance. Chocour’s depiction of the problem facing non-Jews is highly illuminating, and Blood Brothers will dispel many illusions and fallacies that cloud the facts surrounding the status of Israel’s inhabitants.
Most people think Israel always belonged to the Jews but it wasn’t always a safe, holy place where Jews could roam freely. Along with Palestine, it was actually forcefully taken from the Arabs who originated there. The main purpose of this novel is to inform an audience about the conflicts that Arabs and Jews faced. Tolan’s sources are mainly from interviews, documentations and observations. He uses all this information to get his point across, and all the quotes he uses is relevant to his points. The author uses both sides to create a non-biased look at the facts at hand. The novel starts in the year 1967 when Bashir Al-Khairi and his cousins venture to their childhood home in Ramallah. After being forced out of their homes by Jewish Zionists and sent to refuge for twenty years. Bashir arrives at his home to find a Jewish woman named Dalia Eshkenazi. She invites them into her home and later the...
This marked the beginning of the Palestine armed conflict, one of its kinds to be witnessed in centuries since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1. Characterized by a chronology of endless confrontations, this conflict has since affected not only the Middle East relations, but also the gl...
Although a major component of this conflict is religion, the difference in beliefs in the Middle East is not the sole reason for Palestinian resistance and violence. Instead, each person is motivated to fight for freedom in a unique way. For some, the occupation has causes issues and deaths of family or close friends. Others simply feel that it is their duty to fight for independence. No matter the reason, each freedom fighter feels that their actions are justified by the problems that the occupation has bestowed upon them. In Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, two Palestinian men are are chosen to commit a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel. Using the two men as examples, Abu-Assad demonstrates the distinct effects that each man feels in Israeli occupied territories. Hany Abu-Assad has experienced the oppression of the Israeli occupation first hand, and in Paradise Now, he uses long shots to show the overall injustice of the situation and close-up shots to show how single people are trapped by unique circumstances.
This book has taught me a lot about Alexander Hamilton. Most of it was a surprise to me. This book includes where he was born, how he moved to the United States, what he had done to contribute to the country, and his wife and kids. This book has plenty of insight on one of our greatest leaders.
The dispute over the territory called Palestine began relatively recently. Palestinian Arabs had lived as impoverished peasants under corrupt, continuous Ottoman rule for centuries ; political identification as a Palestinian within the broad current of Arab nationalism only...
Bourke, Dale Hanson. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Tough Questions, Direct Answers. Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity, 2013. N. pag. Print.
The fiction, Emperor of China: Self-portrait of K’ang-Hsi, is written by Jonathan D. Spence in 1974. Based on various historical records and the letters written by K’ang Hsi Emperor, Spence creates a fictional memoir to describe K’ang Hsi’s later years. This book is divided into six chapters plus two appendixes. The first chapter, “In Motion”, illustrates his talents in hunting skills and his extensive knowledge on how to survive by taking the natural advantages during wars. The second chapter, “Ruling”, expresses K’ang Hsi’s opinions on how to rule the country. The third chapter, “Thinking”, compares the cultures and ideologies between the Western countries and China. The fourth chapter, “Growing Old”, shows his medical knowledge and how to apply in real life and medical clinic in the palace. The last chapter, “Son”, shows his father’s love toward his sons and the process and conflicts on the succession. The additional translated appendixes display K’ang Hsi’s seventeen letters and his final valedictory edict that hidden from the palace. Those original documents clearly the audience a clear idea of K’ang Hsi’s inner self. This book report will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of reading this book and how this book affects the reader.
As the trains follows its route, the excited passengers consult their travel guides and imagine ancient times based on the book descriptions and the landscapes perceived. Most of them are prosperous emancipated Jews, naively searching for a solution to the Jewish question. Of them, only Israel Zangwill is not naive. He is a well-known, incisive writer who sees Palestine as it is, a territory already occupied by villagers and farmers. Seven years later, when giving a speech in New York, he scandalizes his audience by stating that Palestine is populated and that the sons of Israel should be prepared to take the country by force. As a result he is driven out of the Zionist movement, only to return in the second decade of the twentieth century with more radical postures.
In 1776, David McCullough gives a vivid portrayal of the Continental Army from October 1775 through January 1777, with sharp focus on the leadership of America’s greatest hero, George Washington. McCullough’s thesis is that had not the right man (George Washington) been leading the Continental Army in 1776, the American Revolution would have resulted in a vastly different outcome. He supports his argument with a critical analysis of Washington’s leadership during the period from the Siege of Boston, through the disastrous defense of New York City, the desperate yet, well ordered retreat through New Jersey against overwhelming odds, and concludes with the inspiring victories of Trenton and Princeton. By keeping his army intact and persevering through 1776, Washington demonstrated to the British Army that the Continental Army was not simply a gang of rabble, but a viable fighting force. Additionally, Mr. McCullough supports his premise that the key to the survival of the American Revolution was not in the defense of Boston, New York City, or any other vital terrain, but rather the survival of the Continental Army itself. A masterful piece of history, 1776 is not a dry retelling of the Revolutionary War, but a compelling character study of George Washington, as well as his key lieutenants, and his British adversaries, the most powerful Army in the 18th Century world. When I read this book, I went from a casual understanding of the hero George Washington to a more specific understanding of why Washington was quite literally the exact right man at the exact right place and time to enable the birth of the United States.
Part of Oren’s motive in writing this book was the impact it had on his own life. He informs the reader that, as a Jewish child growing up in America, he remembers seeing his parents worrying over the uncertainty of Israel’s future when faced with an imposing war against the Arabs in 1967 and their excessive joy when Israel won (Oren 332). He remembers his father showing him a photo of an Israeli soldier wading through the Suez Canal. Years he later he had the privilege to meet that soldier and writes, “…he’s my neighbor—and I told him that it was because of him that I decided right then and there, in 1967, to move to Israel and take part in the drama of Jewish Independence,” (Oren 333). Oren’s personal connection to the events of the Six-Day War and how he feels it aided in shaping his future served as inspiration to write Six Days of War to inform others.
The ongoing and explosive Israeli-Palestinian conflict has its roots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when two major nationalist movements among the Jews and Arabs were born. Both of these groups’ movements were geared toward attaining sovereignty for their people in the Middle East, where they each had historical and religious ties to the land that lies between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Toward the end of the 19th century, Southern Syria (Palestine) was divided into two regions, inhabited primarily by Arab Muslims, and ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire (BBC News). At this time, most of the Jews worldwide lived predominantly in eastern and central Europe. When the Zionist political movement was established in 1887 and began to fund land purchases in the Ottoman Empire controlled region of Palestine, tensions between the two groups arose. Since then, Israel and Palestine have been vying for control of this land that they both covet, and this conflict remains as one of the world’s major sources of instability today, involving many different players. One of these players who continues to halt the peace process, is a militant fundamentalist Islamic organization called Hamas. Hamas has intensified extreme opposition and bloodshed in the region, with the aim of destroying the state of Israel. However, few people know that starting in the mid 1970s, Israel secretly supported an organization that would later emerge as Hamas, even though both groups had competing future visions for the nation. Why did it choose to do this when it had so much at stake? This paper will address the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict leading up to the beginning of Israeli support of Hama...
On the 28th of September, of the year 2000, the second Palestinian Intifada took place. The main reason that sparked this Intifada was the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon, the current Israeli Prime Minister, to the Haram Al Sharif. Even though the visit was what set the ground on fire, these feeling of hatred and desire to rebel had been stirring inside the Palestinians ever since the declaration of the Israeli State, on the Palestinian land, back in 1948. This Palestinian frustration is due to their lack of trust and hope in a peace process that did not yield meaningful results. After seven years of peace talks and six agreements, Palestinians realized that Israel is not serious about peace. Since 1993, Israel has doubled settlements on confiscated Palestinian land, continued to imprison Palestinian prisoners and has implemented only 8 percent of what it agreed to implement in all the signed agreements.
Edward Said “States” refutes the view Western journalists, writers, and scholars have created in order to represent Eastern cultures as mysterious, dangerous, unchanging, and inferior. According to Said, who was born in Jerusalem at that time Palestine, the way westerners represent eastern people impacts the way they interact with the global community. All of this adds to, Palestinians having to endure unfair challenges such as eviction, misrepresentation, and marginalization that have forced them to spread allover the world. By narrating the story of his country Palestine, and his fellow countrymen from their own perspective Said is able to humanize Palestinians to the reader. “States” makes the reader feel the importance of having a homeland, and how detrimental having a place to call home is when trying to maintain one’s culture. Which highlights the major trait of the Palestinian culture: survival. Throughout “States”, Said presents the self-preservation struggles Palestinians are doomed to face due to eviction, and marginalization. “Just as we once were taken from one habitat to a new one we can be moved again” (Said 543).
The graphic novel Palestine written by Joe Sacco is a trustworthy description of different stories in the heart of the century-long conflict between Arabs and Israeli. Sacco produced the graphic novel after spending two months with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories in late 1991 and early 1992. Things certainly have changed since thenThe story is all about what happened in that part of the Middle East at the beginning of the 1990s. In this respect, a critical viewpoint should be applied in order to discuss the main topics in detail. Thus, Palestine is actually a guide for a Westerner willing to know what occurs in the Middle East each time the conflict between Israeli and Palestinians takes place.Excellent contemporary graphic novel. The characters convincingly portrayed. Sacco has a journalist eye and a storyteller’s heart.