Holy Land, Unholy War : Israelis and Palestinians

by Anton La Guardia

Writing dispassionately about the Holy Land, said Mark Twain, is as hard as being dispassionate about your own wife or children. Today, more than a century after Twain led the way for mass tourism to what was then a remote corner of the Ottoman Empire, the difficulties are redoubled. The modern struggles of the Israelis and Palestinians - with their larger-than-life stories of disaster and redemption - command the obsessive attention and passion of sympathizers around the world. The 1993 Oslo accords promised to end more than a century of conflict between Jews and Arabs, but the Palestinian uprising that began in October 2000 has raised fears that the fighting could destabilize the whole region. With the experienced journalist's eye for the telling detail and anecdote, Anton La Guardia offers an intimate portrait of the people behind the headlines. He explores their histories and from the religious upheavals of Jerusalem to the extremism of Jewish settlers and Islamic suicide bombers, from the first Zionist pioneers to the post-Zionist generation in Tel Aviv, from the stirrings of Arab nationalism to the Lebanon War.The author explains how the searing traumas of the Holocaust and the Palestinian exodus have shaped Israeli and Palestinian societies. He also looks at the role of the outside world, from the awe-struck visits of medieval Christian pilgrims to the scheming of world powers. He traces how the promise of peace has turned into the curse of war, drawing on his reporter's notebooks from years spent covering the peace accords, Islamic suicide bombings, the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising. This book is part contemporary political reportage and part iconoclastic history. A dispassionate account of Israel and Palestine may be impossible, but this book is written with the first-hand knowledge, affection and exasperation of one who writes about embittered relatives.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Middle East, Israel

Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Susan Rumsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not easy to read (I am not an academic!) but well worth the effort. I understood the need for clarity and detail, but found it difficult to take in all the time. The author is refreshingly unbiased and exceedingly well researched. He never takes sides. Most interesting for me were all the facts which came to light - facts which have purposefully been ignored by the western media. This is a good book to read if you want to know what really goes on in Israel, and if you are tired of the name-calling and the blame game that the west has trust down our throats for the past 60 years.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tired of being ignorant of what it is exactly that the Israelis and Palestinians are constantly fighting about I picked up this book. It serves as an excellent historical survey of Israel and Palestine as well as explaining the political standpoints in an unbiased way, along with cultural sketches of the different peoples that inhabit/occupy these countries.

[Soodaroo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Facing this masterpieace, i shocked: it destroyed all my belief concerning politics in Middle East. with the important face that i am a muslim, i faced with a book talking about things i cannot believed: that world is completely different ... i Love this book: this text remind me of the past that all of us (Jews, Muslims, etc) lost. i recommend this book to all the people concerning todays life in Middle East ...

[Sjonni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un exposé en profondeur des sociétés israélienne et palestinienne. Tous les grands événements depuis la création de l'état d'Israël ainsi que les aléas du conflit avec lequel nous avons tous grandi. Accessible, intelligent, complet, juste et rempli d'espoir. Cinq étoiles.