Showing titles in Middle East

Gershon Baskin's memoir of 38 years of intensive pursuit of peace begins with a childhood on Long Island and a bar mitzvah trip to Israel with his family. Baskin joined Young Judaea back in the States, then later lived on a kibbutz in Israel, where he announced to his parents that he had decided to make aliya, emigrate to Israel. They persuaded him to return to study at NYU, after which he finally emigrated under the auspices of Interns for Peace. In Israel he spent a pivotal two years living with Arabs in the village of Kufr Qara.

Die Frage, wem das Heilige Land gehört, ist heute aktueller denn je. Die Debatten zu diesem Thema sind oft von Ignoranz und starken Emotionen geprägt, noch immer verstellen Parteilichkeit und Machtinteressen den Blick auf die politische Lage im Nahen Osten. In seinem unentbehrlichen Standardwerk wagt es Michael Wolffsohn, an überkommenen Mythen und Vorurteilen zu rütteln. Umfassend und gut verständlich erklärt er die historischen Wurzeln des Konflikts zwischen Juden und Arabern, der bis in die Gegenwart nichts von seiner Brisanz verloren hat.

A well-known novelist and journalist from the coastal city of Jableh, Samar Yazbek witnessed the beginning four months of the Syrian uprising first-hand and actively participated in a variety of public actions and budding social movements. With rare empathy and journalistic prowess Samar Yazbek compiled oral testimonies from ordinary Syrians all over the country. Filled with snapshots of exhilarating hope and horrifying atrocities, she offers us a wholly unique perspective on the Syrian uprising.

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a surgical resident working in Baghdad when the military police marched into the operating theatre and ordered the team to mutilate army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed. Munjed's choices were stark - comply and breach the medical oath, refuse and face death or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia and boarded a boat to Australia.

The clash between Israel and Palestine has been one of the most emotionally engaging causes of modern times. Prophets Without Honor tells the story of the attempts to solve the conflict and examines the reasons for its resilience. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who participated at a high level in the July 2000 Camp David peace talks that almost led to a historic deal, uses his insider experience to illuminate the specific factors that impede a solution to the conflict.

When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet 40 years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and other serious challenges.

Michael Oren served as the Israeli ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013. An American by birth and a historian by training, Oren arrived at his diplomatic post just as Benjamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton assumed office. During Oren's tenure in office, Israel and America grappled with the Palestinian peace process, the Arab Spring, and existential threats to Israel posed by international terrorism and the Iranian nuclear program.

A rich and varied collection of contemporary short stories, extracts from novels, and poetry that will go a long way toward informing the English-speaking world of the latest developments in Iranian literature. This sampling - or to use the Farsi term golchine, a bouquet - provides a window onto an important but sorely neglected segment of world culture. We hope it will also serve to awaken further interest in the work and in translations of Iranian novelists and poets.

Terrorism expert Erick Stakelbeck pulls back the curtain on ISIS, the violent terrorist organization spreading death and hate in the Middle East. The rise of ISIS took the White House by complete surprise: President Obama called the group "JV" then was forced to reassess when ISIS began executing innocent American journalists. Now radicalized Americans and Europeans are joining ISIS' ranks.

It is a simple fact that no president in American history brought less foreign policy experience to the White House than Donald J. Trump. The real estate developer from Queens promised to bring his brash, zero-sum swagger to bear to cut through America's most complex national security issues, and he did. If the cost of his "America First" agenda was bulldozing the edifice of foreign alliances that had been carefully tended by every president from Truman to Obama, then so be it.

From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country's most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise - now more than 30 years old and with no end in sight.

When Charif Majdalani begins to walk the streets of his city and to write down what he sees, the first hints of unrest within a vibrant culture creep to the fore. Majdalani's reportage through the months of 2020 bears witness to the ways in which an ancient civilisation slowly, then rapidly, descends into the abyss. Then, the unexpected, Beirut collapses under the explosive force of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate. The blast kills hundreds and injures thousands. But through the rubble and the sirens, a people finds its strength to survive and its heart to unite.

Say the word Israel today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers' dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws listeners into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era.

The enormous sense of optimism unleashed by the Arab Spring in 2011 soon gave way to widespread suffering and despair. Of the many popular uprisings against autocratic regimes, Tunisia's now stands alone as a beacon of hope for sustainable human rights progress. Challenging the widely shared pessimism among regional experts, Micheline Ishay charts bold and realistic pathways for human rights in a region beset by political repression, economic distress, sectarian conflict, a refugee crisis, and violence against women.

In a world that cries out for peace, which will prevail - Jesus or Jihad? Bible-believing Christians wonder: What does Islamic extremism mean in terms of Bible prophecy? Do today's turbulent events have prophetic significance? In Jesus, Jihad and Peace, Dr. Michael Youssef provides answers that are concise and biblically accurate, explaining how trends within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam fit into prophetic history.

Most violent jihadi movements in the 20th century focused on removing corrupt, repressive secular regimes throughout the Muslim world. But following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a new form of jihadism emerged - global jihad - turning to the international arena as the primary locus of ideology and action. With this book, Glenn E. Robinson develops a compelling and provocative argument about this violent political movement's evolution.

As someone who has a foot in both the Western and Arabic worlds, Amal set out to explore the lives of Arab women both in Australia and the Middle East, travelling to the region and interviewing more than 60 women about feminism, intimacy, love, sex and shame, trauma, war, religion and culture. Beyond Veiled Cliches explores the similarities and differences experienced by these women in their daily lives - work, relationships, home and family life, friendships, the communities they live in and more.

Using previously unpublished documents, Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, exposes how the deeply ingrained hatred that has provoked the new terrorism has its roots in Saudi Arabia's dominant religious creed, a radical Islamic offshoot known as Wahhabism.

At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parents' decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians—the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds—who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country

Why have Israelis and Palestinians failed to achieve a two-state solution to the conflict that has cost so much and lasted so long? In Paradigm Lost, Ian S. Lustick brings 50 years as an analyst of the Arab-Israeli dispute to bear on this question and offers a provocative explanation of why continued attempts to divide the land will have no more success than would negotiations to establish a one-state solution.