Genesis 1948

This book tells the full story of the first Arab-Israeli war and the birth of the State of Israel. Based largely on some 1000 interviews with participants of all nations, it describes the important military and diplomatic events of that epic war - from the struggle between Truman and Dean Rusk to the fall of Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter; from the Irgun-Stern Gang massacre at Deir Yassin to the ambush of a Hadassah hospital convoy; from the clandestine operations of the Jewish underground in the US to the secret negotiations between Jordan's King Abdullah and Moshe Dayan.

Traditional scholarship often points to the Calvinists and Max Weber's writing on the Protestant ethic as the catalysts to changing Christian attitudes concerning profit-seeking and wealth. Author Skip Worden argues that the seeds of this change occurred centuries earlier. From the beginning of the Commercial Revolution to the fifteenth-century Renaissance, he shows that the predominant Christian thought on economics went through a fundamental shift, becoming favorable toward profit-seeking and wealth-holding. Worden discusses this dramatic change and explains how the general antagonism toward the pursuit of wealth before the Commercial Revolution transformed into Protestant theologians' fighting against the prevailing view of a pro-wealth paradigm during the fifteenth century. Worden contends that the shift away from the Patristic view of wealth occurred well before the addition of the Calvinist spirit of capitalism and the Puritan work ethic into Christian economic vernacular. Drawing on Plato, Cicero, and Augustine, early Protestant theologians unsuccessfully sought to check the rising dominance of the pro-wealth Christian paradigm, which they believed had been pushed too far. These theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century felt it was too close to advocating love of gain itself, something too close to the sin of greed. How well the Reformation succeeded can be assessed by Worden's insightful concluding study of John D. Rockefeller, the ascetic steward of God's Gold in the form of monopoly.

When in 1921 the British created the 'Amirate of Transjordan' for Abdallah to rule, the barren and desolate region he was given made him concentrate almost from the start on Palestine for an expansionist drive that was to underpin the legitimacy of the kingdom he craved and lend lustre to the crown he coveted. Analyzing Abdallah's strategies vis-a-vis the other players involved - the British, the Jews, the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs - the author painstakingly shows how Abdallah gradually went about fulfilling that lifelong ambition.

This collection of articles analyzes the underlying motivation, strategy and interests which lay behind "Great Power" (British and post-World War II American) involvement in Palestine and the Middle East, from 1917 to 1948.

The Real History of Israel and the Palestinians No history is so disputed as the history of Israel. Some see Israel's creation as a dramatic act of justice for the Jewish people. Others insist that it was a crime against Palestine's Arabs. Author David Brog untangles the facts from the myths to reveal the truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict. In Reclaiming Israel's History you'll learn how the Jewish people have maintained a continual presence in the Land of Israel for over 3,000 years—despite centuries of Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim persecution; how the Romans invented the word "Palestine" as a way to sever the connection between the Jewish people and their land (and how subsequent conquerors doubled down on this strategy); how modern Jewish immigration to Palestine did not displace Arabs but instead sparked an Arab population boom; and the largely untold story of how the leader of Palestine's Arabs collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews in Europe before they could reach their ancestral homeland. You'll also learn why most of Palestine's Arabs never identified themselves as "Palestinians" until after the 1967 War; the extraordinary lengths to which Israel's military goes to protect Palestinian civilians (and the high price Israel's soldiers pay for this morality), and how the Palestinians have on separate occasions rejected Israel's offers of a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza. Brog frankly admits to Israel's "sins both large and small," but notes that in any fair-minded analysis these have been far out- weighed by Israel's commitment to Western values, including freedom, democracy, and human rights. Honest, provocative, and timely, especially given rising anti-Semitism and the aggressive delegitimization of Israel, David Brog's Reclaiming Israel's History is the book for every reader who wants to understand what is really happening in the Middle East.

This highly-regarded history gives a balanced and judicious introduction to this immensely complex and controversial subject, weaving different strands of the story into a single coherent narrative, thus making it essential reading for all students studying conflict in the Middle East. Of all the troubles affecting the modern world few are as topical, deep rooted and intractable as the Arab-Israeli conflict. For this region, an understanding of the past is vital to an understanding of the present. Ritchie Ovendale’s classic study of the roots of the conflict is now updated for a fourth time and considers events until 2003.