Palestine War

May 6, 1986: Nick Popaditch arrives at the Receiving Barracks, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. April 9, 2003: An AP photographer captures a striking image seen around the world of the Gunny Sergeant smoking a victory cigar in his tank, the haunting statue of Saddam Hussein hovering in the background. Popaditch is immortalized forever as "The Cigar Marine."

The politics and recent history of the Middle East can seem baffling to outsiders. Nowhere was that more evident than during the Lebanon War that raged in 1982. Even contemporary reporting often made fundamental mistakes, and there was little general understanding of what was happening and why. This conflict involved a bewildering number of groups and influences from different parts of the world. The precipitating event was the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, carried out by members of a Palestinian terrorist group.

When the establishment of the State of Israel was announced on May 14, 1948, it seemed to many people that the new nation could not survive for long. The haste with which it was created meant that Israel lacked the infrastructure of government, and its armed forces consisted of little more than a handful of lightly armed former guerilla fighters. Ranged against it were some of the most powerful nations in the Arab world, including Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria.

It is the year 1915, and the British and Ottoman Empires clash in a deadly struggle in the Middle East. Tasked with keeping the Ottomans out of Suez Canal, Major Andrew Selkirk discovers that his real assignment is to retrieve a Bengali spy working for those who vow to see British rule out of India. After landing on the west coast of Palestine, Selkirk discovers the Ottomans have taken the spy captive. Even more troubling are the plans by Ottomans and Germans to draw Afghanistan and Persia into the war against Great Britain.

Most books and documentaries about the First World War focus on the carnage of the Western Front, where Germany faced off against France, the British Empire, and their allies in a grueling slugfest that wasted millions of lives. The shattered landscape of the trenches has become symbolic of the war as a whole, and it is this experience that everyone associates with World War I, but that front was not the only experience.

Dopo saggi considerati pietre miliari della storiografia del conflitto araboisraeliano, lo storico israeliano Ilan Pappé rivolge qui la sua analisi al futuro di Israele e della Palestina, riflettendo sui rischi e sulle opportunità che emergono dagli orrori di questo momento storico. Il libro è suddiviso in tre parti.

Come for a walk with me, if you would, along the streets of Jerusalem. My family has walked has walked these streets for more than a thousand years. . . Come for a walk with me, if you would, along the streets of Jerusalem. My family has walked has walked these streets for more than a thousand...

As it prepared to ward off an invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies in 1948, newborn Israel lacked the weapons to defend itself. Enter Al Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran who feared a repeat of the Holocaust. He created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the US War Asset Administration, fixed them in California and New Jersey, and sent his pilots - Jewish and non-Jewish WWII aviators - to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia.

Am 7. Oktober 2023 wachte der israelische Soziologe Natan Sznaider in einer anderen Welt auf. Entsetzt und verzweifelt waren unzureichende Worte, um das Massaker der Hamas zu fassen. Aus der Ferne erkannte der Kölner Schriftsteller Navid Kermani den Schrecken wieder, der in den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnten bereits über so viele Völker im Nahen Osten gekommen war. Die beiden Freunde erinnerten sich eines leidenschaftlichen Mailwechsels, den sie 2002 nach ihrer ersten Begegnung in Haifa geführt hatten.