The 5 Books About Israel You Must Read While Stuck Home During COVID

If, like much of the rest of the world, you’re getting restless at home during the coronavirus pandemic, you could do worse than make use of the time saved to finally read up on Israel’s history. Gain a better understanding of the conflict and the issues which repeatedly arise in conversation about the Jewish State with these top five must-read modern books about Israel.

Einat Wilf — Winning the War of Words: Essays on Israel and Zionism

From the United Nations to the media, and from academia to international NGOs, the attacks on Israel’s legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people are growing. To win this war of words, Israel’s defenders must be able to clearly explain the ideas and circumstances that led to the creation of modern Israel and underpin its existence today. This collection of articles by Dr. Einat Wilf on the Middle East, Israel, Zionism, and public diplomacy, aim to serve as an accessible public resource to meet that end.

The book’s various chapters cover a range of topics. The first explains how the violent upheaval over the Middle East in recent years will take decades to be resolved, and that Israel should position itself as a “neutral bunker” in the region. Elsewhere, Wilf focuses on the negative role played by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which makes peace harder to achieve by inflating the number of Palestinian refugees and encouraging them to believe that Israel will one day disappear, presents a formula for Israeli-Palestinian peace based on the concept of “two states for two peoples,” and reframes the story of the Zionist movement as an inspiring drama that must not be portrayed as the outcome of the Holocaust, because such “Zionism denial” robs the Jewish people of their role in reviving their ancient homeland in the decades before World War II.

With much of the battle being fought in the media and via social media, any list of books about Israel has to include Wilf’s contribution, which offers a clear understanding of the issues at the core of the conflict.

Micah Goodman — Catch 67: The Left, The Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War

It’s well-known that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes opinions around the globe. Less well-known is that the conflict actually polarizes opinions in Israel, too. Although Israel’s leftist camp has shrunk over the years, it remains passionately dedicated to the belief that it is incumbent upon Israel to force end the stalemate with the Palestinians in a bid to forge piece. In the opposing corner are those who believe that peace can only be reached when the Palestinians show a willingness to accept Israel. However good the arguments each side may make, they repeatedly miss each other’s virtues – and the distance and the distrust between the two sides grows.

Realizing the rut that the discourse has been stuck in, popular Israeli philosopher Micah Goodman proposes a healthier mode of conversation in order to promote more reasonable, moderate thinking: Instead of seeing things in absolute terms – peace or no peace, occupation or no occupation, peace or security – Goodman offers an alternative conception: seeing things in terms of more or less. More peace or less peace. More violence or less violence.

The resulting conversation, he posits, empowers the middle ground and advances the interests of both peace and security. In his own words, the models would “shrink the amount of occupation without dramatically shrinking the amount of security for Israelis.”

No matter your opinions on the conflict, Catch 67 is a refreshing take on Israeli society and the conversation it has with itself – with both security and peace very much at the forefront of the national interest.

Gil Troy — The Zionist Ideas

No collection of books about Israel is complete without one delving into the very meaning of the term ‘Zionist’. Faced with a world in which the word means many things to many people, some of whom are insistent that their definition is the right one, American-Israeli historian and Jerusalem Post columnist Gil Troy sets out to explore the full stories of over 170 passionate Jewish leaders, thinkers and activists spanning a period beginning in the 1800s and taking reader right up till the modern day.

Far from offering a single vision, Troy shows how the figures possessed a surprisingly diverse array of plans, beliefs and perspectives for realizing Israel as a democratic Jewish state.

Troy divides the thinkers into six Zionist schools of thought—Political, Revisionist, Labor, Religious, Cultural, and Diaspora Zionism—and reveals the breadth of the debate and surprising syntheses. He also presents the visionaries within three major stages of Zionist development, demonstrating the length and evolution of the conversation. From the pioneers: Herzl; Gordon; Jabotinsky; Kook; Ha’am; and Szold; through to the builders to who saw the dream realized, including Ben-Gurion; Berlin; Meir; Begin; Soloveitchik; and Kaplan, all the way to the modern torch-bearers, such as Barak, Grossman, Shaked, Lau, Yehoshua, and Sacks.

Troy offers readers a veritable mosaic of voices, and serves as reminder of just invigorating the Zionist conversation has always been, with plenty of room to discuss the moral, political and practical implications of Israel’s actions.

Yossi Klein Halevi — Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

There are books about Israel, and then there are books about Israelis. For those seeking to understand Israeli society better, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is a wonderful starting point. It confides with readers, sharing the deepest fears of Israelis. It confesses, admitting to needless wrongs. And it philosophizes, seeking to map a path out of the violence that grips the region, inviting people across the divide to join Israelis in their “spiritual home, in the hope that one day we will be able to welcome each other into our physical homes.”

As one reviewer succinctly put it, “The Palestinian national movement denies Israel’s legitimacy, and Israel in turn denies the Palestinians’ national sovereignty.. [Klein Halevi] insists on accommodating both.”

Through his series of letters, Klein Halevi attempts to directly address Israel’s neighbors and share the perspective of Israelis, relaying the emotions, concerns, choices and needs of millions of his compatriots.

His aim: To win, not a battle, but empathy.

Related Reading: Top 10 Israel History Books

Matti Friedman — Spies of No Country

From books about Israel, to a book about about those who took incredible risks for a country that did not yet even exist. Journalist and award-winning author Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies reads like an espionage novel–but it’s all true. The four agents at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage operations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities.

In 1948, with Israel’s existence hanging in the balance, these men went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a newsstand, collecting intelligence and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end, the Arab Section would emerge as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.

Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these young spies, but it’s also about the complicated identity of Israel, a country that presents itself as Western but in fact has more citizens with Middle Eastern roots and traditions, like the spies of this narrative. Meticulously researched and masterfully told, Spies of No Country is an eye-opening look at the paradoxes of the Middle East.

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