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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   917 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 10, 2025

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Any suggestions for books to learn more about the modern conflicts in Israel, especially wrt Gaza? I figure that requires some amount of covering history, but my actual objective is to be able to understand the modern state of affairs, rather than to understand history for its own sake. Maybe 2-3 suggestions, to capture a range of political viewpoints.

Podcasts/blogs would be OK too, but I'd rather books.

For bonus points, please describe the political viewpoint of the book (left/right, or pro/anti Israel, etc)

I read Enemies and Neighbours by Ian Black last year and found it expansive and informative. A mild pro-Palestinian bias becomes more apparent towards the end of the book, and the fact it only goes up to 2017 (when it was published) means it is now 8 years out of date, are drawbacks but I found it to be an engaging, relatively balanced and detailed account of how modern Gaza became the mess it is now.

The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt was published in 2007 and blew up the polisci academic space, it was the first book to openly address the odd relationship Israel has with the US (and the groups which make it possible). I think it gives a pretty good cross section of US-Israel relations as they were in 2007 and previously and is a great help explaining many of the current institutions/habits that have been placed under a great deal of stress since Oct. 7. While groups the like ADL have smeared it as antisemetic, it very much is not, it's not some conspiratorial "expose" but an academic investigation (one of the authors is a jew, too). Not very much emphasis wrt Gaza but they authors spend some time on Palestine.

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