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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2212 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)

These two lectures by Haviv Rettig Gur for Shalem College are an excellent primer on Israeli-Palestinian relations, one each from the Jewish and Palestinian perspectives respectively (note that both Gur and Shalem College are very much Zionist, not just Jewish).

Israelis: The Jews Who Lived Through History

The Great Misinterpretation: How Palestinians View Israel

It's very much a historical series, talking about the Aliyah in it's first stages during the Ottoman Empire and the interwar period, along with the experiences of the European/American Jewry (and the contrast that extends to today in their responses to Palestinian nationalism)

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