Book Reviews

A Little Piece of Ground

A Little Piece of Ground
By Elizabeth Laird
Haymarket Press, 2016

A story of the Second Intifada that demonizes and dehumanizes Israelis has no place in education. Yet that is exactly what Elizabeth Laird’s A Little Piece of Ground, now required reading in Newark public schools, does.

A Promised Land: Obama’s Memoirs Malign Israel

A Promised Land
By Barack Obama
Crown Publishing, 2020

The first volume of the 44th American president's memoirs are filled with errors and omissions about Israel. And, as CAMERA's book review shows, they are all one-sided. Worse still, Obama even minimizes Palestinian terrorism.

A State At Any Cost: Ben-Gurion, Distorted

A State At Any Cost: The Life of Ben Gurion
By Tom Segev
Macmillan, 2019

Tom Segev's recent biography of Israeli premier David Ben-Gurion is well-written, but deeply flawed. Instead of letting the facts dictate the narrative, the revisionist historian does the precise opposite.

Arab Voices: James Zogby Supports One Message Only

Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters
By James Zogby
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Arab Voices, ignores those that urge Jihad and neglects what some Arabs say in Arabic about non-Arabs.

Arafat’s War: Palestinian Policy Through the Oslo Years

Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest
By Efraim Karsh
Grove Press, 2003

A riveting and invaluable new book that offers the first comprehensive account of Palestinian policy through the Oslo years.

Can The Whole World Be Wrong?

Can The Whole World Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad
By Richard Landes
Academic Studies Press, 2022

A new book explores how and why advocacy journalism replaced empirically-based reporting as the dominant media template in covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Code Name: Butterfly

Code Name: Butterfly
By Ahlam Bsharat; Nancy Roberts (translator)
Neem Tree Press, 2016

The Palestinian education system is notorious for labeling terrorists as martyrs, inverting reality and upending morality. Children’s books that do the same don’t belong in the hands of young readers.

Determined to Stay: Propaganda in the Guise of Non-Fiction for Teens

Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village
By Jody Sokolower
Northampton, MA:  Olive Branch Press (an imprint of Interlink Publishing), 2021

Israel’s enemies are finding ways to infiltrate curriculum, using fashionable buzzwords like “intersectionality” to camouflage hatred of Israel. Sokolower’s book exemplifies this deceptive practice.

How Israel Lost: Flippant Book by Former Reporter Aims Darts at Israel

How Israel Lost: The Four Questions
By Richard Ben Cramer
Simon & Schuster, 2004

Richard Ben Cramer's latest book disappoints on all counts. Far from changing the boundaries of discussion, it contains neither an original thesis nor trenchant argument. Instead, the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian situation are reduced to the hackneyed superficialities of Israel's detractors.

Palestine Peace not Apartheid: A Collection of Jimmy Carter’s Errors

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
By Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster, 2006

Jimmy Carter claims that "everything" in his new book is "completely accurate," and maintains (incorrectly) that the book's critics deal in straw-man accusations and ad hominem attacks. But many, if not most, of the facts on which his book's premise rests are demonstrably false.

Print to Fit: A 120-Year Exposé of the New York Times

Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016
By Jerold S. Auerbach
Academic Studies Press, 2019

Print to Fit is a must-read for anyone who wants to truly understand the anatomy of biased  journalism at one of the foremost media outlets – the so-called “newspaper of record.”

The Invention of the Jewish People: Shlomo Sand Reinvents History

The Invention of the Jewish People
By Shlomo Sand, Translated by Yael Lotan
Verso, London New York, 2009

When it comes to undermining the legitimacy of the Jewish state, there is no thesis too absurd to be published. "The Invention of the Jewish People" by Shlomo Sand who teaches French history at Tel Aviv University is one example.

The Story of the World: Volumes 1&4

The Story of the World: Volumes 1 and 4
By Susan Wise Bauer
Well-Trained Mind Press, 2006 and 2021

Volumes 1 and 4 of Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World include erroneous claims about Jewish inhabitation, the drawing of inappropriate analogies that obscure historical data, and omissions of crucial information surrounding Israel’s establishment.

The Trouble With Textbooks: Study Exposes the Bias in American Textbooks

The Trouble With Textbooks: Distorting History And Religion
By Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra
Lexington Books, Maryland, 2008

The book exposes historical, religious and social misrepresentations of propagandistic proportions by the K–12 school textbook publishing industry in the United States. It is essential reading for educators, students and parents alike.

To Whom Was The Promised Land Promised?

To Whom Was The Promised Land Promised?
By Abraham A. Sion
Mazo Publishers, 2020

The book is also an important read for anyone truly interested in understanding the conflict, including how the commitment to create a Jewish state came about, how the anticipated borders of such a prospective state evolved over the years, and what the respective rights were for Mandate Palestine’s Jews and Arabs under international law.

Wishing Upon the Same Stars

Wishing Upon the Same Stars
By Jacquetta Nammar Feldman
New York: HarperCollins, 2022.

Children’s books aiming at even-handedness on the Arab-Israeli conflict usually fail – as novels, because they’re didactic, and as political tracts, because they’re inaccurate. The books that do succeed are most often by Israelis, who write what they live and have no illusions.

Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews
By David L.. Bernstein
Wicked Son, 2022

Woke Antisemitism is a firsthand account from a top Jewish leader about how woke ideology shuts down discourse, corrupts Jewish values, and spawns a virulent new strain of antisemitism.