Welcome to the We Believe in Israel reading list! This is your one-stop shop for all the reading material you could ever need on everything to do with Israel - its history, politics, culture, fiction, important figures and more.
Although as a pro-Israel movement we naturally have a stance on many of these issues, we also firmly believe that in producing this reading list we should be providing our supporters, and those with interest in this topic, a wide spectrum of ideas and perspectives. This should not be taken as an endorsement of any specific content included in any of these works. We have selected these books based on our belief that they are well-written, and will both improve and challenge your understanding of the issues. Enjoy!
Where to Start?
Anita Shapira (2015) Israel: A History. W&N.
Daniel Gordis (2017) Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn. Harper One.
Yossi Klein Halevi (2018) Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour. Harper.
Additional Reading
Ahron Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri, Israel and the Arabs: An Eyewitness account of War and Peace in the Middle East, New York: TV Books, (2000).
Akiva Eldar and Idith Zeltar (2006) Lords of the Land: The War over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007. Nation Books.
Alan Dershowitz (2004) The Case for Israel. John Wiley & Sons.
Ari Shavit (2013) My Promised Land. Spiegel and Grau.
Asher Arian (2005) Politics in Israel: The Second Republic. CQ Press
Avi Shlaim (2014) The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. Penguin.
Benny Morris (2008) 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Yale University Press.
Benny Morris (2001) Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict. Random House.
Benny Morris (2004) The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press.
Colin Shindler (2007) What Do Zionists Believe? London: Granta Books.
Dan Senor and Saul Singer (2011) Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. Twelve.
David Horowitz (2000) A Little Too Close to God: The Thrills and Panic of a Life in Israel. Knopf.
Dennis Ross (2015) Doomed to Succeed: The US-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Dennis Ross (2005) The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Dennis Ross and David Makovsky (2009) Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East. Viking.
Efraim Karsh (2011) Palestine Betrayed. Yale University Press.
Eliot Abrams (2013) Tested By Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Cambridge University Press.
Howard Sachar (2007) A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. Knopf.
Kirsten Schulze (2008) The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Pearson Education.
Mark Tessler (2009) A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Indiana University Press.
Martin Bunton (2013) The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Martin Gilbert (1998) Israel: A History. Doubleday.
Martin Gilbert (2008) The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Routledge.
Martin van Creveld (2010) The Land of Blood and Honey. Saint Martin’s Press Inc.
Micha Goodman (2018) Catch 67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War. Yale University Press.
Michael Oren (2015) Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. Random House
Michael Oren (2002) Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Oxford University Press.
Mosab Hassan Yousef (2011) Son of Hamas. Authentic.
Ronen Bergman (2018) Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. Random HouseSari Nusseibeh and Anthony David (2008) Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Picador.
Saul David (2016) Operation Thunderbolt: The Entebbe Raid. Hodder Paperbacks.
Shlomo Avineri (1981) The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York: Basic Books.
Stephen Spector (2006) Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. Oxford University Press.
Thomas Friedman (1995) From Beirut to Jerusalem. Harper Collins.
Shlomo Ben Ami (2007) Scars of War, Wounds of Peace. Oxford University Press.
Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin (2008) The Israel-Arab Reader: a Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. Penguin Books.
Yehuda Avner (2010) The Prime Ministers. The Toby Press.
Biographies:
Anita Shapira (2015) Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel. Yale University Press.
Anshel Pfeffer (2018) Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu. Basic Books.
Abba Eban (1992) Personal Witness: Israel Through My Eyes. Putnam Pub Group.
Amos Oz (2002) A Tale of Love and Darkness. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Daniel Gordis (2014) Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel’s Soul. Bravo Ltd.
David Landau (2014) Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon. Knopf.
Francine Klagsbrun (2017) Lioness: Golda Meir & the Nation of Israel. Schocken Books.
Hillel Halkin (2014) Jabotinsky: A Life. Yale University Press.
Itamar Rabinovich (2018) Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman. Yale University Press.
The Palestinian Perspective
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal (2003) The Palestinian People: A History. Harvard University Press.
Edward Said (2003) The Question of Palestine. Random House.
Ghada Karmi (2015) Return: A Palestinian Memoir. Verso Books.
Rashidi Khalidi (2010) Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. Columbia University Press.
Yezid Sayigh (1993) Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford University Press.
Fiction
Amos Oz (1968) My Michael. Am Oved.
David Grossman (2011) To the End of the Land. Vintage.
Etgar Keret (2015) The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories. Riverhead Books.
Leon Uris (1983) Exodus. Turtleback Books.
Matti Friedman (2016) Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story. Algonquin Books.
Shani Boianjiu (2012) The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid. Hogarth Press.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (2002) Only Yesterday: A Novel. Princeton University Press.