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In its entirety the story told here spans all of recorded history. It is a story of momentous events and mighty nations, of the birth of great religions and of foreign conquests, of longing and renewal. The scholars who have produced this work have woven an engrossing, continuous narrative out of the historical materials, presenting a rich array of peoples and cultures, from the ancient Hebrews and their neighbors down to the time of Jesus and the Roman wars and then on through the Arab and Crusader conquests, the Mameluk domination, the long period of Turkish rule, British Mandate, and the rebirth of Israel. An integral part of the story is the magnificent selection of photographs illustrating the land, its sites, its ruins, and its treasures. This expanded millennium edition of A History of Israel and the Holy Land takes the story into the twenty-first century with a new and comprehensive survey of the State of Israel from its establishment to the present day. The new material includes a review of political, economic, and social developments in Israel and summaries of the country's wars and the peace process.>
What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Holy Land covers the 3,000 years which saw the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--and relates the familiar stories of the sacred texts with the fruits of modern scholarship. Beginning with the origins of the people who became the Israel of the Bible, it follows the course of the ensuing millennia down to the time when the Ottoman Empire succumbed to British and French rule at the end of the First World War. Parts of the story, especially as known from the Bible, will be widely familiar. Less familiar are the ways in which modern research, both from archaeology and from other ancient sources, sometimes modify this story historically. Better understanding, however, enables us to appreciate crucial chapters in the story of the Holy Land, such as how and why Judaism developed in the way that it did from the earlier sovereign states of Israel and Judah and the historical circumstances in which Christianity emerged from its Jewish cradle. Later parts of the story are vital not only for the history of Islam and its relationships with the two older religions, but also for the development of pilgrimage and religious tourism, as well as the notions of sacred space and of holy books with which we are still familiar today. Sensitive to the concerns of those for whom the sacred books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are of paramount religious authority, the authors all try sympathetically to show how historical information from other sources, as well as scholarly study of the texts themselves, enriches our understanding of the history of the region and its prominent position in the world's cultural and intellectual history.
A scathing and brilliant revisionist history, Defending the Holy Land is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Israel's national security and foreign policy, from the inception of the State of Israel to the present. Book jacket.
Israel has one of the most extensive and highly developed hiking trail systems of any country in the world. Millions of hikers use the trails every year during holiday breaks, on mandatory school trips, and for recreational hikes. Walking the Land offers the first scholarly exploration of this unique trail system. Featuring more than ten thousand kilometers of trails, marked with hundreds of thousands of colored blazes, the trail system crisscrosses Israeli-controlled territory, from the country's farthest borders to its densest metropolitan areas. The thousand-kilometer Israel National Trail crosses the country from north to south. Hiking, trails, and the ubiquitous three-striped trail blazes appear everywhere in Israeli popular culture; they are the subjects of news articles, radio programs, television shows, best-selling novels, government debates, and even national security speeches. Yet the trail system is almost completely unknown to the millions of foreign tourists who visit every year and has been largely unstudied by scholars of Israel. Walking the Land explores the many ways that Israel's hiking trails are significant to its history, national identity, and conservation efforts.
“A compelling tale of how this spiritually and politically charged area of the globe has long been a place of pivotal battles” (Library Journal). Today’s Arab-Israeli conflict is merely the latest iteration of an unending history of violence in the Holy Land—a region that is unsurpassed as witness to a kaleidoscopic military history involving forces from across the world and throughout the millennia. Holy Wars describes three thousand years of war in the Holy Land with the unique approach of focusing on pivotal battles or campaigns, beginning with the Israelites’ capture of Jericho and ending with Israel’s last full-fledged assault against Lebanon. Its chapters stop along the way to examine key battles fought by the Philistines, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, and Mamluks—the latter clash, at Ayn Jalut, comprising the first time the Mongols suffered a decisive defeat. The modern era saw the rise of the Ottomans and an incursion by Napoleon, who only found bloody stalemate outside the walls of Akko. The Holy Land became a battlefield again in World War I when the British fought the Turks. The nation of Israel was forged in conflict during its 1948 War of Independence, and subsequently found itself in desperate combat, often against great odds, in 1956 and 1967, and again in 1973, when it was surprised by a massive two-pronged assault. By focusing on the climax of each conflict, while carefully setting each stage, Holy Wars examines an extraordinary breadth of military history—spanning in one volume the evolution of warfare over the centuries, as well as the enduring status of the Holy Land as a battleground.