Book Review: Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby

About:

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby offers a chronological timeline of the region, explaining how we got to where we are. Ms. Tishby was a successful actress and entertainer; she is now an advocate against antisemitism and producer.

• 352 pages
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press
  
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982144939

My rat­ing for Israel — 4
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Thoughts:

This 2021 book was both entertaining and informative, if anyone wants to understand the region from the Israeli perspective, it’s a good read. For me Israel by Noa Tishby was more of a review, I knew most of what the author presented, even though I do look at history from a more skeptical point of view.

One of the highlights of the book, for me, was how the BDS movement integrated itself into higher-education.  This is something I didn’t know and that part was fascinating. Her question of “who’s paying for this” is an important one to ask, but it seems that there’s an overlap between BDS and Hamas leadership which should make everyone uncomfortable at the very least. I checked this and found the Congressional testimony from 2016 which Ms. Tishby refers to, as wells as a more recent one from 2023.

This book is biased, of course. But it’s not heavily biased and is simplistic by design. Many of Ms. Tishby’s points are spot on and she does a great job giving a high-level overview of major events in a timeline filled with them.

In an attempt to be unbiased, she acknowledges wrong done by Israel, but they’re quick and few. I wished she spent more time on those though since Israel is a divided country politically and self-reflection is important and would make her other points better.

I certainly think this book has value, is worth reading even if you disagree with every point she makes. The author includes a handy timeline at the end of the book, with major turning points that is interesting and gives a high-level historical overview.

Rant:

One of the reasons I bought this book is because of the wave of antisemitism around the world, in the left side of the political aisle, and in educational institutions. I knew Jews were in trouble when I visited colleges with my kids in 2022 and almost all of them had either classes or lectures about the “Palestinian cause and …” African Americans/LGBTQ+/feminists, etc.
Unfortunately, my theory that this was all just antisemitism in disguise was proven correct.

Ms. Tishby talks about how antisemitism integrated itself into college curriculum over the past several decades. It does, as always, comes down to money and unfortunately those students who “learned” about the Middle East conflict missing context, history, and critical thinking tools will never get their money, or worse, their education back. As I pointed out above, the fact that BDS and terror organizations are closely related was public information since 2016, yet nothing was done and higher-education institutions embraced the organization’s agenda fully for… rea$on$.

Buy Israel from Amazon.com*
More Books by Noa Tishby*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I bought this book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account, the money is usually spent on books