The most amazing Jewish story of Gallipoli and the ANZAC Light Horsemen ever published in Australia. John Henry Patterson (1867-1947) was a non-Jewish British army officer who sought to help the Jews to create a Jewish state in Palestine. He was involved with such major figures as Vladimir Jabotinsky and Trumpledor. Jabotinsky and Patterson also believed that Jews, within the boundaries of a Jewish state in Palestine, would treat peaceful minorities with much more compassion and tolerance than they themselves would be treated if they attempted to be the peaceful minority.
In this first-ever biography of Colonel John Patterson, Denis Brian reveals his subject to be a diverse composite of identities. An Irishborn soldier, lion hunter, bridge builder, East African game warden, author, and Zionist, Patterson’s life is a fascinating story, and Brian’s well-researched account gives a revealing look into the ebb and flow of circumstances that produced such a colorful character. Brian begins the narrative with Patterson’s assignment in East Africa,where lion attacks are terrorizing workers on a railroad project. With a storyteller’s breathtaking tone, he details accounts of Patterson quelling the rebellion and killing the lions himself. The colonel’s indomitable energy and courage become a consistent theme in the book as the author traces Patterson’s life from his days as a British socialite to his recruitment of the Jewish Legion of volunteers who helped drive the Turks out of Palestine. Patterson spent most of his later years as an ardent Zionist,working for the creation of a Jewish homeland until his death in 1947, a year before the birth of the state of Israel. Drawing on an impressive range of sources, Brian’s biography of this “Righteous Gentile” is an incisive portrait of a key figure in both Israeli and colonial British history.
'Richard North Patterson has outdone himself - Exile is his best novel yet.' Bill Clinton From one of America's most compelling novelists comes the mesmerising story of a lawyer who must defend the woman he loves against a charge of conspiring to assassinate a prime minister. David Wolfe's life is approaching an exhilarating peak: he's a successful San Francisco lawyer, he's about to get married, and he's being primed for a run for Congress. But when the phone rings and he hears the voice of Hana Arif - the woman with whom he had a secret affair in law school -he begins a completely unexpected journey. The next day, the prime minister of Israel is assassinated by a suicide bomber while visiting San Francisco; soon, Hana herself is accused of being the mastermind behind the murder. Hana may well be guilty but David cannot turn away the one woman he can never forget... Culminating in a tense and startling trial with international ramifications, Exile is that rare novel that both entertains and enlightens. At once an intricate tale of betrayal and deception, a moving love story, and a fascinating journey into the lethal politics of the Middle East, this is Richard North Patterson at his most brilliant and engrossing.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first definitive history of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the IDF’s targeted killing programs, hailed by The New York Times as “an exceptional work, a humane book about an incendiary subject.” WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN HISTORY NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY JENNIFER SZALAI, THE NEW YORK TIMES NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist • The New York Times Book Review • BBC History Magazine • Mother Jones • Kirkus Reviews The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions. Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism). Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the entire world. “A remarkable feat of fearless and responsible reporting . . . important, timely, and informative.”—John le Carré
The role of religion in a democratic society Best Book award given by the Israel Political Science Association Since the 1980s, relationships between secular and religious Israelis have gone from bad to worse. What was formerly a politics of accommodation, one whose main objective was the avoidance of strife through "arrangements" and compromises, has become a winner-take-all, zero-sum game. The conflict is not over who gets what. Rather, it is a conflict over the very character of the polity, a struggle to define Israel's collective character. In Israel and the Politics of Jewish Identity Asher Cohen and Bernard Susser show how this transformation has been caused by structural changes in Israel's public sphere. Surveying many different levels of public life, they explore the change of Israel's politics from a dominant-party system to a balanced two-camp system. They trace the rise of the Haredi parties and the growing consonance of religiosity with right-wing politics. Other topics include the new Basic Laws on Freedom, Dignity, and Occupation; the effects of massive immigration of secular Jews from the former Soviet Union; the greater emphasis on liberal "good government"; and the rise of an aggressive investigative press and electronic media.
The formation of a Battalion of Jews for service in the British Army is an event without precedent in our annals, and the part played by such a unique unit is assured of a niche in history owing to the fact that it fought in Palestine, not only for the British cause, but also for the Restoration of the Jewish people to the Promised Land. In writing the following narrative, my object has been to give a faithful account of the doings of this Jewish Battalion while it was under my command. I am much indebted to Captain H. Davis, the Rev. L. A. Falk, Mr. Bendov of Jerusalem, and Canon Parfit for permission to reproduce the photographs illustrating this book, which add considerably to its interest. J. H. P. London, 1922. The Jewish Legion (1917-1921) is an unofficial name used to refer to five battalions of Jewish volunteers, the 38th to 42nd (Service) Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, raised in the British Army to fight against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
"Shoah and Torah systematically takes up the task of reading the Shoah through the lens of the Torah and the Torah through the lens of the Shoah. The investigation rests upon (1) the metaphysical standing that the Nazis ascribed to the Torah, (2) the obliteration of the Torah in the extermination of the Jews, (3) the significance of the Torah for an understanding of the Shoah, and (4) the significance of the Shoah in for an understanding of the Torah. The basis for the inquiry lies not the content of a certain belief but the categories of a certain mode of thought. Distinct from all other studies, this book is grounded in the categories of Jewish thought and Judaism-the categories of creation, revelation, and redemption-that the Nazis sought to obliterate in the Shoah. Thus the investigation is itself a response to the Nazi project of the extermination of the Jews and the millennial testimony of the Jews to the Torah"--
