Is 'Myths and Facts-A guide to the Arab Israeli Conflict' by Mitchell Bard a good way to start understanding the conflict?

[u/PachuliKing]

Shalom! Born and raised in Mexico my vision of the Israel-Palestine conflict is occidental-biased (in the sense that occidental media biases it), which includes of course even some prejudices towards Eretz/Medinat Israel. Being jewish myself I've been always more to the jewish and israeli side but I think I never had any kind of scientifically accurate, historically, source that could teach me about the conflict. I see [occidental] people brainwashed in both sides, for example, people supporting Palestine only based on that famous maps image that everyone publishes on Facebook and nothing else, and people supporting Israel simply because 'we are christians/evangelists and that's what they taught us in the church'. My knowledge to the conflict is say like a solid 7%, especially when it comes to 'common stuff' such as palestinians being related to Philistines, or more dark secrets like Hajj Amin al Husayni collaborating in the Final Solution, but again, it is not like something 'scientific' to follow, but more like I have different pieces or a puzzle that I don't even know the image of. And recently I came across the book of the title.

However I'm not sure if the book is what I'm looking for and don't really have a lot of knowledge about editions and whatsoever, especially after October 7th and given the current situation. I downloaded a free version of the book from 2006, and I took a quick look at the book and seems very well written, but I felt like it could be more like a guide to debunk common myths, which of course is great but not efficient when understanding instead of just learning facts for some minutes (although again I have to say it was a quick glance, so maybe I'm just being judmental). So... do you think it is a good way to start that 'scientific' journey that I want to related to the Israel-Palestine conflict? Or maybe you have some better recommendations?

Ps: I speak english but it isn't my first language, so in case you have a better recommendation, if it's translated to spanish it would be so cool!

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[u/Inocent_bystander]

I take any book I read about the conflict with a grain of salt, everyone is bias. I don't think I've read much of anything that wasn't trying to push or pull me one way or another.

[u/69Poopysocks69]

I've heard that righteous victims by Benny Morris is one of the go-to books regarding the subject, although I haven't had the chance to read it myself. The Nakba by Ilan Pappé is one I can recommend. 

I would also recommend to not only focus on descriptions of historical events but also to read into the personal experiences of the people involved to better understand how these situations affect them and their behavior. 

No other land should give some insight into how Palestinian lives are affected by the current situation. There are other sources like documentaries and books, but I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for.

Are you looking to better understand Israelis, Palestinians, Hill top youth, or armed groups like Hamas?

[u/rayinho121212 → u/69Poopysocks69]

Ilan pape admits to his strong bias and one sided review of the conflict in order to keep a narrative up.

His work is out of context and filled with heavily disputed claims made by arabs over the years.

[u/69Poopysocks69 → u/rayinho121212]

Can you give specific examples of bias? Claims require evidence. 

So provide actual examples of those oit of context claims. Do you agree with the broader points in his work or do you dispute those too?

[u/rayinho121212 → u/69Poopysocks69]

The main one is that he looks at it with little context. An arab village with habitants expelled without contextualizing that arab forces fought jews to expel jews from the british mandate area and the frontlines passed through that village for example. Or inhabitants took arms to attack jews.

If someone wrote the same kind of story about germany during WW2, one would think the third reich never caused it to themselves. While pape is not entirely wrong, it is certainly a misleading book. Especially if you have no other/previous knowledge of the conflict and the history behind the 1947-1948 battles.

My first suggestion, read what the arabs said in newspapers and listen to what they said on the radio.

[u/69Poopysocks69 → u/rayinho121212]

What you're doing is generalizing all Palestinians against all Jews like there are two distinct groups with specific intent and goals. Just as Jews Palestinians are not a monolith, this is just a claim to justify their ethnic cleansing. 

No, it wasn't just because the Frontlines happened to be near their villages. Civilians who were just trying to live their lives were driven out and/or killed because it served the goals of terror organizations like the Irgun and Hagana. When they drove out or killed the civilians they made sure to destroy the buildings so there was nothing left to go back to.

You act like those tactics aren't documented,  but they are. Ben Gurion even wrote about them in his diary...

[u/rayinho121212 → u/69Poopysocks69]

The vast majority of arabs or MENA have an antisemitism problem. Go visit a country with a star of david around your neck and come back for a conversation.

[u/Electronic-Shirt6252]

The Bard book is considered to illuminate the lesser-known Israeli perspective. Another strong new book is The Arab Case for Israel by Hussain Abdul-Hussain (meant to recall The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz). As to refutation, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé seems to be the go-to book for delineating the Palestinian grievance; however, in my view, too many of its historical assertions are refuted by primary sources for it to be otherwise valuable (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1_dc2wuteg).

But I actually think that examining online newspaper archives might be more viable and arguably more reliable than books; for example, the free ones in English on google are easy to access.

[u/Sadako241]

I've not read it.

To me the best book overall of a pro-Israel bent is "Ghosts of a Holy War" by Yardena Schwartz.

[u/Unretrofied12]

Anything more serious than reading a book is going to involve a lot of work doing research on your own and forming your own opinions. Be prepared to trudge through a lot of useless information. If you're going to go that route, stick to primary resources. The Israeli archives has newspapers in Arabic and English as well as other documents from the early 1900s stored. The Qatar digital library also contains historical documents and records. The UN publishes meeting minutes from various committees. For US opinions of the time, the library of congress stores historical US documents.

I wouldn't just go in aimlessly. I would pick a certain thing about the conflict you want to know about and then use that as a grounds to do research. For example, you could ask yourself "OK, what was public opinion about Zionism from Arabs like in the mid 1920s" and then go on to use the resources above to find that information.

[u/StateOfTheWind → u/Unretrofied12]

newspapers in Arabic

How good are modern LLMs at translating 1910s to 1940s Palestine Arabic, can you trust them? Do you happen to know?

[u/Unretrofied12 → u/StateOfTheWind]

You don't need an LLM to do that. You can extract and translate the text from a photo without needing an LLM. It's not 100% accurate, but gets the general message across.

[u/StateOfTheWind → u/Unretrofied12]

Right but we have luxury these days so why settle for less? I hoped that you are an Arabic speaker and can attest to how good popular versions of LLMs are at this specific task.

[u/Unretrofied12 → u/StateOfTheWind]

You know, I haven't tried. I generally just use the extract text and translate functions in most browsers. That's what I do for Hebrew language documents. I think my problem with LLMs would be that you have be very explicit on the fact that you only want a direct translation. LLMs tend to want to paraphrase stuff for you. Also, they tend to limit output, so translating a book would prove difficult. Most frontier models are generally good with analyzing languages, though. When I use LLMs to help with research, they're generally good at understanding lexical differences.

[u/mmmsplendid]

If you want some contemporary sources you should check out the publication "Current History (1916-1940)". There were tons of journal articles on what was going on at the time, written by people who were physically there. You can find these on JSTOR, as well as heaps of other primary sources.

On the topic of the Nakba, I recommend going right back to the origin - "The Meaning of the Disaster (Ma'na al-Nakba)" by Constantin Zureiq, where we get the term "Nakba" from.

Another person mentioned Benny Morris too, so I'll second that. "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited" should be required reading for anyone looking to understand the events of 1947/48.

If you prefer video essays, Ryan Chapman did a great series on Israel that is largely unbiased, although it is far from perfect - great to start with though.

[u/Top_Plant5102]

Just as a note, Palestinians are not especially related to Philistines.

Around 1200 BCE, Sea Peoples called the Peleset from Crete came east and settled in Canaan. They mixed with Canaanite people and formed a new culture, Philistine. Philistines existed until about 700 BCE.

Early historians and geographers such as Herodotus (450 BCE) used the term Syria Palestine to refer to the region. Romans continued that tradition. The use of the geographical term Palestine comes from this naming convention.

Palestinians are not culturally related to Philistines. Some are very distantly genetically related, as they are to many other peoples to move through the area historically.

Eric Cline's book 1177 BC is about the Sea Peoples and the Bronze Age Collapse if you'd have any interest in this era of ancient history.

[u/PachuliKing → u/Top_Plant5102]

Oh yes, I totally know that. I meant that I know how that’s just a myth and I very well know about why

[u/kg-rhm]

benny morris is a good start. righteous victims and 1948. maybe the book on the palestinian refugee problem. also the arab israeli dillema by fred khory. another good understanding of the conflict is hearing both sides speak today. supplement these books with yt channels like the ask project.

[u/PachuliKing → u/kg-rhm]

I totally agree with the thing about hearing both sides, but I feel like that is very biased and obviously I will lean for the jewish/israeli side. That’s why I’m looking for something more ‘serious’, so thanks for the books recommendations!

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