Six Days of War - Michael B. Oren 4/5

[Nicole D.]

I've been to Israel a couple of times, and am going again next week. I'm always a bit fuzzy headed about the Israel/Palestine/Jordan/Syria situation (with good reason) so I thought I'd give this a go. When you stand if front of the Zion gate, and see it riddled with bullet holes, it's good to have the appropriate level of context.

This book is something my highly intellectual son chose, and it was COM.PRE.HEN.SIVE. I did the audio so I drifted a lot, and I spoke to him about it a lot and he helped me to further understand.

Relationship status: It's complicated.

I don't mean to be glib, this is serious life and death stuff. What's crazy to me is that little has changed in the 50 something years since this war. My tour guide in Jordan said that Israel and Jordan have a "difficult peace" which is better than a "good war." Golan Heights (contested then, contested now) was appointed to Israel via Trump's magic Sharpie. Palestine still has world leaders trying to draw (most recently "swiss cheese") maps of what they can consider theirs, but not as a nation ... It's nuts, and it's a situation where its easy to see "all sides."

The Jews deserved their place - did they deserve THAT place? I don't know. The Palestinians deserves theirs. Jordan deserves water and who really rightfully owns the Golan Heights? This book didn't clear any of that up.

The author of this book has many critics because he is a strong supporter of Israel. I saw a bit of their hero worship of Ben Gurion and I concede the book had a pro-Israeli bent. Like, at one point I asked my son ... so is Zionism bad? For me, though, I got a good overview even though a lot went over my head.

There are no easy answers for this area of the world. Everybody deserves their place, but nobody is willing to concede. This will be my 4th trip to the Middle East and every time it's fraught - but there is no place like it on the planet.

(Been reading this for months, so not eligible for tags or PBT)

[Theresa]

What's crazy to me is that little has changed in the 50 something years since this war

I hazard to say nothing has really changed since the birth of the modern Middle East 100 years ago.

2018 was a year I ended up reading quite a bit about the Middle East from an historical perspective. It started with the incredible Gertrude Bell in Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by biographer and historian Janet Wallach, and included A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal by journalist Åsne Seierstad, To Keep the Sun Alive by documentary filmmaker Rabeah Ghaffari, and The Gates of Damascus by journalist Lieve Joris. All women authors, you will notice, and I highly recommend them all. They are all page turners.

My ultimate conclusions are:
▪the enmities in the Middle East have ancient roots
▪change happens at a glacial pace, if at all
▪western concepts of governance may never work
▪access to oil keeps the West interfering.

BTW, the thriller The Eight by Katherine Neville taught me in a side plot about the rise of OPEC which also plays a role today of course.

[Amy]

By the way, I loved the Eight by Katherine Neville, Theresa! It actually has a sequel which I didn’t know about until many years later. That’s a duo I would like to read twice.

Yes the Middle East is quite fraught. And more opinions than there are truth. Israel is the place the term fake news bega, and its interesting that is at the heart of our current dramas. Easy to say that who ever we read is biased. Glad you are going yet again to check out the inherent beauty of the country. I will be there in October.

[Theresa]

Amy wrote: "By the way, I loved the Eight by Katherine Neville, Theresa! It actually has a sequel which I didn’t know about until many years later. That’s a duo I would like to read twice.

Yes the Middle Eas..."

I have the sequel in my TBR! Loved the first!