Books

A Forever War: Israel and Palestine achieves something quite extraordinary. At a time when passions run high and the Israel-Gaza war intensifies, so much coverage is based on prejudice, fear and ignorance. Colin Schindler, Professor of Jewish Studies at SOAS, presents a calm, scholarly and dispassionate view of the past and of what might lie ahead.

Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the Middle East has been thrown into conflict. Schindler reflects on the key questions: How did this state of affairs come about? Is it even possible to write an impartial account? Was the Balfour Declaration a disaster? Could all the conflict have been avoided? How is it that Israel itself is a divided nation and even other Arab nations treat the Palestinians so badly?

On both sides are the extremists – terrorists and Ultra-Orthodox Jews who are determined to seize land from Palestinians and dream of a new Jewish theocracy – but A Forever War strives for objectivity and asks how we can best approach the truth in a time of such complex division.