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PREVENTING PALESTINE

A POLITICAL HISTORY FROM CAMP DAVID TO OSLO

Anziska displays an admirable understanding of the Palestinian plight, and his fair and equitable treatment is laudable and...

A Middle East scholar explains the workings of Israel, Egypt, and the United States in making sure that Palestine would never become a state.

Devoting most of the book to the Camp David Accords of 1978, Anziska (Jewish-Muslim Relations/Univ. Coll. London) closely examines the motivations of and dealings among Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, and Jimmy Carter. Sadat had no real interest in establishing a Palestinian state; he only wanted to remove the settlements and regain the ground lost in the Six-Day War. Begin wanted to secure the West Bank and Gaza by increasing the size and number of settlements. In no way would he countenance a Palestinian homeland or any form of sovereignty. What he offered was “autonomy” of Palestinians for five years and Israeli citizenship, after which Israel would assume sovereignty. Another deal-breaker was Israel’s demand that Palestine accept U.N. Resolution 242, which called for the return of territories in exchange for the Arab world’s recognition of Israel and settlement for the refugee problem. The loose term “territories” was interpreted by Israel to not include the West Bank or Gaza. The “refugee problem” didn’t include the 700,000 Palestinians who fled after the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948. Palestinians’ objection to Resolution 242 involved the danger of conceding recognition of Israel without a guarantee of sovereignty in return. The Palestinians were not included in any talks until Madrid in 1991, primarily due to violent actions and lack of unity. The Palestine Congress had voted to accept the resolution in 1988. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon was launched because of the provocation of an assassination attempt in London. Israel obtained permission from the Ronald Reagan administration for a minor incursion to protect the Maronite Christians in Lebanon. As the author amply demonstrates, that 1982 invasion, the American involvement and losses in Beirut, massacres in refugee camps, and the attacks on Syrian installations threatened peace in countless ways.

Anziska displays an admirable understanding of the Palestinian plight, and his fair and equitable treatment is laudable and encouraging.

Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-691-17739-7

Page Count: 440

Publisher: Princeton Univ.

Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Awards & Accolades

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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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