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My Israel Question Paperback – July 23, 2010
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Antony Loewenstein is a board member of Macquarie University’s Center for Middle East and North African Studies and cofounder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices. He has written for the Age, the Australian, Crikey, the Guardian, Haaretz, the Nation, New Matilda, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Washington Post. He is the author of The Blogging Revolution.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 27 people found the following review helpful
By
Robert M. Bram
on July 6, 2008
Format: Paperback
1 Comment
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Antony Loewenstein's book is essentially about his staunch opposition to the actions of Zionist lobby groups who are determined to portray all criticism of Israel and its policies as Anti-Semitism, in other words conflating the terms Zionism and Judaism. This is the central, and most powerful, message in this book. Antony Loewenstein shows that because of the concerted lobbying of media and politicians by Zionist lobby groups in Australia, the US and UK, it is very hard to have honest discussion on the conflict between Palestine and Isreal.
I found this book very hard to read, and not just because my usual fare is more in the way of fantasy and science fiction. I felt drawn to this book, but I didn't like reading it and often put it down. This book is a polemic, the seed of which is a conflict so ingrained that a resolution seems impossible. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories is an extremely divisive topic, and I am continually dismayed by stories of the unmitigated hatred that come out of this conflict every week. It is not unique; there are many other conflicts around the world that deliver stories of equally depressing portent, but this is the one I feel closest to, due to my name, my lineage: my own Israel Question.
This book has helped me understand what Zionism is, and how the relationship between Zionism and Judaism involves the longing for a home land - which is what the Palestinian people want too.
There are four main sections to this book, each of which show a different aspect of the same general theme. The first part outlines Antony's family upbringing and how his questioning of faith and politics affected his life.Read more ›
I found this book very hard to read, and not just because my usual fare is more in the way of fantasy and science fiction. I felt drawn to this book, but I didn't like reading it and often put it down. This book is a polemic, the seed of which is a conflict so ingrained that a resolution seems impossible. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories is an extremely divisive topic, and I am continually dismayed by stories of the unmitigated hatred that come out of this conflict every week. It is not unique; there are many other conflicts around the world that deliver stories of equally depressing portent, but this is the one I feel closest to, due to my name, my lineage: my own Israel Question.
This book has helped me understand what Zionism is, and how the relationship between Zionism and Judaism involves the longing for a home land - which is what the Palestinian people want too.
There are four main sections to this book, each of which show a different aspect of the same general theme. The first part outlines Antony's family upbringing and how his questioning of faith and politics affected his life.Read more ›
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20 of 34 people found the following review helpful
By
N
on November 21, 2007
Format: Paperback
3 Comments
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For over a year now I have been reading just about every book relating to Israel and the Middle-East that I can get my hands on. From revisionist historians like Benny Morris to old Historians such as Bernard Lewis; from vehement left-wing critics of Israel such as Chomsky and Said to staunch Zionist supporters like Dershowitz, I've tried to read as widely as I possibly could.
As I am currently living in Australia, I found the book to be informative and interesting in revealing the activities of pro-Israel Jewish lobbyists in Australia. However, that is where the merits of this book end. I especially found his defense of Hanan Ashrawi to be extremely unconvincing, since he fails to investigate her history adequately and simply uses quotes from her speeches to support his position. I would expect that someone writing a political text would be aware of the fact that what politicians say and what they do are usually radically different - as was attested by Yasser Arafat himself. Lowenstein's book is not a piece of objective scholarship. For example, he adopts the official PLO stance on the Camp David negotiations - that is, that Israel offered the Palestinians a state divided into Gaza, the Northern West Bank, the Central West Bank, and the Southern West Bank, while earlier in his book he cites Dennis Ross' "The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace", which in fact debunks that very same accusation. Another example is Lowenstein's dishonest accusation that there are "Jewish-only roads" in the West Bank, when in fact these are Israeli only roads, available to Israelis regardless of ethnicity or religion.Read more ›
As I am currently living in Australia, I found the book to be informative and interesting in revealing the activities of pro-Israel Jewish lobbyists in Australia. However, that is where the merits of this book end. I especially found his defense of Hanan Ashrawi to be extremely unconvincing, since he fails to investigate her history adequately and simply uses quotes from her speeches to support his position. I would expect that someone writing a political text would be aware of the fact that what politicians say and what they do are usually radically different - as was attested by Yasser Arafat himself. Lowenstein's book is not a piece of objective scholarship. For example, he adopts the official PLO stance on the Camp David negotiations - that is, that Israel offered the Palestinians a state divided into Gaza, the Northern West Bank, the Central West Bank, and the Southern West Bank, while earlier in his book he cites Dennis Ross' "The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace", which in fact debunks that very same accusation. Another example is Lowenstein's dishonest accusation that there are "Jewish-only roads" in the West Bank, when in fact these are Israeli only roads, available to Israelis regardless of ethnicity or religion.Read more ›
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9 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By
Shaun in Adelaide
on May 20, 2010
Format: Paperback
1 Comment
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I'm a rapacious reader of books on the Arab/Israeli conflict and so I picked this up when I saw a copy in a second hand bookshop earlier this year. I was aware of the controversy that followed this books release and so I had expected to find it challenging and engaging. It very quickly became clear that the author is way out of his depth and has spent almost no time in the region. I literally felt embarrased for him when reading error after error that no one who has lived there would make or which any decent editor should have picked up. There is no nuance or balance whatsoever and the author's views can be summed up as 'Jews bad/arabs good'. The myopic hyperbole was annoying, but the simply dull and sophmoric writing was quite unforgivable. If you want to find books that will feed your anti-Semitism, there are many other better options out there than this infantile effort.
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21 of 38 people found the following review helpful
By
geoffff
on May 18, 2007
Format: Paperback
2 Comments
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A very poor book indeed. Badly researched and one sided to the point of bigotry. Full of factual errors and a contempt for truth which would be difficult to find in the worst propaganda. A dishonest book very badly written. One wonders how it got published as it would not pass muster as an undergraduate honours thesis in any respectable university. There are many fine balanced books about this complex issue. Don't waste your time and money on this one.
It appears that there is now a whole industry of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, even antisemitic books and other media products written by people who make a point of claiming Jewish descent. Such people seem to have little difficulty in finding helpful and supportive publishers, irrespective of the quality or merit of their work, especially of course when the publisher is not under normal commercial constraints. This book is an example of this genre of Middle East "scholarship" and a product of this industry. The book's publisher is an Australian university press that has spent an enormous amount of time and money on editing and publicity to little effect. The publisher is of course funded by public money. It appears oblivious to the damage it does to its, and the university's, academic and intellectual reputation.
It seems that with some people, it is hate, not love, that is blind.
Loewenstein is not a journalist and it is dishonest for him to claim he is. He worked for a Sydney newspaper a number of years ago as a junior assistant on a blog but was soon fired.
It appears that there is now a whole industry of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, even antisemitic books and other media products written by people who make a point of claiming Jewish descent. Such people seem to have little difficulty in finding helpful and supportive publishers, irrespective of the quality or merit of their work, especially of course when the publisher is not under normal commercial constraints. This book is an example of this genre of Middle East "scholarship" and a product of this industry. The book's publisher is an Australian university press that has spent an enormous amount of time and money on editing and publicity to little effect. The publisher is of course funded by public money. It appears oblivious to the damage it does to its, and the university's, academic and intellectual reputation.
It seems that with some people, it is hate, not love, that is blind.
Loewenstein is not a journalist and it is dishonest for him to claim he is. He worked for a Sydney newspaper a number of years ago as a junior assistant on a blog but was soon fired.
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