Noa Tishby

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Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby offers a chronological timeline of the region, explaining how we got to where we are. Ms. Tishby was a successful actress and entertainer; she is now an advocate against antisemitism and producer.

This 2021 book was both entertaining and informative, if anyone wants to understand the region from the Israeli perspective, it’s a good read. For me Israel by Noa Tishby was more of a review, I knew most of what the author presented, even though I do look at history from a more skeptical point of view.

One of the highlights of the book, for me, was how the BDS movement integrated itself into higher-education. This is something I didn’t know and that part was fascinating. Her question of “who’s paying for this” is an important one to ask, but it seems that there’s an overlap between BDS and Hamas leadership which should make everyone uncomfortable at the very least. I checked this and found the Congressional testimony from 2016 which Ms. Tishby refers to, as wells as a more recent one from 2023.

This book is biased, of course. But it’s not heavily biased and is simplistic by design. Many of Ms. Tishby’s points are spot on and she does a great job giving a high-level overview of major events in a timeline filled with them.

In an attempt to be unbiased, she acknowledges wrong done by Israel, but they’re quick and few. I wished she spent more time on those though since Israel is a divided country politically and self-reflection is important and would make her other points better.

I certainly think this book has value, is worth reading even if you disagree with every point she makes. The author includes a handy timeline at the end of the book, with major turning points that is interesting and gives a high-level historical overview.… (more)

Everyone should read ISRAEL by Noa Tishby. Most people NEED to read it. As her subtitle says, it's "a simple guide to the most misunderstood country on earth." I'm not Jewish, and I don't live in Israel.

Many times I've tried to read other history books or books pertaining to present-day countries in other parts of the world but gave up on them before I finished.They were like homework. Not ISRAEL. Every sentence interested me and kept my attention.

Rather than repeat what Tishby tries and succeeds in making clear, I'll say that ISRAEL is an easy-to-read book that corrects misunderstandings.

Read it. You may end up wanting to buy a copy for everyone you know.… (more)

I almost did not listen to this because the cover blurbs come from Bill Maher and Ben Shapiro - short of including Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity I cannot think of any media people whose opinion I less want to be in accord with. But I picked it up anyway, and started listening a couple days before fighting recommenced in the West Bank, and I can already see that this book immediately altered the way I perceive the news coming out of Israel.

This is spectacularly informative and very entertaining. This is truly necessary reading for anyone (read NOT JUST JEWS) who wants to understand Israel's history and present. Tishby is incredibly good at boiling 5000 years of history down to their essence (because the history is essential to understanding the present) and in focusing on the settlement of Israel and the establishment of the Jewish state. I felt like I had an inadequate but halfway decent understanding of all of this from reading, visits to Israel, and talking to Israeli friends, students, and colleagues (the program I run is associated with an Israeli university, and I work with a number of Israeli academics, though they are a collection of physicists, computer scientists and entrepreneurs rather than historians). I was wrong. There is so much super relevant information I was unaware of and my enlightenment helps me understand things I previously simply did not get. It also helps guide me in doing more reading. This book is a great gateway, its not the end of the inquiry.

I took away a half star because although Tishby is somewhat even-handed in her consideration of the many moving parts here this is not unbiased. She gives the current Israeli government, Hamas, the Haredi and BDS the drubbing they all deserve. That said, she glosses over some very legitimate concerns with respect to Arabs within Israel and the West Bank who are not Israeli citizens. She also sticks to the line that being anti-Zionist is intrinsically anti-semetic, and there are some good arguments on the other side of that coin she ignores. That said, this is Tishby's book, and it is her lens. This book is unabashedly Zionist, but not hidebound -- she sees and acknowledges a good deal of the injustice and spreads the blame among many players. That is fine and good. This is also not a simple screed, supporting a position, its a proper history lesson and logical analysis, and that is something the world, and especially the US, gets too little of when hearing and reading about Israel.… (more)