Intensive Arabic Semester

The following books are suggestions from former Intensive Arabic Semester students and from the teachers. These books cover topics like Israeli History, Jewish History, Zionism, Islam, Arab culture, conflict resolution, human rights, and much more. They are meant to represent a variety of opinions and perspectives and no one point of view is endorsed by the program. You can read about these books on the Internet or find them in a bookstore and decide for yourself which ones you would like to read. They are listed below in alphabetical order.

Also below is a list of official documents that are relevant.

• 1948: A History of the first Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris
• A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji Al-Ali by Naji Al-Ali
• A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
• A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel by Walter Laqueur
• A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin
• A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
• A Wall in Palestine by Rene Backmann
• Arabic Throught in the Liberal Age, 1789-1939 by Albert Hourani
• Britain’s First Muslims: Portrait of a Community by Fred Halliday
• Burned Alive: A Victim of the Law of Men by Souad
• Commanding Syria: Bashar al-Asad and the First Years in Power by Eyal Zisser
• Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel by Joe Sacco
• From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust by Meir Litvak and Esther Webman
• Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide, Second Edition by Khaled Hroub
• History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time by Howard Morley Sachar
• I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali
• In Ishmael's House by Martin Gilbert
• Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Intrnational Intervention in Local Conflicts: Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution Since the Cold War by Uzi Rabi
• Iran Between Two Revolutions by Ervand Abrahamian
• Iraq Between Occupations: Perspectives from 1920 to the Present by Amatzia Baram, Achim Rohde, and Ronen Zeidel
• Islam and Dhimmitude:  Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Ye'or
• Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Kemalism, Religion, and the Nation State by Umut Azak
• Israel by Martin Gilbert
• Israel/Palestine by Alan Dowty
• Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor of Jordan
• Married to a Bedouin by Marguerite van Geldermalsen
• Mawlna Mawdude and Political Islam: Authroity and the Islamic by Roy Jackson
• Middle East Monarchies, the Challenge of Modernity by Joseph Kostiner
• Nino’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War by Cynthia Enloe
• Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh
• One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict by Benny Morris
• Orientalism by Edward Said
• Palestine by Joe Sacco
• Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation by Saree Makdisi
• Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter
• Palestinian and Israeli Public Opinion: The Public Imperative in the Second Intifada by Jacob Shamir and Khalil Shikaki
• Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia by Steffen Hertog
• Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2011 by Benny Morris
• Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren
  
• Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef
• Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle by Dan Senor and Saul Singer
• The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz
• The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam by Bat Ye’or and David Maisel
• The Gift of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way a People Think and Feel by Thomas Cahill
• The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World by Avi Shlaim
• The Israel Test by George Guilder
• The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land by Donna Rosenthal
• The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl
• The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus
• The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Andrew Bostom
• The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
• The Maghrib in the New Century: Identity, Religion, and Politics by Bruce Maddy-Weitzmann and Daniel Zisenwine
• The Middle East by Bernard Lewis
• The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach by Dale F Eickelman
• The Missing Peace by Dennis Ross
• The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish-Arab Divide by Susan Nathan
• The Palestine-Israeli Conflict, 3rd Edition: A Beginner’s Guide by Dan Cohn-Sherbok
• The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Martin Gilbert
• The Shift: Israel-Palestine From Border Struggle to Ethnic Conflict by Menachem Klein
• We Can Have Pace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work by Jimmy Carter

Relevant Official Documents

• UN Resolution 181 (Partition Plan)
• UN Resolution 242 (after Six Day War)
• Israel Declaration of Independence
• Israeli Law of Return (1950)
• Palestine National Charter
• Hamas Covenant