Demystifying Israel: Revisiting Noa Tishby’s Witty and Informative Guide

View of Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 21, 2017. AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner

Commentary

The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted on the Gaza disengagement plan 20 years ago this month.

Initially intended to improve Israel’s security and reduce terrorism, the plan ultimately proved disastrous. Instead of fostering peace, it inadvertently allowed Hamas to consolidate power and radicalize the population. Following the complete withdrawal of Israeli communities and military, Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, using the territory as a base to launch increasing attacks against Israeli civilians. This escalation of terror culminated in the devastating Oct. 7, 2023, assault.

In 2021, Israeli actress, producer, and writer Noa Tishby penned what she referred to as a “simple guide” to her homeland. The author’s motivation in writing the book was her sense that Israel, alone among the world’s nations, was particularly misunderstood. This concern was compounded by Tishby’s belief that Israel was also the focus of far more attention and vitriol than any other nation, including several with far less impressive records on numerous fronts, from human rights to economic innovation.

Given the events of the past 17 months, Israel is now perhaps even less understood and more misrepresented. It is worth revisiting Tishby’s 2021 bestseller for a clear-eyed view of the situation in the region.

When it was published, the book was something of a sensation, receiving plaudits from several high-profile personalities including Bill Maher, film director Aaron Sorkin, and ex-Palestinian militant Mosab Hassan Yousef, as well as making it onto the New York Times bestseller list. Reading through “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth,” it quickly becomes evident why the book garnered such praise. Reviewers refer to its straightforward and accessible presentation, bringing much-needed context to a topic generally bogged down in half-truths and partisan misrepresentation.

One of the more endearing aspects of Tishby’s writing is her devotion to her country, though often conveyed with a degree of humour and even irreverence, that infuses a comic touch into a historically sombre story. Add to this her numerous references to her own family’s role in the founding and development of modern Israel, and her book takes on an intimacy that is both engaging and sympathetic.

But for all its charms, Tishby’s “Israel” is far from a “simple guide” to this vast subject. In terms of content, the book covers numerous themes with a surprising depth of insight and detail. Divided into three sections, it provides a historical survey of the Jewish homeland and Zionism, an account of the founding and growth of modern Israel, and a survey of the country’s current prospects and challenges in a blunt and uncompromising manner.

The first section offers up a primer on the ancient history of Israel and the Middle East, up to the 19th century with the founding of modern Zionism. She references the 13th century BCE Merneptah Stele—the earliest textual reference to Israel—to citations from Bennie Morris, one of modern Israel’s most renowned historians, and everything in between.

Tishby provides her reader with a comprehensive history of the region and the role the Jewish people played. She lists the various empires over the past 2,500 years that dominated, occupied, and despoiled the land between the Jordan and Mediterranean, including the Assyrians, Persians, Romans, and Turks, and is quick to emphasize that throughout history, only the Jewish people have ever laid sovereign claim to the land. In this regard, the history and memory, the indigeneity of the Jews to the land, and of Israel as a political entity, runs deep.

In terms of the area’s 20th century development, Tishby does an admirable job describing the often-fraught return of Jews to Palestine, both during the Ottoman and British occupations. She brings to light the economic and social status of the area prior to Israel’s founding, highlighting the relatively undeveloped character the land, mostly swamp, rock, or desert.

Importantly, she defies the label of Israel as a “settler colonial” state, pointing to the reality that the country is in fact a nation of diverse refugees with all the problems that status entails.

In the book’s second part, Tishby turns to the founding of Israel, complete with its litany of wars and invasions by its Arab neighbours. She provides an insightful and balanced account of what Palestinians refer to as “Nakba” (or catastrophe) that occurred during Israel’s War of Independence, when some 750,000 Arabs left, were encouraged to leave, fled, or were made to leave. Tishby makes the strong, legal case that none of this amounted to ethnic cleansing. She speaks to the sad status of the permanence of Palestinian refugees uniquely subject to the interminable dominion of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). And she traces the origins and impact of settlements in Judea and Samaria—that is, Jewish homes east of the Green Line—and their typically misunderstood relationship to the ongoing dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.

Finally, in the third section, Tishby speaks to contemporary controversies and misrepresentations concerning Israel, its domestic situation, and the generally unjust criticisms lobbed against it. She debunks the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), while highlighting Israel’s own deeply democratic society. And she defends Israel’s fundamentally egalitarian and open society, on everything from gay rights to Arab participation in national politics.

One of Tishby’s more interesting comparisons between Israel and other post-colonial nations focuses on Pakistan. Referring to comments from reformed Pakistani Islamist Maajid Nawaz, Tishby notes that, like Israel, Pakistan was founded as a homeland for persecuted Muslims in the Asian subcontinent within months of Israel’s founding. Also, Pakistan has experienced ongoing conflicts with minority religious groups, but unlike Israel, Pakistan is not the subject of calls for boycotts or divestment.

One criticism of the book may be that while Tishby does an admirable job of recounting Israel’s history and contemporary politics, she does not fully explain why the nation is the object of so much irrational scorn. Of course, such an explanation would require another book on its own, one that would consider the anti-Western and anti-colonialist narrative that has become the norm among many on the left. It would also require a consideration of how dangerous ideologies, including those not so remotely linked to the 20th century’s worst totalitarian excesses, have found a new home in Islamism, postmodernism, neo-feminism, and the proliferation of would-be critical theories.

Overall, Tishby’s book is a thorough and highly readable corrective to many of the falsehoods routinely circulated about Israel. It has all the more relevance in a post-Oct. 7 world. Its approachable style and witty appreciation for the subject matter make this an indispensable book for those seeking to gain a balanced perspective.

Collin May is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and the former chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. He is a lawyer and adjunct lecturer in Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.