Interesting Books on the Middle East

Baruch Kimmerling, the late Israeli professor of sociology at the Hebrew University, was a complex and, on the surface, contradictory man. He loved Israel but criticized the occupation and the treatment of the Palestinians and was an early opponent of the war on Iraq.

He was able to penetrate to the heart of a text better than anyone I have ever met. This ability enabled him to read vast amounts of material and develop highly original interpretations.

Nowhere is this ability more evident than in his books about the crisis in the Middle East. These books go beyond propaganda, apologetics, and clichés and present insights that are both original and profound. If you have an interest in the Middle East, your knowledge will be deepened by reading his work.

I am proud to say that I helped him prepare the manuscript of Politicide. Although a stunningly brilliant man, he never mastered English and I untangled his sentence structure for him before he sent it to the publisher for real editing.