Imperialist Rome employed a policy of colonization and confiscation of Jewish land, transferring it to foreigners who immigrated to the Land of Israel and settled there with the support of Roman governments. Jewish resistance to Roman policies in the Great Revolt (66-70) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135) was cruelly suppressed. Of a population of nearly 2.5 million Jews in the Land of Israel during the first century CE, only 800,000 or so remained by the end of Roman occupation in the fourth century CE. The Jewish majority in the Land of Israel was eliminated by war casualties, the sale of prisoners of war in Roman slave markets throughout the empire, and the flight of Jewish refugees. In response to the Jewish resistance to Roman policies, the Romans concentrated their attacks on elements central to the Jewish religion, destroying the temple in Jerusalem and passing decrees against circumcision and the study of the Torah. Renaming Judea as Syria-Palaestina aimed to remove any surviving connection to the Jewish nation. The Jewish minority in the Land of Israel continued to shrink during the centuries of Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, and Mamluk occupations. Jews preferred emigration over conversion.

Imperialist Rome employed a policy of colonization and confiscation of Jewish land, transferring it to foreigners who immigrated to the Land of Israel and settled there with the support of Roman governments. Jewish resistance to Roman policies in the Great Revolt (6670) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132135) was cruelly suppressed. Of a population of nearly 2.5 million Jews in the Land of Israel during the first century CE, only 800,000 or so remained by the end of Roman occupation in the fourth century CE. The Jewish majority in the Land of Israel was eliminated by war casualties, the sale of prisoners of war in Roman slave markets throughout the empire, and the flight of Jewish refugees. In response to the Jewish resistance to Roman policies, the Romans concentrated their attacks on elements central to the Jewish religion, destroying the temple in Jerusalem and passing decrees against circumcision and the study of the Torah. Renaming Judea as Syria-Palaestina aimed to remove any surviving connection to the Jewish nation. The Jewish minority in the Land of Israel continued to shrink during the centuries of Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, and Mamluk occupations. Jews preferred emigration over conversion.

The Case for Israel is an ardent defense of Israel's rights, supported by indisputable evidence. Presents a passionate look at what Israel's accusers and detractors are saying about this war-torn country. Dershowitz accuses those who attack Israel of international bigotry and backs up his argument with hard facts. Widely respected as a civil libertarian, legal educator, and defense attorney extraordinaire, Alan Dershowitz has also been a passionate though not uncritical supporter of Israel.

"Flawless . . . [Makdisi] reminds us of the critical declarations of secularism which existed in the history of the Middle East."—Robert Fisk, The Independent Today's headlines paint the Middle East as a collection of war-torn countries and extremist groups consumed by sectarian rage. Ussama Makdisi's Age of Coexistence reveals a hidden and hopeful story that counters this clichéd portrayal. It shows how a region rich with ethnic and religious diversity created a modern culture of coexistence amid Ottoman reformation, European colonialism, and the emergence of nationalism. Moving from the nineteenth century to the present, this groundbreaking book explores, without denial or equivocation, the politics of pluralism during the Ottoman Empire and in the post-Ottoman Arab world. Rather than judging the Arab world as a place of age-old sectarian animosities, Age of Coexistence describes the forging of a complex system of coexistence, what Makdisi calls the "ecumenical frame." He argues that new forms of antisectarian politics, and some of the most important examples of Muslim-Christian political collaboration, crystallized to make and define the modern Arab world. Despite massive challenges and setbacks, and despite the persistence of colonialism and authoritarianism, this framework for coexistence has endured for nearly a century. It is a reminder that religious diversity does not automatically lead to sectarianism. Instead, as Makdisi demonstrates, people of different faiths, but not necessarily of different political outlooks, have consistently tried to build modern societies that transcend religious and sectarian differences.

The goal of the Palestinian national movement, including the Palestinian Authority, is to rewrite the history of the Land of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs developed several agendas about the history of the country, one claiming that they are the ancient population of the country they call Falastin (Palestine) and the Jews have no historical claim on that country. Professor Shlomo Sand adopted one of their agendas and claims that the Romans never exiled the Jews 2,000 years ago and the Jews converted to Islam during the Arab-Muslim occupation of the country (640-1099). He concludes that the Palestinians are the descendants of these Jews and the country belongs to them. The historical facts, however, tell a different story... This volume brings historical and archeological research on the ethnic-religious composition of the population of the country from the Arab-Muslim occupation until World War I. The second volume will deal with the years 1918-1948 until the establishment of the State of Israel. This series aims to disprove the thesis that the Arabs in Israel are the ancient population of the country and prove that most of them are descendants of immigrants who came to the country from Arab and Muslim lands in small numbers during a slow process taking hundreds of years. Some were invited by the various occupation governments who wished to settle the unpopulated regions of the country. Between the end of the 19th century and the start of World War I in 1914 the immigration became greater due to the economic opportunities and employment created by the Zionist movement, Jewish investors, and Christian organizations. The economic development created much better opportunities compared with the situation in their home countries.

"The widely held assumption that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is a temporary situation and that the 'peace process' will soon bring an end to Israeli abuses has obscured the reality on the ground today of Israel's entrenched discriminatory rule over Palestinians. A single authority, the Israeli government, rules primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), made-up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Drawing on years of human rights documentation, case studies and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials and other sources, [this report] examines Israel's treatment of Palestinians and evaluates whether particular Israeli policies and practices in certain areas amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution."--Page 4 of cover.

A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.