"In Goliath, New York Times bestselling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens. Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's war on Gaza in 2008-09, which brought into power the country's most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process. As Blumenthal reveals, Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like Avigdor Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu are sacrificing democracy on the altar of their power politics; where the loyal opposition largely and passively stands aside and watches the organized assault on civil liberties; where state-funded Orthodox rabbis publish books that provide instructions on how and when to kill Gentiles; where half of Jewish youth declare their refusal to sit in a classroom with an Arab; and where mob violence targets Palestinians and African asylum seekers scapegoated by leading government officials as "demographic threats." Immersing himself like few other journalists inside the world of hardline political leaders and movements, Blumenthal interviews the demagogues and divas in their homes, in the Knesset, and in the watering holes where their young acolytes hang out, and speaks with those political leaders behind the organized assault on civil liberties. As his journey deepens, he painstakingly reports on the occupied Palestinians challenging schemes of demographic separation through unarmed protest. He talks at length to the leaders and youth of Palestinian society inside Israel now targeted by security service dragnets and legislation suppressing their speech, and provides in-depth reporting on the small band of Jewish Israeli dissidents who have shaken off a conformist mindset that permeates the media, schools, and the military. Through his far-ranging travels, Blumenthal illuminates the present by uncovering the ghosts of the past-the histories of Palestinian neighborhoods and villages now gone and forgotten; how that history has set the stage for the current crisis of Israeli society; and how the Holocaust has been turned into justification for occupation. A brave and unflinching account of the real facts on the ground, Goliath is an unprecedented and compelling work of journalism"--

The late-summer headlines of a landmark peace accord between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization stunned and delighted citizens of conscience from every walk of life and from all over the world. Here, at last, were the first glimmerings of harmony for a region whose bloody, intractable conflicts between Arab and Jew had outlived hot and cold wars alike to become an inescapable, insoluble fact of life in our modern age. Many men and women of peace and vision worked together to bring about this epoch-making accord, but none played a more prominent and crucial role than Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, and former Prime Minister, Shimon Peres. Using both behind-the-scenes statecraft and the very public platform of the international media, Peres has called for nothing less than a total transvaluation of our thinking about the future of the Middle East. Peace, he has argued eloquently, is the only alternative for Jews and Arabs poised on the verge of a new century, and a new millennium. Peace will come only as the result of compromise. Peace is the only way to prevent posterity from making the same terrible mistakes of preceding generations.In The New Middle East Peres offers a compelling vision of the future for his region. He sees a reconstructed Middle East, free of the conflicts that plagued it in the past, set to take its place in a new era - an era that will not tolerate backwardness or ignorance. He sees a social revival, and an economic revival as well - one fueled by the billions upon billions of dollars wasted for decades on defense. But crucially, he is not fixated only on what might be. He offers a no less cogent analysis of how peace can be achieved. He seeks nothing short of a historic new chapter between two peoples: to end a hundred years of hostility, and to begin a hundred years of peace and understanding. The New Middle East is a blueprint for the dawning of a new age. A visionary manifesto of current events no one can afford to ignore, it also may become one of the enduring political documents of our time.

In March 1983 a mass poisoning was reported in the girls' middle school of Arrabeh, a village near Jenin in the West Bank. The malaise recurred in the following weeks in Jenin, Hebron, and other towns in the West Bank. All the sufferers, mainly young Arab women, were hospitalized, but soon released. The toxic agent which allegedly caused the malaise was not found; Israeli authorities concluded that the attacks were caused by mass hysteria. Nonetheless, both local Palestinian authorities and the PLO leadership accused Israel of an attempt of mass poisoning, aiming to affect the women's reproductive system and thus to tamper with the natural growth of the Palestinian population. The accusation was taken up by the media, not only Arab but also in the West (French, British, German, etc.). Once the hoax became apparent, the whole affair disappeared from the media. Compares the "poisoning affair" to blood libels in the past. Raises questions regarding the strange credulity of the Western press, otherwise very cautious in presenting similar affairs in other countries, its anti-Israeli disposition, and its disproportionally great interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Contends that the media's incrimination of Israel is a manifestation of its latent antisemitism. Where the Arabs incriminate the Jews as a people, the Westerners, reluctant to look ethnophobic, incriminate the Jewish state. Includes many quotes from the press.