Books by Raphael Israeli

The twenty percent Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel, which enjoys officially equal rights, refuses to recognize and accept the concept of a Jewish-Zionist state.Even though Israel is where Palestinians live, they strive to misuse Israeli democracy, allowing their representation of fifteen MK, or Members of Parliament, to subvert the legitimacy of the Israeli state and to totter it. This would allow them to create a bi-national Jewish-Arab country, where Arabs can veto anything Jewish or Zionist in its symbols or regime.But since the Jewish majority is adamant in maintaining the Jewish state, established more than seven decades ago, the Arabs who cannot reconcile their present situation will have to choose eventually between living in permanent friction and frustration, or restarting a new life in one of the surrounding 22 Arab or 57 Muslim countries where their likely adaptation would be much smoother and seamless.One major figurehead mentioned in the book is MK Ahmed Tibi, who despite being the darling of the liberal Israeli media, often adopts extremist anti-Israeli views and claims that Israel incites against his nation.(About the Author)Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 60 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.

Patchwork and Its Pitfalls: The Cost of Half-Way Solutions describes decision makers’ patchwork actions that occur due to hesitation and lack of firmness and determination.Under the pretext of “humanitarianism,” “saving lives,” or taking an otherwise wimpy action, they end up taking a cowardly action at the cost of human lives and much material damage.The costliest action often turns out to be the cheapest, but is seldom done, while the easiest and apparently cheapest action ends up being the most expensive in the aggregate.This book is important, because indecisive decision makers can emerge in all nations at all times.The author’s inspiration for writing this book: “When I watch politicians who repeatedly take cowardly decisions out of ‘human considerations’ and concern for lives and material preservations, but in fact end up wasting both.”(About the Author)Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 60 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.

Dangers are looming for Western civilizations due to the creeping invasion of Muslims, who are gradually diluting the West with their own beliefs as they end up taking over and dominating them. This danger is described very eloquently and frighteningly by French writer Michel Houellebecq in his best-selling novel Submission.This process also triggers a fundamental change in Western societies, so the old cultures of Europe, which are known, sought, and admired by outsiders, will practically disappear, replaced by an amalgam of ancient European tradition with a newly imposed Muslim faith, mores, and Sharia laws.Muslim tourists and immigrants to the West are gradually but firmly imposing their culture on a scared West, which has lost its will to fight and its capacity to defend itself because of political correctness and a reluctance to face the truth. This volume is the fourth in the Quartet on the Waning of Western Civilizations which also comprises: Retreating from the Mirage of Multi-Culturalism, Misnomers and Cultural Choices, and Suicidal Democracy published in 2018-19.(About the Author)Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.

Misnomers are often used in international politics to describe issues and situations that use common words, but carry different meanings. For example, tolerance, suicide bombers, women’s equality, and many other words are commonly used by Muslims to make us believe that these words mean the equivalent of the jargon we know, when in fact they cover up dark schemes that depart miles from conventional meanings.Tolerance means for us to accept others as they are without value/judgment. For Muslims, it means accepting others (often temporarily), despite their inherent inferiority, until converting or dominating them becomes feasible.Suicide bombers for us means terrorists who do not care for human life, and are prepared to kill themselves together with other targeted enemies. For Muslims, these bombers are holy martyrs who sacrifice themselves for the sake of Allah by killing enemies of Islam, and are assured the bliss of Paradise in the proximity of Allah.Women are diminished and relegated to a second-rate status in Islam. Women can be beaten and disciplined, while at the same time, equality and special concern is claimed for them. A wide array of examples and situations of Muslim misnomers are cited and elaborated in the book.Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.

The Odd Couple details the ups and downs in the tortuous relations between modern Turkey and Israel.The central actor in the book is Tayyip Erdogan, who came to power in Turkey in 2002-2003, determined to turn the clock back and return his country to its pre-Ataturk glory, when the Ottoman Dynasty reigned supreme and Islam was the dominant ideology holding the Empire together. To understand the aberrant relationship between the Jewish state of Israel and the Islamic state of Turkey, and the preponderant role of Tayyip Erdogan in its deterioration, one must dig into the Ottoman past, the historical attitudes of Turks to Jews, and the shift in Turkish policies that was effected by the transition from the modern Turkish civil governments up to 2002 to the vast changes that the Islamic parties of Erbakan and Erdogan have triggered thereafter. This is the story of how one man can alter relations between two countries. Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam. Born in Fes, Morocco, at fourteen, "I left my family when I could no longer bear the oppression of Jews in an Islamic country and moved to fledgling Israel. To this day, I consider that the wisest and most game-changing decision I took in my life."

The Middle East conflict, which has been raging for a century and seems to have no end in sight, is not over territory or other assets, but is historically anchored in the Islamic tradition, which has become the preponderant faith of the Arabs.Being a qualitative factor of an either-or import from the Muslim point of view, which is today best expressed by Iran, the Muslim Brothers, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical Muslim movements, it is not given to negotiation and compromise, as any other political conflict, but is governed by absolutes and one-sided perspectives.Arab nationalism, Islam, and Zionism are the main political and religious movements taking center stage in this conflict.The intractable nature of the conflict has so far defied all negotiations, agreements, and peace treaties. All the proposed "peaceful" settlements have thus far remained brittle, while the fundamental issues of stereotyping, suspicion, hatred, and condescendence have remained in place, unshaken.This book confronts two contradictory ideologies and attempts to bridge them over. Born in Fes, Morocco, Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s. Professor Israeli is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgement -- Arab Perceptions of Jews, Zionism and Israel -- Judaism and Israel -- Israel's Domestic Affairs -- The Political Leadership of Israel -- Israeli Foreign Policy -- Israel and the Arab World -- Israel and the Palestinians -- The Israeli Defence System -- The Israeli Propaganda Machine -- A Sample of Cartoons -- Does 'Peace' Change Perceptions? -- Index

Ethnic Cleansingis about the various forms of population displacement, from migration and ethnic cleansing to violent removals and expulsions, which may end up in genocide.It also shows how amidst displacement, the Jewish people have developed a millennial culture of survival.This volume covers the experience of population displacement in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, where the most renowned cases of migration and ethnic cleansing have happened under different regimes and in various cultures along the history of mankind.Today the author is also concerned with the plight of the Rohingyarefugees from Myanmar living in Bangladeshand the perennial Palestinian refugee problem.Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam. Born in Fes, Morocco, at fourteen, “I left my family when I could no longer bear the oppression of Jews in an Islamic country and moved to fledgling Israel. To this day, I consider that the wisest and most game-changing decision I took in my life.” 

Dying as a Shahid: Martyrs in Islam examines the motives, religious and psychological, which make the so-called "suicide bomber" tick.What is usually so called, must rather be termed "Islamikaze," a combination of Islam and kamikaze, due to the phenomenological resemblance between the Japanese kamikaze who fought in the Pacific during World War II, and the present-day Muslim terrorists.In addition to the religious, social, and psychological underpinnings of the phenomenon of Shahid (martyr), there is a rich array of historical precedents that have fixated this sort of terrorism with self-immolation, dubbed "self-sacrifice," as a prominent feature of Islamic life.(About the Author)Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam. Born in Fes, Morocco, at fourteen, "I left my family when I could no longer bear the oppression of Jews in an Islamic country and moved to fledgling Israel. To this day, I consider that the wisest and most game-changing decision I took in my life."

Government strategies for immigration in the Western world are changing. This follows decades in which the West enthusiastically embraced a policy of multiculturalism, hoping to integrate the critical mass of Muslim immigrants arriving in Europe. Some have come in search of economic opportunity; others are legitimate political refugees fleeing tyranny, oppression, and persecution. Multiculturalism, however, became an ideology so deeply and wholly adopted by certain Western governments, as to trigger processes of separatism instead of integration, while efforts to accord citizenship and facilitate assimilation have instead created undercurrents of revivalist Islam. The resulting policy has deteriorated into anger and frustration, leading some new immigrants to support terrorism against their host countries, and to participate in planning and initiating acts of violence in Britain, Spain, France, Germany, and Belgium.In view of this, some host countries have begun to rethink the benefits of multi-culturalism, adjusting to a new policy seeking the integration of Muslim minorities, not through recognizing and cultivating their separate identities, but through imposing the dominating culture of the adopted country. Case studies include Holland, Britain, and Israel.Born in Fes, Morocco, Raphael Israeli currently teaches Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. The author has been both a lecturer and professor of Islamic and Chinese history at Hebrew University. A Fellow of the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, Professor Israeli is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.

The fact that Kosovo was torn away from Serbia as a result of the Bosnia War of the 1990s was not dictated from above or was inevitable. It was a Loss by Complacency.Serbia had allowed this situation to develop over the years by letting a Muslim majority grow in place. It then was able to take over the most important district in Serbian history.International interference in this developing conflict helped decide its fate, but only because Serbia did not continually demonstrate that it cared for the area, and therefore should have ensured a permanent Serbian majority in it and not let it fall into the hands of Muslims, thus altering the entire strategic balance in the Balkans.The U.N. and other international forces decided the fate of the war in Kosovo, but it was the Serbs own self-delusion that they needed to do nothing to ensure their sovereignty over the territory that was theirs for centuries. They should have had no faith in the American and European assurances, or in the Dayton Agreements, which ended the Bosnia War and that Serbian territorial integrity would be guaranteed in any case. Born in Fes, Morocco, Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is currently a Professor Emeritus. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. A Fellow of the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, Professor Israeli is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam in the Middle East, in Asia, and in Europe.

For centuries Muslim countries have cultivated the myth that Jews under their rule enjoyed equality, harmony, and generally positive treatment.But the revelation of relevant documents covering one millennium of history (the 10th to the 20th centuries) tell a different story, one of persecution, pogroms, suffering, and humiliation, which were relieved only when France colonized North Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries.The major landmark of this attitude was manifested in the inferior and humiliating dhimmi status that Jews were subjected to, which dictated that the harsh rules of Muslim supremacy and dhimmi submission be applied to non-Muslims in Islamdom.Raphael Israeli is a professor of Islamic and Chinese history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. "I have myself lived under these horrific conditions. But my grievances against the Muslim world, which I was compelled to leave behind in Fes, Morocco, at age 14, were hard to prove against the fervent denials of the Muslims. The revelation of these documents shows conclusively what the real situation has been, which caused the massive exodus of the Jews of Islamdom when the state of Israel was founded in 1948." This is the author's 57th book.Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/RaphaelIsraeli

This volume deals with the dilemma of "just wars," if any war can be justified.In fact, it is like many other things in life, in the eye of the beholder. For what is just in the eye of the winner and victor, will be wrong and unjustified in the eye of the victim and loser.This is the reason history is written by victors, while the defeated indulge in lamentations and nostalgia.In several historical chapters, this volume brings up several cases from antiquity to our days, of big powers that took the liberty to conquer small nations and subject them to their whims, in the belief that might was right, as well as reversals in history where the crushed victims ultimately gained the upper hand.Therefore, the question of who is right and who is left to tell the story will remain a tale of relative narratives, leaving it to subsequent generations and their (usually biased) historians to rewrite history to their taste.Raphael Israeli grew up in Fes, Morocco, and had a French education. At 14, he moved to Jerusalem, Israel, where he is now a professor of history at Hebrew University. He is the author of 55 books and was motivated to write this book to show "the pattern of rise and fall of great empires, and of their subjected countries and peoples."

We watch with amazement the Muslim Jihadists of our time, moving from one killing field to another, mobilized, physically and spiritually for the cause of Islam, and risking their lives to accomplish a goal that usually escapes us.It turns out this practice took root since the inception of Islam, and that its miraculous expansion worldwide was due to a great extent to the masses of volunteers who sprang out of Arabia, heading westward until North Africa and the Atlantic, and on the other hand, to the Iberian Peninsula, and on that side of the globe, they conquered the Middle East, Asia Minor, and Central Asia in a sweep the world has known since the Roman Empire.The process of Islam expansion has also produced the great Islamic Empires of the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, the Muwahhidun of North Africa and Iberia, the Ottoman in the Middle East and the Balkans, and the Moghuls of India.Even after the Islamic empires were defeated and colonized, and from their point of view victimized and humiliated, the revived Islam continued to witness vast movement of volunteer Jihadis, flocking to Afghanistan, then to Iraq and Syria. In contemporary Islam, that movement has come to embrace large numbers of Western Muslims from Europe and the Americas, who have been swept by the exciting idea of a revived Caliphate.Raphael Israeli grew up in Fes, Morocco, and had a French education. At 14, he moved to Jerusalem, Israel. Now retired, he was a professor of history at Hebrew University. The author of 55 books, Israeli wrote this book so he could investigate the roots of the phenomenon of ISIS and al-Qa'ida, "the modern manifestations of itinerant Jihadis."Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/RaphaelIsraeli

This is the saga of the underground Jewish emigration from Morocco, which sent hundreds of thousands of Moroccan Jews who had been persecuted under Islam for centuries, onto illegal ships.The Jews faced stormy seas and an uncertain future in their valiant attempts to escape from the authorities forbidding their emigration, risking their lives for the dream of reaching the hopeful shores of nascent Israel.In one of those attempts, the ship “Pisces” sank off the coast of Morocco, taking with it 45 souls, including entire families who were never to reach their destination.Since this book is partly autobiographical, much of the story focuses on the author and his family. The rest is populated by the many brave and unidentified Jews who ventured into the unknown, taking enormous risks to secretly leave Morocco.Raphael Israeli was born in Fes, Morocco, a hostile environment for Jews for a millennium. After the birth of Israel in 1948, most of the 300,000 Moroccan Jews immigrated to the Jewish state. “I have been living in eternal and awesome Jerusalem most of those years, where I served as a professor of Islamic and Chinese history at Hebrew University.” The author has now published 52 books.Publisher’s website: http://sbpra.com/RaphaelIsraeli 

For several centuries now the Muslim Midwest, notably the Northwest and the Southwest, had been the ""Muslim country"" of China. Although Muslims only sporadically constituted local majorities in some towns, villages, counties, and neighborhoods, they remained overall a minority in the overwhelming Han landscape of China. Nonetheless, in those areas the Muslim-Hui culture has had its greatest impact and visibility. It was in those areas in mid-nineteenth-century China that major Muslim rebellions took place with the stated purpose of seceding from the Kingdom and establishing independent Muslim states.Almost two centuries later, those areas still bear the traumas of the past--crushed Muslim rebellions with massive massacres of Muslims, who lost their predominance and are reluctant to invoke past glories. The result has been a multitude of sects and sub sects, notably the Menhuan, which has no parallel in other parts of China, and even a new hybrid--the Xidaotang.""The author took the advantages of his rich knowledge about the Islamic schism and ''combed'' the Chinese Islamic new sects into systematic categories so that they are easily understood by English readers. The author also explores some main factors of the Yunnan Hui Uprising in the nineteenth century and the influence upon the Hui-Han relationships to today. This study does not stop on the façade, however; it touches the root part of the Hui faith which lead to their social interactions among themselves and with the majority Han. Even many Hui researchers in such area of expertise have neglected such discussions. I highly appreciate the book."" --Wan Lei, Senior Research Fellow at
King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies
Kingdom of Saudi ArabiaRaphael Israeli has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. At Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he taught courses on the modern Middle East, Islamic history, Islamic radicalism, and on Islamic minorities in Europe and Asia. He is the author of fifty-five books and over 100 scholarly articles on those topics.

The persistence of anti-Semitism and its current resurgence after a brief post-Holocaust suppression, challenge those who study human behavior to locate the causal bases of anti-Semitism and find approaches to combat it

Israel has been constantly threatened by Palestinian and Islamic ghosts that either perennially mount attacks against her or loom in her horizon as permanent menaces for her very existence.These ghosts that cause nightmares and haunt Israel include the Israeli Arab minority, Palestinian refugees, Palestinian prisoners, Muslim radicals and terrorists, Muslim campaigns of de-legitimization, Muslim poisoning of the physical and spiritual environment of the Middle East, and other threats.Written by a college professor, Israel''s Nightmares boldly delves into the history of the region and its politics.Raphael Israeli was born in Fes, Morocco, a hostile environment for Jews for a millennium. After the birth of Israel in 1948, most of the 300,000 Moroccan Jews immigrated to the Jewish state. "I have been living in eternal and awesome Jerusalem most of those years, where I serve as a professor of Islamic and Chinese history at Hebrew University." The author has now published 46 books.Publisher''s website: http://sbpra.com/RaphaelIsraeli