Politics, Lies, Videotape

by Yitschak Ben Gad

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1561710156
• ISBN13: 9781561710157
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: S.P.I. Books
• Length: 479 Pages
• Weight: 1.82 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Shows why the "peace process" failed, written in 1991!

This book does an excellent job of showing the propaganda, incitement, and lies that Arab antizionists have subjected their populations to in their war against Jewish rights. Ben Gad supplies plenty of cartoons and photos to back up the points that he makes. He documents the PLO crimes in Lebanon. And he shows that giving the PLO a state would merely endanger Israel while not helping the cause of peace at all. The author also explains how the United Nations has supported terror when that terror has been against the Jewish state. This work is not meant to be a history book, but it does supply a reasonable historical overview of the conflict (excluding the part since the book was written, in 1991). And this includes the fate of the more than 850,000 Jews who lived in Arab nations in 1948. By 1976, less than 25,000 of those Jews remained. Luckily, many of them found a new home in Israel. I think two points that this book makes ought not be forgotten. It explains that the PLO is not a peace partner. Since 1991, the world has been urged to believe otherwise. And in spite of the fact that the nature of the PLO was obvious, much of the world pretended otherwise. In short, most of the world claimed that the Emperor was wearing not merely underwear, but a tuxedo, when in fact it was clear to anyone who looked that he wasn't wearing anything. Why did this happen? Well, I think it is simple. Some people in a position to write books or report on the area were pressured or bribed into lying. Others did so out of a sincere desire to be malicious. But the truth is out now. More than thirteen years have passed since this book was written. We've seen that the PLO was never a peace partner. Arabs may indeed want peace, but they'll need to find representatives who want it as well. The second point is that Arab antisemitism, as we see in cartoons, books, and other media, is not compatible with peace. In the years since 1991, we've seen an insistence by the Arab side to keep up this steady stream of incitement. Of course, that ought to have scuttled any peace talks. But it did not. I think it is worth reading this book even today, just to realize how little things have changed. I think it will make us see just how easy it is to pressure Israel into accepting phony promises of peace. And how dangerous it is to everyone, especially the Arabs, for the international community to keep making such concessions to Arab terror.

Debunking Myths of the Middle East

What Yitschak Ben Gad has done in this 1991 book is debunk many of the more common myths of the Middle East in an easy-to-read Q & A (Questions and Answers) form accompanied by many references, quotes, source documents, and political cartoons. The book is extremely well documented and the political cartoons come from many sources including Dry Bones (a popular cartoon in many syndicated papers in Israel), Sawt-El-Arab (an Egyptian daily newspaper), El-Shaab (another Egyptian daily newspaper), Al-Nadwa (A Saudi Arabian newspaper), Achbar Al-Chaleege (a Bahrainian newspaper), and from many other publications around the world. Many of the pages include the original Arabic, Hebrew, or other-language documents that Ban Gad uses for references. If you read Arabic then this book is an extremely good source for political commentary in the Arabic language (a huge variety of pages from newspapers around the Arab world are featured in the original Arabic). Because of the unadulterated nature of political cartoons and unambiguous statements from Arabic media sources, the book in many places reads like a history of anti-Semitism.Books like this helped to lead to Internet groups like MEMRI.org that translate Arabic newspapers and other media into English for anyone interested (mostly for politicians, professors, etc.). I found the cartoons to be very powerful indicators of political opinion in the Middle East since standards of decency are very different in the Arab world and Israel. For instance many of the cartoons from Arab newspapers show horrific depictions of bloody hands, dismembered bodies, racist caricatures (hook-nosed Jews, swastikas, Nazi references, etc.), and every kind of desecration of the Star of David or the Menorah (symbols of Judaism and Israel) that might be possible. The Israeli political cartoons featured in this book have great sarcasm and irony, but feature none of the horrific images that are commonplace in the majority of newspapers in the Arab world.One of my criticisms of the book is that while it features many wonderful and authentic source documents, it is all in black and white format, which in many places makes the source materials very difficult to read. Some of the photographs are very difficult to make out in black and white format. However, I found this shortcoming manageable and not overwhelming. Here's what Yitschak Ben Gad wrote about the book (page xviii):The goal is to enable the average reader, who may show some interest in our troubled area, to get an idea about most of the subjects without having to strive or read at great length. The questions and subjects are based upon my selective and subjective discretion. I have no intention of dealing with all aspects of the conflict. The idea is to deal with either forgotten issues or with subjects that demonstrate the absurdity of the conflict and the great injustice inflicted upon the Jewish people. The quotations are meant to strengthen the points dealt with in