The war on error : Israel, Islam, and the Middle East / Martin Kramer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kramer, Martin S., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Islam and politics.

Islam and politics--Islamic countries.

Arab-Israeli conflict--Influence.

Arab-Israeli conflict.

Islamic countries.

Middle East--History.

Middle East.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 318 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick (U.S.A.) : Transaction Publishers, [2016]

Summary:

In The War on Error, historian and political analyst Martin Kramer presents a series of case studies, some based on path finding research and others on provocative analysis, that correct misinformation clouding the public's understanding of the Middle East. He also offers a forensic exploration of how misinformation arises and becomes "fact." The book is divided into five themes: Orientalism and Middle Eastern studies, a prime casualty of the culture wars; Islamism, massively misrepresented by apologists; Arab politics, a generator of disappointing surprises; Israeli history, manipulated by reckless revisionists; and American Jews and Israel, the subject of irrational fantasies. Kramer shows how error permeates the debate over each of these themes, creating distorted images that cause policy failures. Kramer approaches questions in the spirit of a relentless fact-checker. Did Israeli troops massacre Palestinian Arabs in Lydda in July 1948? Was the bestseller Exodus hatched by an advertising executive? Did Martin Luther King, Jr., describe anti-Zionism as antisemitism? Did a major post-9/11 documentary film deliberately distort the history of Islam? Did Israel push the United States into the Iraq War? Kramer also questions paradigms-the "Arab Spring," the map of the Middle East, and linkage. Along the way, he amasses new evidence, exposes carelessness, and provides definitive answers. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I The Middle East (Studies) Conflict

1 Dangerous Orientalists 3

2 The Shifting Sands of Academe 9

3 Surveying the Middle East 19

4 Policy and the Academy 39

Part II Missing Islam

5 Fundamentalists or Islamists? 53

6 "Islamic Fascism" 71

7 Islam for Viewers Like You 77

8 Afghani and America 87

9 He Might Have Been Pope 97

10 Hamas of the Intellectuals 105

11 Know Thy Enemy 113

Part III Misunderstood Arabs

12 1967 and Memory 119

13 Sadat and Begin: The Peacemakers 125

14 When Minorities Rule 133

15 Syria in the Fertile Crescent 141

16 Arab Spring, Arab Crisis 147

17 Listening to Arabs 153

Part IV Inventing Israel's History

18 What Happened at Lydda 169

19 Shabtai Teveth and the Whole Truth 219

20 Who Censored the Six-Day War? 225

Part V Elders of Zion

21 The Exodus Conspiracy 245

22 In the Words of Martin Luther King 253

23 Israel and the Iraq War 269

24 Fouad Ajami Goes to Israel 283

25 "Gaza Is Auschwitz" 291.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Kramer, Martin S., author. War on error.

ISBN:

9781412864336

141286433X

9781412864992

1412864992

OCLC:

951833389