Caroline GlickRezensionen

From WWI and the League of Nations mandate system through Arafat and Bill Clinton to Obama/Kerry, this book goes broad rather than deep in making the case for a one state solution, and it works. The author did not get sidetracked with various variations or arguments for one state (such as arguments that Transjordan/Jordan is a Palestinian state or that Palestinians are Arabs and all sorts of Arab states were created post WWI), in fact, the style is more one of presenting (history, diplomacy, law) . The book also takes a look at likely responses to a one state solution, and this section is good, but for me is where it disappoints since leaves out the 2 most important likely responses -- the likely divine response, and the likely ummah response. Though religion is not totally left out in the book (brief mention, for ex, in discussing the Mufti of Jerusalem), book discussion of the dispute is mostly limited to Arabs (within the land and the neighbors) as immediate parties and USA, Europe, and UN as concerned parties, suggesting the ummah's hate for Israel is extremist rather than normative, and imo, that's a denial of reality. Besides the Islamic response, the response of the biblical God (YHWH) not only has no book section, but not even a sentence of acknowledgement that this is an issue, though He in the Bible most certainly has very specific things to say.

For myself as an evangelical reader who interprets the Bible in its ordinary sense (rather than a replacement theology, spiritualizing sense), parting what God calls "My land" is the one specified biblical NO for which judgment is promised to a nation (thus the main reason, of many, the Abraham Accords is disastrous), so rereading this book about NOT parting the land was a bit of encouragement, but only in that you-are-not-alone-while-it-all-goes-down kind of way, sadly encouraging.

This book came out pre-Trump so does not get into the outrageous Abraham Accords/Peace to Prosperity stuff, but given Biden's been talking up 2 state demands, this book is a relevant refresher.

This may indeed be the most important book on Israeli policy published this decade. Well-researched with innumerable citations, Glick explains why the two-state solution proposed by the Oslo accords
is a complete and utter failure. Glick furthermore sets out in terrific detail the legal proof of Israel's sovereignty to Judea and Samaria and explains why fully incorporating those portions of the Jewish homeland under Israeli civil law is the best solution for peace in the region.

At the root of the conflict, Glick explains, is a jihadi mentality among Arabs committed to destroying Israel because they want the Middle East to be free of all Jews and Christians. Israel is the ancestral homeland of only one people -the Jews, whose history and continuous presence there for
4000 years stands alone and is proven over and over again by historical documents and artifacts, which the Islamic Jihadis are making every effort to destroy and erase with the complicity of
UNESCO.

Modern day Israel derives from the mandate of the League of Nations which gave all of the Mandate including Hashemite Jordan to the Jews to settle. The UN recommended partition in 1947 but the Arabs led by Al-Husseini, who was Hitler's henchman, rejected partition. Jordan then illegally occupied Judea and Samaria.

At the heart of this book is an analysis of the demographics of the region and a startling conclusion that PLO censuses of the area were false and that therefore incorporating Judea and Samaria into Israel would not affect the democratic character of it.

That's all well and good but your blood will boil when you read in exquisite detail about the farce of negotiations with the PLO, the
greatest con job in the history of the world. Israel at the behest of the US and Europe appeased the terrorists over and over again and no final agreement could ever be made because the terrorist Jihadi PLO
will only accept a Jew-free Middle East. Nothing will ever be acceptable
to the PLO but the ethnic cleansing of every Jew from Israel. They have never hid their goal but no one cares because they have succeeded in conning the world with smiles while never renouncing murder.

It is an infuriating book to read because it lays out step by step the trap Israel and the West have fallen into in pretending that a two state solution will ever satisfy the PLO terrorists who are committed to
ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews and have even made it a capital crime
to sell land to a Jew.

Appropriately one of the last chapters calls out Kerry for his Alice in Wonderland view of the region and his sick habit of justifying terror.

The Israeli Solution: A one state-plan for peace in the middle east is an excellent and very compelling argument for the abandonment of the "two-state solution". Just today, I heard that, though Israel had accepted a cease-fire, Hamas rejected it. So Israel still has to defend itself against their enemies who do not desire peace with them, but desire their annihilation instead. This has been the case for many years, beginning even before Israel even existed as a state.

In this book, Caroline Glick takes us on a trip through history to examine the Arabs' constant rejection a Palestinian state. As she puts it so well, "Israel's desire for peace with the Arabs has been amply proven". They have put themselves at risk multiple times, releasing their proven enemies from prison, giving up land that could be used as a base of attack against them, even approving the entry of known terrorists into the land they relinquished. In peace talks they have been willing to make huge concessions, some in particular that would make them greatly vulnerable to their enemies, all in order to have peace with the Arabs; but the Arab's have consistently rejected these offers. Glick shows that history makes it clear that the Arabs do not want peace with Israel, nor do they want a Palestinian state, they simply do not want Israel on the map of the world.

Reading this book really made me ashamed of America. We have consistently supported and deferred to the Arabs for 20 years or more, and we have never supported Israel, our ally, as we ought. Glick points out that "In 2013 alone, the US committed $440 million taxpayer dollars to direct financial support for the Palestinian Authority." I was appalled to learn about how much America has snubbed and spurned Israel, treating them as the 'bad guy' simply for trying to defend themselves, and despite Israel's proven desire for peace. Even President Reagan literally protected Israel's enemies from Israel sending in Marines to protect them from Israel's forces. It was embarrassing, frustrating, but also interesting to see the comparison of Obama and Bush's policy towards Israel. Surprisingly, Glick shows that they both favored the Palestinians, "The distinction between Bush and Obama is rhetorical, not real."

Glick shows the absurdity of the United States make Israel give up land for a Palestinian state, "This demand is without precedent in the in the history of warfare. There is no precedent of a civilian population, displaced by a war that their leadership started and lost, claiming a right to return to territory that they failed to conquer." By the same argument, America should start giving back the land they conquered from the Confederates, and then in turn, both the Union and Confederates should give America back to the British and then the "Native Americans" . And every country should be held to this standard and so the world will be in chaos with everyone trying to figure out what land belongs to whom as they go further and further back into history to see who had what land, and who should give it up to a certain people, and who that certain people should give it up to…and it won't end for a long time, if ever.

This book is a very concise argument, one that emphasizes the obvious in a readable way. This book serves as an excellent history lesson regarding the State of Israel and its relations with the United States. Glick has a good, logical, present day application of that history. There is repetition, but, in my opinion, it is done in a way that enhances the argument, rather than rendering it boring.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning more about America's role in the Middle East conflict, or if you are wondering what position to take on the issue.

Thanks to Blogging for Books for sending me a free review copy of this book(My review did not have to be favorable)

The 'Shackled Warrior' is a collection of articles written by Caroline Glick originally for "The Jerusalem Post.” She has chosen some of her articles and has placed them into categories that comprise the chapters of the book. Her articles speak not just to political and cultural currents in Israel, but in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Her articles show she has an understanding of the strategic importance of the events she writes about. And when you look at the dates of the articles you see that her insights were correct.

This journalist allows you to gain a clear and precise understanding on complex situations that have been allowed to take place to enable the terrorist and explains this as a struggle for freedom over oppression; right over wrong. She is also critical of her own adopted country that she loves. Israel's policies of appeasement over the last two decades and its own part in the enablement of terrorist. The articles show the strength of the citizens and soldiers of the United States and Israel and the self-serving and destructive policies of the "enlightened" elite of these countries and Europe. Of course in this complicity of the 'enlightened elite' falls most of the mass media that she explains empowers Palestinian and Arab propaganda tactics to work. Most of the world media seems not only willing but eager to put forth the terrorist propaganda and hide or subvert the truth.

It was a pleasure to read columns by a real journalist that does not worry about political correctness, but has an emphasis and concern on being correct with the facts presented in her columns. Glick is up front in her desire to insure the security of Israel and is cognizant of the true threats the nation face. Born in the United States, educated at Harvard and having served as a member of the Israeli Defense Forces gives her a good understanding about her subject material. She also worked as an embedded journalist with an American mechanized Infantry unit at the beginning of 'Operation Iraq Freedom' and gives a very clear view on the American soldiers view on the war and what they face as they moved quickly forward. If the free world's fight against Terror is of importance to you this book has to be on you reading list.

This book is a collection of parts of Ms. Glick’s columns from the pages of 'The Jerusalem Post' that she wrote from 2002 to 2007. When you read this book it is obvious she wrote for her Israeli audience and those in the world who would already agree with her point of view. I did not find this a book that I could pick up and just read straight through. The author credentials are sterling for writing on this subject but her style will not do anything to help get those who disagree with her to open up for a dialogue.

The author has a BA in Political Science from Columbia University and in 1991 emigrated to Israel. Caroline Glick was born in Chicago, USA, and is the deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. I can understand Ms. Glick being pro Israel and and expressing concern about taking the Arab's point of view with a grain of salt. And she has no qualms in letting us know how adept the Arabs are at manipulating the world press. And in her words we learn that this conflict will be solved only when one side of the conflict has won militarily.½

To be sure, this book is not a picked-it-up-couldn't-put-it-down volume. It's not that it's uninspired, preachy, or trite. It's just that it's a very heavy topic. Other reviewers referred to a perceived lack of context the book should provide. I agree that in this case, context is a prerequisite for absorbing Glick's ideas.

She certainly does come across as black-and-white at times, and doesn't back down from speaking her mind (sometimes provocatively, but that, again is also relative t the context). I spent a year in Israel beginning in the summer of 2000, just weeks before the second intifada began.

Reading Glick's articles in the book (and I'm sure I probably read some of them in the newspaper when they were first published) brought back the details and nuances of my memory of what it was like living through that time in Israel. Speaking personally, I can't handle a marathon session of reading about this turmoil- like I said before, it's just too heavy.

Getting back to the context, Ms. Glick's ideas have a relevancy and make sense to someone familiar with the absurdities of the intifada. Those who vilify Israel are sorely lacking context. Still, Ms. Glick can be very severe, and I think that can turn an audience off to the more nuanced aspects of her insights.

This brings me to my last point, about the intended audience for this book. For years, I've been frustrated by the general tendency of those who support Israel to (correctly) complain about double-standards, Arab lies and evils, and perverted media bias. The complaints aren't the problem; it's that they're directed at like-minded people. We end up feeling mutually indignant, but don't do much about conveying these ideas to the politically ignorant.

I fear that Glick's book, sharp, sincere, and courageous as it is, only preaches to the choir. I do think it has value and the potential to educate those curious but unfamiliar with Levantine politics, if they don't get turned off by its vigor.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have volunteered to review Shackled Warrior. I know very little about Israeli/Palestinian relations and even less – well, nothing – about the author, Caroline Glick. When I threw my name into the Shackled Warrior lottery, I was merely hoping to get a book that would teach me something, anything(as long as it was unbiased), about the modern political and social landscape of the Near East. But, such a book I did not get.

The book is simply composed of several years’ worth of the author’s short journalistic articles, typically 5-6 pages in length, thematically arranged, and presented completely without context. So, unless you are well-versed in Near Eastern affairs, the book may seem to you, like it did to me, a Near Eastern neophyte, to be nothing more than a fragmented collection of mildly incomprehensible events.

Aside from a brief preface and an even briefer introduction, the book contains no new material. There is no original research, or a list of references, or, in the advanced copy of the book that I read, an index – all of which is unfortunate, but perhaps it is to be expected given the editorial nature of the articles. Without such traces, though, how can I, a person who knows very little about what he reads, begin to honestly evaluate and judge such content?

Yet, despite all this, Glick’s editorializing does make for a compelling read at times. Her writing is straight-forward, accusatory, and provocative, and she doesn’t hide behind carefully constructed and purposely vague syntax. But, such highly opinionated writing is, especially in this case, a double-edged sword, because 416 pages of unabashed ravings results in a completely one-sided picture - and, a frustratingly propagandist one at that. After awhile you start to think, “Okay. I get the point.”

But, who am I to say?

Neocon Nonsense

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through Library Thing's Early Reviewer program.)

At first glance, journalist Caroline Glick seems well-suited to author a book on the so-called “global war on terror”, particularly Israel’s piece in the puzzle. Born in the United States and educated at Columbia and Harvard Universities, she immigrated to Israel in 1991, where she joined the Israel Defense Force and served as “a core member of Israel's negotiating team with the Palestinians during the Oslo peace process.” Subsequently, Ms. Glick also served as assistant foreign policy advisor to PM Binyamin Netanyahu. Currently she is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC., as well as the deputy managing editor of THE JERUSALEM POST (to which she contributes two weekly syndicated columns), and the chief diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s MAKOR RISHON newspaper (which publishes a weekly column of Ms. Glick’s in Hebrew).* THE SHACKLED WARRIOR: ISRAEL AND THE GLOBAL JIHAD is a collection of Ms. Glick’s columns, culled from the pages of THE JERUSALEM POST from 2002 to the present.

Unfortunately, Ms. Glick’s considerable knowledge and experience is dwarfed by her black-or-white, “you’re either with us or against us” world perspective. Like most neoconservatives, Ms. Glick has yet to advance beyond Piaget’s concrete operational stage of cognitive development. To wit: she seems incapable of anything but dichotomous thinking.

For example, take the following passage (from the column “Politically Correct Perfidy”, dated September 11, 2006).

The setup: Harvard University students are protesting a scheduled visit from former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami, who was invited to speak at the school by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The same week, VP Dick Cheney had to scurry through the back door of the Harvard Club in Boston in order to avoid a few hundred angry protesters.

Glick blasts Harvard for extending an invitation to Khatami; doubly so, their failure to schedule a two-person debate rather than an uninterrupted monologue.** She then wonders,

“[H]ad a debate between him [Khatami] and Cheney been organized, it would have been interesting to see which side the protestors outside of the Harvard Club in Boston would have supported.”

Because, ya know, you just can’t detest two fascist, murderous regimes simultaneously.

Seriously, though, as a self-described liberal/progressive, I think equating Bush/Cheney with the likes of Hitler is misguided hyperbole at best. Even so, I do consider BushCo war criminals, and both the VP and the President ought to be impeached. That doesn’t, however, mean that I must automatically support Khatami (along with the likes of Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, radical Islamists, suicide bombers, and other assorted bigots who would kill and oppress the Other in order to gain power and/or advance their particular strain of superstition). Again, this “you’re either with us or against us” dubya speak is the kind of egotistical blather that lost us the hearts and minds of most of the world – allies and “damsels in distress” alike.

In addition to this black-and-white “reasoning”, Ms. Glick dons the blinders when it comes to seeing any possible negative consequences on the “War on Terror”.

In the Preface, she writes,

“The forces of jihad – whether comprised of states actors or non-state actors – are the enemy in this war. Consequently, anything that advances jihad’s aim of Islamic domination is antithetical to the interests of the free world. Anything that harms that cause advances the interests of human liberty and freedom.”

In two tidy sentences, Ms. Glick has justified torture, indefinite detention, warantless wiretapping, and countless other violations of civil liberties. “Anything that harms jihad advances the interests of human liberty and freedom.” The terrorists hate us because we’re free – so let’s not exercise our freedoms, or the terrorists win! Jonah Goldberg? Is that you?

Not to mention, half the Iraqi population is female. Female humans. Female humans who have seen their rights steadily eroded since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But, again true to neocon think, I guess they don’t count since they have lady bits and all.

Aside from the actual content of the book, I was also dissatisfied with the format. The bulk of the book is columns that have previously appeared in THE JERUSALEM POST. They’re arranged by topic into ten chapters, and then chronologically within each chapter. The only new material is the book’s preface, meant to introduce the compilation. With no chapter intros to string the individual columns together, the book simply doesn’t flow well. Additionally, the columns are presented without context; unless the reader is intimately familiar with everyday happenings in the Middle East, it’s sometimes challenging to read the topic as part of a larger narrative. Some background information, where appropriate, would have been much appreciated.

All in all, I can sum up my review with one pithy statement: Why buy the book when you can (not) read the neocon nonsense for free? ***

* Information gathered from Amazon’s THE SHACKLED WARRIOR listing, as well as Wikipedia’s entry on “Caroline Glick”.

** When the current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was similarly invited to speak at Columbia University on September 24, 2007, this format worked out wonderfully: given the chance to spout off, Ahmadinejad’s rants no doubt taught the students in attendance much about the hard-line leader’s warped worldview. “No homosexuals in Iran”? Indeed.

*** Google the individual columns to read them online – or take a shortcut right to TownHall, the epicenter of right wing neocon nonsense.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2008/03/24/in-which-i-hate-on-caroline-glicks-new-book...

Chicago-born Caroline Glick is deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. After earning a BA in Political Science at Columbia University, she emigrated to Israel in 1991. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Glick was an embedded journalist with the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division. Since emigrating to Israel, Ms. Glick has been a staunch defender of Israel and a voice suggesting extreme caution in believing the Palestinian or Arab point of view as they have repeatedly been able to manipulate an unwary media. Shackled warrior is a collection of her political commentary from the Jerusalem Post, organized by theme. The period covered is from 2002 until late 2007.
In Letter from Harlem:1960, James Baldwin writes of those trapped in the Harlem ghetto: “Many, many more are 'moslems', by affiliation or sympathy, that is to say that they are united by nothing more – and nothing less – than a hatred of the white world and all its works.”
In an article titled “Stop Navel Gazing” from May 14th, 2004, echoing Mr. Baldwin, Ms. Glick writes “When we pay attention to our enemies and see the scope of their ambitions and the depth of their hatred we must come to a revolutionary conclusion....It is our existence that provokes our enemy.”
The book is broken into ten chapters, with three to twelve articles. Although consistently interesting, I found the chapters “Contemporary Thought Police”, “The Battle for Hearts and Minds”, “An Israeli in Iraq”, and “A Light Unto the Nations” to be the most interesting. Throughout her body of work, Ms. Glick makes her feelings clear that as a policy, appeasement will not work when the opposition's ultimate goal is to eliminate “the other”.

The Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad is what I'd call an aggressive book. The author, writer and Israel-affairs expert Caroline B. Glick, has an aggressive agenda- to prove that Islamic jihadists are out to take over the world, beginning with a campaign of genocide against all Jews.

I respect Glick's views and there are a lot of positive things to say about this collection. The book is made up of newspaper columns that ran in The Jerusalem Post, and in general her columns are very well-written and she knows her subject inside and out. Her writing is based on experience in the Israel Defense Forces, time as an embedded reporter with the U.S. military and in think tanks in Washington, D.C.; thus her expertise and depth of involvement shine through every page. Her articles, written in the thick of the action, are deeply tied to current events and to her point of view- she writes passionately about her subject and her argument, something any reader absolutely could not miss.

The book is arranged by topic and then chronologically within each topic; this arrangement allows the reader to see her reflections on history as it unfolds- a rare treat. However, because the articles appear without explanatory notes and out of context, it seems to be assumed that the reader knows what she's talking about. Removed from their source, to someone like myself who knows very little about the details of Middle Eastern politics and cannot match random publication dates with the specific events that occurred on or near them, they are simply confusing and it is difficult to learn anything about the Middle East or Israeli politics through her lens. I think reading her in the paper, right next to the day's news, would probably help me follow the thicket of detail and reference more closely.

What I did learn about was Caroline B. Glick and how she sees the world. Not one to build an argument in deliberate and logical fashion, with subtlety, footnotes and backup, her approach is aggressive and jarring, not to mention fast-paced and repetitive. She skims over the day's (or week's) news, using each turn of events to bolster her argument, which is always the same no matter what specific topic she's covering. Then there's the name-calling. For all she knows about the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics, adjectives and accusations are tossed around willy-nilly, often with little support. She claims that Europe is one step away from becoming another Middle Eastern country, what with all the Muslims and the accommodations European governments make for them. She takes the fight to America as well and accuses former Senate candidate Ned Lamont and his supporters of anti-Semitism in his campaign against then-incumbent Senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman in one or two throwaway sentences, and she includes nothing to substantiate that very serious and inflammatory accusation. I know there were some rumors going around after Lamont beat Lieberman during the primary, and I'm certainly not in a position to evaluate the veracity of the accusations, but whatever the case it's unacceptable for Glick to besmirch someone's good name like that with nothing to back it up. Not content just to libel a Democratic American politician, later chapters see Glick going after such targets as the French, leftist academics and hippie protesters at Harvard. Do you see a pattern yet?

To be honest I found the book almost unreadable going from cover to cover. She has one point to make, and she makes it over and over in every column; after a while I wondered if she had anything else to say. I ended up finishing the first chapter and then cherry-picking through the rest until I had read everything. I'm sure she's better to read in the paper. When I read someone's column once a week or so, over time I can get a good feel for the writer's sensibility and point of view, but reading many columns all at once is a very different experience, particularly with a writer as polemical as Glick. I respect that Glick, unlike some American penthouse pundits, walks the walk and has put herself on the line more than once to become so well-informed. And the book is not without its merits. But it is certainly not appropriate for newcomers to Middle Eastern politics and I would recommend it only to serious Israel and political science buffs looking for an extremely focussed and narrowly-viewed picture of that particular landscape.