Non­fic­tion

The Pales­tin­ian Nation­al Authority

John C. Hall, Adam Woog, Arthur Gold­schmidt Jr.
  • Review
By – January 13, 2012
When read­ing a book that is sup­posed to be fac­tu­al and even­hand­ed on such a com­plex issue, it is easy to accept what is writ­ten with­out ques­tion­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, when the authors of the book have pres­ti­gious cre­den­tials it can be intim­i­dat­ing to crit­i­cize its con­tents. How­ev­er, accept­ing this book with­out expos­ing its pro-Pales­tin­ian bias would be a mis­take. Plus, there are numer­ous errors and omis­sions, such as mix­ing up Moses and Mohammed (“Moses is believed to have ascend­ed to heav­en” at the Dome of the Rock), inflat­ed sta­tis­tics about how many were killed at Deir Yassin, or pages about the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem with­out men­tion­ing his Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tion. The authors stick to a par­tic­u­lar­ly one-sided script, leav­ing out sui­cide bomb­ings and, unbe­liev­ably, the entire Yom Kip­pur War of 1973. Tak­ing a look at the sources used in the bib­li­og­ra­phy, one gets the idea of where these authors are choos­ing their facts. Just because some­thing is print­ed does not mean it is true. Fur­ther­more, very dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions are reached when sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion is delib­er­ate­ly exclud­ed. This is a book intend­ed for the high school report writer. One would hope these stu­dents will chose oth­er sources that are more accu­rate and bal­anced. Not recommended.
Marge Kaplan is a retired Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage teacher. She is a con­sul­tant for the children’s lit­er­a­ture group for the Roseville, MN school sys­tem and is a sto­ry­teller of Jew­ish tales.

Discussion Questions