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Comment by commandlinefan | Hacker News Reader

I've always been idly curious as to what happened in Israel (as in the geographic area) between, say, 35 A.D. and 1948. It seems, though, as if everybody who might have some insight there also has an agenda that makes any concrete information they might have to share indecipherable.

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I recommend The Source by Michener (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(novel)). Masterfully written.

Actually the really big diaspora happened during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian and were called the Bar Kokhba revolt. (around 136CE)

A friend of mine recommended A Peace to End All Peace, but I haven't read it yet.

https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/080...

Your idle curiosity has already yielded an important insight: the situation is complex. I think if everyone only knew one thing about the middle east, it should be that.

Romans, Byzantines, Arabs/Muslims, Crusaders, Ottomans, British. (You're connected to the greatest repository of knowledge in human history, you can look some of this up on your own.)

You act like the internet is some fount of unvarnished knowledge.

You actually think it would be difficult to find factual sources on this kind of historical topic? Don't try to be cute.

Assessing which historical sources are factual is not a trivial problem.

Mostly 1,400 years of Muslim rule besides a short period of Catholic rule during the crusades.

Just separating it based on religion is weird. I feel like in a 1-sentence tl;dr you should at least mention the Ottoman empire from 1299-1923 (ended in WW1).

That leaves 500 years unaccounted for.

Try Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Monte fiore. It’s great. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/201...

And if you’re even vaguely interested, his books on Russia are fantastic too - The Romanovs and the two on Stalin in particular.

I highly recommend this book (by a French author), which covers the years 70 AD to 1943, so not far!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abraham_(novel)

I don't know if some would call it biased, but it made a strong impression on me as a young adult. I am not Jewish, but it is fascinating in and of itself.

I just read the plot summary on wikipedia - and it seems that this book focuses on a family that leaves Israel pretty early on during these 2000 years.

Yep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora

First I would suggest this funny and historical song about the lands you speak of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY

As soon as we hand history over to a good-willing person, even if they are a great artist, the matters quickly get foggy. This particular attempt at simplification of history has at least one significant flaw. It picked a plot line of different peoples fighting for land because they consider it holy and sticks to it, even though it's historically incorrect. Specifically, it is only fully correct for Jews, since, according to the Bible, the land of Israel was promised to Abraham and his descendants by God. Everyone else were and are primarily fighting for other reasons. For Muslims, Israel has never been a particularly important place - only the Jerusalem Mosque is somewhat important (not as important as Mecca and Medina), even though it is only thought to be mentioned in Quran as "the farthest Mosque". Now while Christians did call it a Holy land, I believe the real reason they were attracted to it was because of its association with Jesus.

So yeah, while Nina Parley is a terrific artist, be warned that this particular work of art distorts the truth, whether on purpose or not. The real story is that the Jews have a much stronger religious claim to the land than anyone else. Even more importantly, Israel is their only homeland, as opposed to everyone else who fought (and, arguably, still fights) for it.

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