Description
Book SynopsisExplains how an Arab landscape, physical and human, was transformed into an Israeli, Jewish state. This book discusses the process by which Hebrew nomenclature replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages, and ruins in Eretz Israel/Palestine (his name for the Holy Land, thereby defining it as a land of Jews and Arabs).
Trade Review"When peace finally comes to Israel, Benvenisti will be regarded as a moral and courageous thinker who spoke out on behalf of the oppressed before it became the fashionable thing to do." - Kirkus Reviews "Benvenisti powerfully describes how Israelis have sought to obliterate all signs of the Palestinian past while Palestinians continue in their unrealistic fantasy of a return to a world that is no more." - Tikkun "Equally informed by intelligence and remorse, Sacred Landscape is a passionate book that eludes easy categorization [and] represents a heroic effort to transcend derelictions of the past through its scholarly restoration." - Jerusalem Post "The literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict is vast, but very little of it has anything new to contribute to a debate which usually amounts to no more than the reiteration of entrenched positions. Sacred Landscape is a refreshing exception to this. Here is an author who uses scholarship and knowledge of the land to make clear and uncompromising points. Benvenisti has produced an important work of lasting value. Its publication shows the strength and vitality of Israeli intellectual life. It is marked, above all, by an unflinching regard for truth, even the most inconvenient truths." - Hugh Kennedy, Times Literary Supplement
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Introduction
I. The Hebrew Map
2. White Patches
3· Exodus
4· Ethnic Cleansing
5· Uprooted and Planted
6. The Signposts of Memory
7· Saints, Peasants, and Conquerors
8. The Last Zionists
Epilogue
Notes
Index
