What is Reddit's opinion of Jerusalem: The Biography?

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Allenby also specifically walked in rather than rode into Jerusalem to avoid the crusader vibe. There's this pretty big and slow-going book which is excellent for an in-depth look at Jerusalem's history

This may be a strange suggestion, but in my experience the most unbiased history that I found is Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Monefiore (see https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307280500/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_awGLFbC0NGWHY ).

The last quarter of the book is dedicated to the modern conflict like you want, but not the whole thing, so this us not exactly what you asked for. On the other hand, it is good to get an overview of how Jews, Christians, Muslims, various European empires and other conquerers became attached to the holy land over the centuries and millenia. Most books on the modern conflict start in the 1800s without that sort of religious or political background, so something comprehensive has some advantages.

Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore http://www.amazon.com/Jerusalem-Biography-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/0307280500

It is by far the bloodiest book I've ever read. The things that have happened in that city throughout history make today's problems look non-existent.

Jerusalem: The Biography

>> Arabs are a colonial empire

> Neither of those things are true.

Really

> The native Palestinians living in Jericho have lived there for ~11,000 years.

Lol no they haven't. Jericho is an 11,000-year-old city that was colonized many, many, many times in the past 11,000 years. Literally nobody has lived in Jericho for 11,000 years - not Palestinians, not Moabites, not Natufians (the ancestors of the Jews). Palestinians have lived in Israel for a maximum of 1400 years, before which they lived in Arabia. Israel has a long, long history, and the vast majority of it predates Arab colonial expansion. If you use 11,000 years ago as a starting point - and the Jews only go back about 4,000 years, but okay I'll take your 11,000 - then the Arab empire invaded Israel a week and a half ago.

> No. Certainly not modern hebrew. Ancient hebrew was as I understand it a semitic language. But even then you're wrong. And, ironically, you don't seem to know any jewish history, only false propaganda.

Modern Hebrew is ancient Hebrew with a couple of modern words like "plastic" to fill in the gaps. The Jews revived their own language. Hebrew is not only a Semitic language, it's a Canaanite language, which Arabic is not. The Jews are literally a Canaanite people. They lost their language after colonization - although they still used it for religious purposes for thousands of years - but they preserved their alphabet, which they used for day-to-day purposes in European exile, and they preserved their holy texts - at risk of death from Christians and other white people - which they had written in their native land, in their native language, millennia and millennia before Arab colonization.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur_of_the_Chaldees

Yes, Avram and Suri (Abraham and Sarah) were from Ur, which is in Mesopotamia, or Iraq, and they migrated to Canaan. Yitzhak and Yaakov (Isaac and Jacob, the son and grandson of Abraham and the fathers of the Jewish people) were born in Canaan, and took Canaanite wives. The twelve sons of Yaakov (the twelve tribes of Israel) took Canaanite wives and had, essentially, Canaanite children. Only Abraham and Sarah were from Ur. They moved to Canaan and married into Canaan, and their descendants were genetically Canaanite. Hebrew is mutually intelligible with other Canaanite languages such as Moabite and Edomite. Palestinians today who test positive for Canaanite blood are literally testing positive for Jewish blood, from Jews who joined the dominant culture during the Arab occupation.

By the way, Arabs also descend from Abraham. Abraham's son Esav, father of Ishmael, is considered the father of the Arabs. So your argument "Abraham was from Ur therefore Jews are not from Israel" doesn't check out - first, because the descendants of Abraham integrated into Canaan and eventually became their own kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel, which lasted a thousand years, and second, because Arabs are also children of Abraham.

> A thousand years before rome was founded the ancient Egyptians called it Peleset.

Ok so:

• Ancient Egyptians (today's Coptic people, who are routinely massacred by the colonizer Arab culture in Egypt) are not native to Israel, so if they used the word "Peleset" to refer to Canaan or Israel, it was an exonym, not an endonym. It's like referring to Australia as "Australia," a European word, rather than any indigenous names of the island.

• Peleset is a Hebrew word. It means "to wallow."

• The Peleset were an actual people. They are not related to Greek Philistim, Roman Palestinians, or Arab Palestinians. They were one of the "Sea Peoples," a group of unknown origin who invaded a bunch of countries during the Bronze Age collapse. Here is a video that covers this topic. Arab colonial apologists love to claim that Egypt's one mention of Peleset refers to some ancient version of Palestine, hundreds of years before the arrival of the Philistines from Greece, but that doesn't correspond to reality. The Peleset were an actual people. They're not a smoking gun for a lost Palestinian people who jumped backwards in time from the Arab imperial period.

> Later the hebrites would wander over the mountains from Iraq to genocide the Canaanites and occupy and colonize Peleset, before they themselves were occupied and colonized by the Romans. Actually iirc the hebrites were occupied and colonized by many kingdoms and empires.

Ok, no, that's not what happened. Not exactly, and certainly not the part about "wandering over the mountains from Iraq to genocide the Canaanites and occupy Peleset."

Really, I suggest you read more about this topic. There's a book called Jerusalem by Simon Montefiore that's pretty decent, considering how politicized this topic can be.

Jews had wars with other Canaanite peoples, that is true. They didn't suddenly appear from Ur or Iraq to take over Canaan or "Peleset." They had lived in Canaan for centuries. Wars were normal for the time, and, what we refer to today as genocides, were also normal during the Bronze and Iron ages. Canaanites - Malekites, specifically - are mentioned in the Old Testament as enemies of the Jews. Malek is scheduled to come back every generation, and so far he hasn't failed to show up. Many Canaanite groups, including the Jebusites, Moabites, Edomites, Ammonites, survived for centuries afterwards, almost into modern times. The Edomites allied with the Jews against the Greeks and Romans. Many of those indigenous groups disappeared under various colonial occupations. There were about twenty empires who passed through the region, before and after the Arabs.

>> Jews survived colonization all the way through history.

> In Peleset/Palestine? A few thousand, yes.

Yeah, no one has ever called it Peleset. It was Canaan (the Egyptians knew it as Canaan), then it was Israel, and then Rome came and called it Palestine. There was a Greek culture, the Philistines, who lived for a few centuries in today's Gaza Strip, but they came during/after the Kingdom of Israel was established. The story of David and Goliath was a conflict between the Jews and Philistine Greeks. During the war between the Greeks and the Jews, the Jews asked Rome for help, because the Greeks and Romans were enemies. Later, when the Romans turned on the Jews, they named Israel "Palestine" after the Greek culture. This was the first time in history, AD 136, that Canaan/Israel was ever called Palestine, and it also marks the beginning of the exile period, which ended in AD 1948.

Also, that Jews had become a minority in their own land is a classic mark of colonization. Native Americans are an extreme minority in USA and Canada as well. Arabs had a much higher population than Jews in Israel during their occupation because they benefitted from the privilege that came with being the dominant power.

This book (http://www.amazon.ca/Jerusalem-Biography-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/0307280500) really sparked my interest in the time period.