Enjoyable read. Insightful and thought pro

Mitchell Bard's book, Death to the infidels is an in depth look at Jewish-Muslim relations, especially the last century. Well covered is the creation of Israel and the many wars which followed. Major differences in the Arab world versus other Muslim states are noted as well as the U.S.'s shifting positions on Israel and the Palestinians.

First, it must be noted that this is not a balanced account of the conflict, but written from the Israeli point of view. Bard writes in a scholarly tone and he uses end notes to cite his many sources. In my advanced reader’s copy, there was no index (and I could have used one many times to go back to previous chapters) but one will be included in the final version of the book.

In today's increasingly anti-semitic world where even the terrible comments of a representative in the U.S. House were not censured, it is important to know what has happened in the past so we can reconstruct a future that is fair to all participants: Muslim, Jew and Christian. This book goes a long way in understanding the Israeli point of view and allows the reader to grasp the fundamentals necessary understand today's world. ( )

Won this through the Early Readers program and was looking forward to reading it to get a better understanding of the Mideast and the struggles between Muslims and Jews.
Started out very interesting and clearly but I soon got bogged down. there are so many different groups on both sides I could not keep them clear. I'm sure this was more of a problem on my part than on the author.
I'm sure it is a struggle for anyone to keep all the factions clear. Seemed like it took me forever to read because I couldn't keep everyone straight. I'm sorry I didn't enjoy it more. ( )

A solid, if brief, tour through the history of the modern state of Israel, of the ages-old conflict between Jews and Muslims, and of the evolution of the conflict since 1948 from mostly political/nationalistic to religious. He thoroughly documents the virulent anti-Semitism that has long motivated antipathy to Israel, revealing it as a hatred of the Jews themselves and of even the idea that a Jewish state could even persist in the midst of Muslim nations. He provides quotations from many Palestinian and Muslim leaders in which they declare their intent to drive the Jews into the sea. He also details the many opportunities the Palestinians have had to get their state -- and how they have rejected the deals every time because they simply won't accept Israel's right to exist at all in any capacity (a good companion book which focuses on the Palestinians is State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State by Jonathan Schanzer).

Parts of this book were quite hard to get through -- very dry and consisting of long lists of statistics -- but overall a decent treatment of probably the most important political/religious issue we face today. ( )

Very interesting and relevant book as the West struggles to grapple with the horrors of ISIS, Boko Haram, and other groups. It requires a very different philosophical and ethical understanding to imagine where such radicals are coming from, and this book helps the reader bridge some of that gap to better understand their enemy. ( )