The Israel Narrative

About the Book

William G Baker, a Near East expert, university professor, retired military intelligence officer, native Arabic and Hebrew linguist, and author, answers the following questions in this book: • What was the Diaspora and why were Jews persecuted? • What is Zionism and by what authority was modern Israel established? • How was modern Israeli culture reconstituted and the Hebrew language revived? • What were the Arab-Israeli wars? • Who is Israel’s new existential threat? • Who were the Hebrews, Judahites, and Israelites? • When did they rule the land of Israel, who ended their rule and renamed it Palestine? The book examines the gathering of millions of Jews into a cohesive, new, contemporary Jewish-Israeli society and its development of a strong military, which has made Israel a regional superpower. It also explores the Palestinian narrative and objection to Israel’s creation. This is the first single text that covers the historical span of the Hebrew-Israelite-Judahite-Jewish-Israeli narrative from its ethnogenesis in antiquity to its rebirth in modernity.

About the Author

William G Baker was raised in the Near East and is a native speaker of Arabic and Hebrew. He has served as assistant professor of Arabic at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and as a senior Near East analyst at the Pentagon. He has also been assistant air attaché, Tel Aviv, Israel; air attaché Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and defense attaché, Doha, Qatar. Following his military retirement, he served as director of Asian and African Languages, assistant director of Middle East Studies, and senior lecturer in Arabic and Middle East Studies at Baylor University for twenty-years. He is also the author of The Cultural Heritage of Arabs, Islam, and the Middle East and The Arabic Sound and Script.