41■■ /MN. tat) qa Arts & Entertainment Between The Pages New perspectives on Mideast history, politics and contemporary life. Sandee Brawarsky Special to the Jewish News •From Benny Morris, a leading fig- ure among Israel's "New Historians:' a work described as groundbreak- ing and deeply revisionist, 1948:A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (Yale; $32.50), focuses on the political dimensions of the war. When asked about lessons to be learned from his study of the 1948 war, Morris replies, "To be sure, many Israelis will learn that they must remain strong and techno- logically advanced; otherwise they will be overwhelmed by Arab numbers and fervor. The Arabs might learn that they must improve themselves, at least on a technological—scientific level, and better their societies and armies, if they hope to overcome Israel, though it is possible that if they do, they may lose the desire to destroy Israel:" • Dr. Sami Khader is the only zoo veteri- narian in the Palestinian territories, and the zoo he oversees in the once prosperous farming town of Qalquiya is a place with animals in rusting, broken cages and few visitors these days. But Dr. Khader hasn't given up: His dream is to turn the zoo into one of international caliber. The zoo was founded in 1986, with the help of Israeli zoologists, vets and wildlife workers, but most of them now find it too dangerous to travel there. As told by British journalist Amelia Thomas, The Zoo on the Road to Nablus: A Story of Survival from the West Bank (Public Affairs; $24.95) is an account of the opera- tion of this indomitable and colorful insti- tution and a chapter in the unfolding tale of Middle East history. • In Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East (Norton; June 9, $27.95), Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysan examine the region's history through the lives of particularly colorful characters who were at the center, some forgotten, some infamous. The authors, a pair of married journalists, point out the name of the region is an Anglo-American invention. •American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem (Nan A. Talese, June 17: $26) by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, a former reporter for the New York Times, looks close- ly at a community established in Jerusalem in 1881 by American Christians with unorthodox beliefs. They befriended all the peoples of the Middle East and supported the return of Jews to their ancestral land. Their institution, the well-known American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, still stands. • Bernard Avishai has been writing and thinking about Israel since he moved there to volunteer in the 1967 war. Now a politi- cal economist, he calls on Israel to forge a more complete democracy to ensure a peaceful future in The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace At Last (Harcourt; $26). • Palestine Inside Out An Everyday Occupation (Norton; $24.95) by Saree Makdisi is an intimate view of the bureaucratic hurdles faced by Palestinians, the perceived loss of control of their lives and their eroding hopes for freedom. Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, compares the Palestinian territo- ries to open-air prisons. • In The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (Bantam; $26), Aaron David Miller, an adviser to six secretaries of state over the last 20 years who helped shape U.S. Middle East policy, provides a critical first person narrative. Miller is now a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. •A celebratory book, Israel at Sixty: An Oral History of a Nation Reborn (Wiley: $30) by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, the authors of several oral his- tories, includes interviews with more than 30 Israelis and American activists, illus- trated with many unpublished archival photos. ❑ o cWS the Israeli gov- ernment, but olov Special to the Jewish News he had to deal with a steady ‘1:11 Revisiting Exodus stream of old The 1960 film Exodus, from the novel Haganah and by Leon Uris, was the first major Irgun fighters Actor Paul Newman 0) motion picture filmed on location in who kvetched and director Otto Israel. A sweeping, intelligent epic about their Preminger on the set that told the story of the founding of of Exodus depiction in the State of Israel, the movie helped the movie. create favorable public opinion for Menachem Israel in the West. Exodus played to Begin complained about Irgun get- sold-out crowds and earned back five ting short shrift. When Preminger times its cost. asked how Begin had seen the script, The film's director, Otto Preminger, Begin replied, "I wasn't in Irgun for is the subject of a new biography, nothing." Preminger: The Man Who Would Be Preminger correctly perceived King by Foster Hirsch (Knopf; $35), that Israel's cause would be better which provides some interesting served if the novel's heavy-handed facts about the making of Exodus. pro-Israel perspective was toned Preminger had the cooperation of down and if some of the Arab and Nate Bloom CU C14 May 15 • 2038 British characters were "good guys." This was a brilliant decision because it gave the still pro-Israeli message of the picture an air of veracity that struck a chord with non-Jews. One quarter of Jerusalem's Jewish population turned out as unpaid extras for the street scene in which a massive crowd awaits the results of the United Nations vote on the parti- tion of Palestine. Preminger got this turnout by promising the extras that all of them would be entered into a lottery with a grand prize of 20,000 Israeli pounds. Big Screen/Little Screen For economic and ideological rea- sons, Israel didn't even have a TV station until 1966. Today, there are eight broadcast channels and a wide range of cable offerings. Israeli TV, like Israeli film, has blossomed in the last decade, and Western compa- nies are looking at which Israeli TV programs they can adapt for their own domestic audiences. The first such adaptation — the HBO series In Treatment — pre- miered earlier this year. Israeli film and TV actors also are starting to break into American film and TV produc- tion. The box-office Oded Fehr smash The Mummy (1999) and its sequels introduced worldwide audi- ences to handsome Israeli actor Oded Fehr, 37. More recently, Fehr has co-starred on the American TV shows Presidio Med and Sleeper Cell.