Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

Israel’s history is laced with persistence, achievement, immigration controversy, and resilience. Author Noa Tishby, an actor, producer, and writer who now lives in West Hollywood, proudly relates the story of her homeland in Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. A military veteran, Tishby’s style is vigorous; she tells it like it is. For the title’s “simple,” read “complex,” and as for “misunderstood,” she acknowledges a chronic situation.

Tishby delves back centuries to the land and its people prior to 1948, the year Israel achieved independence as a freedom-for-all state. Her chapters profile Israel’s early prime ministers: David Ben-Gurion; Menachem Begin, a fighter for independence who became a diplomatic orator and shared a Nobel Peace Prize with the Egyptian Anwar Sadat; the assassinated Yitzhak Rabi; and Shimon Peres, who later became president.

Tishby embraces personal role models, too, including her pioneer grandmother who was an early kibbutznik and a grandfather who served as an agricultural adviser in African countries on the threshold of independence from colonial rule.