A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture

Book Description

Censored last year by the Association of Israeli Architects, A Civilian Occupation is the first attempt by Israeli architects, scholars, journalists, and photographers to highlight the role of Israeli architecture in the Middle East conflict.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the declared aim of the Zionist project has been to build a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. From the settlement offensive of the Tower and Stockade villages in the 1930s, through the total planning of the state of Israel soon after its independence, to the colonization of the occupied territories from 1967 to the present, this book reveals how central Israeli architecture has been in securing that aim. 25 color and 116 b/w photos/illustrations.

Contributors: Daniel Bauer, B'Tselem, Meron Benvenisti, Zvi Efrat, Nadav Harel, Miki Kratsman, Milutin Labudovic, Gideon Levy, Ilan Potash, Sharon Rotbard, Rafi Segal, Efrat Shvily, Eran Tamir-Tawil, Eyal Weizman, Pavel Wolberg, Oren Yiftachel.

Customer Reviews:

Fresh but overstated.......2006-04-01

This book describes a phenomenon that grew out of a innovative aerial photography technique developed by the Israeli's which gave government officials and planners unprecedented ability to use terrain to further their social and political ends. An amazing revelation, especially since by the day Israel is becoming ever more stratified with barriers of all types and now has a terrain in which free movement is often impossible. But the author's seem to overstate their thesis that " Contrary to common belief and visual impression, it [Israeli space] was born not of haphazard improvisation, emergency solutions or speculative entrepreneurship, and certainly not of spontaneous diachronic development, but rather of the unprecedented objective of putting into practice one of the most comprehensive, controlled and efficient architectural experiments of the modern era." As often happens, the far-Left position on Israel mirrors the far-Right in dissimulating Israel's history by couching it in terms of a singularity. Much of the research presented in the book offers a great way to begin assembling a history of Israel, but unfortunately the authors do what is more expedient by allying themselves with an already articulated critique of Israel instead.

a good start of the way to speak out the truth.......2006-02-12

A good start of the way to speak out the truth. I urge all Israeli architects to rethink their involvement in a racist and apartheid regime.

Propaganda against human rights.......2005-01-24

Is architecture ever political? Of course.

I think it was political when Arabs built their homes with doors so low that folks couldn't ride their horses through them. And obviously, it was political in 1936 to 1939, when Jews built 57 "stockade and tower" settlements, many of them in a single day. But most of the politics I saw in this book was pro-ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank, from the contributors.

This book does have some maps and photos. You may want to look at them in the library. But don't buy the book.

The book says that Jews are putting up buildings in the West Bank. It implies that such construction is hideous. It calls all this "arrogance." And it says that even a Jewish withdrawal from the West Bank will not undo all the damage. But I think anything it says about the West Bank can be equally well applied to the rest of the Earth, and I think the bogus argument for removing Jews from the West Bank is no different from the one to remove them (or any other people) from this planet.

In fact, Israel is land-poor. Its people ought to have a right to buy land and live on that land, just as people everywhere in the world ought to have such a right. The West Bank is disputed land, not the personal property of some Goddess who has permitted only Her People, the West Bank Arabs, to live on it. Jews need to have as much of a right to live in the West Bank and build on it as do Arabs. The authors, by failing to agree, have shown their opposition to human rights, not just for Jews, but for everyone.

Problems abound.......2004-12-05

The argument here is pretty simple. A Jewish refugee living on the West bank is "wrong", he should not live there and it is not fair that if he chooses to live there that he might choose to live in a safe place, with gorgeous vistas. This book was compiled by left wing Israelui architects, whose meager experience in politics does not dull their hatred of the country for which they have worked in the past, namely the state of Israel. Their arguments are strong, they dont think its fair that Jewish villages happen to be located on hill tops or that those villages happen to be clean and neat and tidy or that those villages have defenses like fences to keep people out.

The book begs the question of what is so interesting about a village in the west bank. The Authors are entirely racist in that they do not also covers similar settlements in the American west or the Moroccan occupied Western Sahara. This book doesnt draw any parrallels between places throughout the world where immigrants have designed new communities, out of fear or in order to live safely and in culturally homogenous places. THus in the end this racist narrow minded presentation falls far short oft he great work it could have been. it could have shown how early Islamic occupation of the same area was also dominate dby hilltop villages and armed military camps, as in the Roman period. THe subject lacks depth and history, whereas the subject itself; how immigrants settle land, is an amazing one.

Seth J. Frantzman

A very narrow-minded one-sided work.......2004-09-26

This book is written by a group of extreme left wing architects and journalists. It's a flirt with antisemitism and a major self-hatered manifesto. It is full with half-truths and misleading information. It's not worth the paper it was printed on. If you do intend to read it, do yourself a big favor and read "A Durable Peace" by Benjamin Netanyahu. For a true insight of the reality of this complexe reality which is the Israeli-palestinian conflict.

Book Description

In the misty dawn of January 31, 1921, a Coast Guardsman on watch at the Cape Hatteras Life-Saving Station sighted a mighty five-masted schooner, all sails set, wrecked on the treacherous Diamond Shoals. Rescuers rushed to the ship, but when they arrived they found the Carroll A. Deering deserted, with no trace of the captain, Willis B. Wormell, or the crew. When, several months later, a bottle was found on a nearby beach, purportedly containing a note from a crew member who ascribed the schooner's fate to its capture by pirates, a sensational panic in international shipping ensued. The captain's daughter successfully lobbied for a federal investigation, but months of inquiry failed to turn up either the missing crew or a reason for the ship's demise. To this day, the fate of the Deering has remained one of the greatest mysteries of maritime history.

Bland Simpson assembles the known facts into a compelling reconstruction of the Carol A. Deering's final voyage and its baffling aftermath. Using contemporary sources including newspapers, FBI reports, ship's logs, and personal and official correspondence, he weaves together historical narrative with the voices of key participants in the drama. Simpson's haunting chronicle keeps the story of the Deering alive, an apt memorial to the ghost ship and its lost crew.

Customer Reviews:

horrible writing style for a book, almost unreadable.......2005-12-23

I was really looking forward to reading this book over the Christmas holidays. I enjoy reading true, unsolved mysteries but after reading and rereading several pages I gave up.

Reading should be a pleasure and the reader should not have to keep rereading words and sentences to try and decipher what the author is trying to convey.

In reading this book it was like every sentence was overly long with each phrase seperated by commas when it seemed for clarity the sentences should have ended and a new sentence begun.

Also,have you every read a book when you get the impression the author is just trying to show you how intelligent he is by constantly using new uncommon words just to show you, the reader, how vast his vocabulary is? Also I noticed every noun in almost every sentence had to be preceded by about 3 descriptive words when one would have been fine most of the time.

Paragraph after paragraph has sentences like this:

"The gusting January wind blew spray and sand at them, and the damp sand gathered and caked upon the three foot, wooden spoked wheels, and the sea oats and grasses around them bent seaward, as the men and their boat slowly dragged through the dunes and over the open seabeach, the half-dozen men and the one beast drawing forward as if they next intended, like poseidon of old, to plough the very sea itself."

ALSO

"In the wet sand below the tideline the men halted and unhitched the front set of wheels from the boat carriage and led the mare forward into the shallow surf that was sheeting rapidly beneath tem, till the wheels were clear and the front fell into the water and made a skid down which the boat would go, and one of them walked the mare around and away, pulling now just the wheels, till she too was clear and unburduned and, standing alone and apart from the surfmen, looked away from them and their incompcomprehensible task".

Page after page of reading this type of writing becomes so tedious and frustrating you just give up and go on another book.

Just to be fair I want to let the readers of this review know I also ordered from Amazon two 900 page books, Shattered Swords(about the Battle of Midway) and Ultimate Sacrifice(about the Kennedy Assination)and I would wake up in the middle of the night and go back to reading both of these books because they were so well written.

Simpson's Best Yet.......2002-10-16

I started this book on a Saturday at 1:00 pm, and put it down, finished, eight hours later (and jumped right into "...Nell Cropsey" by author same. This is simply a must-read for any lover of shipwreck stories, mysteries, or American history...and particularly for anyone (like myself) who's fallen in love with coastal North Carolina. Thanks Bland!

Average customer rating:

Adventure 1934--January
Thompson Burtis (Duke Daly Looks at Crime), Gordon Carroll (The Last Dispatch), B. E. Cook (Wise Son), Henry Lacossitt (Brothers), Arthur D. Howden Smith (Galleons in the West), W. C. Tuttle (Buzzards Know), Gordon Young (When the Bravest Trembled (Part 2)). Contributors include Lawrence G. Blochman (Out of Thin Air)
Manufacturer: Butterick Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VPUTYQ

ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY - Volume 21, number 6 - June 1976: Gemini and the Missing Mother; Sometimes They Bite; The Triad; Albion Perfidious Albion; One Up; Life or Breath; Caveat Emptor; The Big Old Melon; The Silver Lining; Kid Cardula; Police Calls

Average customer rating:

ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY - Volume 21, number 6 - June 1976: Gemini and the Missing Mother; Sometimes They Bite; The Triad; Albion Perfidious Albion; One Up; Life or Breath; Caveat Emptor; The Big Old Melon; The Silver Lining; Kid Cardula; Police Calls
Eleanor (editor) (Joyce Harrington; Lawrence Block; Pauline C. Smith; Everett Greenbaum; William E. Chambers; Nelson DeMille; Kay Nolte Smith; Stephen Wasylyk; Mick Mahoney; Jack Ritchie; Carroll Mayers) Sullivan
Manufacturer: Davis Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HPAQAW

"The Big Five": Some facts and figures on our nation's largest rivers

Average customer rating:

"The Big Five": Some facts and figures on our nation's largest rivers
Carroll W Saboe
Manufacturer: U.S. Geological Survey, Dept. of the Interior
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Rivers | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B00071DG1W

Collective bargaining in Chicago: 1929-30,: A study of the economic significance of the industrial location of trade-unionism, (Social science studies, ... Committee of the University of Chicago)

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Collective bargaining in Chicago: 1929-30,: A study of the economic significance of the industrial location of trade-unionism, (Social science studies, ... Committee of the University of Chicago)
Carroll Lawrence Christenson
Manufacturer: The University of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006AM3ZO

Average customer rating:

Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence
Carroll Davidson Wright
Manufacturer: Rand, Avery, & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Handsome Lawrence: A Sequel to "A Rolling Stone." By George Sand. Translated from the French by Carroll Owen

Average customer rating:

Handsome Lawrence: A Sequel to "A Rolling Stone." By George Sand. Translated from the French by Carroll Owen
Lucile-Aurore (Baronne) Dudevant
Manufacturer: Boston: James R. Osgood
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000ITS8MU

Average customer rating:

Imagine
Shirley Hawley , and Lawrence Carroll
Manufacturer: EPPI
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0968648509

Book Description

IMAGINE is a book of illustrated reflective poems.The poems invite you on a journey towards awareness and nuturance of yourself and others.

Average customer rating:

Richard Milazzo's essay is sublime
informative , insightful view of Carroll's work.

Lawrence Carroll
Richard Milazzo
Manufacturer: Cantz
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Artists, A-Z | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

German | Foreign Language Nonfiction | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Arts & Photography | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

Nonfiction | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

All German Books | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 3893225080
Release Date: 1999-10-02

Book Description

Edited by Johann-Karl Schmidt, Lawrence Carroll. Text by Richard Milazzo.

Customer Reviews:

Richard Milazzo's essay is sublime.......2006-03-08

Collins and Milazzo changed the way I looked at art in NYC in the mid 80's and early 90's/ I have continued to read and follow Richard Milazzos writings ever since. Carrolls work was brought to my attention through exhibitions curated by C&M and I have followed his work since the late 80's. Carroll is an artist of great sensitivity and touch. In the tradition of the great ones he follows close behind...He keeps surprising me....

informative , insightful view of Carroll's work........2002-05-15

Little has been published on this unique artist, and what has been published is mostly out of print , or only found in Europe. It was in Europe that I first saw Carroll's work in Kassel, Germany during Documenta 9 , the most important exhibition of contemporary art held every 5 years. Ever since I have been intriqued and drawn to the work. Mr. Millazzo's essay alows an entrance into the process of Caroll's work, and allows questions to form that engage the reader. Beautifully designed and illustrated with mostly color plates allows the viewer to glimpse into the range of this talented painter. Carroll's fascination with the fleeting, temporary nature of our very own exsistence is written about thoughtfully in the text. Carroll has been exploring these personal and complex ideas since the early 80's
I highly encourage this book if you are interested in contemporary art of our time.

Average customer rating:

LAWRENCE KEARNY
CARROLL STORRS ALDEN
Manufacturer: PRINCETON
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000S9IZ2I

Book Description

A unique opportunity for the youngest in the household to be introduced to the world of the ninth art, thanks to the famous reporter created by Herge.

Average customer rating:
The Compliance Review Tool Kit: An Internal Control System for Auditing and Monitoring Consumer Regulatory Compliance
Marrinan Barefoot , and Inc. Associates
Manufacturer: Probus Publishing Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Accounting | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books | Auditing | Bookkeeping | Financial | General | Governmental | International | Management | Taxes
Banks & Banking | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1557387834

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The compliance review tool kit: An internal control system for auditing and monitoring consumer regulatory compliance
William J Showalter
Manufacturer: Probus Pub. Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006OW5B2

Book Description

In Cultivating California, David Vaught shows how fruit and nut growers were neither industrialists nor agrarians. From the very outset, he explains, these "horticulturists" saw themselves as guardians of California's unique culture--raising crops for market while self-consciously building healthy and prosperous communities. Every grower was not, in fact, like every other, Vaught argues, whether one examines their labor systems, recruiting methods, harvest needs, marketing strategies, farm size, or their relationships with their communities, unions, and the state. The hard work, foresight, and devotion to detail required to nurture an orchard or vineyard made them, they insisted, cultivators of a better society. Over time, however, labor relations, market imperatives, and changing political conditions undermined the growers' horticultural ideal.

Customer Reviews:

Accessibly revealed in the course of this involving account.......2003-02-10

Students of California history and agricultural development will find Cultivating California an intriguing story of growers, specialty crops, and labor developments in the state from 1875-1920, revealing how politicians, growers, and organizations interacted in the process of cultivating California's crops. Labor relations and agricultural development planning are all accessibly revealed in the course of this involving account.

From the publisher's website.......2002-12-30

"This is an important book because it dares to take on -- with considerable success -- a paradigm that has prevailed since the publication of Carey McWilliams's Factories in the Field in 1939. Cultivating California is a crisply written, fast-paced narrative based upon extraordinary research. It is also a courageous effort to clarify the history of agriculture in California by making room for the high ideals of the turn-of-the-century horticultural generation." -- Kevin Starr, Business History Review

"This detailed history of four central and northern California agricultural communities is developed around pivotal issues of race, gender, market forces, and entrepreneurial vision. It is local history at its best." -- Harry C. McDean, Western Historical Quarterly

"Cultivating California is expertly researched and gracefully written... [It] is an extremely important book that will be read by scholars in agricultural, labor, and California history." -- David Igler, Agricultural History

"Vaught... is a good writer, but an even more valuable trait... is his dedication to research. This book tells an intriguing story, and it should thus rank very high on the reading list of any historian interested in the history of agriculture and labor in the American West." -- Carlos A. Schwantes, Journal of American History

"A must for scholars interested in the Golden State's controversial history." -- Paul Rhode, Agricultural History Review

Average customer rating:
Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920.
David. Vaught
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000R0YVOE

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