From the moment of its founding, and, in truth, before its founding, the State of Israel has faced the determined opposition of the Arab world. The armies of five Arab nations invaded Israel the day after it declared independence in 1948. In 1967, after a similar attempt again failed, the Arab League met at Khartoum and issued the famous three no's: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel. Terrorism, war, and boycott followed across the decades—the PLO, the intifadas, the missile campaigns, and the Iranian proxy network that exploited Arab grievance and stretched from Lebanon to Gaza to Yemen, and whose efforts came to a gruesome crescendo on October 7, 2023. Arab opposition to Israel has been, for most of the past century, an organizing principle of Arab political life. It was the cause around which governments mobilized populations, and around which Palestinians built an identity.

And so it is genuinely remarkable when a man who grew up inside that world, who absorbed its assumptions as a child, who knows its arguments from the inside, sits down and writes a book called The Arab Case for Israel.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain was born in Iraq, raised in Lebanon, and serves as a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. On this episode, he joins Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver to discuss The Arab Case for Israel.

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