Middle East Military

Israel Defense Force Brigadier General Gal Hirsch has taken part in all of Israel's military confrontations since 1982, leaving a unique signature on a wide scope of strategic thinking owing to his deep understanding of operational art and military planning. In 2009, Hirschs autobiographical book in Hebrew, War Story, Love Story, was published and instantly appeared on the Israeli best seller list where it stayed for many months. The description of his own personal journey offers deep, open-minded, and critical insights.

In the summer of 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts organized a series of writing workshops, led by prominent authors, to encourage U.S. troops and their families to record their experiences and reflections on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The result is this extraordinary volume of first-hand letters, poems, journals, memoirs, and e-mails from the men and women directly involved in battle and their families back home.

Whatever else the United States intended when it invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, it was not to hand the country over to a 32-year-old militant cleric who fought against the U.S. presence from the start and was described by former Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer III as a "Bolshevik Islamist".

Gallipoli: the mere name summons the story of this well-known campaign of the First World War. And the story of Gallipoli, where in August 1915 the Allied forces made their last valiant effort against the Turks, is one of infamous might-have-beens. If only the Allies had held out a little longer, pushed a little harder, had better luck, Gallipoli might have been the decisive triumph that knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the First World War.

The judging panel of the Hebrew Writers Association and Tamuz Publishing House unanimously chose The Arab Within as the best prose book for the year 2000. “Against a background of this decade’s political events, there unfolds a creative and fascinating tale, which slowly penetrates the membrane of Israel’s sanity, to extract truths that pluck at the chords of our soul.” (The judging panel) From the book: Nadia’s words rose and floated in his head. As long as he doesn’t meet the victim face to face, he’ll never know who it was and now that he has details of the man’s private ...

Given how quickly its operations have achieved global impact, it may seem that the Islamic State materialized suddenly. In fact, al-Qaeda's operations chief, Sayf al-Adl, devised a seven-stage plan for jihadis to conquer the world by 2020 that included reestablishing the Caliphate in Syria between 2013 and 2016. Despite a massive schism between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, al-Adl's plan has proved remarkably prescient. In summer 2014, ISIS declared itself the Caliphate after capturing Mosul, Iraq - part of stage five in al-Adl's plan.

In Assad: The Triumph of Tyranny, Con Coughlin, veteran commentator on war in the Middle East and author of Saddam: The Secret Life, examines how a mild-mannered ophthalmic surgeon has transformed himself into the tyrannical ruler of a once flourishing country.

The Gulf War of 1990-91 was probably the last major deployment of arms by the UK on such a scale and a larger gathering of armour than the Battle of Kursk in WW II. This is a personal account of the Gulf War 1990-91 and the liberation of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm / Operation Granby by a Troop Leader in a front line tank squadron; B Squadron The 14/20th Kings Hussars, 4th Armoured Brigade, 1 British Division. Forward by General Sir Richard Shirreff. This is not a political or strategic study, but a look at the lives of the men who lived and fought on and from their tanks.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, two of bin Laden’s key lieutenants: the masterminds behind the attacks of September 11. Based on the only interview these masterminds of terror ever gave to the media as well as extensive follow-up research, Capture or Kill may be the closest we will get to the full inside story of the plot.

ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - has taken on the mantle of being the single most dangerous terrorist threat to global security since al-Qaeda. In Defeating ISIS, internationally renowned intelligence veteran, author, and counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance gives an insider's view to explain the origins of this occult group, its violent propaganda, and how it spreads its ideology throughout the Middle East and to disaffected youth deep in the heart of the Western world.

In 21 Days to Baghdad, historian Dr. Heather Stur describes the commitment of the division to Kuwait, the invasion of Iraq and the three weeks of violent desert conflicts on the way to Baghdad before the siege and battle for the city itself, and the “thunder runs” that saw its fall to U.S. forces. She then details the complex security mission that required the soldiers and their commanders to convince Iraqi citizens that the U.S. was there to help them, while at the same time they continued fighting Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard, paramilitary forces, and terrorists.

Colonel Tiso's account offers unique insights into the challenges of planning the Iraqi campaign and the intricacies and challenges of multinational service through the lens of his assignments as a war planner at U.S. Central Command, Senior Military Adviser of the Arab Peninsula Shield Force and the Polish-led Multinational Division (Central-South), and Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (C-3) of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team tasked to develop the New Iraqi Army.

Decision Making in a Nuclear Middle East analyzes the implications of a nuclear Iran by applying lessons from the Cold War. It takes a hard look at the assumed stability of the Cold War, the judgment of Soviet and American leaders, technology glitches, incidents and events that brought the superpowers closer to a nuclear exchange than they ever planned or expected.

It is the year 1915, and the British and Ottoman Empires clash in a deadly struggle in the Middle East. Tasked with keeping the Ottomans out of Suez Canal, Major Andrew Selkirk discovers that his real assignment is to retrieve a Bengali spy working for those who vow to see British rule out of India. After landing on the west coast of Palestine, Selkirk discovers the Ottomans have taken the spy captive. Even more troubling are the plans by Ottomans and Germans to draw Afghanistan and Persia into the war against Great Britain.

In 1948, Stan Andrews left a comfortable postwar life in Los Angeles to travel to the war-torn Middle East, where a four-front Arab invasion threatened to destroy the newly-declared State of Israel. There he joined the Israeli Air Force and became one of its first fighter pilots. Andrews was an unexpected volunteer for the fight for a Jewish state. He had previously been aloof from the struggle for Jewish independence but found himself so roused by the anti-Semitism of 1940s America that he decided to go to Israel and risk everything.

In a move that would forever alter the map of the Middle East, Israel captured the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and Sinai Peninsula in 1967's brief but pivotal Six Day War. Cursed Victory is the first complete history of the war's troubled aftermath—a military occupation of the Palestinian territories that is now well into its fifth decade. The audiobook provides a gripping and unvarnished chronicle of how what Israel promised would be an "enlightened occupation" quickly turned sour and the anguished diplomatic attempts to bring it to an end.

As the US occupation of Iraq rages, novelist Mortada Gzar, a student at the University of Baghdad, has a chance encounter with Morise, an African American soldier. It’s love at first sight, a threat to them both, and a moment of self-discovery. Challenged by society’s rejection and Morise’s return to the US, Mortada takes to the page to understand himself. In his affecting memoir, Mortada interweaves tales of his childhood work as a scrap-metal collector in a war zone and the indignities faced by openly gay artists in Iraq with his impossible love story and journey to the US.

For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the same era the Near East was utterly remade by another series of wars: the Mongol invasions. In a single generation, the Mongols conquered vast swaths of the Near East and upended the region's geopolitics. This is the definitive history of the Mongol assault on the Near East and its enduring global consequences.

At the height of the Syrian Civil War, deep beneath the shattered streets of rebel-held Darayya was a secret library. This basement room filled with thousands of books, rescued under constant sniper fire from gutted buildings, was an oasis of normality in a country at war with itself. Here, despite a devastating four-year siege, people risked their lives to read. Over a period of more than a year, Mike Thomson heard their extraordinary stories via tenuous Skype calls, emails, social media messages, and audio diaries recorded on their mobile phones.

The No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling modern classic: A Bravo Two Zero for the Second Gulf War. They were branded as cowards and accused of being the British Special Forces Squadron that ran away from the Iraqis. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ten years on, the story of these sixty men can finally be told. In March 2003 M Squadron - an SBS unit with SAS embeds - was sent 1,000 kilometres behind enemy lines on a true mission impossible, to take the surrender of the 100,000-strong Iraqi Army 5th Corps.