Ian Black

From a long-time Guardian correspondent and editor, an expansive, authoritative, and balanced account of over a century of violent confrontation, war, and occupation in Palestine and Israel, published on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War

Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

Enemies and Neighbors

Benny Morris

Surveys Israeli intelligence operations from the 1930s to the Ostrovsky affair and describes relations with the American intelligence community

A History of Israel's Intelligence Services

Israel's Secret Wars

Enemies and Neighbours

The rivalry between the East and West Ends of Glasgow is one of the fiercest and longest standing in Britain. This book takes a look at the funny side of this enduring rivalry.

Eastenders Vs. Westenders

Leslie Black

The traditional rivalries run deep between Glasgow's industry-blighted East End and the leafy suburban academia of the West End. The typical West Ender viewpoint is that the East End is full of workshy junkies and your average East Enders knows fine that the West End is populated by jumped-up snobs, but a shared sense of humour means that everything is just hunky-dory. 'Aye right', as we say in Glasgow when we mean: 'No way'.These rivalries are ancient, sometimes vicious, and run as deep at the Styx, but nowadays the main weapon is humour. People in the West are reacting to the suggestion that the Commonwealth Games is being shared by the city: 'Shared is it? Aye, the East End is getting it and we're paying for it'. These are the tall tales, the tantrums and the taradiddles told by both sides. Laugh? You'll probably flit to Edinburgh.

Eastenders vs Westenders and Westenders vs Eastenders

Connecting what Jesus said and how we live today in all its messiness and complexity, "Follow Me" provides practical steps that all of us can take to live the sayings of Jesus.

Living the Sayings of Jesus

Follow Me

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When we try to be like me. Sloan Phoenix Her plot is deadly. Her scheme is sinister. Her plan for Sloan Phoenix? Give him everything he wants! Two years ago, Judy Palmer was manipulated into murdering her unfaithful husband, Charlie, by the devilishly clever Sloan Phoenix. Now, after destroying the Prescott family, Sloan is the CEO of Prescott Industries. So just when everything looks like its going smoothly, Judy returns, hell-bent on destroying him. Partnered with the young Dan Pierce Jr., son of a deceased technology mogul and a former friend of the Prescotts, Judy uses a dark secret from Sloans past, putting his budding relationship with the young and beautiful widow Alexis Pierce in the crossfire. To stop Judy, Sloan, along with his best friend, Garry Lennox, seek out the past of Charlie Palmer, setting them on the path of a deadly secret that involves Judys new husband, Dr. Chris Faulkner, and her tormented sister, Tara. And as Judy weaves her tangled web of deception, duplicity, and death, Sloan must untangle himself long enough to beat her at the game he taught her to play. Agame with three rules: Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer. And take your secrets to the grave!

Part Two of the Tangled Web Trilogy

The Cradle Will Fall

Looking to escape the black cloak of your Calvinist heritage? Feeling dismally depressed by tomes of gloomy Scottish sayings? Need an umbrella against life's constant drizzle of pessimism? The look no further than Positive Thinking for Calvinists - The School of Soft Knox. We all know that the Scottish psyche is a complex creature, a victim of centuries of sackcloth and ashes. And when we look into the deep well of our Scottish souls we see the dark waters of Calvinism lying in wait. Definitely time for some positive thinking . . . So, if you've ever wondered if wool grows just as fast on lazy sheep, why hard work sometimes pays off in the future but indolence works this very minute and what exactly is the worst sort of Calvinist, then the answers are all here. And you might be surprised. You might even, God help us all, crack a smile or two dozen.

The School of Soft Knox

Positive Thinking for Calvinists

Ian Black has been called 'a best selling author' so many times that he is thinking of patenting the phrase and making his fortune that way, but he still wishes that he was Alexander McCall Smith or that nice blonde woman who writes about the wee laddie with the scar and the glasses, as that would mean to hell with poverty and let's throw another pea in the soup. But he still has to work and has now produced MAIR Edinbuggers Vs Weegies/MERR Weegies Vs Edinbuggers. This latest effusion is a completely new collection of anti-Weegie and anti-Edinbugger swedging, hard hits and sneaky bits from the West and East sides, sharp jibes and bludgeoning diatribes, including the slogan from a graffitti-covered wall in Glasgow's West End which avers that 'James Kelman likes fucking Edinburgh' and the one, possibly from Pilton, which claims 'Hugh MacDiarmid took sugar in his porridge'. You may find some reference to Shir Sean and the reason that he chose to support Celtic rather than Hearts or Hibs*, and you will find a list of things that you will never see in Edinburgh, but which have been personally observed by the author in the streets of Glasgow, starting with a Muslim woman in the full chador, Iranian Abaya-style, eyeslit only, pulling said eyeslit down so that she could blow a big bubble with her gum to amuse her toddler. But it is just friendly rivalry really, isn't it? To use the double positive negative, a figure of speech unique to Scotland: Aye, right.

Merr "Friendly' Rivalry and Anti-Edinbugger/Weegie Swedging

Merr Weegies Vs. Mair Edinbuggers

Mair/Merr hilarious jokes and anecdotes on the eternal struggle that is WEEGIES v EDINBUGGERS Ian Black has been called 'a best selling author' so many times that he is thinking of patenting the phrase and making his fortune that way, but he still wishes that he was Alexander McCall Smith or that nice blonde woman who writes about the wee laddie with the scar and the glasses, as that would mean to hell with poverty and let's throw another pea in the soup. But he still has to work and has now produced MAIR Edinbuggers Vs Weegies/MERR Weegies Vs Edinbuggers. This latest effusion is a completely new collection of anti-Weegie and anti-Edinbugger swedging, hard hits and sneaky bits from the West and East sides, sharp jibes and bludgeoning diatribes, including the slogan from a graffitti-covered wall in Glasgow's West End which avers that 'James Kelman likes fucking Edinburgh' and the one, possibly from Pilton, which claims 'Hugh MacDiarmid took sugar in his porridge'.You may find some reference to Shir Sean and the reason that he chose to support Celtic rather than Hearts or Hibs*, and you will find a list of things that you will never see in Edinburgh, but which have been personally observed by the author in the streets of Glasgow, starting with a Muslim woman in the full chador, Iranian Abaya-style, eyeslit only, pulling said eyeslit down so that she could blow a big bubble with her gum to amuse her toddler. But it is just friendly rivalry really, isn't it? To use the double positive negative, a figure of speech unique to Scotland: Aye, right. * It's because, as the Weegies so artlessly say: "He's a Fenian b******".

Mair Edinbuggers Vs Weegies and Merr Weegies Vs Edinbuggers

In this work, first published in 1986, the author shows how the Zionists of the late Thirties related to the Arabs of Palestine and of the neighbouring countries, to what extent they perceived the existence of an ‘Arab Question’, how they defined it and how they dealt with it. The Arab question is as old as the Zionist movement itself. From the moment that Zionists began to immigrate to Ottoman Palestine in the last decades of the nineteenth century, it became apparent that they were not ‘returning’ to an empty land and that they could expect opposition to their enterprise from the inhabitants of the country they considered theirs. Comprising diplomatic, political, social, economic and cultural history, this book is a close analysis of the spectrum of views and opinions pertaining to Zionist relations with the Arabs.

Zionism and the Arabs, 1936-1939 (RLE Israel and Palestine)

A collection of prayers for the principal feasts and festivals. There are prayers for each principal feast and festival, with sets to cover each of the 'headings' for the lesser festivals and commemorations. This collection is a natural companion to Exciting Holiness, the compendium of readings to accompany the calendar.

Intercessions for the Calendar of Saints and Holy Days

How much do Mancs hate Scousers? Well, there's not a lot you can compare it to, except of course how much Scousers hate Mancs.

And Scousers Vs Mancs 2

Mancs Vs Scousers

For 300 years, Scotland and England have stood together, united in glorious kinship. This text is full of angry jibes and gentle jokes between the Jocks and the Auld Enemy. It has been updated to cover the 2014 independence debate.

Whit Will They Dae Withoot Us?

Scotland Vs England

“The scariest hush is the kind that screams” —Sloan Phoenix A friendship will be tested. . . A trust will be broken. . . A lifelong secret will be revealed! Having barely survived the car explosion that nearly killed him and his best friend, Garry Lennox, Sloan Phoenix must immediately contend with the complications of the sudden murder of an old enemy, Sydney Prescott. After her culpability in the murder of her first husband, Charlie, was exposed, Judy’s marriage to Chris Faulkner is on the verge of divorce. Becoming increasingly short on allies, Judy hires divorce attorney, Jericho Fox, a childhood rival of Sloan’s, to handle her case. Her life is further complicated when she and Sloan are invited to Sydney Prescott’s will reading, which puts many of their dirty deeds over the years in danger of being revealed. As the killer goes after many of the people present at the will reading, Sloan and Judy are pitted against each other in a dangerous game of cat and mouse in an effort to expose the other as the killer. But the true killer has another game. A game that has three rules: Don’t scream. Don’t cry. Just hush. And you die.

Part Three of the Tangled Web Trilogy

Hush

The Untold History of Israeli Intelligence

It's an eternal argument which divides people all over the world. People fight about it. Couples divorce over it. But, when the chips are down, you're either cool for cats or hot for dogs. Some people even pretend to like both but, if you could only save your dog or your cat from a grisly fate, which one would you choose? Are cats cooler than dogs or are dogs better that cats? Here, Ian Black sorts out this age-old question in his usual comic style. FOR THE CATS. Cats are cool. There even used to be a TV programme called Cool for Cats, run by some human pretending to be cool. He wasn't because only cats are cool. FOR THE DOGS. Dogs aren't cool. Dogs are warm. Dogs are dogged. When a dog loves you, he loves you through to the marrow of your bones and for ever. If they don't have dogs in heaven, then I want to go where they do. The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and sickness. He will lick the hand that has no food to offer. He will guard the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. Consider: Cats are intelligent but only show it when they want to. Dogs are stupid and don't care if they show it or not. Cats give food to whoever they are loyal to. Dogs are loyal to whoever gives them food. Even people who hit them. Doh! DOGS OR CATS IT'S TIME TO CHOOSE!

Cats vs Dogs & Dogs vs Cats

Stát Izrael budí již od svého dramatického vzniku v roce 1948 obrovskou pozornost, která je čas od času oživována neméně dramatickými a bouřlivými událostmi. Po první arabsko-izraelské válce v letech 1948–49 následovala tzv. Suezská válka v roce 1956, Šestidenní válka v roce 1967 a Jomkippurská válka v roce 1947 a také izraelská invaze do Libanonu v roce 1982 a první palestinská Intifáda od roku 1987. Následovalo ještě mnoho dalších dnes již legendárních historických momentů. Je skutečně až s podivem, kolik se toho za posledních šedesát let událo okolo malé země jménem Izrael. Vzrušující a nedílnou součástí izraelských dějin byl a dodnes je rovněž nemilosrdný zákulisní boj izraelských tajných služeb. Právě ty izraelské si oprávněně vydobyly po celém světě reputaci obávaného a efektivního nástroje v boji proti (nejen) arabským teroristickým skupinám. Jednu ze slavných epizod jejich existence nám připomíná kontroverzní snímek kultovního režiséra Stevena Spielberga nazvaný zcela prostě Mnichov. Pro pamětníky a odbornou veřejnost je Mnichov 1972 známým pojmem a také mementem jedné z vůbec nejtragičtějších událostí izraelsko-arabského konfliktu. Smrt jedenácti izraelských sportovců na olympiádě, zasvěcené symbolicky míru, vyprovokovala jednu z nejslavnějších operací v dějinách státu Izrael. Odveta izraelské zpravodajské služby Mossad za tento útok vešla do dějin jako legenda ve světě tajných služeb a je popsána také v této knize.

Ian Black

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