Book Review: Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Documentary and Reference Guide

Abstract

The Arab-Israeli conflict continues to spark confusion, emotion, and anger in educational environments. Tension around these topics remains so high that strict ground rules and active arbitration remedies exist for those who wish to edit the Wikipedia articles for Israel, Palestine, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. As events progress in these regions, these Wikipedia articles experience a flurry of activity as editors around the world work to update and improve their content. This is the downfall of any traditionally published encyclopedia; once published, it becomes a snapshot in time, a historical artifact, as opposed to a living document that captures past, present, and future tense. The other disadvantage of traditionally published encyclopedias is that editors often give subject experts a template and writing guidelines for the entries that can make the subject expert look incompetent. Dr. Priscilla Roberts’s “documentary and reference guide” to the Arab-Israeli conflict, for this reason, has strengths and weaknesses.