Samuel Katz' rendition of history from 1896 forward is superb. The book contains many photographs which belie the insistence of Arab nations that Palestinians were peaceful and driven from their land. Photographs of the Arab revolt in 1936 show quite the opposite.

Jewish farmers were unarmed and isolated, and remained unprotected by British troops then occupying the land, ostensibly with the authority of the League of Nations and for the construction of a Jewish Homeland, but in fact, to the detriment of the Jewish people.

Attacks came quickly and for the most part at night, when hundreds of Jews were slaughtered in their beds. Torture and rape were commonplace, as was sheer butchery of Jews by Arabs.

Beginning in chapter 2, Katz focuses on the War of Independence, in which Israel barely won its survival, and some 481,000 Arabs fled the land of Israel for what they mistakenly believed would be a short sojourn while Arab nations destroyed the nascent Jewish state.

The fedayeen came to be known in English as the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, but in Arabic as Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini, better known as Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement--though I remain dubious of the terminology for such a group.

Founded in the 1950s by Arafat and Khalil Wazir, Fatah launched its first terrorist raid on January 1, 1965; terrorists laid a faulty bomb aimed at cutting off Israel's water supply, but failure did not deter them.

After the Six Day War in 1967, Fatah took up terror in earnest to keep pace with rival terror groups such as the PLFP founded by George Habash, a prominent Christian who nevertheless promoted Islamic jihad ideology. Similarly, Abu Iyad's Black September group massacred 11 Israeli athletes in Munich in September 1972. In 1973, Black September, on orders from Arafat himself, executed two American diplomats in Khartoum, Sudan.

Katz covers such terrorist figures as Abu Abbas, who commanded the PLFP members that seized the Achille Lauro while it cruised the Mediterranean, shot Leon Klinghoffer, 69, point blank, and threw the body of the wheelchair-bound Jewish New Yorker into the sea; he had been traveling with his wife to celebrate a milestone wedding anniversary.

Also discussed is Fathi Shaqaqi, who founded Palestinian Islamic Jihad in about 1979, helped plan the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, was one of several inventors and promoters of the suicide bomb--and was assassinated on October 26, 1995 in Malta. He was succeeded by Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who with Fathi's brother Khalil Shaqaqi served as an executive of Sami Al-Arian's World and Islam Studeies Enterprise in Tampa, Florida, according to Steve Emerson's Jihad in America (p. 112).

While Katz hits the nail on the head concerning all terrorist groups, he again misses the mark on points of ancient and medieval history, however. He accepts without question a false claim that Palestinians descend from Philistines; in fact, the Philistines were utterly vanquished and disappeared. Moreover, Arab family names in Israel (at least, of the majority) tell of their origins in the Mughrab, Egypt, Sudan, Arabia, Yemen and Iraq--not in Israel, ancient or modern.

Moreover, Katz once again glosses over the bloody beginnings of the Islamic faith, and accepts without question the strictly modern claim that Mohammed slept in Jerusalem. In fact, Mohammed never visited the holy Jewish city, where mosques did not "spring up," but were built on vanquished Jewish holy sites and the ruins of churches.

In short, read Katz to learn about terror, not for his take on ancient or medieval history.

--Alyssa A. Lappen