Elder of Ziyon
21 May '10
(I believe this is the 4th review I'm posting on Palestine Betrayed, each reviewer with a slightly different take. The one thing they have in common, Great Book! I purchase through Amazon, with an average shipping time to Israel of about 8 days from the order being placed. With shipping it comes out to slightly less than the list price. Elder of Ziyon has Amazon for this book on his post.)
Efraim Karsh's "Palestine Betrayed" is an answer to the "New Historians'" view of Israel during the War of Independence. In it, Karsh makes a strong argument that the vast majority of the tragedy of the "naqba" was because of Arab, not Jewish, actions.
Karsh makes a startlingly effective case for the fact that the mainstream Zionist leadership wanted to live with their Arab cousins in peace. He brings quote after quote, from Herzl to Jabotinsky to Ben Gurion, that shows that the plan of ethnic cleansing that we are told so incessantly about by Arabs today is simply a fiction. He goes into some detail about Arab-Jewish cooperation immediately after the Balfour Declaration - and before the Mufti.
Much of the blame for the severe deterioration on the relationship between the communities goes directly to Hajj Amin Husseini, who almost single-handedly led the Palestinian Arabs to disaster - as Mufti of Jerusalem, as president of the Superme Muslim Council, and as president of the Arab Higher Committee. His unwavering anti-semitism combined with his positions of power and his ability to outmaneuver his rivals created an atmosphere where compromise was unthinkable. Karsh also shows that Husseini, far from being a nationalist, was always more interested in a pan-Arab nation - first as part of Greater Syria, but even later he viewed the Arab Palestine as being a stepping-stone to pan-Arab unification. Karsh follows his career from Jerusalem to becoming a Nazi sympathizer.
The centerpiece of the book is the description of the fighting and Arab flight during the first part of the War of Independence. Karsh puts forth a strong argument that the vast majority of Arabs fled their homes as a result of fear, and often in spite of Jewish entreaties to stay put. He goes into detail of the flight of Arabs from Haifa and Jaffa, into the complete breakdown of Arab leadership and the almost non-existence of a unified Arab front, neither within Palestine nor without.(A fascinating detail from Haifa: the Arab flight occurred during Passover, and the rabbinate of Haifa gave a special dispensation for Jewish bakers to bake bread for Arabs during that time to help them out as their infrastructure evaporated.)
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In confronting the question of why there is so much anti-Israeli opinion in the world, particularly among academics, I believe that the corruption of the basic historical narrative by Morris and other "new historians" has played a great role. When I drill down as best I can through all the anti-Israeli statements, the core message seems to be that European Jews with no real relationship to Israel came on the scene in 1947 and threw the Palestinians out of their homeland. Of course, that oversimplified narrative is ludicrous and beyond anything that even Benny Morris said, but it seems to be the take-home message that many so-called intellectuals have gotten from the new historians' writings. In various forms, that narrative is accepted by many individuals accept these days.
ReplyDeleteHow that view came gained acceptance by so many individuals, in the absence of a factual basis, is hard to understand. I think one has to deconstruct the entire context of the arguments. This leads more into the realm of psychology and motivation theory than history. As demonstrated in Palestine Betrayed, there has long been a strong world bias in favor of appeasing unreasonable Islamic, and in particular, Arab demands because the Arabs have such a stranglehold on oil. Also, the Arabs are not hesitant to bribe both academics and other opinion leaders throughout the world. Of course, with many academics, the size of the required bribe is shockingly and humiliatingly small---a lectureship or a fellowship will often do it (at least politicans and business leaders have the self respect to demand millions). Finally, mix in the Arab/Muslim's willingness to shed the blood of multitudes of innocent bystanders to get their own way, and you one begins to understand the motivations for promulgating and accepting a bogus and fabricated view of Israeli history.
I am not an historian, so I am incapable of sifting through the primary data myself. For a long time I have searched for a solid narrative covering the essential points of the development of modern Israel. Karsh's earlier work on the Fabrication of Israeli History covered a lot of important ground but it was not an entire narrative of the development of modern Israel. Palestine Betrayed, though not a comprehensive modern Israeli history, is a data driven, logically connected account of the interactions between Jews and Arabs from the beginning of the 20th Century through 1948. I believe it is a magnificent achievement. Of course, rebuttals to various points are both possible and expected but overall it has the solid ring of through about it. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning the truths about the development of modern Israel.
Though I realize that there are rebuttals which can be made to many of his arguments, I believe that he has given a very balanced and factual account Israel's relationship with the Arab community. Any person who is interested in the future of Israel should thoroughly study this book.
Stephen,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your well thought-out, well written comment. Y.