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Title: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 by Benny Morris ISBN: 0-679-74475-4 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 August, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.28 (25 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Evenhanded and Thorough
Comment: This well written and organized book is an effort to provide a fair narrative history of the Zionist/Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflicts. It is based largely on secondary sources and published documents and not on any extensive archival research. As pointed out by the author, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, there is considerably more documentation available for the Zionists/Israelis. Indeed, much of what Morris can tell us about the Arab/Palestinian side comes from Zionist/Israeli sources. Morris, however, interprets material carefully and this is generally an evenhanded book.
As can be seen from prior reviews, individual reviewer reactions are influenced by prior conceptions of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I am impressed that much of the book is devoted to debunking Zionist mythology. Some examples. Many, if not all Zionist leaders, including most of the founders of the state of Israel, were aware that construction of a Zionist state would require dispossesion of the native Arab populations. The British Mandate was largely beneficial for the Zionists. In the wars of 1947-1948, the Zionists enjoyed significant advantages. While there is less written about the Arabs/Palestinians, several important themes emerge. Palestinian national consciousness is largely a result of the confrontation with Zionism. The Palestinians suffered from incredibly poor leadership. Some of the Palestinian problems, particularly their poor leadership, is a product of the fact that Palestinian society was essentially pre-modern in social and political organization. The Palestinians have been treated poorly by Arab states.
This book is particularly useful for episodes that Americans are unlikely to be familiar with. The 1973 war is described well, including the near victory of the Syrians in the north of Israel. The invasion and occupation of Lebanon, ultimately the only real defeat ever suffered by the Israeli armed forces, is very well described and analyzed.
While I think Morris is correct on broad outlines and is generally fair to both sides, I think he is wrong on some specific points. He suggests that Israeli decision makers misinterpreted Arab nation intentions prior to the 1967 war and that it was avoidable. Michael Oren's recent and very good book on this subject, published after the publication of Morris's book, emphasizes the aggressive intentions of the Arab states and the difficult but probably correct decision made by the Eshkol cabinet to initiate hostitilies. Similarly, Morris states that the US become unswervingly committed to Israel during the Kennedy administration. It is probably closer to the truth to see considerable deepening of the US commitment to Israel as a consequence of the great success in the 1967 war.
Overall, this is the best historical introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and really useful for understanding the genesis of the present and very complex state of affairs.
Rating: 2
Summary: liberal zionism
Comment: Any book on the Arab Israeli conflict that is not 100% pro- Israel is labeled as objective, critical and balanced in the US. In his book, Benny Morris discusses some aspects of the Palestinian sufferings such as mass uprooting and deportations of the Palestinian people and to limited extent other forms collective punishments which makes his book a balanced book for the NY Times and the Washington Post. But as a Palestinian I do not see his book as objective but rather as an attempt to lay the blame squarely on the Palestinian people. He portrays the Palestinians as uncompromising, prone to violence, unsympathetic for the Jewish suffering and human suffering as well while the Israelis as the opposite: civilized, compromising, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
He begins his book by stating that Muhammad, the Muslim prophet, had killed many Jews during his era. He states this without going into the context of those events. It is simply stated as to some how show that as the Europeans, the Muslims had forced the Jews to find a home land and the Palestinians being mostly Muslims are partly to blame for their own suffering.
The overall tone of the book I thought was pro-Israel addressed to the liberal readers who are patient enough to read how Israel at times had to act inhumanely towards the Palestinians and commit acts that are not reflective of its "democratic" and "civilized" society but were forced to do so because the Palestinians forced them or gave them no other choice.
His thesis is basically Israel had acknowledged the Palestinian problem and was willing to make "painful compromises" to find a resolution but the Palestinians refused because the prefer terrorism as a way of life. Anyone familiar with Palestinian history realizes that Palestinian are the ones who made the painful compromises by giving up 78% of their home land and seeking to establish a state on only 22%. Even before the current intifada, Israeli settlers and forces subjected Palestinians to the daily killings of women and children, home demolitions, land confiscations, economic constraints and all forms of abuse and humiliations. For the Palestinians to be "true peace seekers" they have to endure all this torture and watch the Israelis elect new leaders that scrap previous agreements at their whim and continue to expand the so called settlements which are in fact cities being built on the Palestinian homes and blood.
Again very good read for the pro-Israel liberals that want a sophisticated way to blame the whole conflict on the Arabs and the Palestinians.
Rating: 1
Summary: Better sources available
Comment: Morris' review is coloured in his attempt to provide equity between Palestinians and Israelis. Historically, the bottom line is that Israel absorbed almost 1 million Arab and Perisan Jews, while the Arabs failed to absorb less than half a million displaced Arabs from the creation of Israel. (Population transfer was the original mandate for Israel, see League of Nations Mandates of 1917, which also created mandates for independent states such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, and were affirmed in the first paragraph of the UN Charter) If you're looking for historically documented facts, I suggest Joan Peters' 'From Time Immemorial'. She is a journalist who set out to write a pro-Palestinian book and ended up finding (in almost exclusively Arab sources) a strong history which debunks current Arab claims about refugees and the right of Israel to exist in all of the land west of the Jordan river. For instance, it is interesting that even the UN claims that only 20% of the Arab refugees were landowners (and that the other 80% were migrant workers from other Arab lands and not indigenous to Israel at all), and that these displaced persons were included in the refugee rolls because Arab countries refused to take them back [and they needed shelter and food, which UNRWA could provide). We find from Peters' multiple Arab sources that Arabs openly stated repeatedly that they would use these non-refugees politically (and so far successfully) in attempts to destroy nascent Israel. Morris also completely ignored the facts that 1) until 1981, most Palestinian refugees held Jordanian citizenship, and 2) that Jordanian law, based on the Mandate from 1917, carries a clause which stipulated [until 1981] that all non-Jewish Palestians have a 'right of return' to Jordan. Peters' book is completely annotated, and as I mentioned earlier, her sources are almost exclusively Arab, which lends her book a lot of validity and debunks the most basic premises' of revisionist histories of the conflict.
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Title: The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World by Avi Shlaim ISBN: 0393321126 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris ISBN: 0521009677 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 05 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: The Palestinian People : A History by Baruch Kimmerling, Joel S. Migdal ISBN: 0674011295 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: A History of Israel : From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (Second Edition, Revised and Updated) by HOWARD M. SACHAR ISBN: 0679765638 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 13 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz ISBN: 047146502X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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