Awards

• Nominated for National Jewish Book Awards 1999

Overview

Tracing the roots of political Zionism back to the pogroms of Russia and the Dreyfus Affair, Morris describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers into Palestine and the impact they had on the Arab population.

Full Product Details

9780679744757

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Reviews

The most sophisticated and nuanced account of the Zionist-Arab conflict. - The New York Times Book Review<br><br> A very rich account.... Defies sweeping generalizations about the conflict and facile attribution of moral responsibility to any one side. - Foreign Affairs

The most sophisticated and nuanced account of the Zionist-Arab conflict. -The New York Times Book Review A very rich account.... Defies sweeping generalizations about the conflict and facile attribution of moral responsibility to any one side. -Foreign Affairs

A highly interesting, quite comprehensive, yet also at times jaundiced history of the military and diplomatic aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Morris (History/Ben-Gurion Univ., Israel; The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, not reviewed), Israel's leading revisionist historian, continues to debunk some of his country's most cherished myths. Concerning Israel's War of Independence, for example, he notes that, contrary to the popular belief, the fledgling nation enjoyed clear military and strategic superiority. His coverage of the recurrent military conflicts is clear, detailed, and otherwise outstanding. But Morris's highly critical view of the Zionist movement and the Jewish state is highly problematic, particularly because it involves a selective marshaling of some bistorical evidence. For example, he claims that David Ben-Gurion and many other Zionistf/Israeli leaders favored the transfer of Arabs out of Palestine. The expulsion of tens, and possibly hundreds, of thousands of Palestinian Arabs unquestionably did take place during the War of Independence and Six Day War. Yet as Morris himself makes clear, the term transfer conflates advocacy of a planned, possibly compensated exchange of populations and ah abrupt expulsion of Arabs. In addition, Morris demonstrates that there was, at best, ah inconsistent, often only rhetorical advocacy of transfer. While relating Israeli human-rights violations and atrocities against Arabs, Morris also scants corresponding Palestinian and other Arab acts. Thus, there is almost no mention of the fact that, during the Jordanian occupation of the old city of Jerusalem, all synagogues and other Jewish holy sites were desecrated. Morris generally has a fine sense of historical narrative and, at times, a knack for a telling phrase (he notes of the Arab states that in 1973 and 1992, they ultimately managed to turn limited military defeat into limited political victory ). Yet his long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, well documented, highly informative, and fluidly composed as it is, lacks the balance that a less polemical historian might produce. (Kirkus Reviews)

A detailed account of the century-long struggle between Zionists and Palestinian Arabs that has destabilized the whole of the Middle East since the middle of the 20th century. This unique and tragic struggle between two conflicting nationalisms for the same small pice of territory has sucked in more and more states: it was first entangled with the interests of the British Empire, then with the fate of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe and finally, as Zionism became a worldwide rather than just a narrowly Russian and east European-based movement, the USA where it established deep roots after World War II and influenced American policy in the Middle East during the Cold War. It is still the world's greatest unresolved conflict. Even though some Arabs (especially the PLO and Syria) have come to accept that Israel is militarily indefatigable and have therefore grudgingly moved towards peace, many radical Arab states are not reconciled to a Jewish state in Palestine and it is not yet clear that either Israeli good will or ill-will will decisively temper or resolve this bitter hostility. (Kirkus UK)

The most sophisticated and nuanced account of the Zionist-Arab conflict. - The New York Times Book Review <br> A very rich account.... Defies sweeping generalizations about the conflict and facile attribution of moral responsibility to any one side. - Foreign Affairs

Author Information

Benny Morris is a Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheeba, Israel.

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