Key problems, conflicts, and decisions in Israel's past and present are analysed in this fully documented, dramatic history of the turbulent events that have shaped the crisis in the Middle East. From the questionable policies of the British, both in the Mandate era and in 1948, to the debate over the return of territories won in the Six-Day War and the war of attrition that spills over into the rest of the world, this book carefully examines Israel and its relationship to the rest of the Middle East as well as the rest of the world.
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Samuel Katz
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55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
History of Arab-Israeli conflict for the sceptic,
This review is from: Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine (Paperback)
Many books have been written about the history of israel and the conflict in the Middle East. Everyone of those authors had an agenda, and Samuel Katz has one, too. His, seems to be: "I'll give you the key to research this issue for yourself, to find out the truth and to be amazed at how distorted the common understainding of this (Israel-Arab) conflict, really is."In fact, you will find that Mr. Katz provides aboundant links to documents, interviews, witnesses and other articles. The great majority of the evidence Mr. Katz is using, is of Arab provenience. Most importantly, he gives you the means, through detailed documenting of the sources, to check them out for yourself. This is very important, because this conflict's facts have been grossly and tendentiously manipulated. At first, of course, the reader might experience some strange mixture of disbelief and anxiety. This should not last too long, though, depending on your personal education and experience. For me, it was quite acceptable, knowing how the events that lead to the annexion of the Finnish Karelia by Russia, were fabricated, and accepted by the UN because, well, Finland was small and Russia so big and powerful. History is, perhaps, written by the more powerful but even the mightiest of the powers can't completely erase all traces of truth. This book talks about the conflict in Palestine by giving the reader the opportunity to find those traces and to be the judge. It's also a very easy to read, enjoyable and immersive reading. Of course, checking the sources is a more laboriious but also more rewarding task which I personally urge every reader to undertake, to whatever extent he/she might be comfortable with. A must-have for everybody who wants to be educated on an important aspect of modern history, both scholar and layman.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best on the subject,
By
This review is from: Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine (Paperback)
Having read virtually everything in print on this subject--I can say that Battleground is perhaps the best single text on the subject of Israel/Palestine. Its biased comments are extremely minor (hard to find on either side). People forget that Jews were not in any position to brutalize anyone, until very recently--though they had been brutalized virtually non-stop, throughout history. Today, on the death of Yasser Arafat, it is appropriate to mention that after reading Battleground, anyone who sheads a tear for the inventor of modern terror, simply uses the "Arab Cause" as a "stick--by which to beat the Jews".
38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
This review is from: Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine (Paperback)
Like the work of Arieh Avneri, Howard Sachar, Connor Cruise O'Brien, Efraim Karsh and Martin Kramer, Battleground is a magnificent piece of reporting on Middle East history, whose most salient facts revisionists have unfortunately papered over during the 29 years since it was first published. This book recounts the beginnings of a 55-year Arab jihad war against the Jewish state. Katz elucidates critical parts of the historical puzzle, including this centerpiece: In 1919, less than two years after the Balfour Declaration, Emir Faisal of Syria and Iraq--who along with his father the Sharif Hussein of Mecca were then the only recognized Arab leaders in the world--declared the plan for a Jewish national homeland in all of Palestine as "moderate and proper." The book shows that by international vote of the League of Nations at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the world community adopted a plan to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine--which included all of current day Israel and Transjordan. One may here read that history, and the treaties between Chaim Weizmann and the Emir Faisal of Iraq, as well as letters supporting this plan by both he and his father, Sharif of Mecca. For the record, this book cites a great deal of primary source material from Arab leaders themselves. Much of it, furthermore, contradicts current-day Arab sentiments and claims. As one Arab League leader admitted, for example, "everyone knows, Palestine does not exist." Katz also shows that although the Paris League of Nations meeting accorded all of Palestine to the Jewish people, Britain unilaterally and illegally granted more than 80% of original Palestine to the Arabs, creating current day Jordan. In short, Katz shows that the 1919 League of Nations vote to adopt the plan did not (as conventional wisdom now wrongly supposes) unilaterally impose a decision on the Arab peoples of the Middle East without their input. In fact, the League of Nations acted as direct result of a 1919 Arab treaty with Jewish leaders. King Faisal's approval of plans for a National Home for the Jews was significant not least for its policy--and inclusion of current day Israel and all of current day Jordan. In 1919, the Emir Faisal wrote--and numerous scholarly, studies and population figures substantiate this point--there were few Arabs and many Jews in Palestine, and King Faisal saw the importance of recognizing the rights of the Jewish people to their homeland. The book also shows that the Jewish people did not--as another common misconception holds--"steal" the land of Israel. On the contrary, beginning in the 1870s and 1880s, the Jewish Agency and many private groups and people purchased land (usually swamps and desert) from private absentee Arab landowners, often at wildly inflated prices. Katz also carefully establishes the actual number of Arab refugees from the 1948 war against a nascent Israel that 7 Arab nations began in 1948. The correct number is 480,000, a number that Katz shows Arab leaders at the United Nations admitted at the time. Gradually, over the years, he also demonstrates, that number has been falsely inflated--a fact that even the United Nations admits. The "refugees" now include hundreds of thousands originally from other states, and their heirs. Neither does Katz omit the nearly 1 million Jewish refugees booted from 22 Arab and Muslim lands between 1920 and 1978 with nothing but the shirts on their backs. (The dark motivations for mass ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab Middle East are exposed by Malka Hillel Shulewitz and Itamar Levin and Rachel Neiman in two books, The Forgotten Millions and Locked Doors.) Including the children and grandchildren of those Jewish refugees from Arab lands would raise their number today to more than 4 million, who together now account for more than half Israel's population. And finally, Katz shows the central problem that has plagued Israeli-Arab relations since long before Israel was founded in 1948. Most Arab nations--from which the majority of people now known as Palestinian actually immigrated--have never recognized even the considerably reduced version of the Jewish state. Rather, they continue a permanent state of jihad war against non-Muslim infidels, rather than admit the Jewish people a right to self-determination, or a state governing the land in which Jewish inhabitants have remained since before the Romans sacked the second Temple in 70 A.D. This book corrects reams of false propaganda that obscures the past and the Jewish right to a state in Israel. --Alyssa A. Lappen
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