Customer Reviews

How Israel Was Won: A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a highly polarizing, emotional issue. This is reflected in the highly polarized customer reviews of this book: clustered around one- and five-star reviews. The American public and the media are highly sympathetic to the Israelis--U.S. politicians are terrified to be on the wrong side--whereas the European public is more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. This polarization has been fueled by the Holocaust and 9/11, the latter monolithically casting all Muslims as anti-Semitic, anti-American terrorist thugs. These painful events color emotions despite their displacement in time and place from a conflict between the Zionists and Palestinians that began many decades before.

It is a shame that a very good book recounting what historians (as opposed to the public) have said about this conflict has been mauled by personal identifications and sympathies--as though "unbalance" must be a feature of the book and not its readers. Serious academics have been impressed by this book. For example, the Association of College and Research Libraries (CHOICE) judged it to be an "outstanding academic work in the year 2000". The book does illustrate how an historically victimized people, the Jews, have, in their rising up, victimized another (not necessaril blameless) people, the Palestinians--perhaps analogous to how religiously persecuted Europeans, seeking liberation, victimized the resisting native Americans threatening to obstruct a providential colonization. No surprise; it is the way of the world. Virtually all modern states have the same history. This book, based on American and Israeli scholarship, simply tells how it was done, not whether it should have been done.

I picked up this book hoping to learn more about a subject of which I have very little understanding, but about which we all hear about on a daily basis on the news. I like to think that I came to the topic with very little bias, other than the semi-conscious bias that most westerners probably in viewing Israel as a bastion of western culture surrounded by arab muslim cultures.

I should say that I am glad I read this book. It gave a good background to the inception of Israel and the interworking of the mid 20th century colonial powers in the region. It also made it clear that Israel has frequently been the powerful aggressor in many instances, rather than a hopelessly outnumbered, embattled outpost. The Palestinians clearly have many legitimate grievances, and whatever anyone says about who is right and wrong in these things none of it can change the following historical fact: that Palestine/Israel started out as a small area in which Arabs were in a minority, Israel now occupies a much larger territory, has an overwhelmingly Jewish population, and a very large number of the Arabs who used to live there do not any more.

Other than giving me the above insights, the book was both disappointing and annoying. First, it is very poor history, and the fact that the author is a PSYCHOLOGIST, and that the book was "the product of research done in the context of a professional writing group that INCLUDED three history professors" should be a red flag to anyone looking for a proper historical analysis. I don't know how anyone can say it was well researched; based on the notes a huge proportion of the research was done based on three or four other books on the subject. For example in the Chapter on the Suez conflict, of 56 source notes, 38 go back to two books (Spiegel's, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict, and Sachar's, A History of Israel). Virtually no primary source materials are used, and the book is full of judgmental quotes or quotations regarding the views of various statesmen, but they are really just passages from other history books, rather than statements attributable directly to players in the events. All very disappointing.

The annoying part is that as your read the book, the veneer of balance drops away, and it gradually becomes an "Israel bad, Palestinians/Arabs good" polemic disguised as history. I first clued into this when the author made special note of the fact that Israel's 1950 Law of Return providing worldwide Jewry with the right of abode in Israel Violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial discrimination. Taking into account that the convention was adopted 19 years later in 1969, and that no comparatives are given for any other country's compliance with the same convention, it is simply an idiotic thing to point out.

As the book progresses (or perhaps I just became more sensitive), it becomes more and more obvious Begin is described as a "terrorist" whereas Arafat is the head of a "guerrilla organization". The public statements made by Arabs are all taken at face value whereas those made by Israeli leaders are all exposed as lies. Syria has 35,000 troops in Lebanon, but was seeking a policy of trying to "preserve a military balance and political stability" in the country, whereas the Israelis were raping and pillaging for their own benefit. Lyndon Johnosn is "hair trigger". One Israeli leader is a "loose cannon". Etc. etc.

This is not to refute all of these views or the many terrible acts and policies attributed to the Israelis, only to say that the book's validity as a decent work of history is fatally compromised by such blatant one-sidedness.

In the end, while I am glad to have read the book, I would not recommend it.

This book by Baylis Thomas is an insightful read. As far as history goes the narrative is engaging and the concise style holds the readers attention throughout. For the writing alone, I would give this book 5-stars. What holds it back though, is the singular presentation of facts towards a somewhat biased look weighing on behalf of the Palestinians. For this reason I downgraded the book to 4-stars.

If you are looking to gain more insight into the Israeli conundrum, which in these day and time is of utmost importance, go get this book. However you will need an accompanying book to get both sides of the story. Thomas hones in on the injustices enacted against the Palestinians without ever presenting the Jewish perspective. For controversial issues, there are two sides to every story. With this book there largely seems to be just one.

Thomas has the original thesis that he terms, "the nazi syndrome" that allowed a certain environment to exist in which certain injustices could be justified to allow the Jewish nation to be created at the expense of the Palestinians. The Nazi syndrome briefly explained is that the Jewish people were victimized at the hands of Nazi Germany and carried that victimization with them, as well as in the eyes of world policy, to carve out modern-day Israel at grave injustices to the people of Palestine. There is credibility to this notion and no doubt modern country's world policy has been misdirected towards the Israeli problem, but one should seek to gain a complete understanding of both sides before rushing to condemnation. That's what you don't get with Thomas' book...both sides of the story.

"How Israel Was Won" draws parallels to the Monroe doctrine of westward expansion in the states and the analogy is made to "how the West Was Won." In doing so, Baylis Thomas gives a fascinating rendering of all the facts and history surrounding the creation of modern day Israel, but don't buy this as the complete picture.

This book begins sounding unbiased, but it is in fact a very biased account of the founding of Israel. It made me acutely aware of how history can be filtered through the eyes of someone who wants to present a certain point of view. Most of the facts may be right, but they are presented in a slanted way, and lots of the facts about Palestinian aggression and violence (even towards their own people) are missing.

Read this more for a view of how history can be slanted than for a true historical account.

Everything about the book--from the picture on the front to mention of his time at Albert Einstein--would lead one to believe that he is, at best, sympathetic, and at worst, objective. In this day and age, objectivity can be hard to find.

This book is anything but that. Besides the fact that entire chapters are based on one or two sources, his "concise" history is at the expense of the Israeli perspective. This book reads like propaganda at times, often relying on an OVER-simplified analysis, that is, in turn, based on a limited number of potentially biased sources. According to Thomas, EVERY war that Israel has ever fought has been colonialist, expansionist, or imperialistic in nature. He asserts that the founding of the state was inevitable, as the great Arab armies were in fact torn by dissent and not nearly as organized as Ben-Gurion's Haganah. He simplifies the conflict, to be sure, but to a point that his argument lacks credibility and value.

Save your money. If I had it to do over again, I'd save mine.

Over the last 50 years, we've heard the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in small pieces, and more recently in sound bites. This book does a very nice job of detailing the entire history from turn of the century Zionism to the present. It is sympathetic to the cause of Israeli statehood, but very critical of the methods used to attain it. Critics will say that the book has a pro-Palestinian bias. If so, then it is slight and perhaps long overdue. Since the earliest days of the conflict, most American's views have been shaped by a State Department and media that have shown a decidedly pro-Israeli bias. It's about time we heard the other side. It is naive to think that the Middle-East conflict is a war of the righteous against an Arab "horde". That's the kind of thinking that led to the crusades. This book does not pull punches. It is critical of Israelis, Americans, Palestinians, Jordanians, British . . . basically everyone involved. But mostly, it tells the truth behind fifty years of violence and hate.

I have just finished reading this extraordinary book. I marvel at its clarity and ability to coax the essentials out of the morass of material and anecdote to come up with this lively, spare and, as far as I can see, accurate history. Having lived through this history from the war years on, and been alternately fed too little or distorted reports, I am particularly grateful for the clear codification and perspective the work offers. It's a masterful job.

Through Baylis Thomas' exhaustive research and clear, concise writing style, we learn, perhaps for the first time, the truth behind "How Israel Was Won." Most of us know only one side of the story, the side which corrupt and self-serving governments want us to know. Considering the highly complex events and political decisions surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, events which Dr. Thomas has carefully corroborated in his notes, it is to his credit that the book reads like fiction from beginning to end. I found it revelatory.

Many people wonder why Israel won't give back the occupied territories in return for peace. One reason is that more than half of Israel's water supplies now come from the Mountain Aquifer and Jordan river basin, which are situated deep within them. Today, Israel uses 79% of the Mountain Aquifer and all of the Jordan River Basin -- bar a small quantity that it sells to Palestinians in Gaza. The result is apartheid in all but name. Israelis get 350 litres of water per person per day, Palestinians get just 70 litres. The minimal quantity of water recommended by the World Health Organisation is 100 litres.It is stuff like this that makes this book very important to read.

Now I see what the conflict is by seeing its history! The book heavily depends on the established Israeli and American historians as its sources - Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, Simha Flapan, Howard Sachar, Donald Neff and many others of serious scholarly reputation. I see that the book was named as "an outstanding academic book of 2000" by the Association of American Universities and Libraries in their publication called Choice.That award is well deserved in my opinion. I didn't know that the Jews and Transjordan made a deal to subvert the Palestinian state designated by the UN in 1947, in which Transjordan would pretend to fight the Israelis and then annex the West Bank as part of Transjordan. This is what happened, though Israel took half of the UN designated Palestinian state first. Avi Shlaim spells this out in his "Collusion Across the Jordan." So much for the Jewish acceptance of the Partition Resolution! This book is full of new, to me, facts and desreves its scholarly awards even if unpopular with the pro-Israeli community.It is a must-read, pardon the cliche.