Customer Reviews

Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century

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Gilbert is magnificent in his ability to take a complicated history of events and tell them to the reader in a concise, readable text. He also refrains from editorializing the content towards one side of the struggle. I believe this book is essential for grasping the current unrest in the Old City and throughout Israel. As a recent visitor to Jerusalem, I only wish I could have read Gilbert's work prior to my trip.

I read Gilbert's modern history of Jerusalem a few months after I had lived in the city on a holiday. Sir Gilbert (he was knighted not long ago) has a unique genius in bringing the reader to real time through the voices of those who lived in the times. A balanced book with deep touches of humanity and pathos. One is in awe of how this small city has such a history of blood, tears and hopes. The amazing art of Gilbert's genius is that his skills are transparent to the reader and he is as much a teller of oral history in the way he brings the vast resource of his research and sources as told history. Highly recommended.

Sir Martin Gilbert's book reads much like a novel, with insights from the men and women who lived through Jerusalem's last century. The people, many only larger-than-life names like Ben-Gurion, Rabin, and Kollek, become frighteningly real on the pages of this beautiful work. Gilbert has a rare gift: the ability to not only write like a historian, but also like a novelist, spinning a captivating tale with a rare twist: it is a true story.

It is likely that more half-truths are espoused about Jewish-Arab relations than about any other issue of the late 20th century. Luckily, Sir Martin Gilbert has written this remarkable and thoroughly readable volume, which sets much of the record straight. For example, Gilbert shows that Jews have lived in Jerusalem for the past 2000 years, even though they did not rule there. More importantly, he shows that Jerusalem fell into an advanced state of decrepitude under its many rulers, including the Ottomans and the Arabs, and only the capture of it by the Jews in 1967 helped restore it to its current luster. These examples, and so many well-told others, make this an indispensible volume on the history of the Capitol of Israel.

This is another meticulous study by Sir Martin Gilbert, one of the most prominent, knowledgeable and admired experts in the Middle East. Here he provides a remarkable insight into the history of the City of Jerusalem during the 20th Century.

The author commences with a description of Jerusalem at the dawn of the 20th Century, as a small provincial town in the Ottoman Empire, comprising of a population totalling some 70,000 people. The majority being Jews (45,000) and the remainder mostly Arabs (25,000). The Century approaching it's end with the City's population being more than half a million, the majority Jewish but with some 25% being Arabs.

The book documents Jerusalem under Ottoman rule until their defeat by the British during the First World War. The writer then continues to illustrate the City under British rule through the Mandate period. Appropriate attention being paid to the Arab riots of 1929/36, describing many of the horrific incidents, the role of all the entities involved and the ensuing casualties. Many factors & commendable detail so often overlooked are included here.

The author analyses the City during the Second World War and how the latter affected it's occupants. It is clearly shown that the coming of peace to Europe did not bring peace to Jerusalem.

Indeed, from 1945-47 the writer describes Jerusalem as a City in turmoil, with the imminent end of British rule and the intended UN partition. A partition which unbelievably intended to leave the Hebrew University and the City's 99,000 Jews (one sixth of the total number of Jews in Palestine) outside of the intended borders of the Jewish state. The author describes this and the resentment that this intended move caused.

The ensuing conflict of 1948 is recounted including the siege of Jerusalem and the horrors suffered by the inhabitants. This extends to the 1967 Six Day War with detail also provided of the fighting for the Old City between Israel and Jordanian forces. Indeed, the author omits nothing, extending through the Yom Kippur War on to the Palestinian `intifada' of 1987/89 and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

Numerous maps and photographs are provided in abundance. Notably inclusion is a photograph of the often ignored & forgotten bombing by British Army deserters of the civilian thoroughfare in Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street in February 1948, which killed over 50 innocent Jews. (A captured British soldier apparently boasting of his involvement, but complaining that he did not receive the £500 promised him & his colleagues by the Arab Mufti).

The carnage and destruction in the Ben Yehuda photograph rarely receives the light of day with most `neutral' sources tending to highlight the attack on the King David Hotel by the Stern gang. Photographs are also included of the devastation inflicted on Jerusalem's synagogues by Jordanian bombing in the 1948 conflict.

The writer concludes this excellent work by declaring that Jerusalem can be the `essence of peace' or the `source of conflict'; `the scene of riots' or `of reconciliation'; the `focus of celebration' or `of protest'; of `religious devotion' or `religious hatred'; of `quiet contemplation' or `loud exhortation'. Those who know the City of Jerusalem will know that indeed this City is unique. I highly recommend this book.

I also highly recommend a work covering the City's most recent political altercations by David Bar Illan entitled `Jerusalem; The Truth'. Coupled together these two books will provide a thorough grounding in the background to the City. Those with an interest in the City's Biblical history and it's prophetic element will enjoy John Hagee's `The Battle For Jerusalem' which includes a detailed coverage of the Palestinian `intifadas'.

I really enjoyed this book. This book has given me a clearer idea of the history behind what is happening in the news. Thank you Mr. Gilbert for taking a complex subject and history turning it into something that most anyone can begin to understand.

In this highly readable and informative history Martin Gilbert highlights the history of the 3000 year old City of David, from 1900, when it was a small provincial Ottoman town (with a Jewish majority since 1840) until the 1990s.
In 1900 Jerusalem had a population of 70 000 made up of 45 000 Jews and 25 000 Arabs.
British census reports show that the increase in Jerusalem's population between 1921 and 1933 amounted to 20 000 Jews and 21 000 Arabs. These Arab immigrants came, like the Jews, from distant lands, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Yemen, as well as Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon.
It has been proved beyond doubt by documentation and records that Arab immigration into the Palestine Mandate was indeed greater than Jewish migration into the Holy Land during the British Mandate period.
This was documented and apparent long before Joan Peters gathered and displayed these findings in From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.

The author documents how even at the beginning of the twentieth century Jews, including children were attacked in the streets by Moslem and Christian Arabs and, as recounted by a Christian visitor to Jerusalem in 1904, a Mrs Freer, "Jewish children, girls especially have to be protected mainly from the other children, Christian and Moslem. On the way to and from school; one frequently wonders at the patience- the heritage of centuries- with which Jews ignore the insults shouted after them in the streets, and considering how much they contribute as citizens of Jerusalem, it is sad that large sums of money should be paid for permission to pray beside the western wall of the Temple enclosure, to the villagers of Siloam for not disturbing the graves east of the village, and to the Arabs for letting alone the Jewish share of the tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem".


Gilbert recounts the capture of the city by the British in 1917, and the triumphant entry into Jerusalem by General Allenby.
He recounts the crude anti-Semitic statements of the " Executive Committee of the Haifa Congress of the Palestine Arabs" which cannot be distinguished in it's statements about the Jews around the world from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or from German Nazi propaganda.

He recounts the Arab pogroms in which Jews were attacked and murdered and Jewish women and girls raped in Jerusalem, during the Arab pogroms of 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1939-1939.
The British reacted each time by restricting Jewish immigration into the Palestine Mandate at a time when Jews were under threat from Nazism ,in Europe.
He also recounts how the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini turned the issue of the Temple Mount from a religious one into an explosive racial and political one by the use of crude propaganda including faked photographs depicting Jews hosting the Star of David flag from the Temple Mount and even Jews with machine guns attacking the Dome of the Rock.
The Arabist anti-Israel lobby, especially the international media has through the years perfected these techniques, the highlights perhaps being the staged blood libel falsely blaming Israel for the death of a young Arab, Mohammed Al Dura in 2000, who it was subsequently found could not have been hit by Israeli fired bullets and was probabely not killed at all, and a faked massacre of Arabs which never took place, at Jenin in 2002.
In response to the White Paper preventing Jews from entering their ancient homeland, Winston Churchill speaking on the 23 May 1939, in the House of Commons opposed the new policy of allowing the Arabs to exercise a veto on all Jewish immigration after five years.
'He knew that since the publication of his own White Paper in 1922, more Arabs had emigrated to Palestine than Jews, despite that White Paper's declaration that Jews could enter Palestine virtually without restriction. Emphasising the point Churchill declared " So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased even more than all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population. Now we are asked to decree that all this is to stop and all this is to come to an end. We are now asked to submit, and this is what rankles most with me, to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda".



The author records the bloodshed of the last years of the British Mandate and the War of Independence.
It is worth noting that millions around the world have been brainwashed with the image of Arabs being 'expelled from their homes by the Jews" while the destruction of Jewish homes, suburbs and villages, in areas taken by the Arabs is airbrushed out of history. For example how many people know of the destruction of Jewish synagogues in East Jerusalem, including the Hurva, after it was captured by the Arabs in 1948.
Similarly we are continually reminded of the King David Hotel bombing by the Irgun freedom fighters and the death of Aabs after the Irgun and Lehi fighters captured the Arab outpost of Deir Yassin, which had been used as a base by Iraqi and Syrian soldiers to murder Jews on the roads.
But we hear nothing of the Ben Yehuda Street bombing, the bombing by British terrorists helping the Arabs (shadows of today's International Solidarity Movement) of the Palestine Post, the attack of the Hadassah medical convoy to Jerusalem in 78 doctors and nurses were butchered.
Gilbert also details the great building of the city by the Jews and Israel from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Mount Scopus dedicated in 1918, the many hospitals and homes, including the Hadassah hospital of whcih the first cornerstone was laid in 1934, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial set up in 1953.
He also records the dire poverty of the Jews of Jerusalem in the early years of statehood and the absorption of hundreds of thousands of destitute Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
But the world hates Israel because she lifted her people from the dirt of poverty into a a first world nation?
He go's on to describe the Six Day War in which Israel survived a war forced on them by Egypt, Syria Iraq and Jordan and how so contrary to the Arabs the Israelis, even in the thick of the fighting took care to avoid damage to any Christian, Moslem or Jewish holy places.
He recounts the reunification of Jerusalem and the return of Jews to the East of the city, as well as the care taken to protect the welfare of the Arab inhabitants of the city which has mainly been answered by Arab terror against Jews, in which thousands of Jews have died.
The book ends on the note of the failed 1993 Oslo Peace Accord and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The beginnings of ruthless homicide bombings carried by terrorist gangs are written about.
They had began soon after Israel signed the Peace Accords with the PLO which Arafat would so cynically break on every point.

Is Jerusalem all that special? Does it compare with London, Paris, or Honolulu? Well, whether it does or not, here is an excellent book about Jerusalem in the twentieth century.

The book opens describing a city of about 70,000 people (45,000 of them Jews). And I found it interesting that the Jewish percentage of the city did not change all that much during the century, even though there were all sorts of political changes: World War One, the British Mandate, World War Two, Israeli independence, and the reunification of the city.

Some of the stories are fascinating, such as how on December 17, 1902, during a severe drought, Muslim authorities permitted Jews to pray for rain at the Tomb of David. Within hours, there was a huge rainstorm.

There's plenty of interesting historical material as well. We find about about King and Crane, and their report (they said that Jews ought not be given guardianship over Christian or Muslim holy places). We learn about the riots of April, 1920, in which Arab mobs attacked Jews, explaining that the Jews were their dogs. And we see how everyone fared in the period prior to World War Two, and how more Arab violence led to the scuttling of the Peel Plan to create a small Jewish refuge in the region to which European Jews could have fled. And how that violence then led to the infamous British White Paper of 1939, which very severely limited Jewish immigration.

One of the best parts of the book is the comparison between the Jewish and Arab parts of the city from 1948 to 1967, when the city was divided.

Probably the weakest part of the book is at the end, where there is some mention of attempts to achieve peace between Arabs and Jews in the city. I think no one has the perspective to discuss this very well right now. Those who boast of compromising words and predict that peace may be in the offing are taking a serious stand. And that stand, while it may have been tossed out casually, has been disproven by events. Most of the talk about peace from known Arab terrorists has been insincere. Nor has this insincerity been a surprise to most historians. I think Gilbert would have been better off to simply admit that there has been recent violence and recent peace proposals. And that it is possible that in the future, we'll all see that some of the violence was historically very significant, or that some of the peace proposals were actually significant. But that now, it is too early to say anything of the sort. And that would have been a good way to avoid overdramatizing any of the most recent happenings in the city.

Still, this is an excellent book, and I strongly recommend it.