Customer Reviews

Palestine: A Personal History

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Karl Sabbagh, a writer and television producer, has produced a convincing refutation of the Zionists' biggest lie - that they took over `a land without a people'. As he recounts in detail, the Sabbagh family, like the vast majority of the Arab population, have lived in Palestine for more than 300 years. This fascinating book traces Palestine's history from 1900 to 1948 and examines the original injustice of the Zionists' theft of the land.

Over the last 400 years, documented evidence proves the continuing presence of Palestinian Arabs as a large majority in the territory of Palestine. 16th-century Ottoman censuses showed that Palestine had about 300,000 inhabitants, 90% of whom were Muslim Arabs.

But in the early 20th century, the British state gave crucial support to a tiny foreign political movement, Zionism, which wanted to colonise Palestine, claiming a right derived from a work of fiction. The Zionists always intended to uproot and expel the country's original inhabitants.

Yet during the First World War, the British state had also promised Palestine its independence. As the Foreign Office admitted, in a secret document, "With regard to Palestine, His Majesty's Government are committed by Sir H. McMahon's letter to the Sherif on the 24th October 1915, to its inclusion in the boundaries of Arab independence."

In spite of this promise, the British state, with the Balfour Declaration, gave away the Palestinian people's country to the Zionist movement. There is a long pro-Zionist tradition in the British ruling class, from Balfour to Brown, based presumably on the odd belief that the Zionists would serve the British ruling class's interests.

When the British state ran Palestine under the Mandate, it allowed ever-increasing Jewish immigration. After the Second World War, the Zionist movement attacked the Palestinian majority and dispossessed them.

The Zionists have maintained and extended their illegal occupation ever since, aggravating their original theft with constant aggressive wars. But of course they could never have gotten away with all this without the backing of the US and British states.

This book was a very disappointing read. The author an englishman, and obvious jew-hater, using code-words like zionist , palestine, and a multitude of others just fill in the blanks. He shows his disdain for jews and israel , by continuosly referring to people and places in Israel, that were a part of his families traditional past. The purpose of which is to present the jews as modern day usurpers / interlopers, who have no business being in (palestine). Everything was wonderful until the "evil jews" of europe came to settle in (palestine) and steal the land from underneath the hard working christian/muslim arabs. As well he blames american and european anti- semitism, for the creation of modern israel, and ergo a one- sided biased assertion of the major powers against th arab world . He cleverly tries to portray his fellow arabs as victims of western imperialism, and jewish greed. Joseph goebbels could not have done a better piece.The author also fails to mention the connection between the Mufti of jerusalem and his ties to the nazis. The germans actively recruited aided and abbetted muslim militias during ww2 to harass/kill the jews in palestine, and hopefully get access to the precious oil pipeline running from Iraq to Haifa. This oil was crucial for the european allies who were fighting against the nazis. He also tries to depict Truman and churchill as friends of israel in their war against the Israeli arabs. When in fact it was czechoslovakian arms that saved the jewish people from the onslaught of 5 arab armies , not the usa or britain.Mr sabbagh also reiterates the standard arab lie that jews kicked out most of the israeli arabs. When in fact ,{ not fiction} most left freely ,egged on by the neighbouring arab states , because the arabs stated that they would kill all the jews in israel and then the Israeli arabs would be able to return to there homes. Instead these wandering palestinian arabs living in squalid refugee camps, became a convenient political weapon for the arab countries to beat on israel for the next 65years. Just ask any israeli arab, if they would prefer to live in Israel or one of the so-called 7th century arab republics??

I purchased this book expecting it to be a more scholarly and dispassionate. The author, Karl Sabbagh, demonstrates having done quite a bit of research, but is clearly not a historian and is highly biased. An example of this bias occurs as early in the book as the title: Palestine, History of a Lost Nation. Within the first several chapters, Sabbagh states outright that Palestine was never a nation, and that even the name Palestine is historically a vague geographic designation. He acknowledges sources that cite the Moslems as having a long-standing hatred of the Jews, but he fails to make the connection that that could be a major motivation for the past 60-plus years of violence. He spends chapters making a case that the land belongs to the region's Arabs because of their majority presence in the 18th and 19th centuries, but he makes no similar case concerning the Jews since the 1920's and 1930's. He recognizes that indigenous Jews lived in the now-Arab strongholds of Nablus and Ramallah, but he does not address their displacement. As the book wears on, it becomes tedious. All in all, a one-sided diatribe based on biased versions of historical facts. Even when facts are presented clearly, they are annotated in a biased and unconvincing manner. For example, an historical summary of the Arab population of Palestine cites 14 people per square mile, then he claims that is not a "sparse" population. Additionally, as a writer, Sabbagh's interleaving of his second-hand family story does not work well and is not very interesting, even though it is a veritable soap opera of indiscretions.

If palestine arabs (jews were also called 'palestinians' 1917-1948) had not tried to ethnically cleanse jews from Palestine in 1947-8 then they would all still be living there.

Five arab armies invaded and were supported by palestinians living within the country, falling upon the jewish communities living there.

As a result of the war many left the country yet many thousands of arabs who did not take up arms against the new jewish state stayed and became Israeli citizens. They now are over a million strong, are around 20% of the population of Israel and have full rights there.

Palestinians need to look to the future rather than the past now, to finally decide to live in peace with their jewish neighbours, to establish their state of Palestine and give up on terror and other attempts to undermine the jewish state.

Not even worth a single star.

Karl Sabbagh tells us he is English with 3/8ths Palestinian heritage. His mother Pamela was British and his Father Isa, born in Palestine, was an Arab language broadcaster for the BBC in England during WWII. It appears that it was a marriage of necessity because mom became pregnant with Karl and the 1st news to Khalid's family of the marriage was a letter stating he, Pamela and the baby were doing well.

The couple were later divorced and Sabbagh's recollection of his father is entirely second hand. His grandfather Khalil came from Safad and he met Karl's grandmother Josephina in Brazil where he had temporarily settled. The couple had to flee that country because Khalil had killed Josephina's brother (Karl's great great uncle) and Khalil feared either retribution, justice or both.

We learn that in there actually was a Palestinian State for 30 years in the 18th century ruled by Daher-Al-Omer, a tax collector and a Bedouin who's family had settled in around Acre. It extended along the Mediterranean coast, sometimes as far as Gaza - it depended on how effective Daher and his troups were in extracting taxes. Karl's ancestor Ibrahim was in charge of the treasury, and, according to Sabbagh, an embezzler as well. In Ottoman terms this was known as "tax farming". When not extracting tribute Al-Omer preferred to wage war, either in the neighbouring Veillet of Syria or as far away as Morocco. In truth this was not a self governed independent country but a clan run fiefdom established for the purpose of extracting income and raising mercenaries for the Ottoman empire.

The history only goes up to 1948. Unfortunately the most of the book consist of an antiZionist rant. In between partial quotations he interjects his own views as to what certain figures were thinking. He confuses minority opinion and discussion with final policy. He raises various canards long since refuted such as the allegation of poisoning of wells with bacteria and the supposed rapes at Deir Yassin. (The exaggeration of what happened at Deir Yassin was created by the Mufti's PR machine, corroborated by Arab witnesses shown in this BBC documentary clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkhSHiwzaIY).

He also speaks enviously of Jewish efforts to swing the U.N. vote to recognize Israel and humorously describes the Arab effort as limited to sexually seducing one female delegate in order to change her vote, only to have her dismissed by her government. He underrates the influence of the Mufti and fails to note the effect of his assassination campaign against rival leadership to encourage an anti-immigration point of view. Arab attacks against Jewish immigrants are trivialized and Arabs are portrayed as complete innocents trying to prevent blacks, er - I meant to say Jews, from moving into the neighbourhood and buying and developing property.

Sabbagh is not a Palestinian by upbringing,it is an acquired affectation. There is a strong concluding argument where he argues that Palestinians rejected partition because for them the Jews deserved nothing, however the motivation for partition was the ongoing violence between the two sides and in the end, thanks to the invading armies, the local Arabs were left with no state at all.

The book ends where he describes a sycophantic meeting between Yassir Arafat and himself. No mention of Arafat's record as a terrorist against Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the United States and even the Palestinians themselves. No mention of the purloined billions.

This is the 2nd of 4 Palestinian biographies that I've been reading. "Stranger in the House" by Raja Shehadeh who actually lives in the West Bank is a better book, as is Sari Nusseibeh's "Once Upon a Country". Both men grew up in the region and have a grasp on how to move forward.

Instead of being 'A Personal History', most of the book 'Palestine' laments the achievements of the Zionist movement and the re-establishment of the independent Jewish State. Those who can 'read between the lines' get the following picture: while the Jews were laying foundations of the Modern Israel by building new towns and Kibbuzim, the Christian Arabs were leaving the Middle East to South America or the USA for a better life there and the Muslim Arabs were organizing pogroms against the Jews to chase then out of Palestine. No wonder the Jews ended up with a sovereign State and the Arabs with terrorist organizations. Despite the sincere efforts by K.Sabbagh to re-create ancient roots of Palestinian identity, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the Palestinian nation is of very recent origin. It is, after all, a by-product of the Zionist enterprise.
To his honor, K.Sabagh is not calling for the 'deconstruction' of the Jewish State, but for compensation to those innocent people who lost their property in the course of the conflict. He should have called to compensate not only the Arabs who fled Palestine, but also the Jews who fled Muslim countries for Israel or Europe.
To implement the just solution we must have a dialog based on unbiased picture of the past. The book 'Palestine' is missing that target.