Monday, March 15, 2004
one palestine, complete
Review: One Palestine, Complete by Tom Segev, Owl Books, 2000
Compulsive Reading
Over many decades that Z-word has been colored and bashed black and blue.
The likes of the modern United Nations and the old Soviet Union have obtusely described it as a synonym for “racism” or “colonialism”.
Rather than being colonialist, political Zionism in Tom Segev’s conception seems more like a skilful surfer riding the wave of British colonialism. It’s a big difference. The surfer maintains balance through a remarkable series of bumps and breaks and obstacles until the wave peters out at the shore.
After which, the surfer trudges landward, even as British support shrinks and evaporates. The beach of Israel’s foundation is far from empty, but s/he single-mindedly claims a plot.
Segev’s historical narrative ~ and the narrative flow is smooth like a wave ride ~ focuses on the early Jewish Zionists, but also places them in elemental context and does so with detachment.
There is much detail about the British and somewhat less about the Arabs. There is enough in all cases for the reader to taste the flavor of events centering on Palestine over the first half of the 20th century.
Part of the author’s self-styled mission is clearly to refute any notion that the British were, wholly or mainly, an enemy of Zionist objectives. Attitudes within all 3 groups ~ Arabs, British and Jews ~ are instead shown to be evolutionary and complex.
Upon relieving the Ottomans of rule in Palestine Britain supports Jewish self-determination for an amalgam of reasons including Christianity-based Zionism, humanistic sympathy and Britain’s aspiration to distinguish herself in posterity as the power that enabled Holy Land redemption after 2,000 years of exile.
But it is British desire to curry favor with the (perceived) powerful forces of international Jewry that is, especially in Segev’s view, a real ~ and anti-Semitic ~ factor that is played like a symphony by Zionist leaders and most notably by the brilliant and charismatic Russian-born chemical engineer Chaim Weizmann.
Before the end of the First World War ~ when the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion has just rolled off the Tsarist presses to the murmur of some Europeans and the shouts of a certain hyperactive and mustachioed German war veteran ~ we (and they, presumably) see Weizmann, head of the London-based world Zionist executive, in numerous meetings with the likes of then Prime Minister David Lloyd George and key cabinet officials Lord Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill.
The pinnacle achievement of Weizmann’s efforts is what we now call the Balfour Declaration, the famous letter from the Foreign Secretary committing his government to establishing a “Jewish National Home in Palestine”. It seems that the letter became a “declaration” when Weizmann saw it published in the Jewish Chronicle of London one week later on November 9, 1917 (or 9/11/1917, in British style, the very same day as the Bolshevik revolution).
The clout of the Balfour letter snowballs when its key phrases appear in the Mandate document authorizing British rule over Palestine that is incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles and rubber-stamped by the League of Nations in 1918.
In terms of pro forma legitimacy, little more could possibly have been done to serve Jewish self-determination interests.
It is Segev’s hypothesis that the image of Zionist power helped lubricate Zionist interests here and onwards throughout the ‘tween-war period.
We see Jewish luminaries like Albert Einstein, Baron Rothschild and Martin Buber associated with Palestine in synch with media fanfare, (British) Zionist Jew Herbert Samuel appointed by his country as Palestine’s High Commissioner in the 1920s, Weizmann cleverly and strategically intimating of his (in fact superficial）contacts with American Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, and of his “knowledge” (in fact not true) that “Lenin’s mother was Jewish” and that Jews were behind the Russian revolution.
The memoirs of many of the great British leaders and politicians of the period ruminate on “Jewish” power (they did not tend to distinguish non-Zionist Jews from the Zionists or shades between) with special interest in Jewish leverage in the United States.
On the ground in Palestine, British officials are at the same time wary of rubbing the local Zionist Executive the wrong way, and miffed at the very existence of what was effectively a competing government.
In contrast to the idealistic pro-Zionist attitude of some key political elites back home, a negative attitude toward the nascent Jewish Yishuv colors a large cross-section of British expatriates in Palestine. In reality, Segev tells us, there were not three ethnic societies (British, Arab, Jewish) in Palestine but two: one Anglo-Arab, one Jewish. From the ranks of British military in Arabia spring not only influential orientalists like T.E. Lawrence and St. John Philby, but also many like the suspiciously violent Douglas Duff and the overtly anti-Jewish Evelyn Barker.
This negativity seems to grow as time marches on, and embodies the flip-side of Segev’s tempting “image of Jewish power” hypothesis, within the framework of which we can comprehend also that reading the Nazi decimation of German Jews as a blow to the power of “world Jewry”, the British made efforts not to upset the Arabs during World War Two (for example and principally, by curtailing Jewish immigration) seeing as the Jews were already in their pocket.
Yet even at the Mandate’s beginning, with pro-Jewish British idealism perhaps at its peak, England was careful to temper Zionist ambitions.
The wording “Jewish National Home” was deliberately ambiguous. As for “Palestine”, most its pre-war territory was immediately carved out of the prospective Zionist orbit and into a new country then called “Trans-Jordan”. British administrators of Palestine were then careful to delegate positions of power to rich Arab families like the Husseinis and the Nashesheibis in tandem with allowing Weizmann to set up the Palestinian Zionist Executive.
Perhaps, muses Segev, Britain thought they might perpetuate a role in Palestine as a kind of referee between battling schoolboys. Perhaps they thought the Arabs would soon learn to live with a significant Jewish presence in but one corner of the Arabian world.
If their thinking lay somewhere between these poles, they miscalculated.
One of the early 20th century characters whose views the author uses as a touchstone throughout the book is writer and teacher Khalil al-Sakakini, who is roundly back-slapped by his fellows for ironically sneering from the newspaper Falastin:
“Welcome, cousins. We are the guests and you are the masters of the house. We will do everything to please you. You are, after all, Gd’s chosen people.”
While rulers like the British or the Ottomans may come and go, and impinge upon the native population only to some extent, Sakakini and the Palestinian Arabs were affected at a far more visceral level by the immigration of large numbers of sovereignty-minded, relatively organized, and mainly European Jews.
Tel Aviv steadily grew from an outpost of Arab Yaffo into a Jewish city while strategically located Jewish agricultural settlements flowered up and down the country.
The Jewish immigrants called themselves Palestinians, resurrecting the Hebrew language and strongly pushing for its inclusion in official documents, on signposts and in the (Jewish) education system.
They paid little heed to Arabic culture or language. Technically there was little need to entreat the Palestinian Arabs politically, as power lay with the British. The Zionists had already extracted from them the necessary legalities to legitimately pursue self-determination, and were busily and legally purchasing lands from Arabs.
But legalism proved to be only part of the equation. There were violent consequences as the push for Jewish sovereignty unfolded after 1917
Significant Arab riots broke out in 1920, 1921 and 1929. Arab anger and brutality smoldered all the years in between and afterwards until a full-scale revolt broke out in 1935 and was put down by General Montgomery.
For the many who believe the Arab-Israel conflict began in 1947, or that Zionism first became significant following the onset of Nazism, Segev’s detailing of these preceding events is an eye-opener.
On the question of what might have been – and what might have been avoided - we see that even in the early years there is lively debate.
In one popular Arab view, the Jewish predicament was a European problem that might concern the granting of European land.
Jerusalem’s so-called “Tower of David” was a Muslim minaret; the Jewish “Wailing Wall” and “Temple Mount” were both legally in Arab hands and the golden dome that adorned that site defined the very character of Jerusalem.
Had so for centuries. The Jewish claim to Palestine, they said, was akin to Muslims now claiming Spain by virtue of having sovereignty there for a very limited period many centuries ago.
Could Arabs have been persuaded to accept a Jewish presence?
In the eyes of some, the Zionists invited trouble by the deliberate tactic of being so very public and ostentatious with successful endeavors in which the Arabs had no say at all.
But the most prescient view was expressed by the rising labor leader David Ben Gurion in 1919: “There is no solution!... We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs.”
And so it was, and is. So much of the character of events in this period ensues to this very day. Segev details some of the cases of rapes, mutilations and unspeakable heartlessness that occurred as Arabs rioted. Such events were widely sensationalized by rumor and report, and fed the stereotype: Arabs as uncivilized animals. Meanwhile, Arabs cried “bravo” at what they viewed as stand-up righteousness. The Jews launched their own brutal counter-terrorism campaigns. And so on and on.
As Segev tracks the history, he attends to fascinating detail. It starts with indicators of the decaying Ottoman environment. A large part describes the rivalry between Weizmann and Ben Gurion, and between the two of them and Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and between all three of them and (assassinated) homo-erotic adventurer Jacob de Haan. We feel the shattered disillusionment of various British-appointed High Commissioners who come to Palestine full of idealistic intentions, and learn the origins of Mr Qassam of missile fame. We see that the first martyr of the modern era was the Jewish Yosef Trumpledor, a one-armed socialist revered as a Revisionist hero.
As far as it goes the book is a fantastic piece of historical scholarship, and I found myself wanting it to continue. It seems to run out of legs at the end. Some of the focusing on the personal activities and views of a select band of minor characters is a bit lengthy and tedious. But even this helps to add a texture and dimension missing from traditional histories.
I am so enthused by this book that it is tempting to agree with the rave on the cover: if you have to read one book about the British mandate period, this is the one. But there are certain elements that could be misinterpreted or used by people with existing biases to push their own prejudices, it is true. Particularly where the biases are anti-Israel to begin with. It is important to be aware, I believe, that the author is himself an Israeli who seeks to attack certain misconceptions held by those on the right of the Israeli political spectrum.
On the other hand, if you bring to the table a bit of knowledge, maturity and an open mind, it is a fantastic book.
Compulsive Reading
Over many decades that Z-word has been colored and bashed black and blue.
The likes of the modern United Nations and the old Soviet Union have obtusely described it as a synonym for “racism” or “colonialism”.
Rather than being colonialist, political Zionism in Tom Segev’s conception seems more like a skilful surfer riding the wave of British colonialism. It’s a big difference. The surfer maintains balance through a remarkable series of bumps and breaks and obstacles until the wave peters out at the shore.
After which, the surfer trudges landward, even as British support shrinks and evaporates. The beach of Israel’s foundation is far from empty, but s/he single-mindedly claims a plot.
Segev’s historical narrative ~ and the narrative flow is smooth like a wave ride ~ focuses on the early Jewish Zionists, but also places them in elemental context and does so with detachment.
There is much detail about the British and somewhat less about the Arabs. There is enough in all cases for the reader to taste the flavor of events centering on Palestine over the first half of the 20th century.
Part of the author’s self-styled mission is clearly to refute any notion that the British were, wholly or mainly, an enemy of Zionist objectives. Attitudes within all 3 groups ~ Arabs, British and Jews ~ are instead shown to be evolutionary and complex.
Upon relieving the Ottomans of rule in Palestine Britain supports Jewish self-determination for an amalgam of reasons including Christianity-based Zionism, humanistic sympathy and Britain’s aspiration to distinguish herself in posterity as the power that enabled Holy Land redemption after 2,000 years of exile.
But it is British desire to curry favor with the (perceived) powerful forces of international Jewry that is, especially in Segev’s view, a real ~ and anti-Semitic ~ factor that is played like a symphony by Zionist leaders and most notably by the brilliant and charismatic Russian-born chemical engineer Chaim Weizmann.
Before the end of the First World War ~ when the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion has just rolled off the Tsarist presses to the murmur of some Europeans and the shouts of a certain hyperactive and mustachioed German war veteran ~ we (and they, presumably) see Weizmann, head of the London-based world Zionist executive, in numerous meetings with the likes of then Prime Minister David Lloyd George and key cabinet officials Lord Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill.
The pinnacle achievement of Weizmann’s efforts is what we now call the Balfour Declaration, the famous letter from the Foreign Secretary committing his government to establishing a “Jewish National Home in Palestine”. It seems that the letter became a “declaration” when Weizmann saw it published in the Jewish Chronicle of London one week later on November 9, 1917 (or 9/11/1917, in British style, the very same day as the Bolshevik revolution).
The clout of the Balfour letter snowballs when its key phrases appear in the Mandate document authorizing British rule over Palestine that is incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles and rubber-stamped by the League of Nations in 1918.
In terms of pro forma legitimacy, little more could possibly have been done to serve Jewish self-determination interests.
It is Segev’s hypothesis that the image of Zionist power helped lubricate Zionist interests here and onwards throughout the ‘tween-war period.
We see Jewish luminaries like Albert Einstein, Baron Rothschild and Martin Buber associated with Palestine in synch with media fanfare, (British) Zionist Jew Herbert Samuel appointed by his country as Palestine’s High Commissioner in the 1920s, Weizmann cleverly and strategically intimating of his (in fact superficial）contacts with American Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, and of his “knowledge” (in fact not true) that “Lenin’s mother was Jewish” and that Jews were behind the Russian revolution.
The memoirs of many of the great British leaders and politicians of the period ruminate on “Jewish” power (they did not tend to distinguish non-Zionist Jews from the Zionists or shades between) with special interest in Jewish leverage in the United States.
On the ground in Palestine, British officials are at the same time wary of rubbing the local Zionist Executive the wrong way, and miffed at the very existence of what was effectively a competing government.
In contrast to the idealistic pro-Zionist attitude of some key political elites back home, a negative attitude toward the nascent Jewish Yishuv colors a large cross-section of British expatriates in Palestine. In reality, Segev tells us, there were not three ethnic societies (British, Arab, Jewish) in Palestine but two: one Anglo-Arab, one Jewish. From the ranks of British military in Arabia spring not only influential orientalists like T.E. Lawrence and St. John Philby, but also many like the suspiciously violent Douglas Duff and the overtly anti-Jewish Evelyn Barker.
This negativity seems to grow as time marches on, and embodies the flip-side of Segev’s tempting “image of Jewish power” hypothesis, within the framework of which we can comprehend also that reading the Nazi decimation of German Jews as a blow to the power of “world Jewry”, the British made efforts not to upset the Arabs during World War Two (for example and principally, by curtailing Jewish immigration) seeing as the Jews were already in their pocket.
Yet even at the Mandate’s beginning, with pro-Jewish British idealism perhaps at its peak, England was careful to temper Zionist ambitions.
The wording “Jewish National Home” was deliberately ambiguous. As for “Palestine”, most its pre-war territory was immediately carved out of the prospective Zionist orbit and into a new country then called “Trans-Jordan”. British administrators of Palestine were then careful to delegate positions of power to rich Arab families like the Husseinis and the Nashesheibis in tandem with allowing Weizmann to set up the Palestinian Zionist Executive.
Perhaps, muses Segev, Britain thought they might perpetuate a role in Palestine as a kind of referee between battling schoolboys. Perhaps they thought the Arabs would soon learn to live with a significant Jewish presence in but one corner of the Arabian world.
If their thinking lay somewhere between these poles, they miscalculated.
One of the early 20th century characters whose views the author uses as a touchstone throughout the book is writer and teacher Khalil al-Sakakini, who is roundly back-slapped by his fellows for ironically sneering from the newspaper Falastin:
“Welcome, cousins. We are the guests and you are the masters of the house. We will do everything to please you. You are, after all, Gd’s chosen people.”
While rulers like the British or the Ottomans may come and go, and impinge upon the native population only to some extent, Sakakini and the Palestinian Arabs were affected at a far more visceral level by the immigration of large numbers of sovereignty-minded, relatively organized, and mainly European Jews.
Tel Aviv steadily grew from an outpost of Arab Yaffo into a Jewish city while strategically located Jewish agricultural settlements flowered up and down the country.
The Jewish immigrants called themselves Palestinians, resurrecting the Hebrew language and strongly pushing for its inclusion in official documents, on signposts and in the (Jewish) education system.
They paid little heed to Arabic culture or language. Technically there was little need to entreat the Palestinian Arabs politically, as power lay with the British. The Zionists had already extracted from them the necessary legalities to legitimately pursue self-determination, and were busily and legally purchasing lands from Arabs.
But legalism proved to be only part of the equation. There were violent consequences as the push for Jewish sovereignty unfolded after 1917
Significant Arab riots broke out in 1920, 1921 and 1929. Arab anger and brutality smoldered all the years in between and afterwards until a full-scale revolt broke out in 1935 and was put down by General Montgomery.
For the many who believe the Arab-Israel conflict began in 1947, or that Zionism first became significant following the onset of Nazism, Segev’s detailing of these preceding events is an eye-opener.
On the question of what might have been – and what might have been avoided - we see that even in the early years there is lively debate.
In one popular Arab view, the Jewish predicament was a European problem that might concern the granting of European land.
Jerusalem’s so-called “Tower of David” was a Muslim minaret; the Jewish “Wailing Wall” and “Temple Mount” were both legally in Arab hands and the golden dome that adorned that site defined the very character of Jerusalem.
Had so for centuries. The Jewish claim to Palestine, they said, was akin to Muslims now claiming Spain by virtue of having sovereignty there for a very limited period many centuries ago.
Could Arabs have been persuaded to accept a Jewish presence?
In the eyes of some, the Zionists invited trouble by the deliberate tactic of being so very public and ostentatious with successful endeavors in which the Arabs had no say at all.
But the most prescient view was expressed by the rising labor leader David Ben Gurion in 1919: “There is no solution!... We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs.”
And so it was, and is. So much of the character of events in this period ensues to this very day. Segev details some of the cases of rapes, mutilations and unspeakable heartlessness that occurred as Arabs rioted. Such events were widely sensationalized by rumor and report, and fed the stereotype: Arabs as uncivilized animals. Meanwhile, Arabs cried “bravo” at what they viewed as stand-up righteousness. The Jews launched their own brutal counter-terrorism campaigns. And so on and on.
As Segev tracks the history, he attends to fascinating detail. It starts with indicators of the decaying Ottoman environment. A large part describes the rivalry between Weizmann and Ben Gurion, and between the two of them and Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and between all three of them and (assassinated) homo-erotic adventurer Jacob de Haan. We feel the shattered disillusionment of various British-appointed High Commissioners who come to Palestine full of idealistic intentions, and learn the origins of Mr Qassam of missile fame. We see that the first martyr of the modern era was the Jewish Yosef Trumpledor, a one-armed socialist revered as a Revisionist hero.
As far as it goes the book is a fantastic piece of historical scholarship, and I found myself wanting it to continue. It seems to run out of legs at the end. Some of the focusing on the personal activities and views of a select band of minor characters is a bit lengthy and tedious. But even this helps to add a texture and dimension missing from traditional histories.
I am so enthused by this book that it is tempting to agree with the rave on the cover: if you have to read one book about the British mandate period, this is the one. But there are certain elements that could be misinterpreted or used by people with existing biases to push their own prejudices, it is true. Particularly where the biases are anti-Israel to begin with. It is important to be aware, I believe, that the author is himself an Israeli who seeks to attack certain misconceptions held by those on the right of the Israeli political spectrum.
On the other hand, if you bring to the table a bit of knowledge, maturity and an open mind, it is a fantastic book.
