Submitted by Mike Duffy (United States), Dec 22, 2003 at 00:03
I became interested in the Israeli "historian wars" back around 1990 in a provoctive, intense, insane college class on Middle East Literature that immersed me in the writings of the "new historians", "old historians" and just plain leftists nuts like Chomsky and Said. I avidly read everything I could get my hands on, particularly by Benny Morris, his critics, and defenders alike. One thing which I noticed and rather enjoyed was the ferocious bank-and-forth attacks in article after article.
Efraim Karsh's book turns much of what these "new historians" have written into mush, simply by proving through documentation, that much of what Morris & co. have written, partucularly about the origins of the Palestinian problem, was innacurate, taken out of context, or even falsified. In a short, 236 page book, Karsh shows that, among other points, Ben Gurion never intended to "transfer" Palestinians out of Israel: 2) Golda Meir and King Abdullah never conspired to take over the Palestinian state, with British approval, and 3) that Bevin and the British Foreign Minestry were anti-Israel and pro Arab, not vice versa. What he really proves is that many, if not most, of the claims of these "new historians" cannot be taken at face value.
My only regret is that the book is not long enough. I would have really liked to see what Karsh has to say about, for example, Morris' entire Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, not just a few pages of it. At any rate, this is a well researched, intense book written by an author who does not believe in the 'evil empire' theory of Israeli history, and I enjoyed it immensely.
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