AFTER THE YOM KIPPUR WAR Battleground – Chapter 9 The writing of the original English edition of this book was concluded early in 1972. Thus it was that only in a footnote inserted in the page proofs was there mention of what turned out to be an historic turning point in the Arab war against […]

Israel’s function in the modern world Chapter 8 – Battleground State Department establishment and a usually more widely ranging, more sensitive, outlook in the White House. Hence, too, the sometimes surprising fluctuations in American foreign policy (as in the tug-of-war between President Truman and his State Department in 1948). The intrinsic merits of a pro-Arab […]

The Cause of the Conflict Chapter 7 – Battleground The nature of the Arab purpose in Palestine was il- lumined, was indeed dramatized, by the clash between the terrorist organizations and the Jordanian govern- ment that began September 1970. Not an ideological confrontation nor the result of a difference of opinion on the proper fate […]

A GARLAND OF MYTHS Chapter 6 – Battleground The distortion of history, ancient and modem, basic to the Arab-British resistance to Jewish restoration, had been fully articulated by 1948. After 1948, the Arabs added greater depth and vehemence in presen- tation and with it a theme of hatred of the Jews, com- parable only to […]

BEGENNING TO RESTORE THE LAND Chapter 5 – Battleground The land, unloved by its rulers and uncared for by most of its handful of inhabitants, whose silences La- martine had likened to those of ruined Pompeii, and which Mark Twain had compassionately consigned to the world of dreams, began to come to life again with […]

The history of the second half of the sixteenth century illustrates the dynamism of the Palestinian Jews their prosperity, their progressiveness, and their subjugation. In 1577, a Hebrew printing press was established in Safed. The first press in Palestine, it was also the first in Asia. In 1576, and again in 1577, the Sultan Murad […]

The emergence and the progressive intensification of Jewish national identification in the Soviet Union has seemed miraculous even To many historically minded people. It is, in fact, merely an expression sharpened, deepened, and concentrated by the circumstances of the central fact of 3,500 years of Jewish history: the passion of the Jewish people for the […]

The Jewish Presence in Palestine Promoted by two such powerful forces as Soviet assertions and Arab propaganda, the claim of Arab historical rights has become a central element in the international debate. By sheer weight of noise, it has impressed many otherwise knowledgeable and well meaning people. The facts of history are thus a vital […]

In June 1918, an ingenious solution was accepted by the British government. Osmond Walrond, an intelligence officer attached to the Arab Bureau in Cairo, read out in that city a statement in which the British government officially pledged itself to recreate in the areas not yet conquered the "complete and sovereign independence of any Arab […]

which had in fact never existed and which could not be conjured up. Whenever, therefore, a reaction was to be provoked in the more militant, or more unruly, section of the Arab population, it was the vaguer generality of Islam or of pan-Arabism that was invoked. Thus, the disturbances in 1929 were organized on a […]