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Title: Fabricating Israeli History: The `New Historians' (Cass Series--Israeli History, Politics, and Society) by Efraim Karsh ISBN: 0-7146-8063-X Publisher: Frank Cass Publishers Pub. Date: 01 June, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.91 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Counterattack to the lies of the 'New Historians'
Comment: Prof. Efraim Karsh tears apart the anti-Zionist 'new historians' Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan (now calling himself 'Jean') Pappe. He examines the very texts that they claim illustrate their anti-Zionist agenda, yet finds that they have deceived the public, sometimes giving the exact opposite interpretation of what the document clearly states (witness the Morris outight lie about Ben Gurion's diary entry - Morris makes a big deal saying B-G wrote "We must expel Arabs and take their places.", while Karsh provides us with the original text which states "We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place." The EXACT opposite of what Morris said Ben Gurion wrote! Such is the veracity and integrity of chief 'new historian' Benny Morris and his 'scholarship'.) I like to see all the facts uncovered in history, but Karsh exposes some of the foul play of the 'new historians' who manufacture 'history' to fit their anti-Zionist ideological agenda. For more criticism of the so-called 'new historians' read Shabtai Teveth, Robert Satloff, and Anita Shapira. Meanwhile, Karsh's book is a MUST read. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 5
Summary: New History as New Garbage
Comment: The fact that so many reviewers fail to see the value in this work speaks volumes about the success of Arab propaganda in the last 30 years.
Any study of any of revisionist and leftist historians, so-called "new" for good reason, should be filtered through the eyes of Professor Karsh--and Anita Shapira's 10,000-word New Republic piece, "The Past is Not a Foreign Country." Both call to task Avi Schlaim and Benny Morris, who like Tom Segev, fail to explain the war and peace that has afflicted the Middle East since Israel's founding. These new historians all make one gross omission: They consider it irrelevant that seven Arab nations attacked Israel upon her founding in 1947, making no secret of their intention to destroy the new Jewish state. In 1947, Arab League Secretary General Azzam Pasha promised "a war of extermination," "a momentous massacre" to be remembered "like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
Nor do new historians bother to note that such words were followed by gruesome acts, about which the world has forgotten, given the ubiquity of biased news reports. In 1947 and 1948, for example, all but one of the 600 Jews captured by Arab forces, including many noncombatants and children, were murdered in cold blood--and mutilated beyond recognition. According to Dr. Eugene Narrett and Jerusalem Post reporter Sarah Honig, amid scenes of rape and other sexual abuse, the Jewish victims were dismembered, decapitated and photographed by their proud captors. In the Etzion settlements south of Jerusalem, three truckloads full of Jewish corpses were found sexually mutilated.
Current accounts of those years often do, however, detail supposedly heinous deeds of Jewish fighters-without appropriate context. In the so-called massacre at Deir Yassin some 200 Arabs were killed. But new historians like Morris, Schlaim and Segev delete the relevant and defining fact that Deir Yassin was the scene of a pitched all-day battle, in which every male Arab villager was armed. One has to turn to more thorough and honest reporters, like O Jerusalem author Larry Collins, to learn that Arab fighters in Deir Yassin used women and children as shields.
In war, bad things happen. But new historians fail to ask four critical questions: Who started the war? What were their intentions? Who was forced to mount a defense? What were Israel's casualties? Ask, and truth becomes crystal clear. As I note in a forthcoming Midstream article, "Mourning the Death of Peace," Israel agreed in 1947 to accept a further partition of less than 20% of the land allotted by the League of Nations in 1922 as a National Home for the Jews. The Arabs, however, begrudged Israel even that small patch of land. In every war since, Arabs have mounted an effort to destroy Israel, either militarily or politically, just as they did in 1947. In 1967, Egyptian leader Gamel Nasser promised to wash Israel into the sea. This intention remains sadly evident today in the Fateh Constitution-and countless Arabic reports, statements and broadcasts, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. It seems that moderate Muslim leaders like Shaykh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi, who support both Israel and peace, remain a depressing minority.
When the conflict is seen through the wide-angle lens of clear-sighted historians like Karsh and Shapira, who DO include all the relevant facts, the work of new historians goes up in smoke--as dishonest garbage. Alyssa A. Lappen
Rating: 4
Summary: A Cautionary Tale
Comment: In the late 1980s a group calling themselves the
'new historians', including Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe
and Benny Morris burst onto the scene, claiming to
have written the 'real' history of the beginning of
the state of Israel, a history that had ostensibly
been covered up and which they wished to expose.
According to the 'new history', Israel was guilty of
a multitude of sins, from direct or indirect
responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee
problem (Morris) and colluding with Jordanian monarch Abdullah
I to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state by
secretly agreeing to divide the country between them (Shlaim
and Pappe). Morris also insisted that the idea of
'trasferring' the Arabs out of the Jewish state had been a
central tenet of the Zionist movement, at least from 1937.
They attracted criticism quickly, and for years the argument
over what exactly happened in the Israeli War of Independence
was THE hot topic, resulting in many
journalistic and scholarly articles and mutual accusations.
By far the most straight-forward, no-holds-barred attack on
the collective theses of the 'New Historians' is this book.
Karsh, professor of King's College, faces the 'new historians'
on their home turf-namely their claim that their research is
based on newly uncovered archival material, a claim that is
only partly true.
After first demonstrating that their 'ideas' are not new -
indeed, many of them have been staples of Arab propaganda for
years - Karsh takes a look at the evidence the 'new
historians' bring to support their ideas.
Repeatedly, whether it is the claim that the Zionist movement was obsessed with 'transfer' or that Britain under Atlee and Bevin, long thought to be anti-Zionist, was in fact a friend of Zionism,Karsh demonstrates that these historians ignored evidence that contradicted their thesis, blew the (slim and selective) evidence they had out of proportion, and at times even misread what the document actually said, such as the case where Morris claimed that a meeting discussing the future of the Negev actually discussed transfer. Worse, they completely failed to consider the historical context of various documents, thus jumping to conclusions not allowed when examining the whole picture.
Though Karsh may overreach at times with his rhetoric, it
is impossible to ignore his claims. Karsh's rebuttal is
not just important in the limited context of correcting a
distorted picture of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but is an
important warning against the dangers of forcing the facts
to fit the theory, rather than the other way around.
Historians the world over should take note.
This book is a must-read on the still controversial subject
of the fateful period of 1947-1949, whatever side of the
conflict you may be on.
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Title: The Palestine War 1948 by Efraim Karsh ISBN: 1841763721 Publisher: Osprey Publishing (UK) Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest by Efraim Karsh ISBN: 0802117589 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz ISBN: 047146502X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 by Efraim Karsh, Inari Karsh ISBN: 0674005414 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars by Yaacov Lozowick ISBN: 0385509057 Publisher: Doubleday Books Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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