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Title: The Palestine War 1948 by Efraim Karsh ISBN: 1-84176-372-1 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Bias in favor of the truth is no fault
Comment: Karsh is perhaps the single best historian on the events surrounding Israel's independence in 1948 and any work of his is highly recommended. As far as the comments of the reader below go, Karsh wrote an entire book, "Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians'" that documents not only the inaccuracies but the emendations, misquotations, mistranslations and outright lies of the likes of Avi Shlaim. The latest salvo in this contest between true historians like Karsh and politically motivated absurdists like Shlaim can be viewed in a letter exchange between Karsh and Benny Morris in the March 2004 issue of Commentary Magazine available on-line in the Commentary Magazine website archive (though you may have to pay for access). Anyone considering the merits of Karsh's work would do well to start there. The point worth bearing in mind is that evenhandedness is fine as far it goes, but only so long as it does not result in giving equal time to facts and to distortions. Should, say, a scholar of the Holocaust who took the time out to write an entire book debunking Holocaust deniers give space to their distortions in a general introduction to the Holocaust? And while for complex psychological reasons painting liberal democratic and humane Western nations as demonic while refashioning rebarbative people and governments as noble victims gives comfort to many on the Left, it makes for no more valid history than the tendentious rantings of certain professors of English and Comparative Literature or Linguisitics about matters outside their fields of expertise. If you want to read lies too, fiction is often enjoyable. But don't miss Karsh if you'd actually like the facts. Oh, and as to the shock expressed by the reviewer below about the lack of footnotes: This book is a general introduction, a volume in a series of slender books on important wars put out by an English publishing house. There are no footnotes to any books in the series. The decision not to have footnotes, one would imagine, is likely that of the editors of the series, not the individual authors.
Rating: 1
Summary: Extremely Biased
Comment: Karsh's work is reasonably well-written, and comprehensive enough that it theoretically could serve as an introduction for someone interested in learning about the Palestine War of 1948. However, though presented under the guise of objective history, it is unabashedly biased in favor of Israel (something that emerges in the author's other writings, as well). Additionally, sources are NEVER footnoted, and indeed reference to other works is limited to a very slim "Further Reading" list presented at the back of the book. It is noteworthy that most of the work cited in this list belongs to the 1960s and 1970s (thus ignoring the work of such ISRAELI authors as Avi Shlaim or Martin Van Creveld - both of whom are less biased than Karsh), the notable exception being Karsh's own work.
Rating: 5
Summary: Concise History of the 1948 War for Israeli Independence
Comment: Osprey, a well-known publisher of militaria: campaign histories, troop studies, equipment analysis, etc., has brought this fine history of the 1948 War for Israeli Independence. The book uses another title for the conflict: The Palestine War of 1948, which is preferred in some British academic circles. Efraim Karsh is an Israeli academic working in the United Kingdom. He has extensively written covering different aspects of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The book is a concise (92 page) study of the conflict covering the rising paramilitary action before the British withdrawal until the eventual ceasefires declared between Israel and the Arab invaders. There is some analysis also of the Palestinian-Arab refugee issue as well as early Arab and Jewish state building. The real jewels of the book, of course, are its' many beautiful photographs, gorgeous illustrations, and helpful maps and graphs. A very useful timeline or chronology is also included. Karsh does include a bibliography, but doesn't use footnotes to reference his writing. His bibliography includes a wide variety of authors including Arabs, Israelis, anti-Zionists, and Zionists: Musa Alami, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Chaim Herzog, Efraim Karsh, Issa Khalaf, Rashid Khalidi, Walid Khalidi, Jon and David Kimche, Dan Kurzman, Walter Laqueur, and Natanel Lorch.
Another of the book's attractive aspects is that the book includes some oft forgotten details of the war. Some of these details include the fact that the people we now call Palestinians identified themselves as parts of a greater Arab nation rather than an individual people seeking individual sovereignty. Neither does Karsh forgot to include that the Jews have had a continuous presence in Israel for thousands of years. Many writers gloss over this fact and call the Israelis colonists, settlers, or foreign peoples. They are not. Israel is their home and has been for thousands of years. Karsh also writes about the early connections between the Nazis and the Arabs in Israel / Palestine.
I highly recommend this book as an excellent introductory volume to the 1948 War for Israeli Independence.
Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan
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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: 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): $19.95 |
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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 Univ Pr Pub. Date: 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 Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Suez Crisis 1956 (Essential Histories, 49) by Derek Varble ISBN: 1841764183 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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