Review by Rabbi Danny Rich
BD Publishing
ISBN 979-8332429538
£26.29
As a prominent Jewish student activist of more than 40 years ago, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on The Palestinian Experience in Jordan 1948-1970, and as an advocate since that time for two narratives, the prospect of The Definitive Israel Palestine Reader is an engaging one.
The material is divided into four parts: a short introduction to Zionism (pp 1-15), the historical narrative which forms the bulk of the volume (more than 500 pages), an examination of current issues including security and settlements, refugees, terrorism and counterterrorism, and the natures of Palestinian identity and a Jewish state (nearly 200 pages), and a mere 20 pages on future possible solutions.
The first section which opens with an extract from The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, considered the founder of modern political Zionism, is too brief to convey to the reader the Jewish relationship with the Land of Israel from Biblical to modern times which included at least a millennium of dominant Jewish life there. It unfortunately plays to the common (mis)perception that Zionism was merely a creation of 19 Century European Jewry.
It is not altogether surprising that the opening part of the second section of this volume – primarily recalling history much of which this reviewer did not live through – proves more fascinating. On opposite pages (130/1) and from the same year (1946), for example, are the contemporary letters of Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein, the first advocating non-violence but sympathy for the Jewish cause and the second supporting a ‘Jewish Homeland but not as a separate state’. Although I could not find a copy of the crucial Balfour Declaration of 1917
-perhaps because its text is too well known to students of this topic- or enough of the ‘secret’ correspondence between the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and the Sharif of Mecca during the First World War (covered definitively in Peter Shambrook’s 2023 work, Policy of Deceit: Britain and Palestine 1914-1939, this early narrative section is a strong one, not only offering important material articulating the dilemmas of (British) colonialism in the region but also attesting to the challenge of sharing Palestine summarised by a note titled The Consequences of the Partition of Palestine (1947), written by a representative of the Central Intelligence Agency (pp 151 –153).
This long section does a service in bringing together the major documents and critical speeches of leading players including: The 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence and the response to it of the Arab League (pp 183/7), The State of Israel’s 1950 Law of Return (p226), 1976 papers including Nasser’s address to the Egyptian National Assembly (p227) and the League of Arab States’ Khartoum Resolutions (p233), The 1968 Palestinian Charter (p279) and Yasser Arafat’s
1974 address to the United Nations (pp 283-287), Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s 1977 address to the Knesset (pp 312-319) and the ensuing Camp David material (pp 321-330), the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence issued by the Palestinian National Council (pp 363-367), and work relevant to the relatively short but welcome period recalled by this reviewer known as the 1993 Oslo Accords and their ensuing actions (pp 372-430) including Yasser Arafat’s 2002 interview with the US Public Broadcasting Service (p408-416).
The documents and speeches are interspersed by reflective commentary including that of Asher Susser in 2017 on 1967: The Six-Day War was a watershed in Middle Eastern History (p235), the recent (2023) articles by Nabil Fahmy titled 1973: A Global Paradigm Shift and Itamar Rabinovich’s Israel’s 1973 October War: A 50-year Perspective (pp 299-306), and a 1980 contribution by Dr Asad Abdul-Rahman and Rashid Hamid on The PLO: Past, Present and Future (pp 269-274). Quite why Malcolm X’s 1964 diatribe, Zionist Logic, is included remains a mystery to this reviewer!
Although shorter than the previous section, the Dynamic Aspects of the Conflict follows the pattern but with fewer documents and more ‘thought’ pieces. The current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, features a couple of times including his 2011 Address to the United Nations General Assembly (pp 611-613) and his 2009 address at Bar-Ilan University (p697). The commentaries confront deep issues as their titles indicate: Don Peretz in a 1970 contribution Arab Palestine: Phoenix or Phantom? (pp 579-584), a 1967 article titled The Future of Israel by I.F.Stone (p609), the legality or its opposite of Israeli settlements in the West Bank (pp 614-642), and the relevance of the term apartheid in this context (pp 643-647). As might be expected there are nearly 30 pages (pp 650-678) on Palestinian refugees but sadly no reference to the 750,000 Arab Jewish refugees who were forced to flee their homelands between 1948 and 1970, the majority of whom now live in Israel. Towards the end there is a fascinating edited email exchange between two longtime friends and former college roommates, Michael Oren and David Rothkopf on ‘A’ Jewish State vs.‘The Jewish State’ (pp700-715) – a salient reminder that words matter and nuance is everything!
Whilst much of this volume was prepared before the Hamas murderous incursion into the kibbutzim and towns in the Gaza Envelope of southern Israel and the destructive, devastating and tragic Israeli invasion of Gaza, this section includes relevant articles on Human Shields in Humanitarian Law, and Balancing Targeting and Collateral Damage.
For understandable reasons and because no book, however long, can cover everything, the final section, Where do we go from here, is so brief that a companion volume must be on its way!
Despite my cynicism of any aspect of the Israel/Palestine conflict described as ‘The Definitive’, this remarkable collection is a heavy but worthwhile adventure for anybody who seeks a better understanding of this complex and dynamic tragedy which has enveloped Israel and Palestinian alike for more than two generations.
Rabbi Danny Rich served as the Senior Rabbi & Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism from the middle of 2005 to 2020, and was rabbi to Kingston Liberal Synagogue for nearly two decades. Rabbi Rich is a Justice of the Peace, and a hospital and prison chaplain. He is a President of the Council of Christians & Jews, co-chair of the National Refugees Welcome Board and a member of the Council of Imams and Rabbis.