The Tragedy of Zionism: How Its Revolutionary Past Haunts Israeli Democracy Book

Impressive, Detailed, Scholarly

This is a must read book on the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict. Cohen educates his readers with an absolutely riveting account of the rivalry and tensions between various clan factions in Mandatory Palestine dating from the collapse of Ottoman rule to the Israeli declaration of independence. [ Instead he names local Arab clan leaders and land brokers who willingly sold lands to Jews and to the Jewish Agency. ]

The word "collaborator" in the context of conflict is often taken negatively. Yet in business one collaborates all the time - its how we get things done. When I collaborate with others it is in order to get more accomplished collectively that could be done by individually. In Palestinian society "collaboration" was viewed as pejorative, and therein lies the problem. The main branch of Palestinian nationalism today rejects the notion of collaboration and by examining history we can uncover the origin of this school of rejectionist thought.

I recently wrote the author of a history of the Middle East why he didn't cover the story of the minority view of Arab sympathizers to Jewish migration. He had considered contrary movements in Egypt and in Iran. He dismissed it as the story of the dog that didn't bark, implying that it wasn't very relevant. Yet in the Sherlock Holmes story of the same name the fact that the dog did not bark was the clue that solved the case!

Paragraph by paragraph Cohen clearly outlines of the events of the day backed by newspaper articles of the day, interviews, reports and archived correspondence. He also looks at the campaign of intimidation backed by the Mufti Haj Amin Husseini against those in the Arab community who were friendly towards Jews. What began as threats by 1936 had turned to bombs and and assassination of rivals and members of their families for selling land and doing business with Jews. (There was no refinement of the notion of Jew vs. Zionist shown.) Yet due to the nature of clan rivalry one of the effects was to drive some of the opposing clans such as Abu Gosh into a positive relationship with the Zionist camp.

The book shatters the Palestinian mythologies that Jews stole land, that the land sales were largely from foreigners or even that there was a coherent Palestinian polity, or that the British were on the side of the Jews or Arabs. It's an honest book in that he shows that the Arab land brokers were in some cases motivated by greed to sell land to Jews at high prices and were not adverse to questionable practices in amassing their holdings for resale. Some would squander the profits while others were interested in modernization and reinvestment for the benefits of their families or clans. Cohen establishes a realistic picture of a proto-Israeli polity that was organized for mutual benefit that made sure that it was as well informed as it could be about the sympathies and antipathies that it faced and this was both the purpose and beginnings of Israeli intelligence.

Overall I was spellbound with Cohen's ability relate the past. Credit should also go to his translator Haim Watzman. The book has a multitude of interesting details of which I was completely unaware and it certainly changed my perspective on this period of history. I've followed this up with Cohen's next book Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967. Highly recommended!