Reviews for Fabricating Israeli History: The `New Historians' - Efraim Karsh - Paperback

The average rating for Fabricating Israeli History: The `New Historians' - Efraim Karsh - Paperback based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-24 00:00:00 JAMES E CARLOCK A little circumlocutory, this work deserves a rounding up to 4 on account of my gratitude for its service to the cause of integrity. By chance, it made passing reference to author Bernard Wasserstein's private admission of valid points for weakness to his method, but public persistence in denouncing Karsh; only the other day, I read what everyone touts as Wasserstein's complete impartiality, only to be stunned by his frequent departure for blatant bias. Along the way of demonstrating by passage after passage how deceptive some historians are, bent upon portraying Zionism as an ultranationalist, racist force, another sad theme emerged of late British colonial policy deliberately militating against the success of the incipient nation and in favor of its Arab allies. A small flavor of how Karsh strives to restore balance.... "What drives a person, who clearly belongs to his country's intellectual and social elite, to attack his native country in front of complete strangers, in terms well beyond the reasonable bounds of constructive criticism? . . . After all, there is a fundamental difference between voicing an opinion at a private meeting, or even a public gathering, and the investment of years of archival research geared solely to laying the basis for such an anti-Israel indictment. . . . While leafing through the book's English-language version, I came across a quote from a letter, written by David Ben-Gurion to his son Amos in 1937, stating that 'we must expel Arabs and take their places'. This rang a distant bell. Having read the book's Hebrew edition several years earlier, I recalled the letter as saying something quite different. Indeed, an examination of the Hebrew text confirmed my recollection. It read as follows: 'We do not wish, we do not need to expel Arabs and take their place ... All our aspiration is built on the assumption that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.' . . . Perhaps this was merely a mistranslation, or even a typographical mistake? . . . To my bewilderment I discovered that there was scarcely a single document quoted by Morris which had not been rewritten in a way that distorted its original meaning altogether" (xvi-xviii). "Take Morris' citation of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's words at the Israeli Cabinet meeting of 16 June 1948: 'But war is war. We did not start the war. They made the war, Jaffa went to war against us. So did Haifa. And I do not want those who fled to return. I do not want them again to make war.' The key sentence here ('I do not want those who fled to return') is simply not found in the text of the meeting protocol. It is entirely of Morris's own making. The actual text reads as follows: 'But war is war. We did not start the war. They made the war. Jaffa waged war on us, Haifa waged war on us, Bet She'an waged war on us. And I do not want them again to make war. That would be not just but foolish. This would be a 'foolish hasid'. Do we have to bring back the enemy, so that he again fights us in Bet-She'an? No! You made war [and] you lost" (228-229). Truly, as in all things, take precautions in consumption of sources.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-04-04 00:00:00 Anthony White looks in depth into several instances of the very creative rewriting of historical events around the formation of Israel by those who would prefer that it hadn't been. most readable is a late chapter on the history of UK involvement. their historic ties and treaties with the governments of the Arab countries they helped create after WWI goes a long way to explaining the continued entrenched hostility towards Israel.