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• W766954657 abstract "Anyone who claims to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict is either badly mistaken or has spent several decades seriously studying the matter. I have not spent several decades of study on this topic, and so will not pretend to understand. Judging by the monumental undertaking that is The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, however, Avi Shlaim, an Oxford emeritus professor of international relations, has spent the requisite lifetime needed to speak with authority here. In this daunting work of over 800 pages, he attempts to chart out the entire of Israel's relationship with the Arab world in the service of a revisionist thesis. Shlaim's title refers to a 1923 essay that was highly influential in Revisionist Zionism, which argued for a two-step process in establishing the state of Israel. First, its author argued, Israel must establish an iron wall of military strength to safeguard the nation against the inevitable hostility of the Arab world. Then, once the Arab nations resigned themselves to an Israeli presence, the two sides could negotiate peace. Shlaim argues that Israel failed to follow through on the second step of the iron wall strategy, and that its leaders missed several critical opportunities to negotiate peace. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As I previously mentioned, I cannot credibly the validity of Shlaim's historical argument. What I can do is examine the generosity of his history, and on that count Shlaim passes with flying colors. His sketches are not always generous, and it is clear that he intends to defend the memory of some Israeli figures and tarnish that of others. At one point, he openly announces that he intends in the following chapters to critique Israel's sainted (and hawkish) first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, while simultaneously resuscitating the reputation of his dovish successor Moshe Sharett. But his sketches are vivid and lifelike, and while he castigates the mistakes made by different prime ministers, at no point do any of those mistakes appear implausible. Had Shlaim been a bad historian, he would have presented decisions with which he disagreed as moments of spontaneous evil, or simply failed to explain them altogether. But Shlaim is not a bad historian. There is always some kind of explanation, and it is usually a good one. At least, that is, until the emergence of Israel's current prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu. If The Iron Wall were Beowulf, Netanyahu would be its dragon: he appears late in the saga, with no character traits besides a love of murdering anyone in his path and the apparent goal of laying waste to the kingdom. There is a significant moment a little over three quarters through the book, in which Shlaim proclaims that history may ultimately judge Netanyahu's early years in a different light. This was a troubling line. Up until this point, it had seemed that The Iron Wall was history, and very good at that. After Netanyahu's entrance, that ceases to be the case. The most recent two decades of Israeli are depicted through the close-up lens of partisan politics, rather than the more distant lens of the historian. They feature inflammatory phrases such as a description of the Israelis as colonial overlords and the somewhat absurd claim that Israel fought Hamas in 2008 only because [Israel] knew that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, would stand firm in defense of the national rights of the Palestinian people. …" @default.
• W766954657 created "2016-06-24" @default.
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• W766954657 date "2015-03-22" @default.
• W766954657 modified "2023-09-27" @default.
• W766954657 title "Trapped within walls." @default.
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