One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate

Rating:
Summary: Anything but 'complete' !
Review: I remember picking up this book prior to purchase and flicking through the pages. Cover reviews adorned the publication with glowing critiques such as `...the widest research...' & `...the greatest scope..' etc.. Initial pre-purchase study of the book also proved favourable with the articulate text being easy to understand. I therefore began reading with a sense of anticipation. However, this soon transformed into frustration as I discovered the failure to address some fundamental issues without which any worthwhile study of the subject is incomplete.

At the post first World War Versailles Treaty, the League of Nations gave Britain a Mandate to establish the Jewish National Home in ALL of Palestine (including both sides of the Jordan River).

Britain however, soon embarked on a policy of Arab appeasement, which it still pursues to this day, when with one swift stroke of a pen, acting on it's own volition, Britain cut off some 80 percent of Palestine and gave it to Abdullah Ibn Hussein, whose family had been ousted from Arabia by the Sa'ud family.

Abdullah formed Transjordan (now Jordan) and became it's King. The British also established Abdullah's brother, Feisal. As King over a semi-independent Iraq.

In November 1947, the Jews finally ate the `crumbs' that dropped from the British table. What remained of Palestine at that time was `divided' between Arabs and Jews, with the Jews again receiving the smaller allotment.

The Jewish National Home that was to have originally incorporated all of Palestine now actually constituted less than 11 percent of the land. (Even this being too much for the Arab world and it's International supporters.) I found the overall assessment of even the above in this book to be misleading and flawed.

Following the Arab riots in the 1920's, no reference is made to the League of Nations Mandates Commission which stripped the British of their `moral standing' by announcing in 1930 that Britain had actually caused the Arab riots in Palestine by failing to provide sufficient police protection.

The further Arab riots & general strike of 1936 demanding the suspension of Jewish immigration and the collaboration of British forces at the time also receive scant attention.

Through much of the Arab uprising, the British Army withheld fire and continued it's policy of disarming Jews, (Jewish possession of a firearm being punishable by death by hanging) whilst allowing the supply of weaponry to the Arabs themselves to proceed.

And where is the study into the effects of the British White Paper of 1939 which drastically restricted the numbers of Jewish immigrants into Palestine ? Jews fleeing the Nazi Concentration Camps of Europe for their homeland were turned back to die in the gas chambers of the Third Reich. Either that or the Jews were refused entry & imprisoned in Britain's own Concentration Camps on Cyprus. All of this taking up a vast number of the British Armed Forces just to pursue Mandate policies & Britain's own regional agenda. The latter subjects which also receive scant coverage here.

Indeed, I think that the British betrayal of the Jews, extending well beyond the Balfour Declaration, can only be really understood in the context of what was happening in Europe during the 1930's but this book in no way provides the attention to the subject that is surely demanded.

The book hardly produces any coverage or reference at all when it comes to the invasion of the fledgling Jewish state in 1948 by the surrounding Arab nations intent on the total eradication/genocide of the Jewish presence from their midst.

Indeed much of this book unfortunately consists of exaggerating some facts whilst distorting & minimising others. Some basic historical truths and absolute facts relating to the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict being ignored or trodden underfoot.

I cannot recommend this book as a reference or a study of the period concerned. I found the book's portrayal of the Mandate itself, and all the above issues to be confusing, erroneous and misleading. Others might disagree but if I may, I would like to respectfully point readers towards the more accurate studies of this subject by David Fromkin (`A Peace To End All Peace..'), Joan Peters (`From Time Immemorial; The Origins Of The Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine') and Efraim Karsh ('The Palestine War' & `Fabricating Israeli History'). There are many better books out there on this subject.

Rating:
Summary: Compulsive Reading
Review: Over many decades that Z-word has been colored and bashed black and blue.

The modern United Nations and the old Soviet Union have obtusely called it a synonym for "racism" or "colonialism".

Rather than being colonialist, political Zionism in Segev's conception seems more like a skilful surfer riding the wave of British colonialism. It's a big difference.

Britain supported Jewish self-determination for various reasons. Of these, desire to curry favor with the (perceived) powerful forces of international Jewry is as significant as it is anti-Semitic in Segev's view, and is played like a symphony by Zionist leaders like the charismatic Chaim Weizmann.

Before the end of WW1 ,when the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" has just rolled off the Tsarist presses to the murmur of some Europeans and the shouts of a certain mustachioed German - we see Weizmann in numerous meetings with the likes of then Prime Minister Lloyd George and key cabinet officials Lord Balfour and Churchill.

His efforts result in what we now call the Balfour Declaration, the famous Nov 2, 1917 letter committing Britain to establishing a "Jewish National Home in Palestine".

It became a "declaration" when published in the London Jewish Chronicle one week later on 9/11/ in 1917, (the same day as the Bolshevik revolution).

The clout of the Balfour letter snowballs when its key phrases appear in the Mandate document incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles in 1918.

A few years later (British) Zionist Jew Herbert Samuel became Palestine's High Commissioner.

While notching these milestones, we see, Weizmann intimating of contacts (in fact superficial) with American Supreme Court Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter, and of his "knowledge" (untrue) that "Lenin's mother was Jewish" and that Jews were behind the Russian revolution.

Segev's hypothesis is that the image of Zionist power helped lubricate Zionist interests onward throughout the Mandate, until the Nazis decimated German Jews and hurt the perceived "power of world Jewry". Treating this eventuality in realpolitik terms, Britain then made efforts to please the Arabs before and during WW2 (for example, by curtailing Jewish immigration), seeing as the Jews were already in their pocket.

Yet even at the Mandate's very beginning, England was careful to temper Zionist ambitions and was generally responsive to the ant-Zionist views of influential expatriates and Orientalists.

The wording "Jewish National Home" was ambiguous. As for "Palestine", most its pre-war territory was immediately after WW1 carved into a new country called Trans-Jordan. British administrators delegated positions of power to rich Palestinian Arab families like the Husseinis.

Perhaps, muses Segev, Britain thought they might perpetuate a role for themselves, or that the Arabs would accommodate a significant Jewish presence in but one corner of their world.

Whatever their thinking, they miscalculated.

One of the characters whose views the author uses as a touchstone throughout the book is writer and teacher Khalil al-Sakakini, who is back-slapped by his fellows for ironically sneering from the newspaper Falastin:

"Welcome, cousins. We are the guests and you are the masters of the house. We will do everything to please you. You are, after all, Gd's chosen people."

While rulers like the British or Ottomans impinge upon the native population to some extent, Palestinians were affected at a visceral level by the immigration of numbers of sovereignty-minded, organized, European Jews.

Tel Aviv steadily grew from an outpost into a Jewish city while strategically located Jewish agricultural settlements flowered up and down country.¡¡

The Jewish immigrants called themselves Palestinians, resurrecting the Hebrew language.

They paid little heed to Arabic culture or language. Technically there was little need to entreat Palestinian Arabs, as the Zionists already had from the British the necessary legalities to pursue self-determination.

But legalism proved to be only part of the equation.

Significant Arab riots broke out in 1920, 1921, 1929.and 1935.

For the many who believe the Arab-Israel conflict began in 1947, or that Zionism first became significant following the onset of Nazism, these preceding events are an eye-opener.

On the question of what might have been we see that even in the early years there is lively debate.

In one Arab view, the Jewish predicament was a European problem that might concern European land.

The Jewish claim to Palestine, said some, was akin to Muslims claiming Spain by virtue of having sovereignty there for a very limited period many centuries ago.

In the eyes of the Zionists' British detractors, they invited trouble by the deliberate tactic of being so very public with their endeavors.

But the most prescient view was expressed by rising labor leader David Ben Gurion in 1919: "There is no solution!... We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs."

As Segev tracks the history, he attends to fascinating detail. Like the rivalry between Weizmann, Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, and (assassinated) (...) Jacob de Haan.

We feel the disillusionment of British High Commissioners who came to Palestine full of idealistic intentions, see that the dedication of the Hebrew University was a controversial event involving none other than Albert Einstein. We learn the origins of Mr Qassam of missile fame, and see that the first martyr of the modern era was the Jewish Yosef Trumpledor, himself a socialist fashioned Revisionist hero.

The book is a fantastic piece of historical scholarship, though it runs out of legs at the end.

True, certain elements could be misinterpreted or used by people with existing biases.

But if you bring to the table a bit of knowledge, maturity and an open mind, it is a great read.

Rating:
Summary: The never-ending conflict
Review: The Arab-Israeli conflict has been such a staple of our daily lives that we never really give much thought to how it began. This extremely well-written book gives the general reader an overview of the British Mandate in Palestine from the end of World War I until Israeli independence. I was a person with some general knowledge of this period, but reading this book has been quite informative. I'm sure that many of the statements and conclusions made by the author are causing upsetness in many readers, but, whether you agree with what he writes or not, he has laid out a lot of facts that might point to some of the reasons there is still great animosity in that region. As a person who is neither Jewish nor Arabic, I read the book merely as one who is greatly interested in history, and accepted the book as it was written. I have two Jewish partners, however, and I am lending the book to them to read, and to get their impression of it. When they have reported back to me, I intend to revisit this review with the idea of including their impressions within it.

Rating:
Summary: An important, informative book
Review: These days, when violence seems to rage aimlessly in the Middle East, people may want to understand more about these region and its history. This is where this book may help.
Segev tells the story of Zionism by concentrating on the lives of some individuals who have lived and acted in Palestine before 1948. This way kept me interested enough so I can tolerate the historic information that is so important.
Segev does more than most Israeli writers to bring the Arab prespective as well, although the emphasis is on the Zionist prespective. For this he has unjustly been criticized by right wingers. Segev also sheds light on how British anti-Semitism worked to help establish the Jewish state, by utilizing British fears of "Jewish Power" to the Zionist aim.
I recommand this book to anyone interested in the origins of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict.

Rating:
Summary: Yuck, in a word
Review: This assessment of pre-Israel Palestine is best read in tandem with Prof. Yehoshua Porath's article in the spring 2000 issue of Azure. Segev claims here that the British came to rule Palestine with no clear idea of what they wanted. Segev supposes that a well-organized Arab nationalist movement, vigorously opposed to British rule, mounted the murderous Arab "revolt" of 1936-1939 and forced Britain to conclude it had no interest in Palestine and should leave. These ideas are ridiculous.

Why it took the British until 1948 to leave, Segev does not explain. As to voluminous evidence that the British stirred up Arab nationalism and the anti-Semitic revolt and joined in fighting the Arab's first war against Israel (as accounted by Col. R. Meinertzhagen, Samuel Katz, and many others), Segev keeps silent. Nor does he note that British general John Glubb commanded the Transjordanian army.

Segev asks political questions. 1) Why did the British conquer Palestine? 2) Why did they commit in 1917 to establish a Jewish National Home? 3) Why did they stay in Palestine? 4) Why did the British leave?

But Segev derides official British papers as too tiresome and voluminous to read. Segev bases his conclusions entirely on gleanings from diaries, personal letters, articles and books written by local Britons, Arabs and Jews, none previously consulted by historians--probably because they describe the social scene, not politics. The resultant fiction on Mandatory Palestine repeats the old Arnold Toynbee canard that Britain promised Palestine twice.

This conclusion is also ridiculous: Better accounts (which Segev ignores) are provided by scholars like Howard Sachar (History of Israel); Efraim Karsh (Empires of the Sand); Elie Kedourie (In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth; Chatham House Version); David Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace) and Conor C. O'Brien (The Siege); Samuel Katz (Battleground) and Bat Ye'or (Islam and Dhimmidtude: Where Civilizations Collide).

The worst aspect of Segev's work is his failure to note that Britain's conquest of Palestine was part of a calculated political and military strategy to establish a land bridge between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. This, the British intended to enable their rapid deployment of troops to the Gulf, defend the Empire's vast East Indian interests, protect their territories from Russian invasion, and to provide an alternative to and protection of Egypt's Suez Canal. Segev claims that "[The British] gave [Palestine] to the Zionists because they loved 'the Jews' even as they loathed them" and feared them. He also posits that the British were guided something other than strategic considerations, and lacked an "orderly decision-making process." (p. 33) Good grief. Even if this were true (which it isn't) Segev hardly disproves the importance of the land bridge as the driving force behind British policy.

Segev also minimizes the importance and effect of Britain's 1939 White Paper, which slowed immigration of Jews to Palestine--mandated by the League of Nation in 1922, with international support--to a trickle. Britain trapped Europe's Jews inside Nazi-controlled Europe, denying them their one viable escape hatch. Segev, however, suggests that the White Paper had no practical result, since even the quota established was not filled. But how could it have been filled, when obtaining papers became so difficult in the aftermath of the White Paper? Honestly.

The White Paper exponentially increased the difficulty to European Jews of getting immigration papers, according to account after Holocaust survivor account, as well as work by esteemed Holocaust scholars such as David Wyman (Abandonment of the Jews). Besides refusing to consider a plan to save Europe's Jews, the British deployed 100,000 troops and a large armada in Palestine and the Mediterranean to capture Jews escaping from Europe and return them to that hell--policies the White Paper spelled out. Britain intended to limit Jewish immigration, and did so very effectively.

Once Britain opened Palestine Mandate and foreign office records, decades later, historians discovered that all correspondences concerning wartime immigration into Palestine, among other items, had mysteriously disappeared. In other words, Segev discounts the fact that British officials, obviously mortified post facto by their inhumane actions in 1939 and after, destroyed all especially damning evidence. Segev ignores the fact that the British in London and Palestine well understood the effects of their White Paper policy on European Jews. Segev's thesis does not square with the facts.

Segev also gives short shrift to the 7-nation Arab attack on Israel upon her 1948 founding, belying the Arab intention to destroy the Jewish state. Arab League Secretary General Azzam Pasha in 1948 promised "a war of extermination," "a momentous massacre" to be remembered "like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades"-and gruesome acts followed. Israel lost 6,373 persons in the war, more than twice Arab losses--and nearly 1% of her population. Of these Israeli casualties, 600 were noncombatants abused, mutilated beyond recognition and decapitated by Arab captors, who were assisted by British military aide and blockades that turned a blind eye to illegal Arab gun-running.

Segev doesn't concern himself with the violence that preceded the 1947-8 war, who started hostilities--or why. He doesn't ask who needed to mount defenses or state the casualties on both sides. These is nothing here concerning British participation on the Arab side. In 1947, Israel accepted partition of less than 20% of the land allotted by the League of Nations in 1922 as a National Home for the Jews, while the Arabs begrudged Israel even that.

Much as I love books, this is one that deserves to be heaved out with the bathwater.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Rating:
Summary: Nice Trees, No Forest
Review: This is a colorful montage of various people's experiences under the British Mandate. Lots of intriguing characters and entertaining stories. The unpublished letters and journals Segev draws on, as well as published memoirs, are mostly by relatively obscure Arabs, Jews, and Brits--and this is the book's greatest strength.
But you'll have to look elsewhere if you're interested in a competent description and analysis of British rule. Segev apparently couldn't be bothered to do much background reading on British politics. When he strays from his diaries and memories, he blunders repeatedly. Lloyd George, he writes, was an "Englishman" who was "elected prime minister" in Dec. 1916. (L.G. was Welsh and there were no elections between 1910 and 1918.) Herbert Samuel, when he went into politics, "joined Lloyd George's Liberal Party"--two decades before any such entity existed.
There are a great number of other trivial mistakes, but more disturbing is Segev's persistent, if low-key, anti-Zionism. This is particularly evident in his treatment of Arab attacks on Jews. To take only the first, at Tel Hai on March 1, 1920, Segev concludes, without any evidence, that the Jews may have opened fire, and w/o provocation. He then starts referring to the "myth" of Tel Hai, as if the shootings were a figment of Zionist imagination. (He meanwhile accepts uncritically the myth of "the Arab Revolt" during WW I, discredited for decades.) Segev's treatment of subsequent violence is even more distorted. The role of the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al Husseini, is suppressed and, in the case of the Arab Rebellion of 1936-8, the focus is almost entirely on British countermeasures rather than the terror that inspired them.
But the book's claim to fame is its argument that the British were pro-Zionist because they feared the Jews. In a volume of about 600 pp., the evidence for this consists of four or five scattered, out-of-context quotations, and a distorted interpretation of Prime Minister MacDonald's "Black Letter" of 1931. Conspiracy theories about Jews circulated widely in the '20s (thanks to the success of the Bolsheviks) and Zionist spokesman Chaim Weitzman always emphasized the clout of U.S. Jews, but Segev simply never makes his case.
As for the claim that the British running the Mandate were pro-Zionist, Segev quietly abandons this. He himself provides a mountain of evidence refuting the idea, and no serious historian would try to argue it. Most British officials shared High Commissioner Chancellor's view that the Balfour Declaration was a "colossal blunder."
Particularly as the narrative winds down, there are instances of bias that would make any fair-minded historian wince--Segev's treatment of the White Paper of '39, of Bevin, of the immigration of Jews from Arab countries into Israel, etc. Still, the book is worth reading for the light it sheds on daily life in Palestine under the Mandate. You really appreciate how much of today's conflict is deja vu all over again. Some readers might want to go directly to the original sources--like the memoirs of one of Segev's favorite characters, Khalil al-Sakakini, a Christian Arab educator, nationalist, and Nazi sympathizer. But anyone interested in a thorough and accurate history of British rule in Palestine should look elsewhere, and preferably to an historian rather than a leftist journalist. There are good general histories by C. C. O'Brien and H. Sachar. On the Mandate, take a look at E. Kedourie, E. Karsh, D. Fromkin, B. Wasserstein, John Marlowe, and Christopher Sykes.

Rating:
Summary: A crude attempt at revising facts to suit politics
Review: This was one of the worst-written books I have read on Israel. Segev seems to take inordinate joy in character assassination regarding anyone who may be an exception to his politics. The hopelessly inaccurate information he gives regarding Orde Wingate, the brilliant British military commander, and ardent Zionist and friend of the Jews is a case in point. Since Segev attempts to paint the British in general as pro-Israeli, he must perforce cast the aruably greatest friend the Jews had during the Mandatory years. On the whole, a very questionable piece of pseudo-scholarship that I would advise against wasting time on. Good only as a reference on how distorting this new breed of 'revisionist' historian is.

Rating:
Summary: Explosive Cocktail of Reason, Passion and Compassion
Review: Tom Segev describes in much detail and often with unusual candor how Palestine became a British Mandate and the mission apparently impossible that the British took on them between 1917 and 1948 to manage both communities whose respective aspirations could not ultimately be reconciled under their tenure. Segev makes his account of the events especially moving by describing the life of ordinary Christians, Jews and Muslims besides that of the better known actors of this tragic comedy. Segev challenges the commonly-held view that the British were pro-Arab. Although the British made vague promises of sovereignty to the Arabs in exchange for their support against the Ottomans in charge of Palestine until 1917, they almost systematically promoted the Zionist enterprise at the expense of Christians and Muslims according to Segev. The British both feared and admired the Jews. The British tended to subscribe to the anti-Semitic view that the Jews were in control of history and should not be offended in their capacity of useful ally against common enemies. The proclamation of the Balfour Declaration and the support given to its implementation are deemed to reflect this pro-Jewish bias. To the surprise of many 21st century observers, some British sincerely believed that the aspirations of Jews and Arabs were compatible. Other British feigned to subscribe to this view. Most of the remaining British shared Segev's point of view that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine could not happen without diminishing the standing of the local Arab community. The contradictory interests of both communities resulted first in local atrocities on both sides and then in the first war between the reborn Eretz Yisrael and the neighboring Arab nations in 1948.


Rating:
Summary: Required background info, if nothing else
Review: Tom Segev has clearly angered a lot of people in writing his books, which tend towards the typical post-Zionist "Israel is just as bad, and usually worse, than everyone else" attitude (just look at some of the reviews below). I have yet to draw any conclusions about his political agenda in this book, since it was my first reading of any history of the British Mandate. But I enjoyed the book for two reasons at the very least:
1) It's personally/anecedotally based, so it's very interesting. Most of the larger political tensions are expressed in the words of diaries, letters, etc., and the characters that Segev uses are sustained throughout the book. So by the end, there's a fiction-like attachment to the various people in the book. This definitely helps during the occasional rough patch in the writing.
2) Even if the conclusions Segev draws are incorrect or suspicious (and they may be), the timeline is accurate and the descriptions of key events during the period are thorough and engaging. For anyone who wants, at the least, to get a good description of the history of the Mandate without having to slog through something a lot more academic, this is the book to read.

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Anecdotal History - Questionable Conclusions.
Review: Tom Segev's history of Palestine from the last years of World War I to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 reads like an epic novel. He introduces the reader to an extraordinary cast of real life characters - Arabs, Jews and British - certainly as rich and varied as anyone met in great fiction. Gripping historical and personal accounts of life in this long disputed land are documented from Khalil al-Sakakini's near fatal decision to harbor a Jewish family in 1917 Ottoman Palestine, to many accounts of the British liberation, (just days later), and a description of General Sir Edmund Allenby's entrance to Jerusalem, on foot, along with Lawrence of Arabia and representatives of France, Italy and the United States. Segev fills his pages with the documented actions and thoughts of history's movers and shakers - Chiam Weizmann, Lloyd George, David Ben Gurion, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Muhammed, Iz-al-Din-al-Qassam, as well as those of "everyman" caught-up in the whirlwind of history in-the-making. These accounts, along with anecdotes like the visits to the holy land by the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Albert Einstein, etc., make this book such a terrific and worthwhile read.

However, although Segev's historical documentation is impressive, his interpretation of history is most unusual. He maintains that the British were highly supportive in the formation and creation of the Jewish State, with some resistance during the period of the British Mandate. He also discounts the importance of the Holocaust in facilitating Israeli Statehood. His interpretations of Great Britain's pro-Zionist stance and motivation is highly controversial, and to be perfectly frank, I have to read more from other historians before I can put Mr. Segev's ideas into perspective. Don't be put off by the author's historical conclusions, however. The narrative does make for an interesting read.

Tom Segev is one of Israel's most notable historians and journalists and offers here a dramatic and well written account of two nationalist movements that will hopefully form the basis of two separate countries and populations, living side-by-side, and flourishing in peace one day. From my pen to God's ears.
JANA