The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

While Gilbert tries hard to set himself up as "balanced", one does find oneself questioning at times how fully one can accept his view-points as such--as is true of any books on such a controversial topic.Overall,however, I did find many very interesting different aspects of the Arab-Israeli situation presented by him,especially as I came off reading a biog. of Golda Meir.For an Australian who has seen the Mabo decision knock "Terra Nullius" on the head, I found it especially intruiging to read many references to "a land without people for a people without land" being one of the Zionist slogans.At times main themes were repeated a little too often but this was still a worthwhile read for anyone looking for a reasonably balanced Arab viewpoint on this issue.

My one star is addressed at the poor state of the Kindle edition of Achcar's book. The text is rife with typographical errors: the ligatures 'fi,' 'ffi,' 'ffl,' and 'fl' are often simply rendered 'f.' The word "organization" is almost always spelled "or ga ni za tion." Many words have spurious hyphens and spaces likely inherited from the print edition. Letters with macrons are rendered as enormous images on both the Kindle and the Kindle Android app, so Achcar's transliterations of Arabic are rather jarring to read and are impossible to find when searching. Did Metropolitan Books proofread the electronic text at all?

Professor Achcar has compiled a nuanced and judicious antidote to the prevailing, self-serving equation of Arabs = Nazis. The obvious utility of tendentious scholarship in promoting Israel's selfish and aggressive aggrandizement of this issue needs little explanation. Contradict this with insightful and balanced research, however, and one will need a second book to "answer" and "explain" and "justify" one's self before the avalanche of mud sure to descend with all the fury of bad motives questioned.

From the farhud (pogrom) of 1941 Baghdad to the naqba (catatrophe) of Palestine seven years later, Achcar dissects the blind passions of the period while making no apology for his own perspective. Especially helpful is his dissection of Grand Mufti Husseini, whose dead-end wartime collaboration with Hitler is conveniently portrayed as damning all Palestinians, and by extension all Arabs. Do the same standards apply to Marshal Petain and his Vichy regime, as representing all Frenchmen past and present? Hardly, but then the French are on the right side of the Western power equation, aren't they? When the Nazis conquered their corner of North Africa the Jews suffered accordingly; and had they occupied the Levant they surely would have found Quislings to run their colonies as in Europe. Yet Nazi racial ideology and administrative malpractice would just as surely have provoked the same inevitable backlash wherever the Third Reich reigned. Must one cynically hope that this had in fact occurred, just to settle the subsequent mishmash of pseudo-scholarship?

One reviewer states: "Rejecting the conclusion of Israeli historian Benny Morris that Jews faced annihilation in 1948, Professor Achcar writes: 'How could the Palestinians have mustered the strength to perpetrate genocide when they lacked even the strength to prevent their expulsion and were not prepared for war?' Apparently Professor has forgotten The Arab Liberation Army (ALA), the disciplined and well armed Arab Legion, or the Egyptian army which came close to Tel-Aviv." Apparently this reviewer is unaware that the Arab Liberation Army had relatively little field strength and was more of a pan-Arab foreign legion; the Arab Legion was the regular army of (Trans)Jordan; and the Egyptian Army, like the other two, was also not a "Palestinian" force. These forces were a threat to Israel; but the average Palestinian villages were indeed virtually unarmed before the Palmach and Irgun forces slashing through them like hot knives. Even during the Arab League's massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, three of the four survivors owed their lives to the protection of Arabs. I would like any critics following to provide reverse examples during this conflict.

I strongly disagree on one point - Achcar's semi-apology for "reactive racism." To me this is the slippery slope, where one is "allowed" to be racist because one's own group has suffered. This self-pitying hardheadedness is the very root of his subject's intractability. But his advice on page 291 - that only recognition of both the Holocaust and the Nakba can bring Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arabs into a genuine dialogue - is the surest way to begin its resolution. So I encourage all those interested in this subject to add Achcar's work, as a counterweight to the non-sequiturs and thinly-veiled racism now commanding center stage of the West's, and Israel's, Middle East historiography.