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| Volume XI, Summer 2004, Number 2 |
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| Book Review Excerpts |
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The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisted, by Benny Morris. Cambridge University Press, 2004. 641 pages with footnotes, appendices and index. $110.00, hardcover; $40.00, paperback.
Philip C. Wilcox, Jr.
President, Foundation for Middle East Peace
But, apart from Morris's views on the current scene, his books should be judged on their merits. His new The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited is an expanded and much more fully documented version of his 1986 work. It confirms his original conclusion that, for the most part, 700,000-750,000 Arabs fled or were expelled due to actions of Israeli forces in 1948. Drawing on recently declassified Israeli documents, Birth Revisited reinforces this conclusion with voluminous detail.
Morris's account in Birth Revisited is doubtless the most complete and scholarly work of its kind about the 1948 exodus. But, as he acknowledges in his preface, it is not the last word. Morris admits his preference for working with documents and regrets that he had no access to closed Arab archives. Nevertheless, his account would have been richer and less dominated by the Israeli perspective if he had sought more interviews with Palestinian refugees and scholars.
As in the original Birth, Morris finds no evidence supporting the old Zionist version that the Palestinians left in 1948 because Arab leaders ordered them to do so, promising that they could return to their homes after the Jews were destroyed. In Birth Revisited Morris cites new evidence of requests from Arab leaders for Palestinian women and children to leave villages threatened by the war. But he does not claim this was a dominant factor in the overall exodus.
Birth Revisited also offers new evidence of brutality by Israeli forces against civilians. For example, he documents some two dozen massacres besides the well-known massacre at Deir Yassin outside of Jerusalem, news of which spread rapidly and helped accelerate the flight of the Arabs. There were also about a dozen cases of rape by Israeli troops. (Three Arab massacres of Jews during the war are mentioned in passing but are outside the scope of the book.)
The Modern History of Iraq, by Phebe Marr. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004. 392 pages with notes, bibliography and index. $100, hardcover; $40.00, paperback.
Robert Olson
University of Kentucky
This is a timely and significant book. Even though the author refers to it modestly as an essay, it is much more. It is particularly timely because Marr finished her narrative at the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2004. Many lay readers, hitherto uninterested in the history and politics of the Middle East, will now want an informed book covering the history and politics of Iraq, especially since 1991, insofar as they contribute to an understanding of factors that impelled the United States (and Britain) to invade Iraq. The book provides a solid analysis with evenhanded interpretations of Iraq's history and politics up to the 2004 war. The U.S. occupation of Iraq will undoubtedly be as important as the British occupation and colonization of Iraq after 1918. Marr's book and the included bibliography will provide historians with case studies to compare the successes and failures of the U.S. occupation with those of the British.
Since the book will become a textbook for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduate students and other interested readers, it is important to note that it does not address equally both halves of the twentieth century. Marr is clearly more interested in getting on to her main theme, that of the rise, consolidation and maintenance of the Baath party (1968-2003). Although the author does not mention it in her preface (it is mentioned on the frontispiece), this is the second edition, vastly revised, of her book published in 1985.
It is useful to consider the three major themes that the author emphasizes. She stresses in her preface that The Modern History of Iraq is not meant to be "an exhaustive and detailed history of modern Iraq." Rather her aim is to present a clear, readable one-volume account of Iraq and the forces that shaped it." She hopes the book "will be of use both to the lay reader and to students of the Middle East."
Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied, by Toby Dodge. Columbia University Press, 2003. 260 pages, with notes, bibliography and index. $24.95, hardcover.
Edward L. Peck
U.S. Foreign Service (ret.); chief of U.S. mission in Baghdad, 1977-80
A wave of books and articles has appeared in response to the logical growth of interest in matters related to Iraq. This is neither the interest nor the high-level attention the subject both deserves and requires, but it is at the very least a start, albeit tragically late. These works range from the useful to the hysterical. Inventing Iraq easily falls into the useful category from an expository, historical perspective, but it is somewhat limited in terms of its utility in the present situation. There is no shortage of significant and potentially vital reasons for examining America's looming Iraq debacle in the somber light of Britain's dismal failure in that country-to-be. The British effort at nation-building and forcible enlightenment lasted from 1914 to 1932, an 18-year period in which a country with extensive, varied and -- to that point -- successful efforts at colonizing was unable to accomplish anything that was either useful or enduring.
It can certainly be argued that looking more closely at the British disaster before undertaking our own could have been of significant utility. While that is an eminently logical, if sadly overtaken point, greater attention by the administration even now might be of help in developing a rational plan for minimizing the extent, duration and cost of what has begun to appear to be a major catastrophe.
Inventing Iraq is a scholarly and perhaps overly detailed treatment of how and why the Brits went so seriously wrong. It is a slim volume, less than 200 pages of text. In essence, the focus is on three closely related and constantly interwoven aspects of the situation, only two of which are likely to have any meaningful usefulness now. The most cogent exceptions are the final two sections: The "Despotic" Power of Airplanes," and the Conclusion. There, the author offers compelling analogies and pointed commentary on how the United States might still be able to avoid repetition of some of the U.K.'s more serious mistakes.
Seeds of Hate: How America's Flawed Middle East Policy Ignited the Jihad, by Lawrence Pintak. London: Pluto Press, 2003. 340 pages. $65.00, hardcover.
Transnational Political Islam: Religion, Ideology and Power, ed. Azza Karam. London, Pluto Press, 2004. 143 pages with a foreword by John Esposito. $69.95, hardcover; $19.95, paperback.
Mustafa Malik
Journalist
Some researchers have, however, been exploring more mundane sources of Muslim anti-Americanism, and quite a few titles have appeared on the subject. They are a mixed bag and include Larry Pintak's Seeds of Hate and Azza Karam's Transnational Political Islam. Pintak, in Seeds of Hate, traces the Muslim terrorist "jihad" against America to U.S. support for Israel and for pro-Israeli Lebanese Christians during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s. Azzam's book is a collection of essays on political Islam, some of which examine the Muslim grievances against the United States that fueled anti-Americanism.
Pintak covered Israel's Lebanon war as a CBS correspondent, and his book shows his considerable grasp of Middle Eastern political trends. He says America's misadventure in Lebanon was a precursor to its current war on terror. The United States withdrew its Marines from Lebanon after 241 of them were killed in a suicide attack, but U.S. support of Israel and anti-Muslim Phalangist militia left Muslims in the region embittered. Today's worldwide terror against the United States was "born in the slums of Lebanon" (p. XII). Muslim animosity toward America that was brewed there nurtured a host of terrorist networks, especially Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda.
Transnational Political Islam explores some of the other reasons that many Muslims resent the United States. The book is a compilation of six essays dealing with different aspects of Islam's political dimension and its encounter with the United States and the West. In her article entitled "Transnational Political Islam and the USA," editor Azza Karam points out that many Muslims are rankled by American policy toward the Muslim world (not just toward the Palestinians). U.S. bases and troops in several Muslim countries and hostility with others have riled Muslims everywhere. Osama bin Laden lists U.S. belligerency against Iraq and hegemony over the "Prophet Muhammad's land" of Saudi Arabia (p. 4) as among the causes of his jihad against America.
The essence of radical Islamist antagonism toward the United States lies in the perception of American injustice, embodied in U.S. hegemony over Muslim societies. Justice is the core Islamic value, and nothing works Muslims up as quickly as the call to redress injustice.
Islamic Political Identity in Turkey, by M. Hakan Yavuz. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. xiv + 328 pages. $49.95, hard cover.
Michael M. Gunter
Tennessee Technological University
In recent years, Islamic revivalism in Turkey specifically and the Middle East in general has challenged (and for some, seemingly threatened) modernization and nationalist models for the future. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States focused the broader lay public's mind throughout the world on the reputed "Islamic threat." Many began to ask whether Islam was even compatible with democracy.
M. Hakan Yavuz, a leading scholar of Turkish politics, has written a richly documented and valuable comprehensive analysis of Islamic social movements in Turkey. He argues that, far from being reactionary opponents of secular Kemalist modernization, Islamic social movements in Turkey offer important agents for promoting pluralism and democracy and "are not fueled by a deep-seated rage and frustration with the authoritarian policies of the secular elites, as is the case in Algeria and Egypt" (p. 4).
He aptly terms this situation "the vernacularization of modernity and the internal secularization of Islam" (p. 5). In other words, Islamic norms and traditions are being simultaneously preserved yet substantially altered to assimilate and participate in the discourses on nationalism, secularism, democracy, human rights, the liberal market and personal autonomy. The stunning victory of the AKP (Justice and Development party) in the Turkish general elections on November 3, 2002, offers a real-life laboratory in which to test Yavuz's thesis.
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