RootsRain

I’ve been on a history kick lately, reading several books about World War II, a book about James Madison’s presidency, and a book about the battle of Thermopyle. My most recent one is Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren, an American Jew living in Israel. He’s a Princeton grad and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

I’ve come to the realization that it’s often a good strategy to read books in an area where you feel suddenly and completely factless. The controversy in the Middle East is one such area. Most of what I know about it I know from heresay… “Balfour Declaration… 1948… Armistice Boundaries… PLO… Straits of Tiran… Trans-Jordan…” It’s all been a big, meaningless soup of generally Jewish prejudices about the history of Israel. Y’know, stuff you get from the pulpit of most Dispensational churches (that’s another issue I’m realizing deep ignorance on and I’m going to need to do some reading… any book recommendations, anyone?).

Well, I can’t say this book solved all my knowledge gaps about the history of Israel, but I can say that I now know an awful lot about the Six Day War itself as well as all the complex politics that went into precipitating it. For one, I had no idea the Soviet Union was such a major player in bringing the conflict about. I also didn’t know that Israel struck the first blow (militarily; they claimed Egypt struck the first blow by seriously crippling their economy by closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli traffic, and by massive troop buildups in Sinai). I also didn’t know that the Arab states were falling all over themselves to get Israel to agree to a cease-fire within 3 days of the beginning of the war. Israel actually prolonged the war as long as possible in order to grab territory in Sinai, the West Bank, and Syria (which they hoped to use as bargaining chips in order to get Arab nations to agree to peace treaties with them… which the Arabs refused to do, so Israel kept those territories).

Another thing that struck me was how ridiculous the whole situation was. Most of the Arab leaders didn’t want to go to war with Israel, but more than a few told Israel privately that they could never sign peace treaties with them or else they would be assassinated by their own people. The “Arab street” clamours for the destruction of Israel and so the leaders get aggressive. But the more the leaders sabre-rattle against Israel, the more the street demands violent action. It’s such a stupid circle. Oren, in his interview at the end of the book, said the thing he learned most in writing/researching this book was how utterly irrational poilitcs in the Middle East is. The smallest provocation can hinge the door to massive consequences where none of the players will act according to a basic, philosophical agenda. Everyone is playing it by ear with their fingers on the pulse of the street. From the Arab kid on the street throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, to the prime minister, everyone’s trying to make sure that people around them like them… it’s basic peer pressure in a “context of conflict” as Oren calls it. Take normal, everyday feelings and put it in the context of Jew vs. Arab conflict and it all makes sense. Arab kids want to be accepted by their friends, so they throw rocks at Israeli soldiers. Arab men want to be accepted by their friends, so they try to one-up each other in their committment to destroying Israel, whether by demonstrating in the streets or by acts of terrorism. Arab leaders want the Street to like them, so when they lose a war, they blame America for bombing their forces (which never happened in 1967) so that they appear powerless and America is a roped in as an enemy. You’d never know that millions of people’s hatred of the U.S. is because all those people want the people around them to accept them.

Well, before I get too deep into this, I must continue to admit that I still know very little of the history of modern Israel. I know nothing of the 1948 war, the 1920 massacres, the Yom Kippur War, the parceling of the land after World War I, etc.

I will say this: if the Arab claim is correct that Israel is Arab land and belongs to the Palestians, then Arabic actions over the past 80 years—by and large—are somewhat understandable although still very wrong. If the Arab claim is wrong, however, and Israel belongs to the Jews and Jordan to the Palestians, etc., then their actions over the past 80 years are absolutely abominable.

That’s the question I want to find out. How did this all start? What’s the history of the area during/before the Ottoman Turks conquered it? What exactly did Britain do in dividing up the land and what were the people told about where to go and what land was for whom? Can I use this parallel: If there were a state called “Carolina” and one day in the mid 1960s a conquering government came in and said, “Okay, since the whites are discriminating against and often killing the blacks, all the whites move to North Carolina and all the blacks move to South Carolina and you’ll each be separate nations,” would I expect a white person to be angry with that? Would a black person? Would that division be just? And could whites claim a right to both North and South Carolina as theirs and the blacks should be thrown into the Atlantic? Because that’s the parallel of Arabs wanting the Jews thrown into the Mediterranean. I’ve been coming to the realization that… I never hear it said out loud… but Arab nations seem to be the most wildly racist nations on the planet and no one’s calling them on it.

Anyway… I’ll shut up. I’m assuming my post has been somewhat inflammatory towards Arabs, but bear with me. This is how things look from my perspective after having read one book on the subject and hearing a lot of condemnation over the years of Arab countries for how they treat Israel. I’m still planning on reading, though.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Books, History.