My Amazon Review of Oren Kessler's "Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict"

 The First Intifada

 

On April 15, 1936, at an Arab checkpoint in Palestine three Jewish drivers were singled out and shot.  Immediately thereafter the Irgun paramilitary retaliated by killing two fruit pickers and of a sudden the Great Arab Revolt, which would last for three years, is on its way. Oren Kessler, a journalist, and policy analyst based in Tel Aviv, argues convincingly that the die was cast for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that continues to this day.

 

Kessler takes us back to the mindset of the Jews, Arabs and British in the 1930’s. As the storm clouds of the Holocaust gather over Europe Jewish immigration to Palestine surged up to 75,000 a year and land purchases from local and absentee Arab landlords took off. Indeed, some of the sellers were leaders in opposition to the Jews in the local Arab community.  As a result Arab resentment against the newcomers rose and all it took was the match of the two murderous events to set off a general strike and a revolt against the British.

 

Kessler puts us into the mindsets of the Jews, Arabs and British as they grapple with the crisis. He demonstrates the charm of Chaim Weitzmann, the leader of the World Zionist Organization, the single-mindedness of David Ben Gurion’s policy Havlegah (self-Restraint) in the face of provocations and the realism of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leader of the Revisionist Zionists.  On the Arab side he goes into great detail about the actions of Haj Amin al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who would later be found in Hitler’s court during World War II. Husseini establishes the policy of no compromise with the Jews. He even opposed the 1939 British White Paper that undid the Balfour Declaration and sharply limited Jewish immigration to Palestine. Kessler also highlights the role of Arab intellectuals Musa Alemi and George Antonious; the latter wrote “The Arab Awakening.”

 

On the British side he notes the influence of High Commissioners Herbert Samuels (1920-25) and Arthur Wauchope (1931-38). To me the most interesting character on the British side was General Orde Wingate, who was responsible for stopping the Arab sabotage of British assets in Palestine, especially the Iraq-Haifa oil pipeline. In order to this he enlists the nascent Jewish Hagenah by establishing the Special Night Squads. (SNS) Out of the SNS grew the Israel Defense Forces and its early leaders Moshe Dayan and Yigdal Allon.

Wingate drew his inspiration from Gideon of Book of Judges fame. As a longtime Bible reader, Wingate was knowledgeable of Gideon’s successful night attacks on the Midianites which coincidently was in the same general place where the SNS were operating.

 

In response to the Arab revolt the British initially adopted the Peel Plan in 1937 which called for a geographic separation of the parties, if you will, a two state solution. The Jews accepted the plan, and the Arabs rejected it out of hand. In 1939 facing a war in Europe the British seek to curry favor with the Arabs and adopt their infamous White Paper. The Jews rejected it and although the White Paper was popular amongst the Arab community, no compromise Husseini rejects it.

 

Nevertheless, by Spring 1939 the revolt is a spent force. The revolt succeeded in undoing the Balfour Declaration, but the Palestinian Arabs remained divided. On the other hand, the Jews, despite the general strike, jump-started a self-sustaining economy built on orange exports and local manufacturing, including weapons. Importantly, the Hagenah became the basis for what was to become the Israel Defense Force that was so successful in 1947-48.

 

As Kessler argues the events of 1936-39 formed the basis of today’s conflicts. Both the Jews and Palestinians are here to stay and a way has to be found for them to live together in a modicum of peace. Otherwise, we will continue to relive a 21^st Century version of the events of 1939.

For the full amazon URL see: The First Intifada (amazon.com)

My Review* of Chris Miller's "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology"

 Chips: The New Oil

 

Tufts professor Chris Miller makes a strong case that computer chips have become to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century in terms of global politics. Computer chips are now ubiquitous and have uncountable applications in industry, consumer products and military hardware. We found that out when pandemic related supply shortages shut down production in a host of industries.

 

Miller plows over old ground with his discussion of the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in 1947 to the co-invention of the integrated circuit in 1956 by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Bob Noyce who would go on to lead Intel. He then goes on to discuss the “traitorous eight” who bail out of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968 to for what was to become the Intel behemoth. They all wanted to get rich.

 

The government plays a major role in supporting the industry. The need to reduce the weight of the Minuteman missile sent the Pentagon scurrying to buy integrated circuits from Texas Instruments. As the Cold War heats up more and more integrated circuits find their way into military hardware. I remember in 1967 when I was working for Litton Industries, I first noticed integrated circuits appearing in airborne guidance and control systems.

 

Not mentioned in the book, Texas Instruments benefited from the Kennedy/Johnson White Houses sending defense contracts to Texas and New England. Silicon Valley in California was left out in the cold, but more than compensated by going after the lucrative civilian market. 

 

To me most interesting was the role of Texas Instruments engineer Morris Chang who invented chip production processes. When he was passed over to be president of the company he moves to Taiwan and is instrumental in establishing Taiwan Semiconductor, now the largest manufacturer of chips in the world. Who knows what would have become of Texas Instruments if he became its president.

 

It is Morris Chang who makes Taiwan a semiconductor powerhouse and that is the reason why most of the world’s chips are made there today. Being located 100 miles from China is not exactly the safest place in world to manufacture this critical commodity. It is for this reason there now is a move to diversify production to other sources including the huge U.S. government subsidies now being funneled into the domestic chip industry.

 

Because both the Russians and the Chinese understand how critical computer chips they established their own industries. The Russians did what they do best which was to copy the west, but with the technology advancing so quickly that became a failing strategy. China, on the other hand, is making a huge investment in their own chip industry to wean their economy’s dependence on western made chips and equipment. In case of the latter there was a story today where Chinese spies obtained secrets from ASML, the Dutch monopoly supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. Their machines are essential in the manufacture of chips and cost $100 million apiece.

 

The saddest part of the book is Miller recounting the decline of Intel. It seems the bean counters took over from the engineers. In 2008 Intel turned down Steve Jobs’ offer to them to make chips for the I-Phone ceding the market to Qualcomm. Thus, Intel was nowhere in communication chips and it is being rapidly displaced in the server market by graphics processing chips being made by NVIDIA and AMD.

 

Miller’s book reads like a fast-paced business thriller. There are great anecdotes and reader will learn much about what will shape geopolitics this decade and beyond.

*-Amazon has yet to post this review. The review was just posted 2:23MST at            Chips: The New Oil (amazon.com) 

 

Random Thoughts on the Economy and the Stock Market- No. 2

Because I received surprisingly good feedback on last week's blog, I am going to push my luck with this one.

* The surprisingly strong employment report for January which indicated a gain of 517k in nonfarm payrolls and was confirmed by an 894K gain in household employment. Further there were cumulative upward revisions to the payroll survey of 813k jobs. The ebullience in the job market sent the unemployment rate down to a cyclical low of 3.4%. All of this means that the Fed Funds rate will be higher for longer and those looking for a pivot in 2023 are in for a disappointment.

* Even after Friday's interruption, NASDAQ is up an astounding 14.7% YTD. To me this means the excesses of the pandemic bubble have yet to be purged from the market. 

*The Chinese spy balloon incident and news that Iran is building a drone factory in Russia makes it less likely there will be any cuts in defense spending. Indeed there will likely be an increase above current planning.

* The biggest geopolitical event thus far this year has been the unusually warm weather in Europe rendering Russia's energy weapon mute, thereby strengthening European solidarity in support of Ukraine. 

My Amazon Review of Ari Shavit's "My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel"

 Israel’s Fate

 

I read Ari Shavit’s book nine years ago and I just reread it for my book club. It was better than I remembered it and given the current political situation in Israel, the book is as timely as it was in 2013. Shavit, a writer for the very left Haaretz newspaper, remains a geopolitical realist despite his long history in Israel’s peace camp. He is, of course, anti-occupation, but he fully understands the risks of having a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel and the existential threat coming from Iran. Simply put withdrawing from the occupied territories will not, in of itself, solve the Israeli/Palestinian dispute.

 

Instead of being a normal history, Shavit brings the history of Israel to life with a series of vignettes starting with his great grandfather’s trip to Israel in 1897. Herbert Bentwich was a successful British lawyer who ultimately immigrates to Israel thus making Shavit a scion of the Tel Aviv Ashkenazi liberal establishment.

 

His vignettes cover the start of the Kibbutz movement, the creation of Israeli orange groves, the Palestinians living side-by-side with the Israelis, the housing projects dealing with the mass immigration of Jews post- Independence in 1948, the Dimona project which builds the Israeli A-Bombs, a project which his chemical engineer father worked on; the massacre of the Arab villages of Lydda in 1948, Tel Aviv nightlife in 2000, the high-tech sector, and what today is a very timely chapter on Aryeh Deri, the founder of the Shas Party and now a key member of Netanyahu’s government.

 

According to Shavit Labor Zionism ignored the Arab population living beside them. For example, no notice of the Arab population was mentioned in Bentwich’s travelogue. However, Zeev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, had no illusions about the local Arab population. He correctly foresaw conflict between the growing Jewish population and the locals. A chapter on Jabotinsky’s successor, Menachem Begin, would have been a helpful addition to the book.

 

Shavit ended his book on an optimistic note with the arrival of Israel’s new government in 2013 led by Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett which he hoped would lead the country away from religious zealots and its uninspiring politicians. Unfortunately, given the latest election Israel is turning away from pluralism and heading in a very authoritarian direction. As result not only does Israel face external threats; it is now threatened from within. As Shavit notes Israel and Zionism have overcome prior challenges over the past 125 years and let us hope it once again rises to this new challenge and remains the miracle that it is.

For the full Amazon URL see: Israel's Fate (amazon.com)