My Review of Matti Friedman's "Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe"

 Parachuting into Statehood

While reading Matti Friedman’s wonderful new book, I was reminded of my trip to Prague where I visited the memorial for the dead Czech paratroopers who were gunned down in a Prague Church. (See: https://destinationwwii.com/operation-anthropoid-memorial/ee:) Their mission organized in 1942 by the British under the name Operation Anthropoid succeeded in assassinating Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher of Prague and an architect of the Holocaust. To me, this is Friedman’s best book and I reviewed several of his works before. (See for example: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2022/05/my-amazon-review-of-matti-friedmans-who.html )

 

Here we are told the story of another British mission to send newly trained paratroopers into occupied Europe in 1944. The British in cooperation with the Hagenah recruit 32 Jewish citizens of their Palestine Mandate, whose mission was to help downed pilots evade and escape from the Nazi’s. They were chosen because of their language skills and their knowledge of the countries they were to be dropped into. All of them recently escaped from Nazi Europe and now they are choosing to go back into the hell they left.

 

However, the Hagenah has a different mission. That mission is help organize Jewish resistance to the Nazi occupation and to also, if possible, to get them out of Europe. Indeed, the paratroopers are fighting for a state that does not yet exist. The mission has the high-level involvement of the leading figures in the Jewish state in waiting, including its first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.

 

Of the 32 recruits most die or are captured. Friedman tells the stories of four of them. Haim Hermesh 24, known as the scythe, airdrops into Yugoslavia enroute to Hungary. He like all of them he flies from Cairo to Beri, Italy where he is then parachutes in. He survives. Enzo Sereni, the group leader and a father of three drops into northern Italy. Marta Reick 30, known as Haviva drops into Slovakia where she becomes and important figure in the resistance. Indeed, Freidman takes you into the forests and clearings where the paratroopers landed and their interaction with the local partisans. One thing I did not know, was that for a time the resistance actually controlled a small amount of territory before being overrun by the German army.

 

The most famous of the four was Hannah Senesh 22, the author of the lyrics to “Eli, Eli.” She is the daughter of a famous Hungarian playwright and leaves an extraordinary paper trail. She was captured in Budapest and was killed in prison a few months before the arrival of the Red Army. Her mother was in the same prison with her for awhile and is ultimately freed and ends up in Israel.

 

We also learn from Friedman that the Nazi’s had a good understanding of the operation. Both the Hagenah and the U.S. OSS availed themselves of the services of a double agent in Istanbul. A monumental intelligence failure that put the entire operation at risk.

 

Although from a strict tactical sense the mission of the paratroopers ended up as a failure, in a broader sense the mission succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters. Their lives become the legends that gave inspiration to the new State of Israel.

 

In order to write the book Friedman researched the Hagenah archives loaded with musty boxes, found unpublished letters from relatives of the paratroopers, and discovered long out of print books. He also visited all of the drop zones of his four protagonists and followed the trail from there. It was a three-year effort, and it paid off in a hell of a good story.   

My Review of Sarah Hurwitz's "As a Jew: Reclaiming our Story....."

Be Strong and Stand Tall

Former senior speech writer to President Barack Obama and head speech writer to Michelle Obama, Sarah Hurwitz has written an important book on the need for American Jews to reclaim their proud identity and go beyond being a “social justice” Jew or a “cultural” Jew. Although Hurwitz was a Bat Mitzvah her experience with Judaism was of the pediatric variety. She didn’t really rediscover her Judaism until she was 36 when she walked into an Introduction to Judaism course. Thus, much of the book is autobiographical.

 

She tells us of her discovery of the very long text-line of Judaism going from the Tanakh, to the Talmud, to later rabbinical commentaries and on to the modern era. She didn’t realize the full depth of Judaism as a way of life and a way of thinking. She also has become learned in the history of antisemitism going back to the early Catholic Church relying on the work of James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword.” She goes on to discuss the antisemitism that originated in the Soviet Union and how the Soviet’s anti-Zionism was picked up by the Islamic world.

 

Hurwitz picks up on Dara Horn’s theme distinguishing between Purim antisemitism and Chanukah antisemitism. Purim antisemitism calls for the destruction of Jewry while Chanukah antisemitism is all about societal pressure for Jews to give up their identity. The latter is the antisemitism of the Left in America today.

 

In order to be cool in Left circles Jews have to be social justice warriors and denounce Zionism. I have seen many a letter to the editor signed by an anti-Zionist Jew starting with "as a Jew." She characterizes Jewish anti-Zionism as a luxury belief similar to those who live in gated communities calling to defund the police. Here she goes into the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict where she effectively rebuts much of the pro-Palestinian propaganda that has become mainstreamed in America today.  That said, Hurwitz is a self-professed ‘liberal Zionist” who supports the two-state solution.

 

Her solution is for Jews to lean in to be strong and stand tall against the wave of antisemitism we are now experiencing. We have to reclaim our proud story and to that we have to reclaim our story going back to the beginning.

My Review of Amit Segal's "A Call at 4 AM"

 A Primer on Israeli Politics

Leading Israeli reporter Amit Segal has written a primer on Israeli politics going back to the State’s founding. I would characterize his views as center-right. However, a long time Israeli friend and former reporter would argue that Segal is firmly on the Right. In the beginning Israel created a parliamentary system consisting of 120 delegates to the Knesset who would be elected via a party slate by proportional representation, not by constituency. In 1948 with the new state’s boundaries up for grabs, it wasn’t really possible to create individual districts. You would think that accountability would flow through the political parties, but, in fact, the party leaders became personality cults starting with David Ben Gurion. It seems that once in power prime ministers never know when to quit. Ego mania is alive and well in Israeli politics.

 

With 120 seats in the Knesset, a majority of just 61 seats runs the country. For the first 29 years the Mapai Party (Labor) had a monopoly on power. However, since 1977 when a rightwing bloc formed around the Likud Party under the leadership of Menachem Begin took power, it has for the most part represented the dominant coalition in the Knesset. Israeli governments are coalition governments, because even during the heyday of the Labor Party, no party ever achieved a majority.

 

The trick is to put together a coalition of 61 members and for the past 50 years by the dint of demographics and divisions in the Left, rightwing governments tended to run the country. It has to be kept in mind that the distinctions between right and left are not of the American variety. According to Segal, what separates the right from the left is the distance from Yasser Arafat and his successors. Historically the left has been open to a two-state solution while the right has not.

 

Segal points out the reasons for the ascendancy of the right. The 1973 Suez War destroyed the credibility of the left on the security issue. The failure of the 2000 peace talks with Arafat led to the second intifada thereby causing the left to lose the peace issue. In the 2026 election the critical question will be the right’s failure to defend the country on October 7^th, 2023, be enough to topple its long-term hegemony or alternatively will its subsequent success be enough for it to hold power.

 

On the importance of personality over party, Segal highlights the case of General Ariel Sharon who became a Labor Party member to be promoted in the early 1970’s, he then broke with them to help found the Likud Party and later he founded his own party. During his life he built settlements that he would later destroy.

 

Today political divisions in Israel evolve around Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the question of Jewish versus Israeli identity. Israelis are either for him or against him, so much so that most center and left parties won’t be in a coalition government with him especially when Netanyahu’s guiding philosophy is “no enemies on the Right,” and no one trusts him. That abstention gives power to the Haredi religious parties whose votes in the Knesset are traded for draft exemptions and huge public subsidies that are bleeding the country white.

 

Those citizens who view themselves as primarily Israeli are largely secular and their views about trading West Bank land for peace with the Palestinians are based on a cold-eyed analysis of Israel’s security. On the other hand, those Israeli’s who view themselves as primarily Jewish view Judea and Samaria as sacred ground of the Bible where their forefathers walked and where David and Solomon were kings and where the prophets spoke truth to power. Thus, control of that land is non-negotiable.

 

After reading Segal’s book I have come to the conclusion that the only way to pull Israeli society together after the brutal Gaza War is for Netanyahu and the center left to form a coalition government that would remove the far-right Ben Gvir and Smotrich factions from the government as well as the religious parties.  ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/10/my-review-of-yaakov-katz-and-amir.html ) That would lower the temperature in Judea and Samaria and pave the way to radically reduce the power of the Haredi parties. It is not perfect, but as they say, politics is the art of the possible and both the right and the left are going to have to swallow their pride.

Rage and Silence From the So-Called Peace Camp

 While most of the world looked hopefully on the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, two of the most vocal callers for a ceasefire reacted either with rage or silence. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/10/free-at-last-now-hard-part-begins.html ) Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) applauded Hamas' slaughter of innocent Palestinians and further encouraged them to remain armed. Hopefully their fellow travelers in the West will realize that they have been conned and that the western media will wake up to the fact that Hamas has no compunction about killing their fellow Palestinians. 

Instead of raging at the ceasefire, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has been remarkably silent. Recall that this organization attempted to shutdown Grand Central Station in the name of a ceasefire. Well, they got their ceasefire. Then why the silence? The answer is simple. JVP is fundamentally a left wing group seeking the destruction of Israel as a  Jewish state. Israel winning is anathema to them. They care more about their solidarity with the Left then with the Jewish people and it why they will remain silent about Hamas killing Palestinians.  Shame on them.

Trump's Gaza Plan: More than Meets the Eye

 At his joint news conference with Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump stunned the world by calling for the resettlement of Gaza's population to pave the way for a massive development project under U.S. auspices in Gaza. According to Trump it would be a new "Riviera." Aside from the Israel far right, the idea was uniformly panned in the middle east, Europe and among Trump's MAGA base. Simply put, it is not going to happen.

However, Trump's forced the region to wake up to the fact that we can't go back to the world as it stood pre-October 7th. It will force the Palestinians to come to terms with the new realities of the region.

What has not been said is that while the U.S. will not rebuild Gaza, Trump's idea has whetted the appetite of every property developer from Egypt to Turkey to Saudi Arabia to the Gulf. While Gazans won't accept the U.S. to take the lead, they might be more amenable to an Arab consortium in a project that, of necessity, would involve the temporary exile of portions of the current population. I have to believe that discussions are already underway across the capitals of the middle east.  

My Conversation with Ori Nir on the Situation in Israel: Part 2

 On September 10th I had a wide ranging conversation with Ori Nir, Vice President for Public Affairs of Americans for Peace Now on the proposed judicial reforms in Israel, relationship with the Palestinians and the proposed Israel-U.S.-Saudi Arabia- Palestine mega deal. The YouTube link is below. This is a follow up of on our March 19th conversation. (Shulmaven: My Conversation with Ori Nir on the Situation in Israel)

An Update on What’s Happening in Israel: The View from Americans for Peace Now - YouTube

My Review* of Jonathan Wilson's "The Red Balcony"

An Assassination on the Beach

 

In the evening June 16, 1933, Haim Arlosoroff, the political director of the Jewish Agency, was brutally murdered while taking a walk with his wife on the Tel Aviv beach. Arlosoroff had just returned from Germany where he negotiated the Transfer Agreement which enabled 50,000 Jews over the next three years to leave Germany conditioned on them turning over their resources to be used to pay for German exports to Palestine. To this day the mystery of who killed Arlosoroff is unsolved, and it is at the core of Jonathan Wilson’s “The Red Balcony” which takes us to the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Safed, cities I know well.

 

Wilson’s protagonist is Ivor Castle a young Jewish graduate of Oxford University who is hired to assist the lead defense counsel Phineas Baron. Castle’s first job is to secure the witness testimony of Tsiona Kerem, a very Bohemian artist who he instantly falls in lust and then in love with her, some of which is played out on her red balcony. Kerem is far more involved than first we are first let in on.

 

Castle is helping to prepare the defense for the two accused killers, Aaron Stavsky and Ze’ev Rosenblatt, both of whom are associated with Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionist grouping.  Jabotinsky’s group opposed the Transfer deal because it meant doing business with the Nazi devils and it worked to undo the boycott of German goods. Both defendants are ultimately acquitted and to this day the crime has yet to be solved with other potential assailants being hard-lined Arabs who opposed Arlosoroff’s peacemaking and the Nazis because of Arsololoff’s alleged affair with Goebbels’ part-Jewish wife.

 

There are two other interesting characters in the book. A Charles Gross, an Oxford contemporary of Castle’s who is very close to Revisionist Zionism. We also have Gross’ cousin, the Baltimore socialite whose father is very much involved in helping to fund the Transfer Agreement.

 

One of the things I really lied about the book is Wilson’s description of the Palestine Mandate in the hiatus between the Arab riots of 1929 and the Great Arab Revolt of 1936. You get a very real sense of what the state in the making was like in the guise of a crime thriller.

*- Amazon has yet to post this review. Amazon just posted at this URL An Assassination on the Beach (amazon.com)

 

 

My Amazon Review of Daniel Gordis' "Impossible Takes Longer: 75 Years after....... "

 Israel@75

Daniel Gordis, the American born Israeli Distinguished Fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem College, has offered up an examination of where Israel has succeeded and failed through the lens of its 1948 Declaration of Independence. It is important to note here that although there is much history in his book, it is not a history of Israel. He simply asked whether or not Israel would today be viewed as a success or a failure in the eyes of its founders.

Today’s Israel would give immense pleasure to its Zionist founders. Instead of the cowering Jews of the shtetl, the average Israeli stands upright and, although not quite “the light unto the nations” and not necessarily loved, it is respected in the international community. Indeed, Israel has become a regional superpower with a vibrant culture and a buoyant technology driven economy. It is a country that stops work on Yom Kippur and even among secular Jews it has the highest birthrate in the industrialized world.

The country has grown from the 1947 partition lines of 660,000 Jews and 600,000 Arabs to country of seven million Jews and two million Israeli Palestinians. People today forget how close run its survival was in 1948 and that the vote to declare independence passed by a thin 6-4 majority. Gordis also reminds us that the founders created an ethnic democracy, not a liberal democracy. Afterall, Israel is the Jewish state. And in 1948 its goal was survival, not prosperity. It certainly has survived and thrived.

 

Nevertheless, the founders would be surprised to see that Mizrachi Jews now account for a majority of the state’s Jewish population, a group that was then and still today that is looked down upon by the Ashkenazi elite. The founders hoped that American Jews would move to Israel in substantial numbers. This, as we know, did not happen. To American Jews, America is the new Jerusalem.

 

The 1948 vision of Israel society was that of a state-centered socialism. That lasted for Israel’s first 25 years, but as that the bureaucracy ossified, in fits and starts Israel became a market economy with a very unequal distribution of income. Nonetheless, the social safety net is propped up by a strong universal health insurance system.

 

The founders would be surprised to see that the tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians continue unabated. After 75 years there is still no end in sight. Gordis supports a two-state solution, but that remains far off in the distance. The founders couldn’t imagine that Israeli troops would be deployed outside of the 1948 lines for so long acting as occupying troops. Perhaps even more shocking to the founders would be the power of the orthodox Haredim in today’s government and how far right leaning it is. Remember that in 1948 the Israeli right was just as secular as the Israeli left.

 

Although not present at the signing of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and hardly in the leadership, it was Menachem Begin, heir Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionism, who was most clear-eyed about Israel’s future. To the Revisionists the antagonism coming from the Arabs would be long lasting and that ultimately Israel’s economy would have be organized along capitalistic lines if it were to succeed.

 

As an aside after reading this book and Walter Russell Mead’s “The Arc of a Covenant,” I can’t help but thinking had the U.S. Congress not passed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, there might not be an Israel today; many of the Jews of Europe would have ended up in America, not Israel. (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Walter Russell Mead's "The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People")

 

Reading Daniel Gordis’ book has reinforced my belief as to what a miracle Israel is. Against all odds and with all of its fallibilities, Israel remains a hope for the Jewish people and, in a way, for the people of the world.

For the full Amazon URL see: Israel@75 (amazon.com)

My Conversation with Ori Nir on the Situation in Israel

On March 19th I held a wide ranging conversation with Ori Nir, Vice President for Public Affairs at Americans for Peace Now on the situation in Israel. The discussion was sponsored by Temple Beth Shalom of Santa Fe and included the following topics:  Israel/Palestine, the proposed judicial reforms and religious pluralism. The link is below and starts about 3 minutes into the YouTube.

https://youtu.be/COqSE6osUZs

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 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)

My Amazon Review of Walter Russell Mead's "The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People"

 

America’s Changing Views on Israel

 

Bard College professor and Wall Street Journal foreign policy columnist Walter Russell Mead has written three books in one. The first is a history of the U.S- Israel relationship, the second a history of American foreign policy and the third is a recent history of domestic politics in the United States. In Mead’s view all three are inter-related. This book is above all on the how’s and why’s of the American view on Israel. I write this just as President Biden has left the middle east after visiting Israel and Saudi Arabia signaling a reconfiguration of the region’s chessboard.

 

At the outset Mead completely debunks the view that U.S.-Israel policy is controlled by the so called “Jewish Lobby.” To be sure there is a pro-Israel lobby, but it is far from controlling and it suffers from as many failures as successes. Further American presidents, Nixon, Reagan, W. Bush, and Trump who did much to cement the relationship between the United States and Israel were decidedly unpopular among the largely liberal Jewish community.

 

Mead starts his history in the late 19^th century where a group of Philo-semitic Protestants articulated the support for a return of the Jews to their ancient homeland. Steeped in the bible and the classics these Christians thought it was only natural for the Jews to have a state of their own especially after Greek independence earlier that century and the creation of new Rome in the form of Italy. These views predated Herzl’s Zionism.

 

Mead goes into great detail the policy arguments that took place in the Truman Administration concerning the formation of the State of Israel. His Secretaries of State and Defense were firmly against it, but Truman finally came down on the side of independence. Much was made at the time of the importance of the Jewish vote in the upcoming 1948 presidential election. However, Truman needed the support of the liberal internationalists under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt who viewed the success of the U.N resolution on Israel to be critical to that organization’s future. Truman needed to keep Roosevelt from supporting the far-left candidacy of Henry Wallace.

 

Of interest in 1948, Stalin, motivated by his need to make trouble for Britain and the United States in the middle east, gave the greenlight to Czechoslovakia to sell arms to Israel. Those arms made the crucial difference in Israel’s war for independence. It also supplied hard currency to the Czech’s who desperately needed it after turning down Marshall Plan aid.

 

As difficult as it seems today, the American Left was the home to most of Israel’s support in the 1950’s and 60’s. Israel, for all practical purposes, was a struggling socialist country supporting the dispossessed Jews of Europe and the Arab world. However, today the Left sees Israel as militaristic, capitalistic settler-colonialist state. It seems that the American Left just loves to penalize Israel’s success in building a modern state in an otherwise impoverished middle east. Those are the very attributes praised by the “Jacksonian evangelical Zionists” of the American Right.

 

Nevertheless, Mead leaves much out of his history. Not much is said about the 1956 Suez War where Eisenhower backs Egypt against Israel, France, and Britain; the 1982 Lebanon War which turned American public opinion against Israel, and the taking out of the Iraq nuclear program. Mead resumes his discussion U.S.-Israel relations in the 2000’s and highlights the failures of the magical thinking of George W. Bush’s neocons with the Iraq War and Obama’s with respect to the Arab Spring, Iran, and Israel. Ironically Obama’s missteps in region led the Abraham Accords and burgeoning alliance between Israel and the Sunni Arabs.

 

Although Mead supports the need for a Palestinian state, he like most others doesn’t present a roadmap to getting there. Regardless, Mead has offered up a work of history at its best.

For the full Amazon URL see: America's Changing Views on Israel (amazon.com)

 

My Amazon Review of Adi Schwartz's and Einat Wilf's "The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace"

 

The Palestinian Right of Return: Get Over It

 

Journalist Adi Schwartz and former MK Einat Wilf, both members of the Israeli Left, have written an important book making the case that the biggest obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace is the mistaken belief and Western indulgence of the belief that Palestinians have a right to return to Israel proper. In essence the right to return is a rejection of the Israeli state whose Jewish population would be demographically overwhelmed. This is a demand that no Israeli government can accept. The notion of a right of return is especially galling because how can there be refugees from a war that ended over 70 years ago?

 

Traditionally the role of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has been to rehabilitate and resettle refugees. That precisely was the process after World War II and the India/Pakistan split of 1947. Going back in history there was a mass separation of Turks and Greeks after the Turko-Greek War of 1919-20. The Turks in Greece moved to Turkey while the Greeks in Turkey moved to Greece. Further, if you can believe this, any descendant of someone living in 1948 Israel now living in the United States can be classified as a refugee by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Something like this has never happened before.

 

Indeed UNRWA, despite its name is not really a UN organization. The UN funds a small management fee, but the bulk of its funds come directly from Western contributions. The organization is not really on the UN budget. The U.S. was the leading contributor until 2018 when President Trump ceased making contributions in 2018. In 2021 the Biden Administration restored U.S. contributions.

 

Meanwhile UNRWA has effectively become a Palestinian front organization where it is the second largest employer on the West Bank, and it actively promotes the culture of Palestinian victimhood. The Palestinian are being victimized by their own culture of victimhood. As the authors note the original sin of introducing the right of return was not a Palestinian, but rather the UN diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte. In part the right of return notion was put in place to placate the Arabs and thereby keep the Soviets out of the Middle East. Were it not for Cold War politics the whole notion would never have seen the light of day.

 

As a result, UNRWA’s operation of the Palestinian camps, which are really cities in their own right, became hothouses for Palestinian nationalism, something that really did not exist until the 1960s. It was in the camps that the return ideology got so cemented that no Palestinian politician can back away from.

 

Schartz and Wilf correctly argue that peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis broke down in 2000 and 2008 over the right of return issues. It was not about borders or the final status of Jerusalem. Thus, instead of being a side issue, the right of return is the central focus of the Palestinians. It means that the peace process faces a long winding road ahead of it. As Wilf and Schwartz argue the phasing out of UNRWA is a precondition for getting the Palestinians to accept reality.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Palestinian Right of Return: Get Over It (amazon.com)

Rabbi Neil Amswych's Sermon on Israel, Palestine and Hamas 5-14-21

 Below is the link to Rabbi Amswych's sermon as well as his opening comments. Read the whole sermon.

Rabbi Neil's Blog

Praying and Working for Peace in Jerusalem, May 14th 2021

 "As far as I have learned, in 1875, Rabbi Avraham Ashkenazi and Rabbi Meir Auerbach acquired some land from Arab sellers.  In 1946, shortly before Israel’s War of Independence, two Jewish non-governmental organizations moved to register the deed with authorities in what was then British Mandatory Palestine. In 1982, the Palestinian residents of the property – including the parents and grandparents of some of the current occupants – signed an agreement confirming that the Israeli NGOs were the rightful owners. In the early 2000s, these two Israeli non-profits sold the land to the Nahalat Shimon organization. The Palestinians occupying the dwelling were nevertheless allowed to continue living there and enjoyed “Protected Residents” status. However, by law, the tenants were required to pay rent to Nahalat Shimon. It was only after the Palestinian residents refused to do that, and instead illegally expanded the property and rented out spaces to third parties, that Nahalat Shimon initiated eviction proceedings. Before going to court, the Jewish owners of the property and the Palestinian residents almost came to an out-of-court settlement but the Palestinian Authority threatened the Palestinian residents with violence if they agreed to a compromise. It therefore became an intractable legal issue of squatters, and had to go to court....."

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My Amazon Review of Micah Goodman's "Catch 67: The Left, the Right and the Legacy of the Six-Day War"

 

Shrinking the Conflict

 

Shalom Hartman scholar Micah Goodman has offered up an important history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the points of view of the Israeli Right and Left and the Palestinians going back to Ben Gurion and Jabotinsky. He argues the positions of the Israeli Right and Left better than they do themselves. He knows all of the arguments and how they evolved over time. For example, the Left has moved from peace to the evils of occupation and lead a security crisis caused by a rising relative Palestinian population and the Right has moved from biblical maximalism to the physical security needed to protect Israel proper. The Jordan Valley the hills of Judea and Samaria are of great strategic importance. Thus, both sides argue from a security posture.

 

He also realizes that Israel will never compromise on security and that the Palestinians will never compromise on the right of return. The crux of the problem is that at its core the Palestinians real quarrel is not with 1967, but rather with 1948 that brought with it the Israeli state. Thus, the issue for them is far more than the occupation brought about by the 6-Day War in 1967. Importantly Goodman notes that the Palestinians are an occupied people, rather than the Palestinians living on occupied territory. That territory was never theirs to begin with because Israel conquered it from Jordan after Jordan attacked in 1967. To Goodman the territories should rightly be characterized as “disputed.”

 

Meanwhile history has passed this 2017 book by with the growing diplomatic recognition of Israel by several Arab states. Simply put the Sunni-Shia rivalry, not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has become the critical variable in today’s middle east.  

 

This makes Goodman’s idea of shrinking the conflict far more practical. His idea is to increase the autonomy of the Palestinians by connecting all of their communities with roads thereby avoiding roadblocks and increasing their ability to control development within their boundaries. Of course, the Israeli Defense Forces would continue to be responsible for security. If, and that is a big if, acceptable to the Palestinians his ideas would certainly remove some of the rough edges around the conflict. This would also enable greater foreign investment in the Palestinian zones.

 

Goodman leaves out two important issues. One, the Palestinian government is a kleptocracy and two, there is no discussion about Gaza which is ruled by the iron and corrupt hand of Hamas, certainly not a good example.

 

Nevertheless, Goodman takes us away from the Right’s status quo argument of “managing the conflict” and the Left’s “solving the conflict.” His solution is sensibly to shrink the conflict over time.

For the full Amazon URL see: Shrinking the Conflict (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Gershom Gorenberg's "War of Shadows:..........."

 

Signals War in the Desert

 

Israeli journalist/historian Gershom Gorenberg has offered up a very detailed history of the north Africa theater of operations in World War II through the prism of signals intelligence. The book opens with Cairo in panic as Rommel’s vaunted Africa Corps is within 60 miles of Alexandria in June 1942. As we know the British stand at El Alamein stops the offensive in its tracks.

 

Gorenberg’s history is in depth going into the desert explorers of the 1930’s who map the shifting desert sands. Those insights would have enormous strategic value when the war begins. He is very detailed in discussing the Polish capture of the German’s highly prized enigma code machine that is ultimately transported to Britain and its code breaking headquarters at Bletchley Park. He goes into minute detail as the British ultimately crack the German codes with the insight that the machine it of itself might be unsolvable, but human input errors under the stress of battle leave enough clues to crack the German codes. To Gorenberg it was the unsung men and women of Bletchley who are the heroes of El Alamein.

 

U.S. Army captain Bonner Fellers’ role is highlighted as military liaison to the British in Cairo. Fellers was an acolyte of America Firster Charles Lindberg who becomes a full-throated supporter of the British. After the war he returns to his rightwing form. Nevertheless, while in Cairo he has full confidence of the British and is privy to their plans. He transmits those plans to Washington, but unbeknownst to him the Germans, have access to the American codes. Thus, the Brits are listening in to the Germans and the Germans are indirectly listening into the Brits. Just two days before the Battle of El Alamein, the U.S. changes its code, and for the first time Rommel is operating blind of British intentions. It leads to his defeat.

 

Gorenberg shows how steadfast Churchill was in protecting British interests in the middle east.  This was true, not only in Egypt, but in Iraq. A reader interested in that part of the war should read John Broich’s “Blood, Oil and the Axis."  (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-amazon-review-of-john-broichs-blood.html) Gorenberg discusses the neutrality of the Egyptian Army which kept them out of the fighting and the pro-Nazi sympathies on the then young officer Anwar Sadat. To Egyptian nationalists the British were the enemy. On the other hand, the Jews of Palestine fearing a holocaust in their homeland fought with the British against the Germans on many fronts. That battle hardening experience would pay big dividends when they faced off against an unprepared Egyptian army in 1948.

 

As I said at the outset Gorenberg offers up a very detailed history. As a result, the book slows down at times. It also would have helped if there were maps depicting the battles described in the book. Thus, I give the book four stars, instead of five.

For the full Amazon URL see: Signals War in the Desert (amazon.com)

 

My Amazon Review of Daniel Todman's "Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947"

The High Cost of Victory

This is British historian Daniel Todman’s second volume of his history of Britain’s involvement in World War II. Like his first volume it is way too long (976 pages in the print edition) and way too detailed for the lay reader. (See:  https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2017/01/my-amazon-review-of-daniel-todmans.html )                                                                                                       Nevertheless there is much to be learned for the dogged reader.

The book opens in early 1942 with Britain on the run everywhere. Singapore falls, the Japanese navy runs riot in the Indian Ocean, Rommel rules Africa, and the German army was just barely halted at the gates of Moscow. But underneath the radar the Labour Party was actively preparing for the postwar world. Todman is convincing that the root of Labour’s surprising success in the 1945 election had its origins with the cradle to the grave welfare state proposed by the Beveridge Report, the socialization of the economy under the exigencies of wartime planning and the complete discrediting of the Tory appeasement policy of the interwar years. To top it off Churchill was rightfully far more interested in winning the war than in party building. The Tories were adrift and Labour had focus.

Aside from presenting the high diplomacy of the Big Three, Todman delves into British life on the home front, the impact of the million American soldiers on the small island, the battlefield conditions facing the average soldier, the importance of air power as a defensive force rather than an offensive one and of the generally unsung battles against the Japanese in Burma. 

The war ends with Britain broke with Keynes going hat in hand to Washington to seek needed credits and with Britain in strategic retreat in Greece, India and Palestine. Simply put the empire which was having difficulties before the war was completely overstretched after it. All of this was foreshadowed at the Tehran conference in 1943 where Stalin and Roosevelt took charge of the war over the protests of Churchill.

Although Todman highlights the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps he has little sympathy for the displaced European Jews seeking refuge in Palestine. He is also way too sympathetic to the Labour government’s social reforms and nationalizations of industry. Of course many reforms were necessary, but it was the Labour policies that were at the heart of Britain becoming the “sick man of Europe” over the next 30 years.

I know this review hasn’t done justice to Todman’s all-encompassing book. I only highlighted a few of the insights I got out his book and a few of my criticisms. It is a long slog, but as I mentioned at the start there is much to be learned here.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2GNCCLBEWQH7U/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Tom Segev's "A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion"

Implementing the Zionist Dream

Israeli journalist/historian Tom Segev has written a very detailed and somewhat biased biography of Israel’s first prime minister. He tells the story of how David Gruen, born in Plonsk, Poland, in 1886 becomes David Ben-Gurion the labor leader and for a time Israel’s leading politician after his arrival in Palestine in 1906.

Segev’s Ben-Gurion has a single minded focus on bringing the Israeli state into being. He analogizes him to Lenin, but there is also the all consummate Stalinist bureaucrat in him as he first gains control the Histadrut labor union and ultimately the Mapai (Socialist Labor) Party, Israel’s largest political party until 1977.

Ben-Gurion is a complete bibliophile as he reads voraciously and with his autodidact style become learned on science and military affairs. After the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 he immediately recognizes that it would bring a revolution in military affairs and in 1956 he starts the Israeli nuclear program.

We see him as a very lonely man subject to severe depression and although he was married to his wife Paula for over 50 years he undertook a series of affairs and he was far from a doting father to his children. His life was totally enmeshed in the politics necessary to bring into being the Zionist state.

Where Segev and his fellow “revisionist” historians go astray is when they argue that there was defined plan to uproot the Palestinians from 1948 Israel thereby creating the refugee problem. There was no central order given and while many Palestinians were forced to leave more of them left on their own accord. Segev pays little heed to Israel’s geopolitical reality of 1948 where there was no strategic depth. Hence it is unfair to characterize Defense Minister Dyan a warmonger in the 1956 War against Egypt. The strategic reality facing Israel is that it had to win quickly or lose a war of attrition. That lesson was learned in 1973 War, where Egypt attacked first and almost won.

Although Segev gives us a great deal of discussion on Ben-Gurion hot and cold relationship with Chaim Weitzman, there is far too little discussion on why Ben-Gurion’s relationship with Vladimir Jabotinsky, his political rival in the 1920’s and 30’s was so vitriolic. It had to be more than politics. That vitriol extended to Jabotinsky’s successor Menachem Begin.

To me Segev’s book is way too filled with minutia. Nevertheless, given the caveats mentioned above, he offers great insight into the life of Ben-Gurion and the creation of the Israeli state.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1LLSNFVJT73TD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Dennis Ross' and David Makovsky's "Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped its Destiny"

A Plea for Israeli Pragmatism

Dennis Ross a seasoned American diplomat who spent the bulk of his career dealing with middle-eastern issues and David Makovsky a distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute have written an important book about the fundamental dilemma facing Israel. To them, both committed Zionists, Israel faces a choice: will it be a Jewish-democratic state without most of the occupied territories or will it be a larger democratic- binational state with all of the problems that entails? To them Israel can’t hold on to the bulk of the Palestinian population and remain a Jewish-democratic state.

The authors make a call for pragmatism on the part of the current Israeli leadership by invoking the memories of four prior prime ministers. They being David Ben Gurion who accepted the 1947 U.N. partition plan, Menachem Begin who returned the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace, Yitzhak Rabin who accepted the PLO as a negotiating partner and Ariel Sharon who told the settlers to give up their dreams in Gaza. All of these men were security conscious and it was their belief that pragmatism should dominate over ideology in exchange for what they believed to be a more secure Israel.

Now don’t get me wrong, Ross and Makovsky are not wild eyed peace at any price advocates. They are hard-headed realists who currently believe that very little can be accomplished over the near term in negotiating with the Palestinian Authority. Nevertheless when the time does come for negotiations they offer a series concrete proposals of what Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. can do to create an environment for an ultimate deal. These are too lengthy to go into here, but at its core the Israeli Right, which I am sort of a supporter, has to accept that the current situation is not stable in the long run if Israel is to be true to its Zionist and democratic character.

My main criticism of the book is that there are no maps. This is especially relevant to understand the geographic reality of the proposals they are making. Ross and Makovsky have made an important contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue making their book very relevant for today.

I received this book as a gift.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2OBLHMQQWHY8L/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of John Broich's " Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against a Fascist State in Iraq and the Levant, 1941"

Iraq War circa 1941

Case Western Reserve history professor John Broich tells us the little known story of how a small group of British soldiers and airmen along with local allies kicked the Axis out of the Middle East. With tacit support from Germany a group of Iraqi officers known as the Golden Square staged a fascist coup in Baghdad thereby threatening British oil supplies. Along with a pro-Vichy government in Syria the Axis powers had the ability to cripple British power in region by cutting off its oil supplies in the Mediterranean. If instead of invading Russia in 1941, had Hitler moved into the Middle East, he very well could have brought Britain to its knees and won the war.   

With Britain’s position in Egypt under attack by Erwin Rommel’s panzers, there were few resources to spare for the Levant. Yet with  volunteer troops from India, consisting of Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs, and a few airman, including the writer Roald Dahl of “James and the Giant Peach” fame, the British persevered first in Iraq and then in Syria where French forces supported the Vichy regime. In this Iraq war we are reminded of the battles in early 2000s where fighting takes place in Ramadi, Baghdad and Fallujah.

The British wisely enlisted local forces from Jordan under General Glubb and Palestine where the Palmach commando unit is established. It is during a battle in Syria where future Israeli general Moshe Dayan loses his eye. From Broich’s book I learned that both the Germans and the Italians bombed Haifa to stop the flow of oil from that city’s refinery to the British fleet. Further had Hitler’s armies moved into the region the 500,000 Jews then living in Palestine likely would have been slaughtered like there European counterparts.  

Broich tells a good story, but sometimes his writing seems to be bogged down in the sands of Iraq. I better editing job would have helped. Nevertheless it is a powerful story that highlights, yet again, that the Allied victory in World War Two was a close run thing.

The full amazon URL appears at:  https://www.amazon.com/review/R3KKM2ECEIECQD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv