Arab Politics, Palestinian Nationalism, and the Six Day
War
by Moshe Shemesh
Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic
Press, 2008. 346 pp. $75
Reviewed by Michael Rubin
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2073/arab-politics-palestinian-nationalism-and-the-six
In this latest book, his fifth in English, Shemesh, a
professor of Middle Eastern studies at Ben Gurion University, makes a
valuable contribution to the understanding of Arab politics in the decade
before the Six-Day War. Well-referenced and injecting new Iraqi, Egyptian,
Jordanian, Lebanese, and Palestinian documents into the narrative,
Shemesh's book challenges historians' conventional wisdom. He argues, for
example, that the Palestinian issue was far more important to Arab states
in the decade before the Six-Day War than earlier historians believed. He
also dismisses the idea that the war occurred because Nasser's
recklessness caused events to spin out of control. Rather, Shemesh
suggests that the January 1964 Arab summit set the region down the path to
war. In 1967, Nasser "marched to war open-eyed," believing Arab victory to
be assured.
Shemesh also examines both internal Palestinian Arab
dynamics and the interplay of Palestinian nationalism within intra-Arab
relations of the period. Palestinian fida'i terrorism, for example,
changed the dynamics of the Arab fight against Israel. No longer did Arab
states alone seek to eliminate Israel on behalf of Palestinian Arabs;
Palestinian groups began to take an active role in the fight against
Israel. Shemesh argues that while, prior to the Six-Day War, Palestinian
terrorism did not gain the prominence that it would in later years, by
1965, fida'i activity along Israel's borders with Syria and Jordan
posed a serious security threat and hastened the war.
Arab Politics is a welcome relief from the trend by
which Israeli "new historians" such as Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, and Neve
Gordon eschew serious research for polemic. Shemesh may seek to revise the
existing narrative, but he does so meticulously, offering evidence for
each claim he makes. Nor, unlike so many of his contemporaries, is Shemesh
afraid to document his work. He reproduces facsimiles ranging from a cover
of Fatah's 1959 monthly Filastinuna; to a 1965 Jordanian military
report on acts Palestinian terrorists might perpetrate against Israel; to
a 1967 letter from Hafez al-Assad, at the time still Syria's defense
minister, regarding Israeli troop movements.
While dry, Arab Politics is a necessary addition to
any serious library or scholar's bookshelf. Shemesh deserves
congratulations for breaking new ground.
Churchill's Promised Land
Zionism and Statecraft
by Michael Makovsky
New Haven: Yale University Press,
2007. 352 pp. $35
Reviewed by Adam Pechter
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2074/churchills-promised-land
Britain helped spark Israel's founding by issuing the
Balfour Declaration, but one has to wonder what kept it from backsliding
afterwards and attempting to end Zionist dreams before they were realized.
Britain had a horrible history with Jews: The first recorded ritual murder
charge in medieval Europe took place in England in 1144; there was the
York massacre of the city's Jews in 1190; the expulsion in 1290; and
political emancipation for England's Jews arrived only in 1871, far later
than in other Western European countries. In the Victorian era, "Jews, no
matter how assimilated or influential, were perceived as Jews first, and
often not even considered to be English, no matter how long they or their
families had resided in England. The Jew was widely thought of as suspect,
sinister, clever, rich and powerful, and—in the words of historian Elie
Kedourie—'an agent of reaction or revolution, pursuing hidden aims of his
own, divine or demonic as the case may be.'"[1] Moreover, in the first
half of the twentieth century, Zionism "seemed to many Britons—Gentile and
Jew alike—a ludicrous goal that defied much historical and current
thinking and, in the 1930s and beyond, conflicted with Britain's strategic
interests."
So how did this relatively anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist nation
come to be the one that, while not delivering the Jewish state, helped the
Zionists at key moments and acquiesced to the declaration of Jewish
statehood in 1948? The answer comes in this book, a detailed account of
Winston Churchill and his three-decade long struggle to preserve Britain's
promise as set forth in the Balfour Declaration.
Makovsky skillfully shows that only one man, Churchill—a
true admirer of Disraeli and his mantra that "the Lord dealt with the
nations as the nations dealt with the Jews"—seemingly kept the Zionist
dream alive by vigorously and creatively pushing back against rampant
anti-Zionism in the British government and among the public. As
anti-Zionist calls deepened in Britain, he constantly reinforced his
pro-Zionist political message to keep domestic anti-Zionist adversaries at
bay. When the infamous MacDonald White Paper of 1939 looked as if it would
crush Zionist hopes, Churchill engaged Roosevelt and the United States on
the Zionists' behalf, leveraging a relationship Britain needed more than
ever at that time. While Roosevelt proved genuinely uninterested in
Zionism and appeared ready to undercut it for political concerns,
Churchill's engagement allowed Truman to assume the role of main Western
advocate for Zionism when Churchill fell from power after the war.
As Makovsky shows, Churchill's political activism sheltered
Zionists as they spent the years between Balfour and statehood building
the institutions that would prove indispensable to the new Jewish
state.
[1] Elie Kedourie, England and the Middle East: The
Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1921 (London: Bowes and Bowes,
1956), p. 82.
Escape from Saddam
The
Incredible True Story of One Man's Journey to Freedom
by Lewis Alsamari
New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.
320 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Nimrod Raphaeli and Ellen
Raphaeli
Middle East Media Research Institute, and Professor
Emerita, Northern Virginia Community College
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2075/escape-from-saddam
Escape from Saddam is Alsamari's memoir of his flight
from Saddam Hussein's Iraq and his struggle to bring his immediate family
to safety. It covers about a decade—from late 1993, when Alsamari is
conscripted into military service, until 2003, when he is tried in England
for embezzling £37,500 from his employer to smuggle his mother and
siblings out of Iraq. The path between the two points—escaping from the
military, being smuggled out of Iraq, living in Jordan on forged
documents, and traveling to England to claim asylum—marks the story of
Alsamari's personal growth. At the outset, Alsamari is an 18-year-old
youth so determined to pursue the dream of studying in England to become a
doctor that he will let his family suffer financial hardship,
imprisonment, and torture so he may flee the country. At the end of the
memoir, he is a "genuine man" who "never forgets his family."
Alsamari alludes to his emotional connection to Iraq, but
the Iraq he describes is one he is desperate to escape. Saddam's Iraq is a
place where promotion into the intelligence service is essentially "a
prison sentence in itself," forcing one to become a "cog in the massive
machine of terror."
The book describes the world of human smuggling, the
dangerous and difficult path to asylum, and the cost—financial and
emotional—of escaping tyrannical regimes. It gives a glimpse into the
world where documents are forged, passports are counterfeited, and money
is moved through "convoluted routes." It suggests the porosity of the
borders between Iraq and Jordan, Syria, and Turkey.
This is a suspense-filled book: Alsamari is shot during his
midnight escape from a military camp but saved when a taxi whisks him to a
doctor who removes the bullet by flashlight. He discards incriminating
passports in three toilets in the ultramodern Kuala Lumpur airport, but
discovering that he needs them, retrieves them four days later,
waterlogged but readable.
Parts of the narrative strain credulity. Alone in the desert
after Bedouin smugglers have brought him to Jordan's edge, Alsamari finds
himself surrounded by wolves, which, even in the dark, he can see are
"thin, bony almost, and dirty [with] madness in their eyes." He wounds
some with his Beretta and listens to the others eating their "injured—but
not yet dead—colleagues." When he flies from Muscat to Kuala Lumpur, like
Agent 007, he soon finds his seatmate—a pretty Asian girl returning from
hajj (pilgrimage) with her family—resting her head on his shoulder;
before long, hajj and family notwithstanding, they are kissing. But
the memoir is a slippery genre. As Tennessee Williams says, "Memory takes
a lot of poetic license."
History Upside Down
The
Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli
Aggression
by David Meir-Levi
New York: Encounter Books, 2007.
152 pp. $20
Reviewed by Asaf Romirowsky
Middle East
Forum
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2076/history-upside-down
Meir-Levi provides a valuable guide for those who wish to
understand one important aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict—the battle
over the conflict's historical narrative.
Supporters of Israel face the challenge of differentiating
between legitimate criticism of the Jewish state and a form of
anti-Semitism that uses criticism of Israel instead of Jews in order to
provide a fig leaf of deniability. To recognize genuine condemnation of
Israel, Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician,
suggests a test of what he calls the "Three Ds": demonization (such as
comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of Palestinian refugee camps to
Auschwitz), double standards (in which Jews and Israelis are held to
different and often impossible standards in comparison to other peoples
and nations), and delegitimization (which seeks to deny the existence of a
Jewish people, Judaism, or the State of Israel). Today, we increasingly
see a coordinated campaign to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state—its
right to exist, its Jewish character, and its right to self-defense.
Meir-Levi's book attempts to unearth the historical root
problems of defending Israel; he shows how doing so has become
increasingly difficult as a result of the intellectualization of the
debate. The author traces the origins of Palestinian revisionist history
and details how it undermines the pursuit of peace between Israelis and
Palestinians. He argues that until Palestinian culture comes to accept
Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, that demonization will
continue. For this to change, the historical facts must be taught and
debated free of the mendacity that is standard fare in the Muslim world
and in Europe.
Furthermore, what the author defines as "Palestinianism" is
the process of adoption of the Palestinian cause by liberal groups, such
as women's and gay rights groups, which use the Palestinian cause in the
same fashion as the Arab world uses it—as a media tool to galvanize their
own agenda. Added to the regular use of Holocaust rhetoric, which
Palestinians use to describe their treatment at the hands of the Israelis,
a popular narrative has been created in which Palestinians are now the
David and Israel the Goliath.
Iran and the Bomb
The
Abdication of International Responsibility
by Thérèse Delpech
New York: Columbia University
Press, 2007. 160 pp. $26.95
Reviewed by Ilan
Berman
American Foreign Policy Council
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2077/iran-and-the-bomb
Is Iran seeking nuclear weapons? For some, despite the
mounting evidence, this is still very much an open question. Not, however,
for Delpech, director of strategic affairs at the French Atomic Energy
Commission and senior research fellow at the Center for International
Studies in Paris. "[T]he quest for an atomic weapon is the only credible
explanation" for the pattern of delay, secrecy, and obfuscation exhibited
by Iran's ayatollahs over their nuclear effort, she writes.
Delpech should know. A veteran French arms controller, she
spent years attempting to find a negotiated solution to the Iranian
regime's nuclear ambitions. The fact that she and her counterparts could
not informs the two central theses of her book: One, that the Iranian
regime is completely committed to acquiring an offensive nuclear
capability, and two, that the international community is far less
dedicated to preventing Iran from reaching that goal than it should
be.
Delpech's second argument reinforces her first. In chapter
after chapter, she details the various attitudes of the main international
players—from Europe to China to Russia and the United States—in the
unfolding crisis with Iran. The picture that emerges is damning: While
each has adopted a different approach to the confrontation, none has been
up to the task, and all of them have illustrated to the Iranian regime
that the international community is not capable of acting with sufficient
unity to stop its nuclear program.
What can be done? Delpech concludes her book with a few
"lessons learned," most of which are by now painfully obvious—although no
less relevant for being so. "[A]fter having overestimated Iraqi
capabilities in 2002 and 2003, we run the risk of underestimating those of
Iran," she warns. Likewise relevant is her admonition that "[o]nce
negotiations begin, they are hard to stop, both because the negotiators
get hooked and because neither side wants to accept responsibility for
failure."
Iran and the Bomb's real value, however, is as a
historical chronicle. Delpech's work is a devastatingly accurate account
of the profoundly unserious way in which the international community has
approached the Iranian nuclear issue so far. It is a choice that the world
is likely to rue in the near future.
Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
by Shahram Chubin
Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 2006. 223 pp. $12.95, paper.
Reviewed by
Ali Alfoneh
University of Copenhagen, American Enterprise
Institute
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2078/irans-nuclear-ambitions
Classical Persian literature features numerous books of
andarz (counsel) or nasihat al-muluk (advice for kings), but
current Iranian leaders remain surprisingly immune to the counsel and
advice of learned men, even the advice of Chubin, a lifelong observer of
Iranian strategy. Tired of convincing the turbaned Iranian leaders of the
uselessness of nuclear weapons in deterring security threats facing the
Islamic Republic, Chubin has written a book of advice for those who wish
to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Chubin points out that Iran's nuclear ambitions reflect a
broader aspiration on the part of the Iranian leadership: to become an
Islamic superpower capable of dominating the greater Middle East and to
provide nuclear protection to its allies and proxies. This strategy
requires a reduction in the presence and influence of outside powers, such
as the United States, in the Persian Gulf region. There is a past parallel
to the current policy in the shah's opposition to the British naval
presence in the Persian Gulf in the 1970s.
But while imperial Iran was a pillar of regional stability
and a bulwark against Soviet infiltration, the Islamic Republic seeks
destabilization by means of "export of the revolution" and support for
international terrorism. Under Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
Tehran has expressed with renewed vigor its intention to annihilate
Israel. Chubin presents a detailed analysis of Iran's nuclear negotiation
strategy, leaving the distinct impression that for Iranian diplomats,
delay is the real goal, albeit adorned with the techniques of the carpet
dealers of the Grand Bazaar in Isfahan.
He discusses two main policy options for the United States:
engagement and a grand bargain, or military strikes in the short term and
regime change in the long term. Chubin is realistic enough to add that
Iran "will deal" when vulnerable: "Absent an external threat, it will
continue as in the past, opportunistic and reflexively hostile to the
United States and Israel." Such a bargain, he suggests, is only possible
if "the U.S. position in Iraq improves and with it its leverage." In this,
though, he may overestimate the patience of the White House. Chubin's
well-written and convincing book does not unveil the Iranian leadership's
grand strategy but makes an important contribution to our understanding of
the foreign and security policy of the Islamic Republic.
Islamic Liberation Theology
Resisting the Empire
by Hamid Dabashi
London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
304 pp. $35.95, paper.
Reviewed by Stephen
Schwartz
Center for Islamic Pluralism
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2079/islamic-liberation-theology
The title of this volume by Dabashi, the contentious
Columbia University professor of Iranian studies and comparative
literature, calls to mind an argument made during the 1980s by traditional
Catholics opposed to the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Since all the
monotheistic religions are founded on principles of liberation, why should
a new "liberation theology," as imagined by the Sandinistas and other
Marxists, be grafted onto any of them? Did not the defiance of pharaoh by
Moses and the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus—undertaken by personalities who
are both honored in Islam—along with Muhammad's battles against corrupt
rulers, constitute an original and sufficient theology of liberation?
The motives for the novelty of liberation theology among
Third-World Christians and in Dabashi's version of the Islamic intellect
are the same. For protagonists of this outlook, traditional religion has
proved wanting in addressing recent political questions, especially those
posed by colonialism. Thus Catholic clerics in South America believed
themselves impelled to armed action in guerrilla formations; thus Dabashi
prescribes a reordering of Islam that would more clearly identify the
faith of Muhammad with leftism. The parallel is boasted by the author,
who, defying historical continuity, does his best to make the two
variants, Christian and Muslim, inseparable.
Still, Dabashi seeks Islamic religious legitimacy for his
conception. He therefore associates it with the 150-year old Salafi
movement for modernization of the Muslim world. He writes that "the rise
of Islamic liberation theologies dates back to the early nineteenth
century" and the aftermath of "British, French and Russian colonial
adventures." But with his specialization in Iran, he devotes a good part
of this work to the ideology of the Islamic Revolution although offering
little more than a rehash of Iranian religio-political literature.
Overall, this volume is so clogged with fashionable but digressive
references to everything popular in the contemporary academy, from the
Frankfurt School to diatribes against George W. Bush, that it will be of
little consequence to serious observers of the Middle East.
As with the Christian liberation theologians, Dabashi
presents religion as a cover for a political extremism that courts being
an apologia for terrorism. He begins the book with an equation of the
atrocities of September 11, 2001, with what he calls "terrorizing U.S.
military campaigns" and, in the footnotes, rants against "dilettantes" who
link the views of the Egyptian radical Islamist Sayyid Qutb with "the
actions attributed to Osama bin Laden." Such rhetoric, and little more,
fills Dabashi's pages and, apparently, his mind. Such, it seems, is
Dabashi's distinctive da'wa (proselytism).
The Looming Tower
Al-Qaeda
and the Road to 9/11
by Lawrence Wright
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.
469 pp. $27.95 ($15.95, paper).
Reviewed by Daveed
Gartenstein-Ross
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2080/the-looming-tower
Wright's book may be the most important volume written about
terrorism since 9/11. Aside from his eloquent writing (a rarity in the
genre) and painstaking research, Wright, a staff writer for The New
Yorker, brings to life the personalities that have animated the
jihadist movement and helps the reader to understand how their ideas have
had such violent force.
Wright's narrative begins with the influential Muslim
Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who is introduced as a confused,
middle-aged man aboard a ship in 1948 bound for New York, struggling with
whether he should cling to his Islamic faith once he reaches America or
"indulge those temptations all around me." Having resolved to adhere
strictly to Islam, Qutb responded with disgust to the overt sexuality he
found in the United States, seeing even a church dance as lascivious.
Though his American travels radicalized Qutb, his most significant
experience was imprisonment under Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egyptian regime.
Qutb's prison writings would shape Muslim militants' thinking, and Wright
shows how the harsh prison conditions Qutb suffered at the hands of fellow
Muslims shaped his idea of takfir—leading him to conclude that his
"jailers had denied God by serving Nasser and his secular state."
Today Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are the most
recognizable faces of the jihad, and Wright offers a fascinating study of
their personal histories. As a teenager, Zawahiri once refused a car ride
from the Egyptian vice president; referring to Egypt's roundup of
Islamists in 1954, Zawahiri told his brother, "We don't want to get this
ride from a man who participated in the courts that killed Muslims." Bin
Laden was also pious early in life, though he tried "not to be too much of
a prig." Believing that musical instruments were haram, bin Laden
"organized some of his friends into an a cappella singing group," even
recording tunes about jihad.
Just as Wright brings Al-Qaeda's most influential leaders to
life, he also illuminates the U.S. officials charged with thwarting their
efforts—men such as the FBI's John O'Neill, a womanizer who "favored
Chivas Regal and water with a twist, along with a fine cigar," and the
CIA's driven, obsessive Michael Scheuer, whose response when the agency
expected him to retire was, "Stick it in your ass." Personal conflicts,
exemplified by the rivalry between O'Neill and Scheuer, would seriously
hamper U.S. efforts.
The book culminates with 9/11, which occurred on O'Neill's
second day as the World Trade Center's head of security. He was one of the
approximately 3,000 victims that day. After walking outside in the chaos
and calling both of his lovers, O'Neill was last seen alive entering the
tunnel to the south tower.
Though Wright makes no policy recommendations, he shows
that—contrary to the flawed assertions of some analysts—personalities
matter, and a small group of people can profoundly change the course of
history. He draws on a wealth of information derived from rare documents
and interviews with sources that range from the lowest ranks of the
jihadist movement to the highest echelons of U.S. government. His book
provides an invaluable tool for understanding Al-Qaeda's origins and
evolution.
Losing the Golden Hour
An
Insider's View of Iraq's Reconstruction
by James Stephenson
Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books,
2007. 174 pp. $23.95
Reviewed by Michael Rubin
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2081/losing-the-golden-hour
Insider accounts of Iraq's occupation are a dime a dozen;
some are useful, but most are forgettable. Losing the Golden Hour
by Stephenson, former director of the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), Iraq Mission, joins the latter.
Stephenson tells his story with little introspection or
self-criticism. He describes receiving the call to deploy to Iraq while in
a dentist's chair, his arrival at Baghdad International Airport, and the
wardrobe of Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer
but never transcends his bureaucratic perspective to address how or why
USAID failed its reconstruction mission. Venal bureaucrat shines through;
expert analyst is absent. Stephenson complains that Bremer did not
appreciate USAID's independence as an agency, and he brags of sending home
at the first opportunity "free ions" who helped administer USAID projects
but did not belong to the agency. Bremer's myriad faults have been amply
documented, but why should he not expect USAID to coordinate its actions
with mission goals? Would Stephenson prefer that U.S. agencies in Iraq
worked at cross-purposes?
Losing the Golden Hour focuses on inside baseball and
bureaucratic machinations but does not explain how USAID might better
perform its mission. Stephenson acknowledges that aid and development were
not his top priorities; instead his priorities were the security of his
palace headquarters in Baghdad's Green Zone and the safety of his regional
offices, each already in fortified zones. In Iraq, USAID experts drew
six-figure salaries and purchased multimillion-dollar armored vehicles so
that they might survey their regions of operation but, nevertheless,
refused to leave their compounds even during times of tranquility. While,
from this reviewer's personal observation, USAID officials watched videos
and ate food flown in from Kuwait, 8-year-olds dug wells just five miles
away in villages where residents said they had not seen a single U.S. aid
official. Perhaps the USAID cannot function in postwar environments. If
not, Stephenson might have thought to discuss whether Congress should have
funded USAID's Iraq program or instead transferred responsibility to
organizations more able and willing to function in an insecure
environment, such as the Army Corps of Engineers.
While Stephenson repeatedly refers in passing to USAID's
management of $2 billion, he does not mention the Commanders Emergency
Response Program (CERP) model. CERP allows local military officials to
allocate money to empower local Iraqis to fix sewers, repair generators,
and refurbish schools, many of which remained in disrepair despite USAID
reporting to the contrary. Here, Stephenson need not commit bureaucratic
suicide. Rather, he might have questioned whether both he and his USAID
team could have embedded with military units or adopted a CERP-like model
better suited to Baghdad.
There is no doubt that the United States squandered the
golden hour in Iraq. Had Stephenson discussed how the coalition might
better handle reconstruction or USAID might evolve to handle current
problems, Losing the Golden Hour would have been a valuable
contribution to the literature. Instead, Stephenson has penned a vanity
book—albeit one that every congressman should read, if only to understand
how USAID is not the organization to turn to when the stakes for U.S.
national interests are high.
Once Upon a Country
A
Palestinian Life
by Sari Nusseibeh with Anthony David
New York: Farrar,
Straus, Giroux, 2007. 542 pp. $27.50
Reviewed by Hillel
Frisch
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2082/once-upon-a-country
Is Nusseibeh a personality who justifies a 542-page book? As
president of a small Palestinian university in Jerusalem, hardly. Even
less so on account of the many factual mistakes that undermine the book's
credibility.
Such errors begin early when on page 34 we are told that
Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam was hanged when in fact he was killed in a
fire-fight. Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence from even the
most sympathetic Palestinian sources that his followers "had lost their
livelihoods when absentee landowners sold their land to a Zionist
organization." Quoting from his father's memoirs, a man who obviously was
not a professional historian, Nusseibeh tells us, "The only force to put
up any resistance was the Arab Liberation Army." On page 40, he claims the
Stern Gang was responsible for the loss of his father's leg and then, on
page 56, that his father was shot "from the Mount Scopus police camp." How
could anyone have known in the chaotic days of May 1948 that it was the
Stern Gang that fired the shots? He writes of the refugee march his family
was forced to take. Yet how far was Talbiyyah from east Jerusalem even in
the blistering heat, especially since his family, the author previously
reports, was in Beirut and then in Damascus?
The book is a piece of propaganda. It begins with the title,
which cleverly gives the impression that there was once a state of
Palestine. There was not.
The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East
by Olivier Roy
New York: Columbia University Press,
2008. 160 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Michael Rubin
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2083/the-politics-of-chaos-in-the-middle-east
Roy, research director at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique in Paris, is best known for his work on political
Islam. In The Politics of Chaos, he transitions from scholarly
research to policy advocacy and presents a sharp indictment of U.S.
foreign policy in general and neoconservatives specifically. "While it is
fitting to blame the arrogance and incompetence of the Bush
administration" for instability in the Middle East, Roy argues, "the ideas
that drove the American neoconservatives are still part of the current
climate, muddying the traditional left/right divide."
Some of Roy's criticisms are valid: The Bush administration
poorly described its adversary after 9-11, and postwar planning left much
to be desired. Roy understands traditional neoconservatism better than
most and explains the nuances of neoconservative views toward
democratization, civil society, and free markets. He assesses the failure
of U.S. democratization policy and suggests the problem underlying U.S.
policy has been choosing wrong interlocutors. "Negotiation is always
possible and, furthermore, it is desirable," he declares. There follows a
plea to engage political Islam and groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Roy's arguments are nuanced. He separates terrorists from
Islamists (who campaign for a political entity), from fundamentalists (who
seek Islamic law), and from "cultural Muslims" who may promote the veil,
for example, but also pave the way for the other two. He examines Arab
state and Iranian concerns and grievances and argues that the West should
"abandon" the global war on terror because it "leads to the wrong
perceptions and policies."
However, Roy's polemic falls flat. He is sloppy, has a
tendency to make straw-man arguments, and shows little understanding of
how U.S. policy develops. Rather than use primary source documents to
support his descriptions of U.S. policy and its practitioners'
motivations, Roy provides vanity references to his own work. On occasion,
he appears to embellish. He relates a November 2001 conversation with the
"Deputy Secretary of State for Defense" in which Paul Wolfowitz confided
that the "true objective" was "Iraq, of course!," comments both
inconsistent with Wolfowitz's style and fact.
To advance his belief that the campaign against Iraq was
preordained, he ignores the 2002 National Security Strategy that outlined
the concept of preemption, Saddam's bluff with regard to his weapons
capability, and the fact that presidents make decisions based on the
intelligence they have, which is sometimes flawed. Nor is Roy's dismissal
of Saddam's relationship with radical Islam justified. The official study
of documents seized from Iraq demonstrates cooperation between Saddam's
regime and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's number two.[1]
Roy also gets wrong the discussions surrounding the decision
to occupy Iraq. In contrast to his narrative, neoconservatives sought to
transfer sovereignty and authority immediately to a new Iraqi council;
they opposed occupation of Iraq until the president made the decision.
Exaggeration undercuts his analysis in other ways. He
criticizes neoconservative "unconditional" support for Israel, an argument
that may play well in Europe. Neoconservatives certainly argue that the
United States should not force allies to make concessions to terrorism,
but the same neoconservatives also condemned Israel for its earlier
military dealings with China. This suggests that Israel is not the primary
issue but rather U.S. national security.
Rather than provide a basis upon which U.S. policymakers
might better approach the Middle East, as some of the book's endorsers
have suggested, what Roy produces is an impassioned plea for surrender,
and through sloppy methodology and logical somersaults, he provides yet
more evidence of just how poor a resource so many professors are when it
comes to formulating foreign and national security policies.
[1] Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured
Iraqi Documents, Vol. 1 (Redacted) (Alexandria, Va.: Institute for
Defense Analyses, Nov. 2007), p. 42.
Radical Islam Rising
Muslim
Extremism in the West
by Quintan Wiktorowicz
Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, 2005. 245 pp. $82.50 ($28.95,
paper).
Reviewed by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
Foundation
for Defense of Democracies
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2084/radical-islam-rising
The question of why extremist groups continue to be able to
attract followers perpetually vexes observers. The decision to join a
radical Islamic group seems irrational: Membership frequently entails
social stigmatization, emotional separation from one's family,
professional risks, and police harassment. Yet recruiting efforts
nevertheless draw acolytes. Wiktorowicz, an assistant professor of
international studies at Rhodes College, Tennessee, makes an impressive
contribution to our understanding of this question in his study of the
Al-Muhajiroun extremist group.
Al-Muhajiroun was founded in Britain in 1996 by Syrian-born
cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed as an offshoot of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) after
Mohammed clashed with HT leaders over his flamboyant public statements.
Al-Muhajiroun, like HT, was dedicated to the establishment of the
caliphate but engaged more openly in activism and was more stridently
supportive of violence. It officially disbanded on October 13, 2004.
Wiktorowicz was given full access to Al-Muhajiroun activists
for his study, and he immersed himself in the movement's ideology and
events. The most fascinating aspect of Wiktorowicz's findings is his
elucidation of the group's technique for drawing people into the movement.
Since a "necessary precondition" for embracing Al-Muhajiroun's ideology is
that "individuals are willing to listen to … its alternative views," the
group focused on creating "cognitive openings" that could shake
individuals' previous beliefs. Mohammed explains that this is best
accomplished by evaluating an individual's most pressing concerns. He
offers an imagined conversation with someone from Bangladesh that ranges
from terrorism in Bangladesh to the country's rising food prices, shortage
of doctors, and clogged courts. To Mohammed, this demonstrates "a problem
with management as a whole"—which in turn highlights the need for his
utopian religious ideology.
After the initial opening, many people decided to continue
learning about Islam through Al-Muhajiroun in response to Mohammed's force
of personality and perceived religious credibility. His lectures are
replete with evidence from the Qur'an and Sunna (the Prophet's practices
and example); he is conversant with all four madhhabs (Islamic
schools of legal thought), and he is interactive—inviting questions from
his audience and providing comprehensive answers. In part, these
perceptions of Mohammed reflect the failures of Britain's moderate Muslim
establishment. Al-Muhajiroun spoke to issues that deeply affected most
British Muslims while local imams tended to avoid potentially
controversial political questions and often failed to grapple with issues
of import to mosque-goers.
Wiktorowicz's study thus makes several important
contributions. In addition to illuminating certain psychological aspects
of the radicalization process and tactics used by extremist groups, it
pinpoints missed opportunities by British moderates. This book is a
must-read for anybody interested in radicalization in the West and how to
counter it.
The Secret of Coexistence
Jews and Arabs in Haifa during the British Mandate
in Palestine, 1920-1948
Edited by Daphna Sharfman, Eli Nachmias, and Johnny
Mansour. Charleston, S.C.: BookSurge, 2007. 260 pp. $15.99
Reviewed
by Yoav Gelber
University of Haifa
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2085/the-secret-of-coexistence
The Secret of Coexistence is a timely addition to the
growing literature (e.g. Tamir Goren's recent book on Jewish-Arab
municipal cooperation in the city[1]) about mandatory Haifa, but it also
illustrates a nostalgic trend for pre-conflict Palestine when Jews and
Arabs are thought to have lived peacefully with each other under the
umbrella of the British Mandate. The book offers an interesting collage of
tangent points in which Jews and Arabs met and related to each other. For
several reasons, Haifa was—and still is—the symbol of this relatively
peaceful coexistence. Municipal cooperation, mixed labor in government
plants and offices, attempts at organizing joint trade unions, a few joint
business enterprises, and even a mixed underworld signified this idyllic
life.
But peaceful coexistence was illusory. Like every collage,
this one is selective. It blurs the mainstream and enhances what was
marginal. While relations between Jews and Arabs in Haifa might have been
better than in other mixed cities, Haifa was also a center of anti-Jewish
agitation. It was the seat of Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, an anti-Jewish,
anti-British terrorist, and his disciples, a base of terrorist activity in
1931-33 and during the revolt of 1936-39, and the headquarters of the
pan-Arab Istiqlal party and the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.
Representing it as an innocent and cosmopolitan Mediterranean town is not
totally untrue or inaccurate but remains misleading. The end of this
apparent "golden age" in 1948 is the best proof of how precarious it had
been from the beginning.
Sharfman writes a vivid description of daily life in
Mandatory Haifa, encompassing every conceivable field from tourism to the
building of roads, schooling, commerce, and industry. Her writing evokes a
wistfulness also evident in her citation of testimony from Ruth Zuker—an
immigrant from Germany, who was at that time a daring agent of the Shay
(the Jewish intelligence service)—describing the cordial relations between
Jews and Arabs.
During the mandate years, Haifa became the center of
Palestine's heavy industry and Nachmias deals with economic issues. He
shows that the image of Red Haifa did not reflect reality for the town
absorbed a considerable bourgeois immigration in the 1920s and 1930s. He
also demonstrates that the Jewish and Arab economies developed separately
with few points in common; one of them was the attempt to form an Arab
workers' union affiliated to the Histadrut.
Mansour's article brings plenty of valuable data on the
growth of Arab Haifa and its transformation from a traditional to a modern
community—an internal process violently interrupted in 1948.
[1] Shituf be-Tzel Imut (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan
University Press, 2008).
Swimming Up the Tigris
by Barbara Nimri Aziz
Gainesville: University of
Florida Press, 2007. 314 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Michael
Rubin
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2086/swimming-up-the-tigris
Aziz, a freelance reporter and host of an Arab-interest
radio show in New York, first traveled to Iraq in 1989 before Saddam
Hussein's "blunder" in Kuwait. She returned several times during the 1990s
to document suffering under "illegal" U.N. sanctions and after the 2003
Iraq war. What has evolved, in Aziz's words, is a book as much about Iraq
as about the United States. "Washington's 2003 military assault and
occupation," Aziz tells us, "is indisputably part of the United States'
wider imperial design." Much political polemic and conspiracy permeate
Swimming Up the Tigris, as Aziz ruminates on the "weapons [of mass
destruction] hoax and other fabrications."
Aziz organizes her book thematically: Vignettes supporting
her arguments follow short political essays about life in Iraq, the
medical system, and children. Aziz depicts Iraq as an enlightened society
before sanctions and war and as a helpless victim afterwards. Iraq's once
impressive medical system collapsed in the 1980s not because of Saddam's
decision to launch a suicidal war but because Washington sought a policy
of dual containment that left Iraqis isolated. She blames sanctions for
Saddam's 12-year moratorium on hospital construction but omits not only
that sanctions did not apply to medical goods but also that Saddam spent
billions during the same period building gilded palaces. Sometimes, she
simply lies: The coalition did not in 1991 bomb Iraqi food stores. News
media and even most antiwar activists abandoned prewar claims that 500,000
children died because of sanctions when, upon liberation, it became clear
that this too was false. Throughout her narrative, Saddam is but a bit
player. Aziz refuses to acknowledge the impact of his decisions on Iraq's
downfall, for to do so might undercut her world-view.
Few Iraqis would recognize Aziz's description of their
homeland. "Until the U.S. occupation in 2003," she writes, "little
priority was given to religious affiliation." But why then did the Iraqi
government provide electricity to Sunni neighborhoods twenty-four hours a
day and just hours per day to Shi'i areas? If Kurds were equal citizens,
was it simply coincidence that the Iraqi government expelled so many from
their homes in order to resettle Sunni Arabs? For Aziz, there was no
Halabja chemical weapons attack and no mass graves throughout southern
Iraq. Indeed, it is questionable whether she ever bothered to explore
Iraqi Kurdistan or the southern marshes.
Aziz has proven herself the Iraq equivalent of David Irving
on the Holocaust. That the University Press of Florida legitimized such
venom and dishonesty, though, is a black mark impossible to erase.
Teaching Islam
Textbooks
and Religion in the Middle East
Edited by Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Gregory Starrett.
Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. 267 pp.
$55.
Reviewed by Gilbert T. Sewall
American Textbook
Council
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2087/teaching-islam
Teaching Islam is an impressive review of religious
studies, history, and civics books used in schools in Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Oman, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian territories, Turkey,
and Iran. The multi-authored volume contains important new reporting on
the content of textbooks in the Middle East.
The book's stated purpose is to respond to and disqualify
"concerns that the content and character of official Middle Eastern
programs are a danger both to local children and to international peace
and security." Unfortunately, the editors—Doumato, a visiting scholar at
Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, and
Starrett, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North
Carolina—fail to address findings about Saudi Arabian textbooks raised in
the 2005 report from Freedom House, Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology
Invade American Mosques.
The professors of anthropology, political science, and
Middle Eastern Studies who have contributed to the volume do not make it
clear what translations and instructional materials they have examined,
and it is sometimes unclear whether they are working from original texts
or relying on previous studies.
The editors stress significant differences among the books.
As one might expect, textbooks in Turkey, Kuwait, and Oman present a
different view of the world than those of Syria and Iran. The textbooks
generally emphasize obedience, we learn, and they conceive of jihad as
defense against Islam's enemies. A master narrative of victimization is
pervasive. Saudi Arabia "stands alone" in its strict belligerence, Doumato
and Starrett assure us, and textbooks used in Islamic countries generally
do not incite to violence.
Teaching Islam documents worrisome findings and then
blithely dismisses them. Chapter titles such as "Iran: A Shiite Curriculum
to Serve the Islamic State," might give pause, as might overt anti-Jewish
instruction found in Saudi, Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian texts. But
Teaching Islam exudes ecumenicism. The volume's foregone purpose
seems to be to minimize any xenophobic and anti-liberal features of Islam
apparent in social studies textbooks. Coeditor Starrett finds similar
themes of good citizenship between what Arab children read in Islamic
textbooks and what his son reads in the Weekly Reader. Yes,
perhaps, but not exactly. Unlike the editors, this reviewer is alarmed by
the book's findings and equally alarmed that the authors do not reach the
same conclusion.
Terror in Black September
The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970
Hijackings
by David Raab
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 265
pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Barry Rosen
Borough of Manhattan
Community College
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2088/terror-in-black-september
Terror in Black September recounts the personal
history of a then-17-year-old Jewish-American, who faced the danger and
pain of a three-week hostage drama in 1970 when the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) attempted to hijack four airliners and
succeeded in force-landing three of them in the Jordanian desert with
their 310 international passengers.
Raab's Terror in Black September, which uses the
author's diary and relies heavily on American, Israeli, and British
archives to provide the larger strategic consequences, is potentially a
page-turner but turns out to be a surprisingly unexciting recount, devoid
of emotion.
On September 6, 1970, the PFLP hijacked TWA's 707, which was
flying from Frankfurt to New York, after Raab and most of his family had
spent a summer in Israel. The young man from Trenton, New Jersey, who is
now a health care executive, became an unwilling eyewitness to a badly
conceived terrorist attempt to extort the release of Palestinians held in
Israeli custody in exchange for international hostages.
What is clear from Raab's book is that the British, German,
and Swiss governments were very willing to deal American Jews for
Palestinians terrorists. It is evident that both Israeli and American
leaders, especially President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, were highly
engaged in the crisis and took a hard line against PFLP demands.
In the end, after the PFLP dispersed the hostages and blew
up the airliners, "catapulting metal fragments in all directions," the
European powers began folding like a house of cards, always attempting to
twist the arms of the Israelis to give in.
Much of what occurred, from separating the hostages to
moving them from one dreary location to another, took place while King
Hussein of Jordan built up the courage to face off against Yasser Arafat
and his Palestinian state-within-a-state. When the king had had enough,
his forces successfully routed a Palestinian insurrection and stopped
Syrian forces cold in northern Jordan.
Raab uses his sources to reveal that Hussein was not only
looking for U.S. military intervention but also wanted the Israelis to
assist, which they did, by flying reconnaissance for the Jordanians,
providing the king with much needed intelligence about the Syrian
incursion.
Raab provides lessons to be learned from those tumultuous
weeks thirty-seven years ago. He writes, "The hijackings made Hussein
realize that terrorism is a cancer that you can't negotiate with." He
adds, "In an ironic twist, Israel was the prime beneficiary of the whole
episode. Its hostage negotiating strategy was vindicated."
War and Decision
by Douglas J. Feith
New York: Harper, 2008. 674 pp.
$27.95
Reviewed by Michael Rubin
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2089/war-and-decision
Former U.S. officials, military officers, and journalists
have penned dozens of books about the decision to oust Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein and its aftermath. Feith, undersecretary of defense for
policy between 2001 and 2005, has written one of the better accounts.
Feith makes little attempt to present a broad history of prewar
decision-making, instead focusing only on those aspects in which he played
a substantial role. A comparison of his account with those of many
journalists and pundits—George Packer, Tom Ricks, Peter Galbraith, and
Larry Diamond, for example—shows just how shallow previous works have
been. Feith sheds light on key debates about which writers who have
portrayed themselves as central figures were unaware, such as the detailed
debate about whether U.S. forces should engage in a prolonged occupation
of Iraq. Feith had argued against occupation but was outmaneuvered by
Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, his subordinate Zalmay
Khalilzad, and State Department official Ryan Crocker.
Feith uses his account to correct the
record—convincingly—about the false conventional wisdom that permeates
many journalistic accounts of Iraq war planning and his tenure. He refutes
allegations that the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans—to which this
reviewer was assigned as a Council for Foreign Relations international
affairs fellow—was involved in collecting intelligence when it was, in
reality, a policy shop, the corollary to the State Department's Office of
North Gulf Affairs. Feith also counters the notion that the Pentagon had
ignored the State Department's Future of Iraq Project reports, which,
despite their characterization in some press accounts, did not constitute
postwar plans. And he dismisses as unfounded reports that he or anyone in
the Pentagon simply sought to anoint Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad
Chalabi as Iraq's leader after Saddam's fall.
War and Decision is not perfect, however. Feith
emerged from the Pentagon as perhaps its most vilified figure with both
civilian and military officials singling out Feith for criticism. If Feith
was right and his detractors often wrong, why did Feith become the
scapegoat? Here, the book lacks introspection. Why did so many people
consider Feith arrogant? Why did the uniformed military have a far poorer
opinion of Feith than any other civilian official except, perhaps,
Rumsfeld? Such questions are not merely academic because the passionate,
if not irrational, hatred directed at Feith may very well have colored
policy debates. Did diplomats and military officials oppose Feith's ideas
on their merits, or were they prepared to undermine any proposal advanced
by Feith simply to counter him? An old Washington adage goes that
"Personnel are policy." There is no better example than Feith. If War
and Decision is a study of leadership, his lack of introspection
undermines it—or reflects the difficulty of Feith's tenure.
Nevertheless, Feith's study is much needed. Prior to his
tome's publication, descriptions of Iraq war planning were like the
proverbial blind men's description of the elephant. Many officials
depicted the trunk or the tail. Journalists were myopic; they relied on
leaks by officials who themselves had little insight. With War and
Decision, Feith goes a long way to describing the elephant's body. His
may not be the final account of the Iraq war, but it will certainly
provide the basis for future historians.
Will Israel Survive?
by Mitchell G. Bard
New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007. 236 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Moshe
Dann
Jerusalem
Middle East
Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2090/will-israel-survive
Bard, an articulate advocate for Israel, offers a thoughtful
and spirited presentation of the many difficulties confronting the Jewish
state, such as terrorism, relations with the Arab world, the threat from
Iran, media bias, the U.N., and scientific and technological achievements.
In answer to his provocative title, Bard concludes that with U.S. support,
Israel will indeed survive.
Bard's political agenda, however—that Israel cannot retain
("occupy") the West Bank and remain a democratic and Jewish state—leads to
a single goal: a Palestinian state, regardless of its orientation. To
defend that position, he argues in favor of unilateral Israeli withdrawal.
"Israel's withdrawal [from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon] was a wise
strategic position that saved lives and ameliorated the demographic
problem," he writes. Given the results, however, he adds that Israel will
not make the same mistake a third time. But that is precisely what he
proposes.
Acknowledging that Israel faces a variety of environmental
problems (the scarcity of water being the most acute) that would destroy
Israel's delicate ecological balance if millions of Arabs flood the West
Bank, Bard turns inside-out to conclude that the dire warnings are
inaccurate, and there is no danger. This he concludes because he needs to
sustain the idea of a Palestinian state above anything else.
The notion of occupation haunts Bard, frightening him from
dealing with the implications of realities that he himself acknowledges.
This is what makes the book such a difficult read: He understands and yet
refuses to accept any alternatives. This mind-set is evident in his
chapter on "the demographic bomb" in which Bard presents the position of
Arnon Sofer and Sergio DellaPergola that Arab growth rates are a
demographic threat to Israel, ignoring its refutation by Bennett
Zimmerman, et al.[1]
Virtually every military and strategic expert in Israel has
rejected Bard's goal of unilateral withdrawal, but one would never know
this from his book. "Finish the fence and then evacuate all Israelis
behind it," he advises. Admitting that the barrier will not stop rockets,
Bard offers, "Israel has more powerful and accurate weapons." With Sderot
under daily attack and with the occupation of southern Lebanon by
Hezbollah, he acknowledges that although this solution is "another leftist
delusion," Israel has no choice but to retreat.
Unable to recognize the right of Jews to live in the West
Bank, he vilifies religious settlers as "the greatest threat to civil
society." Compared to rampant government corruption, incompetence,
animosity between religious and secular groups, and governmental
irresponsibility, one wonders about Bard's perspective.
Linking Israel's survival to a Palestinian terrorist state
is like trying to swim with cement shoes.
[1] Bennett Zimmerman, "Arab
Population in the West Bank and Gaza: The Million Person Gap,"
testimony before the Subcommittee on Middle East and Central Asia, U.S.
House International Relations Committee, Mar 8, 2006. | 
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