Mythologies Without End

Starred review from November 1, 2020
Evenhanded summary of Arab-Israeli relations since the beginning of the Zionist settlements 100 years ago. "For the past fifty years," writes Slater, a retired political science professor, "I have been studying, teaching, and writing about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and have many close connections in that country." In this highly valuable contribution to the subject, the author combs secondary sources--he does not read Hebrew but notes that most studies are translated immediately into English--offering a "work of synthesis and interpretation of the existing literature." Slater is especially influenced by the so-called new historians such as Ilan Papp�, Benny Morris, and Avi Shlaim, and he essentially provides a systematic refutation of Abba Eban's famously snide 1973 comment: "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." As Slater points out, along with Israeli aggression in the region, the U.S. has become a willing and noncritical ally. The author first debunks the myths that both Israel and the U.S. have long held regarding the founding of Israel--e.g., the "underdog" argument, the religious argument, and "Arab intransigence" argument, among others. Writing about the nature of Zionism, he shows that, "despite the Israeli mythology, the evidence is irrefutable that [David] Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders were not willing to compromise over Palestine and therefore 'accepted' the 1947 UN partition plan only as a temporary tactic to gain time until Israel was strong enough to take over all of Palestine." Moving meticulously through the many relevant conflicts--1948, 1956, 1967, the Cold War, and wars with Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt--to the present, the author argues convincingly that Israeli officials have often worked from a policy of deliberate provocation. Slater concludes with the Trump plan, which makes a two-state solution nearly impossible. A cleareyed study that sounds a serious alarm for the future of Israel--a must for any library's collection on the conflict.

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