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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2010


words: “His Majesty’s Govern- ment view with favour the estab- lishment in Palestine of a nation- al home for the Jewish people.” Before that date, Zionism was a marginal movement that divided Jews and was dismissed by gen- tiles. After the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish national project en- joyed the support of the leading imperial power of the age. Though he was not to know it at the time, the British foreign sec- retary had laid the foundations for the state of Israel and a conflict between Arabs and Zionists that, nearly a century later, remains unresolved. British historian


Jonathan Schneer has produced a remark- able book on this complex and divisive subject. His “Balfour Declaration” is engag- ingly written, adding to our knowledge of this frequently told story without ever taking sides. The novelty of the book lies in the way Schneer tells the story. He sets the Zi- onist struggle for rec- ognition in the context of Britain’s conflicting promises to Arabs, Jews and its European allies as part of its desperate bid to defeat Germany in World War I. Britain supported these movements more for their utility to its war effort than out of conviction. The Arab movement was first


to secure British support. When the Ottomans entered the war on Germany’s side in November 1914, the Germans pressed the Ottoman sultan to declare a jihad — a religious war — against the British and French. Germany hoped by this means to provoke internal uprisings in India and


Book World O


HISTORY REVIEW BY EUGENE ROGAN


The words that sparked wars


n Nov. 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Ar- thur James Balfour transformed the future of the Middle East in 18


THE BALFOUR DECLARATION The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict


By Jonathan Schneer


Random House 432 pp. $30


North Africa that would weaken Britain and France and hasten their defeat. The Ottoman call for jihad raised genuine concern in British government circles, and they sought an influential Mus- lim ally to counter this threat. Sharif Hussein of Mecca en- joyed wide respect as a descend- ant of the prophet Muhammad and as the leading religious fig- ure in Islam’s holiest city. Shortly after the Ottoman call for jihad, the British government entered into correspondence with the sharif to encourage him to lead an Arab revolt against the Otto- mans. The Arab statesman drove a hard bargain and se- cured from Britain promises of arms, grain and gold to sus- tain a revolt, and rec- ognition of a vast Arab kingdom under his rule in the event his movement suc- ceeded. In June 1916, the sharif declared his own jihad, this one against the Otto- mans, and activated a strategic alliance with the British. The Zionists had a much harder time en- gaging the interest of British officials at first. As late as 1913, the chief diplomat of the World Zionist Or-


ganization, Nahum Sokolow, could get a hearing at no higher a level than the private secretaries of Foreign Office officials — and with little effect. As one Foreign Office mandarin advised his aide after a meeting with Sokolow, “We had better not intervene to support the Zionist movement.” In addition, Zionism divided British Jews. The Jewish elite of wealthy businessmen and politi- cians known as the Cousinhood advocated assimilation into main- stream society as the solution to anti-Semitism. They rejected the Zionist assertion of a distinct Jew- ish national identity, since they be-


BETTMAN/CORBIS Schoolchildren bearing Zionist banners welcome Lord Balfour to the dedication of Jewish University on March 26, 1925.


lieved it encouraged the view that Jews were always strangers in their land of birth. “No wonder that all anti-Semites are enthusi- astic Zionists,” mused Claude Montefiore, a leading member of the Cousinhood. Chaim Weizmann proved es- sential to securing support for Zi- onism among powerful members of the Cousinhood and leading British politicians. Born in Russia in 1874, he fled czarist anti-Semi- tism to study chemistry in Ger- many and Switzerland, and moved to England to take a post at the University of Manchester in 1904. He became a British sub- ject in 1910.


Schneer brilliantly captures


Weizmann’s rise, in which he used social contacts with the influential Rothschild family and discussions with liberal newspaper editor C.P. Scott to secure meetings with Bal- four in December 1914 and Min- ister of Munitions David Lloyd George in January 1915. Lloyd George and Balfour be-


lieved their support for Zionism would advance British war aims. They thought American Jews would encourage their govern- ment to enter the war, and Russian Jews would throw their weight be- hind the czar’s efforts to ensure


Germany’s defeat and the creation of a Jewish national home under British sponsorship. Moreover, they believed that support for Jew- ish nationalism might advance Britain’s territorial ambitions in Palestine. Having secretly agreed with France in 1916 to place Pales- tine under an international admin- istration, Balfour saw an opportu- nity to use Zionism to gain interna- tional support to place the Holy Land under British rule instead. Yet even as they obtained Brit- ish support for their cause, the Zi- onists sought accommodation with the Arabs. Given the care with which Schneer develops the parallel tracks of Zionist and Ar- abist politics, it is surprising that he fails to mention the direct ne- gotiations conducted between the two sides toward the end of the war. The tireless Weizmann trav- eled from Europe to meet Amir Faisal, commander of the Arab re- volt, in Transjordan in June 1918, and they later signed a formal agreement of mutual support be- tween a future “Arab State” and a Jewish “Palestine.” Yet as both Arabs and Jews were to learn, Britain’s support was not to be trusted. With the British army caught in a murderous stalemate on the Western Front, Lloyd


George, now the prime minister, pursued a separate peace with the Turks that would have left the Arab world under nominal Otto- man rule. Indeed, Schneer docu- ments no fewer than five different initiatives to secure an Anglo- Ottoman peace, any one of which would have denied both the Arab- ists and the Zionists their objec- tives. Previous authors have argued


that, in pursuit of its wartime in- terest, Britain had promised Pal- estine to three parties — Arabs, Jews and international overseers.


Schneer has convincingly demon- strated that, had the British man- aged to detach the Ottomans from Germany, the British would have been just as happy leaving the country to the Turks. Clear and balanced, this is the most original exposition of the Balfour Declaration to date.


bookworld@washpost.com


Eugene Rogan teaches the modern history of the Middle East at the


University of Oxford and is the author of “The Arabs: A History.”


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From


Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show


HISTORY REVIEW BY CHARLES KAISER Postwar America: The highlight reel T


he story of the United States since 1945 offers a historian the oppor- tunity to mine a rich narrative of steady


change and dramatic transforma- tion. With the end of World War II now 65 years behind us — and the 1960s at least 40 years old — this ought to be a good time to offer new information and fresh in- sights about the political, social and cultural events that reinvented the country in the postwar period. “American Dreams” appropri-


ately dates the beginning of the modern era to the first explosion of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert in July 1945. Here, H.W. Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas, does a good job of making the familiar seem fresh: “Many of the observ- ers were struck by the silence that surrounded the detonation. The astonishing display of light and color took place without a sound- track — until the sonic waves reached the observation posts many seconds after the light waves.” As J. Robert Oppenhei- mer, the project’s director, wrote: “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture . . . ‘Now I am be- come death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or the other.” Oppenheimer’s remark is fa- mous, of course, and the author’s one consistent success in this vol- ume is to recall most of the famous quotations associated with most of the important events of these sev- en decades. Thus, we are reminded of everything from Joseph Welch’s chastisement of Sen. Joe McCarthy (“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”) to President Dwight Eisenhower’s sadly unheeded warning at the end of his adminis- tration (“The very structure of our society [is involved]. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex.”) and Norman Mailer’s early assessment


of John F. Kennedy in Esquire (“His personal quality had a subtle, not quite describable intensity.”). But when it comes to using the past to understand the present, Brands has hardly anything to say. For instance, he quotes Walter Lippmann’s warnings about the danger of the United States over- extending itself in the 1950s: Our clients “will act for their reasons, and on their own judgment, pre- senting us with accomplished facts which we did not intend, and with cri- ses for which we are unready. We shall have either to disown our puppets . . . or must support them at an incalculable cost on an unintended, un- foreseen and perhaps undesirable issue.” But the author never connects that wise, 60-year-old warning to our current situa- tion in Afghanistan. Instead of broad themes about the di- rection of American history, Brands offers a series of mini-por- traits of major events, without finding a way to tie any of them together. And when he does try to make a larger point, he often stumbles. For example, he writes that


Vietnam “seared itself on the American mind, replacing the Munich syndrome with a Viet- nam syndrome. The former had said that when in doubt, America must fight. The latter asserted that when in doubt, America mustn’t.” That abbreviated sum- mary is fine as far it goes. But then Brands adds this meaning- less sentence: “Neither did much to diminish the doubt, the source of all the trouble.” It is obvious to this reviewer


that the misuse of the Munich precedent led the United States


AMERICAN DREAMS


The United States Since 1945 By H. W. Brands Penguin Press 420 pp. $32.95


into a costly misadventure in Viet- nam, while the “Vietnam syn- drome” imposed a welcome re- straint on American intervention- ism — until the neocon movement insisted on “getting beyond it” so that we could once again waste billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives (ours and our enemies’) in endless interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Brands always avoids those broader judgments. Sometimes his cap- sule descriptions of fa- mous events omit im- portant facts and long- revealed ironies. For example, he notes that Lyndon Johnson got rid of Defense Secre- tary Robert McNa- mara when his enthu- siasm for the Vietnam War had disappeared. Then the author adds: “But McNamara’s suc- cessor was no more upbeat. Clark Clifford told Johnson . . . that Vietnam had become a ‘sinkhole.’ ” All of that is true, but it omits the main reason Clifford’s assessment as the new secretary of defense


carried so much weight: It was a complete reversal of what his posi- tion on the war had been when Johnson chose him to be McNa- mara’s successor just a few weeks earlier.


Similarly, Brands writes that


Chicago Mayor Richard Daley “deemed the anti-war protesters the scum of the earth” when they descended on his city during the Democratic National Convention of 1968 — but he leaves out the long-known irony that Daley himself hated the Vietnam War because the son of a close friend had been one of its casualties. In the same section, Brands re-


ports that demonstrators provoked the Chicago police with taunts of


“Pigs, pigs, fascist pigs,” but he nev- er mentions that Freedom of Infor- mation suits filed by CBS News led the network to conclude 10 years later that as many as one out of six of those demonstrators was actu- ally a government agent. Brands does a passable job of summarizing the facts behind major political events, but when it comes to social and cultural change, he never has anything in- teresting to say. The author avoids controversy so assiduously that his book sometimes reads as if its main purpose were to win acceptance by the Texas Board of Education, which decides what facts are appropriate for high school history books. The journalist Molly Ivins once wrote, “It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liber- ties established in our Constitu- tion to everyone in America.” The women’s movement and the civil rights movement both get stan- dard treatment in Brands’s book, but the gay rights movement is barely mentioned. Yet the trans- formed status of women, African Americans and gay people during the past seven decades, produced by the struggle Ivins described, is the most important story of change in the United States in the 20th century. No one would get any hint of


that narrative from this volume. At the end of 385 pages, all Brands has to tell us is this: “Americans had dreamed since our national birth, and in the twenty-first century we were dreaming still.” Historical judgments don’t get


any more banal than that. bookworld@washpost.com


Charles Kaiser is the author of “1968 in America” and “The Gay Metropolis.” He writes the Full Court Press blog for the Sidney Hillman Foundation.


The only comprehensive history of our planet so good, trees volunteered to be made into it.


The Earth?


4.6 billion years old. The Book? 256 pages.


You do the math. On sale Tuesday!


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Available in hardcover, as an audiobook, and as an eBook


www.hachettebookgroup.com Hachette Book Group Photo: Andrew Eccles


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