Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

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Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict is a book by Norman G. Finkelstein. It is a study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the author of The Holocaust Industry. Finkelstein examines and scrutinizes popular historical versions of the conflict by Joan Peters, Benny Morris and Anita Shapira. The 2003 revised edition offers an additional appendix devoted to criticism of Michael Oren's 2002 bestseller Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

Publishing history of Image and Reality:

Content (based on 2003 edition):

Contents

[edit] Introduction to the Second Edition

(p. xxvi): Finkelstein writes: "With assistance from European diplomats, militants that Hamas was on the verge of accepting a cease-fire in July 2002 when Sharon deliberately ordered dropping of a one-ton bomb that killed a Hamas leader and sixteen others (including eleven children), which saw the violence massively escalate."

[edit] Introduction

[edit] PART I Theory and History

[edit] Zionist Orientations The Theory and Practice of Jewish Nationalism

Finkelstein writes: In Zionism and the Arabs, 1882-1948: a study of Ideology, Yosef Gorny has provided the most authoritative study on the crucial period when the Zionist movement made its first contacts with, struggled against and ultimately prevailed over Palestine's indigenous population. As its subtitle indicates, the focus is Zionist ideology. Gorny reveals in fascinating detail both the variousness of possibilities in the Zionist idea and its intransigent kernel that precludes any modus vivendi with the Palestinian Arabs."

[edit] Defining the Zionist Enterprise

[edit] Justifying the Zionist Enterprise

[edit] Implementing the Zionist Enterprise

[edit] A Land Without a People Joan Peter's "Wilderness'Image

See: Norman Finkelstein on From Time Immemorial (Same article printed in Blaming the Victims, as Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial )

[edit] "Born of War, Not by Design" Benny Morris's `Happy Median'Image

A critical study of Benny Morris´s: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 and 1948 and After; Israel and the Palestinians.

[edit] Settlement, Not Conquest Anita Shapira's ´Benign Intentions'Image

Finkelstein focus on Anita Shapira´s: Land and Power: the Zionist resort to force, 1881-1948, which he says effectively summarizes the current state of mainstream Zionist scholarship.

[edit] The Virgin Land or Wilderness´ Myth

[edit] The Myth of ´but sex´

[edit] The Myth of ´Purity of Arms´

[edit] PART II War and Peace

[edit] To Live or to Perish. Abba Eban "Reconstructs" the June 1967 War

[edit] Diplomacy

Finkelstein: "Eban's account effaces Israel's provocations of Nasser and its responsibility for the failed diplomacy."

(p. 129-130): The then United State Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote in his autobiography about the 1967 war:

"We were shocked...and angry as hell, when the Israelis launched the surprise offensive. They attacked on a Monday, knowing that on Wednesday the Egyptian vice president would arrive in Washington to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran. We might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the strait, but it was a real possibility." (In Dean Rusk: As I saw it, New York 1990, pp. 386-387)

Rusk's speculations that Egypt may have been amenable to compromise is sustained by the most improbable source. Middle East Record is a quasi-official Israeli publications assembled by the Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies in Tel Aviv. In volume 3, a comprehensive synthesis of the June war, the editors observe that `a number of facts seem to indicate Abdel Nasser's belief in the possibility of terminating ... the conflict through diplomacy´. Specifically, they point to "the navigation through the Straits of Tiran be taken to the international Court of Justice´; and `his vagueness´ at the end of May `on the exact definition of the materials that were not to be permitted through the Straits to Israel`. (Ref.: Dishon, MER, 1967, p.199. Questioned at a news conference on 28 May about what was meant by strategic materials, Nasser carefully skirted the issue; cf. Jabber, pp.549f.)

[edit] Deception

Finkelstein: "none of Eban's rationales for the preemptive strike can withstand critical scrutiny".

[edit] "Syrian based terrorism"

Major-general Carl von Horn (UNTSO chief of staff before Odd Bull) wrote: "gradually, beneath the glowering eyes of the Syrians, who held the high ground overlooking the zone, the area had become a network of Israeli canals and irrigation channels edging up against and always encroaching on Arab-owned property." "This deliberate poaching was bitterly resented by the Syrians."

Finkelstein quotes from UNTSO chief of staff, Norwegian General Odd Bull, who wrote in his War and Peace in the Middle East: The Experiences and Views of a U.N. Observer:

"I imagine that a number of those evicted settled somewhere in the Golan Heights and that their children have watched the land that had been in their families for hundreds of years being cultivated by Israeli farmers. From time to time they opened fire on these farmers. That, of course, was a violation of the armistice agreement, though I could not help thinking that in similar circumstances Norwegian peasants would almost certainly have acted in the same way."

[edit] "Egyptian troop concentrations on the Sinai"

[edit] "Blockade of the Straits of Tiran"

[edit] Deadlock

Finkelstein examines the international consensus in the war's wake, as expressed in UN Resolution 242. Finkelstein´s conclusion is that "Eban's interpretation of Resolution 242 is well outside consensus"

[edit] Language of Force The Real Meaning of the October War and its Aftermath

[edit] Diplomatic Overtures

[edit] The Jarring Initiative

Regarding Gunnar Jarring´s initiative.

[edit] After Jarring

[edit] The Language of Force

[edit] Oslo: The Apartheid Option

[edit] Appendix: Abba Eban with Footnotes

see also The whole Review.

(p. 184): Michael Oren: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Reviewed by Norman Finkelstein: Journal of Palestine Studies (Spring 2003, Vol. 32, No. 3, Pages 74-89)

(p. 187): "In an interview that created a stir in Israel after its belated publication, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan declared:

I know how at least 80 percent of all of the incidents there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's speak about 80 percent. It would go like this: we would send a tractor to plow.....in the demilitarized area, and we would know ahead of time that the Syrians would start shooting. If they did not start shooting, we would inform the tractor to progress farther, until the Syrians, in the end, would get nervous and would shoot. And then we would use guns, and later, even the air force, and that is how it went....We thought.... that we could change the lines of the cease-fire accords by military actions that were less than a war. That is, to seize some territory and hold it until the enemy despairs and gives it to us." ["Interviews on the Golan Heights and on Jewish Settlements in Hebron", (the interviews originally appeared in Yediot Ahronot on 22 November 1976 and 1 January 1977, Reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies (Autumn 1997), p. 145 )]

[edit] Response to "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict"

"The most revealing study of the historical background of the conflict." —Noam Chomsky
"...both an impressive analysis of Zionist ideology and a searing but scholarly indictment of Israel's treatment of the Arabs since 1948." —London Review Of Books

[edit] External links

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