Constantine Gebert's book Peace with a view to war, summarizing his achievements as a leading Polish observer of mediate east affairs, is undoubtedly an crucial position. Selected for 1 of the books of the year 2023 of the Literary Magazine “Books” has the chance to become a leading guide to the past of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Poland. So it is appropriate to look at this work more carefully and ask what quality is the cognition that Gebert serves Polish audience. How can public opinion be shaped based on this cognition on the Palestinian issue, especially after October 7, 2023?
The Power of Political Myths
The fact that the book is addressed to a wide scope of audiences and does not claim technological pretension, says the author himself, and in this sense plays honestly. Since Gebert is not in control of Hebrew (not to mention Arabic – this apparent fact that it is essential to know Arabic for a thorough examination of Israel's history, inactive does not settle over the Vistula), he must build his communicative “on the basis of [English-speaking generally] works of Israeli authors and [...] his own experiences” (p. 13). Without first author's thoughts, the book would be valuable if at least it popularised the latest historical findings, not available in Polish so far. Below I will effort to show that this task does not fulfil, and behind the creative, although fast communicative there is simply a flawed explanation mechanism.
First of all, contrary to the title, it is not the past of Israel – it is the past of the Zionist movement and the state structure created by it, which the author reduces to being the emanation of Zionism. From the book we learn nothing about the process of establishing the nation of Israel and its dialectical relation with judaic heritage (except for 1 tabloid-style chapter about secular feuds with orthodoxy) or about culture or economy or the legal system. Instead, we receive a past of political-war history, which is backward from today's historiography, told with the eyes of the elites (so-called. top-down perspective).
Moreover, the recognition of Zionism past with Israel's past and Israel's past with the modern past of Jews, although it is in fact false, leads Gebert to the uncritical adoption of the Zionist explanation of judaic history. The historical continuity of the judaic people from antiquity to this day, which Gebert takes for granted (p. 11, 219), is not a fact – it is simply a political myth, akin in its absurdity to the story of Palestinian origin from the indigenous peoples of Canaan. likewise mythological is Gebert's paradigm of Israel's uniqueness as the most experienced war of the country in the world, created by a nation that continues against its desire to annihilate the currents of history.
For the sake of justice, Gebert does not pretend to be impartial: he believes that the Israeli-Arab conflict is right on the side of Israel. It should be appreciated, therefore, that his book is not a wordless apology of Israel; the author alternatively tries to reconcile his sympathy for Israel with an effort to realize the Palestinian side. In the end, however, this effort is simply a disaster, both due to the workshop shortages and the fundamental ideological sympathy of Gebert: it is impossible to give justice to the Palestinian perspective, if it is accepted at the outset that any harm done to them by Zionism is simply a historical necessity. Apart from the periods between each subsequent outbreak of force between Israelis and Arabs, the book creates a false belief of metahistoric determinism, suggesting that all massacre of Palestinians by Israel is simply essential and obvious, though regrettable by Palestinian opposition to the existence of Israel as such.
According to Gebert, the existence of a judaic state in the arabian mediate East is unacceptable to Arabs primarily for spiritual reasons (not due to the fact that it was conceived and incarnate as a colonial project). In this sense, arabian hostility to Israel is simply a continuation of anti-Semitism. The "proofs" for this are alleged recommendations from Palestinian leaders Churchill to get acquainted The Prophets of Zion’s Wise Men (p. 81), and found in Egyptian barracks in Sinai in 1956 Arabic edition Mein Kampf (p. 316), although it appeared in Beirut in 1954, and the translator's name is unequivocally Christian (as Gebert would know if he had read Arabic). This argues with Gebert's observation, taken from the Israeli right, that the national identity of the Palestinians (who he most frequently calls "Palestinian Arabs") developed solely on the basis of opposition to Zionism – which is only partially actual – but the author seems not to announcement this contradiction.
Dehistory of arabian anti-Zionism by reducing to anti-Semitism is all the more remarkable due to the fact that Gebert himself does not shun the language of racist stereotypes: "The arabian crowd—beating and looting—falled upon the judaic districts of Jerusalem," he writes on p. 176. The Palestinian position is simply a priori unreliable: the massacre per capita of Chan Junus by the Israeli military in November 1956 is "dominant" (p. 318) due to the fact that "it is not known in Israeli sources". Only erstwhile Palestinian sources do not seem to confirm Israeli reports of mass execution on Palestinians (for example, in Tantura in 1948), then magically regain credibility.
Gebert almost explicitly assumes (p. 13) that only Israel is able to reflect on its own faults, which betrays ignorance about the intra-Arab discourse. Also, speaking of common execution Arabs and Jews, Gebert reverses the real proportions: he writes about Palestinian crimes extensively, sometimes (for example, discussing the 1929 massacres) even seems to savor pornography of violence. On the another hand, Israel is most frequently brief, paying more attention to the outrage it has caused in Israel than to the victims, even though, due to Israel's technological and military advantage, the scale and number of crimes committed by it in the Palestinians is incomparably greater than the crimes committed by the Palestinians.
At the same time Gebert is to any degree aware of the changes in Israeli historiography introduced by the “New Historians” free from the Zionist paradigm. The “New Historians” have shown that the continuation of the conflict is primarily due to the fact that it is the origin of another Israeli government. Gebert incorporates any of their findings into his text; however, he usually does so in a chaotic way, in the form of artificial intrusions or digressions, without considering the essential message.
What Konstanty Gebert doesn't tell us
As a result, the book is internally inconsistent, which is best seen in discussing the 1948 war. Although it has been 3 decades since the partial beginning and examination of Israeli archives concerning this period, Gebert stubbornly clings to outdated historiography. Built in the early 1950s in Israel, it is based on 3 fundamental myths: 1) Zionist leadership accepted the UN's plan to divide Palestine, while the Arabs rejected it and invaded Israel to destruct it; 2) it was a war of fewer Israelis against many Arabs; 3) Israel is not guilty of the exile of Palestinians who fled urged by their own leaders.
Let's go 1 at a time.
In March 1948, military command of the judaic community in Palestine developed the alleged Dalet Plan ("Fourth"): a series of guidelines for the upcoming war against regular arabian troops. Gebert mentions them in this way (p. 187): "the acquisition of... strategical positions, the seizure of major cities, the mastery of roads and the filling of borders set out in the resolution [about the division]... the mastery of roads leading to specified settlements... which were located outside these borders." The most crucial part of the plan is mentioned in immeasurably: all villages inhabited by Jews in Palestine were to be overrun, besides located in the area of the arabian state to be established, and Palestinian villages were to be located between them destroyed and their population driven out. So, even before Israel arose, his future government planned to violate the decision to divide.
Although the plan itself did not envisage the systematic expulsion of Palestinians (of which Palestinian historiography is silent in turn), at a later phase of the war it was the logic of the "elimination" of the possible 5th column that caused all or most of the arabian population to be driven out of the conquered areas; the late revealed orders and government papers talk of it explicitly. Gebert, writing that “Israel or the Palestinian exodus did not cause, nor did he want it” (p. 528), goes untrue. It fakes not only the essential sound of the Dalet Plan, but ignores the full context of its creation: the alleged Operation Village, undertaken in 1945–1947 by Hagana's interview a task to describe the full structure of agrarian Palestine, which shortly served as a valuable origin of information in treating the conquered population and the past of the thought of a "transfer" in Zionist thought.
It is simply a more scandalous lie to say that the work of the "New Historians" "confirmed... that a large proportion of Palestinian Arabs escaped from fear of armed action or under the influence of arabian leadership's appeals" (p. 194–195, besides 526, 529). The legend of the alleged appeals of arabian leaders to Palestinians to flee to return with the arabian armies was invented in the first half of the 1950s and overthrown at the end of that decade by Irish writer Erskin Childers. "New Historians" only put the last nail in her coffin, so Gebert's above words at best attest to the deep ignorance of the author.
A akin witness to ignorance is the message that "Israel fought alone in 1948—and conquered a miracle" (p. 293). In fact, the judaic side had more soldiers during the full war than the Arabs, so it was victorious through numerical advantage and smuggling of weapons from Czechoslovakia alternatively than Providence. Most of the battles between judaic and arabian troops were fought outside the judaic state's plan to divide the borders of the judaic state, due to the fact that the arabian states intended primarily to conquer arabian Palestine alternatively than "pull Jews into the sea." This last slogan, as the Israeli historian Shay Hazkani pointed out, is most likely the invention of the then Israeli war propaganda.
On this occasion, you can see the selective attitude of Gebert to supposedly more reliable Israeli sources, which he does not read in the original. For if he reached for Israeli literature and literature from the time of the war, he would know that the fact at 1948 was well known in Israel.
A fewer more words about Palestinian refugees. Gebert devotes quite a few space to the argument that since in 1948 there was a "change of population" between the Arabs of Palestine and Jews from arabian countries, the Palestinian right to return was invalidated. An argument seemingly meaningful, but completely untrue.
First of all, it is an anachronism: this symmetry does not appear in the then debates about the destiny of the exiled Palestinians and arabian Jews, and the curious themselves evidently did not think that they participated in the top-down population exchange. Secondly, the exodus of the Palestinians occurred in 1947–1949 (although sporadic deportations were inactive carried out in the early 1950s, of which Gebert is silent), while the exodus of the arabian Jews is in 1949–1967, and was partially caused by Israel's diversionary actions in Iraq and Egypt. Thirdly, calling arabian Jews “refugees” suggests that they are in Israel on “exile”, which contradicts Zionist ideology. Fourthly, suggesting that the Palestinians are Arabs like the people of the countries to which they were exiled makes Gebert an unconscious pioneer of panarabism. But, as I noted above, the consequence is not the strong side of his book.
Proizrael publicist
The book is teeming with errors and inaccuracies of a smaller caliber, which show how vague Gebert has a discernment in the field in which he wants to appear to be the chief specialist in Poland. For example, Gebert writes (p. 244) that the notion of "current absentees" applies to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank or in Gaza who were under Israeli business in 1967. In fact, this definition includes interior refugees in Israel, i.e. Palestinian nationals of the state (current citizens), who are treated by the Property Law Abandoned as the remainder of Palestinian refugees (not present) and officially deprived of access to their property. On page 349 mentions the June 1967 Israeli Government's decision to retreat from Sinai and Golan Hills, but ignores the fact that the decision was never communicated to the Syrian and Egyptian governments. Throughout the book, he repeats that there are “matchets” standing in the Temple Hill, and regularly confuses the ECEL and LEHI undergrounds, and arabian commander Fauzi al-Kawukji becomes “Fawzim al-Kuwaklim”. akin attention to facts is besides characterized by the last part of the book, covering the 21st century and being pure pro-Israeli publicist.
In view of the facts that do not appear in his worldview, Gebert may be disconcertingly clumsy: this is how he writes about the assassination of the British Minister of State in the mediate East in Cairo by 2 LEHI bombers in 1944, he confesses that “it is surprising, given the nationality and motivation of the perpetrators, that the Cairo Street showed them sympathy.” Surprisingly, this can only be for individual who has no thought of the real “cause of the perpetrators”. At the trial, 1 of the assassins, Elijah Bet-Tzuri, a supporter of Hebrew nationalism in the "Canaanic" version, and an atheist who refused to meet the rabbi on the eve of his execution, declared that he was not a Zionist and struggles not to fulfill the Balfour Declaration, but to expel British imperialists from all over the mediate East.
Peace with a view to war, if it had appeared in the late 1980s–90s, it would have been an effective antidote to Moscow's anti-Israeli propaganda. More than 30 years later, it is only a monument to the author's prejudices.
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Roman Vater – historian and translator, graduated from Cambridge University.
* Oh, my God *
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