A Senseless, Squalid War: Voices from Palestine 1945-1948, by Norman Rose
Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-1948, by David Cesarani
The second epigraph in Norman Rose’s eloquent, comprehensive and even-handed book, A Senseless, Squalid War, says it all, from Palestine in the late 19th century to Gaza right now. In 1891, the Zionist philosopher and poet Asher Zvi Ginsberg, wrote:
From abroad we are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all desert savages, like donkeys. But this is a big mistake. The Arabs, and especially those in the cities, understand our deeds and our desires in Eretz-Israel. If the time comes when the life of our people in Eretz-Israel develops to the point of encroaching upon the native population, they will not yield easily their place.
When Ginsberg wrote that, the Jewish population of Palestine was at most 34,000; there were upwards of 600,000 Arabs. On the eve of the first world war, writes Rose, a professor at the Hebrew University, Arabs were complaining that Zionists were aiming for a state within a state, including a flag and an anthem; they accused the Jews of dispossessing them from Arab lands, expanding Jewish settlements, and creating a bank and and a separate educational system.
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