Cheap Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians' (Book) (Efraim Karsh) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians'

Exposing the falsifiers
This book is an important exposure of academic mendacity and intellectual dishonesty. Karsh carefully reads the ' so- called revisionist historians' and shows how they have deliberately falsified records, used skimpy facts, made massive generalizations from a single instance, omitted and slanted evidence that contradicts their own claims. <
>Unfortunately this work will not undo the damage these ' historians' have done .They have succeeded in creating 'myths' about the conflict which are part of the commonplace perception of it today. These myths fit in well with the Arab propaganda effort to deligitimize Israel. <
>One would wish that this present volume would be much more widely disseminated than it has been. I would suggest that in this regard the first audience should be the journalists who cover the Middle East, who often carry with them some of the ' intellectual distortions' promoted by the revisionist historians. The second place should be the Middle East Studies Departments of all Western universities. <
>

---

A very revealing book
This is a classic book. I read it when it first came out. It had a big effect on me. It may have changed me as a person more than any other book I have ever read. <
> <
>When I read it, I was a little surprised by the fact that Benny Morris had made an error that wound up with him saying that in 1938, David Ben-Gurion had said "We must expel Arabs and take their places." In fact, as Karsh pointed out, using the actual source would have confirmed a typo here: Ben-Gurion actually wrote, "We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places." <
> <
>Yes, that was a big mistake on Morris' part, not checking the original source. And it was a big mistake to get something like this wrong. But I still pondered about how Morris could write something so unusual without checking it. After all, wasn't he aware of Ben-Gurion's other statements in the previous and following years? Wasn't he aware of how far this would have been from the statements of most of Ben-Gurion's political allies and supporters? Wasn't Morris aware of how insane it would have seemed to most Jews to prescribe a policy of war towards the much more numerous Arabs? <
> <
>What Karsh appeared to be telling me was that some extremely unlikely speculations had been presented as history. It would be as if some historian quoted John Kennedy as President claiming that the Earth was flat in an important speech, after proposing that we send a person to the Moon. <
> <
>Karsh did a careful job of coming up with the actual history here. And he then demolished Avi Shlaim's claim of "collusion across the Jordan." Here again, Karsh showed a situation in which a supposedly serious historian made a highly dubious claim and supported it with a single piece of highly disputable evidence. And the story continues in the next chapter when we see Shlaim and Ilan Pappe's claims about Britain going along with this non-existent collusion, and saying that Bevin warned the Jordanians not to invade territory belonging to the Jews. Here was another surprise: I had read Glubb's original claim that Bevin had said not to invade those areas. Glubb said that Bevin said it twice! And it seemed possible to me that Bevin could have said such a thing. But was Glubb telling the truth? Karsh, after carefully examining several records of what happened at that meeting, shows that Glubb was basically not telling the truth here. <
> <
>Another good job of investigation! <
> <
>But the biggest shock was saved for last. I had not realized that Shlaim had said "Far from being 'the great ogre who unleashed Arab armies to strangle the Jewish state at birth,' Bevin 'emerges from the documents as the guardian angel of the infant state.'" <
> <
>I had read quite a bit about Bevin, and I immediately recognized Shlaim's claim as completely and transparently false. It was like saying that the United States had fought in World War 2, but not telling the truth about which side we fought on: Germany's or the Soviet Union's. <
> <
>Had Shlaim really said something this bizarre? He had. And that was a huge revelation for me. That we were not talking about a few mistakes by some "new historians." Nor even some very biased reading of a few documents to support some dubious ideas. <
> <
>As Karsh had said in his title, this was indeed "fabricating Israeli history." We were discussing outright violations of acceptable academic behavior. <
> <
>This book made me realize just how much some academics have opposed (not just abandoned) truth. And I think this issue is far bigger than just the Arab-Israeli conflict. At some point, for human society to function, there must be some respect for truth by our educational institutions. In my opinion, that is what this book is all about. <
> <
>After reading this book, I no longer assumed that academic people would necessarily strive for truth. And recently, I have read and reviewed quite a few books about the Arab-Israeli conflict. I have given positive reviews to most of those which made serious attempts to tell the truth. And I've given negative ones to books which simply attempted to mislead their readers. I hope that in so doing, I am contributing, in my own small way, to improving human society.

---

This is how history should be written.
Rely on primary sources. <
>Be intellectually honest. <
>Let evidence form the conclusions. <
> <
>Any first-year history major should have that drilled into their heads. It's also a basic set of tenets for journalists, academics, and anyone else seeking truth among facts and fiction. <
> <
>What I gain from Karsh's book is an objective perspective of the origin of the modern conflict in Israel. I am treated to primary sources, secondary accounts, and conclusions drawn directly from the evidence, and not wild imagination or heresay. The way it hangs together, and the way it is written, almost compels you to consider going through the bibliography to learn more. Presented in the context of an academic response to sloppy historiography, it is a scathing rebuttal that cannot be ignored. <
> <
>Presented as an introduction to the conflict, it doesn't stand alone. More than basic familiarity with the facts of Israel's modern (re)birth as a nation is needed to understand a majority of the references. However, once a basic understanding is in place, this book should serve as the standard by which other accounts or works are judged. <
> <
>Fred