Setting the Record Straight

Books Setting the record Efraim Karsh’s newstraight book serves as a corrective to the popular narrative that all the ills of the Middle East can be traced to the perfidy of the Zionists and Western imperialists By Tibor Krausz I’VE LOST count of the times I’ve heard and In “The Tail Wags the Dog,” the scholar by entering World War I (despite being en- read that if not for Israel’s brutal treatment expounds on this latter theme. Karsh wastes treated by Britain and France not to do so) of Palestinians and the theft of “indigenous” no time disposing of the popular view that on what proved to be the losing side. Arab land in “Palestine” by European Jews, it was incessant meddling by Britain and The much-maligned Sykes-Picot Agree- peace and prosperity would long ago have France in the early 20th century that forced ment of 1916 between Britain and France, dawned upon the long-suffering peoples of local Arabs into volatile national arrange- which sought to carve out their respective the Middle East. As for a century of violent ments in violation of their true national as- spheres of influence across the region, Arab rejectionism, ruthless irredentism, un- pirations, sowing the seeds of today’s brutal wasn’t meant by its creators to divvy up ceasing terrorism, and vicious sectarianism and seismic ethnocentric realignments. In the Middle East into a fissiparous hotch- – it’s as if they’ve never existed. reality, Karsh points out, it was largely the potch of ad hoc states at the mercy of their How about the equally oft-stated notion imperialistic ambitions of Hussein ibn Ali foreign overlords (as many critics, writing that until Israel came into being in 1948, al-Hashimi, the Sharif of Mecca, and his on its 100th anniversary, would have it), everything had been hunky-dory between Machiavellian sons Faisal and Abdullah but to unite its peoples in an autonomous Arab and Jew? Yes, but what of the centu- (soon to become the kings of Iraq/Syria and confederation of self-governing Arab states. ries of oppression, persecution and murder Jordan respectively) that would bedevil the To be sure, Britain and France did act out of Jews by Arabs and Muslims? Bah, they lives of later generations. of self-interest by seeking to protect their never happened, either. geopolitical interests, yet they wanted not Then there is another commonly held The Arabs have always to divide and conquer the Arabs but to win view: All the murder and mayhem in to- them over to their side, even if they went day’s self-imploding Middle East is the wanted a Palestinian about that in a rather haphazard and at times fault of Western imperialism. But isn’t that criminally negligent fashion. nonsense too? state a lot less than Nothing better demonstrates that fact than Efraim Karsh thinks so. An Israeli histo- they’ve wanted to Britain’s gradual withdrawal of support for rian who is professor of political studies at a viable Jewish state in the years after the Bar-Ilan University and professor emeritus destroy Israel Balfour Declaration of 1917. Far from be- of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean studies ing the neocolonialist love child of Western at King’s College London, Karsh is an expert imperialism, as today’s “anti-Zionist” dem- on Ottoman imperialism and Islamic jihad- The Hashemites did rely on foreign help agogues insist, Israel was born of authen- ism – two subjects he tackled with aplomb in, to create facts on the ground, but in the his- tic Jewish national aspirations. The Zionist respectively, “Empires of the Sand” (1999) torian’s view Britain and France weren’t so project had predated the war and would and “Islamic Imperialism” (2006). In both much scheming puppet masters as willing survive, through sheer grit, repeated efforts books Karsh argues that jihadist violence accomplices to well-connected and am- to smother it in its cradle by British dou- has been much less a reaction to Western in- bitious Arab machinators, who wanted to ble-dealing, implacable Arab hostility, and justice than an animating feature of Islamic profit from the territorial spoils of the un- Western indifference. societies from the time of Muhammad, and raveling Ottoman Empire. The empire’s de- The modern Middle East, Karsh insists, that the plight of Middle Eastern societies mise itself was the result of its calculated arose not out of some grand Western master has been largely self-inflicted. attempt to regain some of its former glory plan but out of the confluences and clashes 40 THE JERUSALEM REPORT JULY 11, 2016 King Faisal I of Iraq leads a delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919; on his right is Britain’s T. E. Lawrence WIKIMEDIA of rival visions, misguided interventions, ly backfired, he argues. “It put Palestinian aware of history, or else has the chutzpa to battlefield victories, epochal blunders, Arabs on a collision course with their Jew- counter the emotive and fact-free pro-Pal- grandiose designs gone awry, and ephem- ish compatriots against the wishes of ordi- estinian advocacy that passes for the only eral political alignments with lasting con- nary Palestinians who would rather have acceptable opinion these days in the West. sequences. “The Hashemite dream of suc- coexisted with their neighbors yet paid the That’s why “The Tail Wags the Dog” is ceeding the Ottoman Empire, the French ultimate price for their leaders’ folly: home- a welcome book. A well-argued work of ambitions in the Levant, the Jewish quest lessness and statelessness,” he observes. scholarship, it’s designed to serve as a cor- for a homeland in Palestine, and Britain’s This view borders on portraying “ordi- rective to the popular mainstream narrative regional desiderata” were just some of the nary” Arabs as being hapless bystanders that all the ills of the Middle East can be currents that would shape the geographic during wide-scale anti-Jewish violence, traced to the perfidy of the Zionists and and political landscape. yet Karsh is right to point out that their Western imperialists. This dominant view So would Palestinian Arab leaders’ re- leaders’ uncompromising stance ultimate- essentially reduces Arabs to the status of alization, from the early 1920s onward, ly hurt Palestinian Arabs the most. It’s not perennial victims and implicitly absolves that violence paid political dividends. The the Jews who disenfranchised Palestinians; them of moral agency by forever shifting more violently opposed Arabs in Palestine it’s the latter who disenfranchised them- the blame for their societies’ failings onto became to the very idea of Jewish nation- selves through their leaders’ unyielding all- Israel and the West. hood, the more Britain tried to placate them or-nothing approach, which was routinely Karsh will have none of it. “Contrary to through further and further concessions. backed by popular support. the common perception of regional affairs Simultaneously, Britain kept walking back In 1948 the Arabs chose war, which they as an offshoot of global power politics,” promises to the Zionists through a series of then lost. They would choose war and vio- the scholar writes, “modern Middle East- punitive measures and ever more stringent lence repeatedly in subsequent decades, no ern history has been the culmination of White Papers before finally turning viru- matter what overtures and concessions Is- long-existing indigenous trends, passions lently against Zionism in the aftermath of raelis might offer them. “The Arabs never and patterns of behavior; contrary to their World War II. miss an opportunity to miss an opportuni- treatment as hapless objects lacking an in- Today, violent Arab intransigence re- ty,” Foreign Minister Abba Eban famously ternal, autonomous dynamic of their own, mains unabated, and Israelis still get rou- quipped in 1973, when, true to form, Arab Middle Easterners have been active and tinely blamed for it, not least by British leaders missed yet another opportunity to enterprising free agents doggedly pursing politicians and intellectuals, as exemplified make peace with Israel and create a Pales- their national interests... often in disregard by the recent scandal over widespread ca- tinian state. They blew another chance at of great-power wishes.” sual anti-Semitism within the ranks of the Camp David in 2000 in favor of renewed That’s not to say the West does not have Labour Party. “The fact of the matter is that violence with ceaseless suicide bombings its own share of blame for the sorry state from the very beginning the Arabs’ prima- and other deadly attacks. of affairs in the world’s most volatile and ry instrument for opposing Jewish national Yet the prevalent view in the West on the violent region. The ill-advised invasion of aspirations was violence, and no amount of Israeli-Arab conflict invariably boils down Iraq has proven to be a colossal mistake, yet foreign interference has been able to change to the same old pabulum: it’s all about Is- even that was done with good intentions in this reality,” Karsh writes. raelis’ brutal oppression of powerless Pal- mind – good intentions wedded to a crim- However, homicidal irredentism ultimate- estinians. Rare is the commentator who is inal lack of foresight and a great deal of THE JERUSALEM REPORT JULY 11, 2016 41 Books wishful thinking. By unseating the tyrant lamic State have nothing to do with Islam. Britain and France Saddam Hussein, US President George W. Tellingly, few Islamic religious authorities Bush hoped to lay the ground for the spread make that claim themselves, but Western weren’t so much of liberal democracy across the region, per- decision makers remain wedded to the no- haps à la the Velvet Revolution of 1989 in tion that the savagery of Islamic terrorism scheming puppet Eastern Europe.

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