Why History Matters: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Given the volume of writing on the Arab-Israeli conflict, “you might think that everything has been said,” says Noam Chomsky. But Victor Kattan’s new book, Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, takes a fresh look at the prehistory of the dispute, as well as the evolution of international law and its import for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, says Chomsky. While he is familiar with much of the material in this account, Chomsky also notes episodes in Kattan’s narrative that open up new, “sordid chapters” in these “convoluted, complex, often painful historical events.” Kattan set out to explore how the conflict began, and so pored over the writing of scores of European political figures, and leaders of Zionist and Arab nationalist movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries. His key insight: Neither Arabs nor Jews were to blame for triggering hostilities, but rather Britain, and the other major powers. Kattan argues that anti-Semitism, which welled up during a period of collapsing colonial empires, motivated British actions that led to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and paved the way for trouble over decades to the current time. In the 19th century, Jews viciously persecuted in Russia began flooding Western Europe, especially Britain, where many thousands more embarked to the U.S. America and Britain were the promised land to the Jews, says Kattan — not Palestine. But British distaste for these immigrants soon led to plans for diverting the unwanted foreigners to an alternative location. In the early 1900s, Kattan describes documents authored by British statesmen, and by such early Zionist leaders as Theodor Herzl, arguing that Britain’s Jewish immigration “problem” could be solved by finding Jews a homeland in Palestine. Kattan even cites U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis endorsing such a solution. Anti-immigrant fervor, says Kattan, led to the Balfour Declaration of 19...

Channel: MIT World Video Length: 0s Date Found: Mon, Apr 12 2010 3:09 PM Category: Science Date Produced: Mon, Apr 12 2010 12:00 AM View Count: 0