I have now received, read, and uploaded to box.net Part Two of William Polk's important historical essay on Israel and the Palestinians. I urge all of you most strongly to take the time to read it. I myself had not realized until now how central a role Bill himself played in the unfolding of those events.
The essay can be found under the title "Polk Part Two."
Thanks for sharing this on box.net. Prof. Polk is such a clear writer about the cloudy histories of peoples, places, and conflicts that many of us can't find on a map (his "Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerilla War from the American Revolution to Iraq" is an eye-opening book). His first essay in this series on Israel/Palestine is a great piece of demystification of the early history of Jewish mass arrival in the Middle East and the establishment of the conditions for modern statehood amid a people who had been serially colonized and for whom the notion of a state as it's now understood was rather foreign. His point that the conflict is not simply a Palestinian problem but also a European problem because of Europe's centuries-long treatment of the Jews as "other" is a great insight. Sadly Israel has not even now become a Middle Eastern state. It is in the Middle East but not of it. The Israeli state, again sadly, exemplifies the definition of a nation proposed by the Czech political theorist Karl Deutsch as "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors." Former Prime Minister Ehud Barack described Israel as "a villa in the jungle." It's somewhat true as Abba Eban (who when I was young was often on television during live broadcast of UN debates and who I thought was the smartest person I had ever seen; the UN semed important back then) said that the Arabs "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity," but they have been ill done to by the colonizers and their Western backers. It's a pity that Israel, whose citizens have done marvelous things in that country (the development of Hebrew as a language of daily life, commerce, and a vibrant literature is one of the great intellectual achievements of the 20th century) cannot exist peacefully with its neighbors. I hope Polk's analysis finds a large readership. I tried to find it on his Web site williampolk.com, which is awful--ugly and poorly organized, but it's not posted there.
ReplyDeleteAgain thanks for continuing to share Polk's analyses.
Last December, you posted his letter telling readers about his new book "Humpty Dumpty: The Fate of Regime Change." I immediately bought the Kindle version. The book (the constituent essays) is wonderful (although because it consists of essays written at different times, there is some duplication); the "book" (the physical electronic object) is a mess. He tries to embed tables, photos, and some very helpful maps in the text and the legends wind up sometimes "pages" (or screens) afterward. It's also poorly edited: the Afghan concept of "melmastia" (that is, hospitality) is spelled differently in differnt essays; there are bizarre line breaks, and a lot more small and large irritations. I hope he finds a publisher that will attend to the finer details of electronic editing.
Sorry to ramble on for so long. Thanks again.