| Letter from Beirut: Etel Adnan Reports on Corruption, War Denials, and Distorted History Lessons | |||||||||||
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Books In Brief New Insights Shed Light on People and Place Sharing the Promised Land: A Tale of Israelis and Palestinians by Dilip Hiro, New York: Olive Branch Press, 1999, 372 pp. $18.95 Although the subject matter is anything but new, Dilip Hiro’s approach is fresh and compelling. Hiro, an internationally known writer and journalist, was born in India, has been a specialist on the Middle East since the 1970s, and has written several books on the region. In this volume, he offers a feast of fact and interpretation: he has done his homework, with several volumes on the history of the region under his belt, and he still manages to see everything with new–and very human–eyes. His insight has not gone unnoticed. The Daily Telegraph in London said that he was "the perfect chronicler" because as an Indian, "he is implicated neither by religion nor ethnicity," and the Jerusalem Post calls it a "clear, non-judgmental and unbiased account of Israeli-Palestinian relations." The book, of necessity, traces the elements familiar to all students of this hot-spot, from the early state history to a incisive look at Israeli politics, from the troubled tales of loss in the West Bank to the refugee camps and government corridors in Gaza. While this information is readily available in other sources, there is much here that is highly original in its approach, and it is a humanizing look at the people Hiro meets along the way. Particularly compelling is his chapter on the Mizrachim/Sephardim. These are the terms in vogue, Hiro explains, to describe Jews from non-Western lands. "Nobody in Israel says ‘Arab Jew;’ it is seen as a contradiction in terms." However, the link between them and the cultures they absorbed during their centuries in Arab lands is a strong one. The prejudice against them from their European-origin Ashkenazi fellow citizens is equally strong. Although the two communities are almost equal in size, the Mizrachim supply only 20 percent of the country’s university population. They are the dominant majority in the poor and working classes. "They are almost absent from the top echelons of intellectual, opinion-forming and policy-making influence," Hiro notes. He also uses the debating voices of an Ashkenazi and a Mizrachi to examine other aspects of the split identity, including the reasons behind the Mizrachim opposition to peace with the Palestinians. The Mizrachi voice cites a study showing that when Mizrachi enter a university, they are almost all Likud. "But year by year they change and become liberal. They realize that the conflict with Arabs at home and in the region is the center of the socio-economic disadvantage they are suffering. They become liberal on the peace issue, and begin to re-examine their own background." Hiro also has devised a debate between two fundamentalists–one Jewish, the other Muslim, in which the nature of "divine promises" is tossed back and forth, effectively capturing the essence of this eternally-contentious dichotomy. Like most everything else in this book, there are indeed fresh new approaches to rehashing the painful pages of history, polemics and demographics. Hiro’s scholarship is all there, as well as his seasoned journalism. What is most engaging is to walk the familiar route and see things from his highly original angle, and to find things one never saw there before. This article appeared in Al Jadid Vol. 5, No. 27 (Spring 1999) |
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