A Land Facing Both Ways – Review of Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

For a geopolitical junkie, no region holds more fascination than the Middle East: with its alluring mix of rich cultural heritage, strategic importance and a particularly combustible style of politics. Of the nations that occupy this subcontinent that that the French and British carved out of a vanquished Ottoman empire in the wake of the 1^st world war, the State of Israel stands out in a very unique way. Like most of its neighbors (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria etc.), it is a young country that did not exist a century ago. However, the differences far outweigh the similarities: in a region populated largely by ethnic Arabs, Israel has a Jewish majority. While most of its neighbors are monarchies, theocracies or secular Baathist dictatorships, Israel has been a parliamentary democracy since its founding in 1948.

I have read a fair amount of essays and books on this important nation and they, for the most part, tend to be well-researched and fun to read. However, these books tend to be hampered either by: i) being written by insiders with an agenda to push or an ax to grind – the worst of the lot tend to be little more than partisan screeds; or ii) an objective and dispassionate observation penned by an outsider who struggles to muster the same level of passion or intimacy that insiders can. This new book by Ari Shavit (a celebrated writer at the Israeli left-of-center paper: Haaretz) seems to be the Holy Grail: a book by an insider that manages to be both passionate and objective and which examines the country in a deeply personal way: warts and all.

This book has many virtues to commend it. Mr. Shavit displays a deep love for his country, a love so deep that while he celebrates its triumphs and strengths he is also willing to explore his country’s shortcomings. Mr. Shavit narrates in very honest terms the expulsion of over 50,000 Palestinian Arabs from Lydda and Ramle in 1948, after both towns fell to the army of the new State of Israel. These towns were resettled by the victors, the empty houses of the vanquished occupied by new immigrants and the towns given new names of Lod and Ramla respectively. This was an event so indelibly etched in Arab minds that they refer to it as al-Nakba (“the catastrophe”). While not papering over this tragic event, it is important to put the event in historical context. Earlier in that decade, paragons of human rights such as the United States and the United Kingdom committed acts that top the incident at Lydda. While the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki is well known, the arguably needless joint British and American aerial bombing of Dresden in the waning months of the 2^nd world war left over 25,000 people dead (most of them civilians).  

Mr. Shavit also charts (in a deeply personal way using his family’s history) the story and evolution of the state of Israel. We are swept from the days of Theodore Herzl’s publication in 1895 of Der Judenstaat (“the Jewish State”), a pamphlet arguing for the creation of the Jewish State, then to the early days of the immigrant farmers in the Kibbutzim, and their famed Jaffa Oranges. He lays out the evolution of the country from a few immigrants toiling in the Kibbutzim of the early 20^th century to the wave of immigration from the survivors of the holocaust in Europe and the pogroms of the Middle East in the 1940s and 1950s , to the emergence of the settlements movement in the 1970s and finally to the sophistication of the modern day.

A particularly touching part of the book which I believe has universal appeal is the description of Bizaron, a classic housing estate similar to many built in the 1950s to accommodate the thousands of immigrants streaming into the young country. These immigrants from Europe and the Middle East all had a few things in common: they had all suffered traumatic or near-death experiences, lost a great deal of their material possessions on their flight to Israel and, almost to a man, had to settle into jobs beneath their status in their prior lives. Recognizing that they would probably not reach their full potential, these people turned their efforts to educating their children to attain their fullest potential. These children of “down-on-their luck” immigrants achieved great strides: president of the Supreme Court of Israel, millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs and many distinguished academics at various leading universities globally. This is a universal and classic immigrant story. Immigrant lore is replete with tales of the Nigerian doctor working as a healthcare assistant in Baltimore, the lawyer from Nepal driving a cab in Manhattan or the Ukrainian nuclear physicist working as a bookkeeper for a small firm in Queens. The high-energy and zealously-educated children of these people end up being disproportionately represented in high-powered positions in Corporate America.

Some of Mr. Shavit’s more potentially controversial statements revolve around the issue of Israeli settlement building, an enterprise which he vigorously opposes. The writer describes these settlements as “pregnancies outside the womb” and predicts that runaway settlement activity and ultra-nationalism exemplified by zealots such as Yehuda Etzion, a right wing activist previously imprisoned for a foiled plan to blow up the Dome of the Rock, will present challenges for the continued success of the country. Finally, summing up the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict he talks about a continued conflict that leaves both sides worse off and unleashes a wave of everyday evildoing by non-evil people (in his own words “evil can take place without a need for evil people”). This section of the book is reminiscent of Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil.

All said, a great read and highly informative book that makes a gallant effort of being even-handed and balanced. Reading Mr. Shavit’s book I am reminded of the phrase: “militant centrist”, which I think is an apt description of the man. 

Finding significance in the mundane – Review of A History of the World in 100 Objects

It wasn’t very long ago (1963 to be exact) that the widely overrated historian: High Trevor-Roper, then a professor of history at Oxford University said “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of Europe in Africa. The rest is largely darkness”. While many mainstream historians now correctly view this statement as being particularly narrow-minded, the key approach to historical analysis that informed the worldview of this condescending man has proven particularly hard to shake. Many people have a reflexive instinct to largely view history as written history, with most of history scholarship and teaching still being focused on the evaluation of written texts handed down by ancient societies and contemporary observers or visitors to such societies.

This emphasis is a really unfortunate one, not only because it largely confines the history of societies without a tradition of writing to the dustbins of history and leaves their achievements unsung. Further complicating this already sad picture is that what little information we have of these societies tend to come from the writings of other people they came in contact with. These interactions were often in circumstances that were less than amiable (i.e., enemies, competitors etc.) and the guys who did the writing often made sure to leave behind descriptions that were decidedly designed not to flatter their subjects. For example, much of the world’s knowledge of the Aztec civilization came from the writings of the Conquistadors that ended their subject’s civilization by - shall we say - taking a few items they were not entitled to while dispensing with the lives of those who posed any obstacle to their theft. Similarly, our knowledge of the life and activities of the Germanic tribes (out of present day Scandinavia) come largely from the writings of the Romans which they ended up defeating, a rare case of the vanquished getting to write the story. The list of biased reporting goes on: European settlers wrote about Native Americans, English visitors wrote fantastical tales about indigenous communities in West Africa etc.

This is why I really liked the approach of Neil MacGregor (Director of the British Museum) in writing this really great book. His great idea was to select 100 objects from all across the world through which he charts the progress of mankind from the Stone Age to the current day. He examines each object and explains the significance it held in the societies (and ages) in which it was created and used. These objects range from the two million year old Olduvai stone chopping tool to the modern-day credit card. The origins of these objects range from the Ife Bronze Heads (created in the 17^th century in what is now Nigeria) to an Egyptian sandal label from 4000 BC to the Seated Buddha of Gandhara (created in the 2^nd century AD in modern-day Pakistan) as well as a chronometer from the HMS Beagle (an early Victorian-Era naval vessel).

Despite the great diversity in the geographic origins and purposes of these various objects, they largely have one thing in common: they are largely mundane and pretty unremarkable in nature. There are very few grand and popular objects on the list: the Mona Lisa and other great works commissioned by the Medici are not held up to represent the renaissance era, rather we have mundane everyday items such as a note written in calligraphy and a miniature mechanical galleon that demonstrates the technical skill of 16^th century Germany and their seafaring ways. Representing the 2^nd part of the 20^th century is not a grand or sophisticated item like the Space Shuttle or the Mars Rover. Rather Mr. MacGregor’s choice is the humble credit card, a distinctly unremarkable rectangular piece of plastic lodged in billions of wallets the world over. The choice struck me as odd, but on further reflection I realized that a thousand years from now when our current civilization has been confined to the footnotes of history and an enterprising academic decides to write a thesis on how humans lived in the second half of the 20^th century, the credit card will be as good a window into understanding our lives as any other item I can think of. Encapsulated in that small, flat piece of plastic are themes such as: the emergence of the credit society and the attendant effects that personal debt brings; the rise of the “consumer society” that has led to there being 46 square feet of retail space per person in the US as well as the ubiquitous electronic networks that make all these incessant “swipings” workable.

I’ve always regarded Archaeology as a really cool discipline (hey, what other grown up occupation allows one to go around playing scavenger hunt games!). However, the end results of archaeology have too often been regarded as novelties that end up being gawked at in Museums and rich collectors’ living rooms. The close connection between history and archaeology is often not as closely linked as it should be, with very few books explicitly attempting to tell the history of everyday people in past eras through the simple objects they created and used in the normal course of their lives. This book did a great job giving voice to the voiceless as well as ink and parchment to the lives of often forgotten people who left little or no written text for succeeding generations to follow.