Title: O Jerusalem!
Genre: Non-fiction, History
Published: 1971
BookMarks
O Jerusalem! Narrates the events of 1947-1948 covering the creation of a separate Jewish state in Palestine. How the voting for the partition happened at the UN, and the intense violent aftermath of the Arab-Jewish conflict. The events which are yet to be fully resolved and repercussions are still going on. The book provides a good context for understanding the current issues as well.
Overall, quite an informative read about the events. At times, feels a bit overdetailed at times, especially if your are unfamiliar with the protagonists & the geography, but is necessary to get a clearer picture. Creation of a new state is not an easy task and takes super-human efforts from the leadership to the ordinary citizens to build and sustain it. Little decisions at seemingly insignificant junctures have played a critical role is shaping the present – an overheard conversation, supplies landing in the wrong hands, over-estimating the others power, some delays, some hurried decisions (like the ceasefire) all played a crucial role in shaping the Middle East of today. And most of all it is a human tragedy - a tale of the struggle to survive from starvation and war, as lines drawn on maps become borders on the ground.
A few notes from the book
On the Jewish State
- Theodor Herzl developed a one-hundred-page pamphlet titled Der Judenstaat "The Jewish State." It stated that “The Jews who will it, shall have a state of their own."
- David Ben-Gurion: ”in the city of Tel Aviv on the fifth day of Iyar, 5708, the fourteenth day of May, 1948Let us all stand to adopt the Scroll of the Establishment of the Jewish State."
- Israel did not initially have a name. "Elath thought as he started to draft his request. It presented only one problem: Elath did not know the name of the state for which he was requesting recognition. Solving the problem by calling it simply "the Jewish state," he had dispatched his letter to the White House."
On Jerusalem
- "Jerusalem a city where men came to die as well as to live, and generations of Christians, Jews and Moslems slept scattered under a sea of whitened stone around the valley, achieving in death in Jerusalem what they had so often failed to achieve in life: a peaceful reconciliation of their claims to its ramparts."
- "One place in the city stood apart from the rancor and chaos of Jerusalem, however—a little island all its own in which a handful of Jews and Arabs lived together in peace and harmony. It was the government insane asylum."
The Arab view
- For the Arabs, and above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine, the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed a monstrous injustice thrust upon them by white Western imperialism in expiation of a crime they had not committed.
- "The problem is Palestine, not petroleum."
- Transjordan’s King Abdullah to Jewish Agency - "you must convince the Americans to force us to make peace with you. We want to do it. But it's only possible for us politically if we are forced to do it."
- The armies of the 5 nations fought the same war separately!
A Few lines which stood out
- subtlety, indirection and surprise. - life's tactics
- a mania for secrecy so deeply rooted that before opening his safe he looked in the mirror to make sure who he was.
Some Trivia from the book
- Assiya Halaby was the first Arab woman in Palestine to own and operate her own car.
- The republic of Venice enriched the vocabulary of the world with the word ghetto from the quarter, Ghetto Nuovo -New Foundry - to which the republic restricted its Jews.
- oldest continually observed religious ceremony, the Jewish Passover.
Previously on BookMarks: The Answer Is No
Also by the same authors: Freedom at Midnight
