By Efraim Karsh
Yale University Press
ISBN 9780300127270

When I first went to Bible College of New Zealand from 1977-79, students were almost unanimously pro-Israeli. Many of us came from churches with a history of dispensational teaching that saw Israel’s return to the land as fulfillment of God’s promise, and Israel could do no wrong.

Returning to Laidlaw College in 2010 I find that things have changed markedly. Students are more pro-Palestinian, with the continuing unrest a sign of a corrupt and ungodly nation.

Not approving either extreme, I am concerned that they both arise from poor theological and historical knowledge. We need to present a balanced and Christian response to both sides.

Efraim Karsh, an outstanding historian, seeks to give a balanced presentation of the events surrounding “nakba,” or day of the catastrophe. This inside cover review gives a good outline of its contents:

“The 1947 UN resolution to partition Palestine irrevocably changed the political landscape of the Middle East, giving rise to six full-fledged wars between Arabs and Jews, countless armed clashes, blockades and terrorism, as well as a profound shattering of Palestinian Arab society.

“Its origins, and all that the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, are deeply rooted in Jewish-Arab confrontation and appropriation in Palestine. But the isolated occasions of violence during the British Mandate era (1920-48) suggest that the majority of Palestinian Arabs yearned to live and thrive in peaceful coexistence with the evolving Jewish national enterprise. ...

“Efraim Karsh tells the story from both Arab and Jewish perspectives. He argues that from the early 1920s onward, corrupt and extremist leaders sought vigorously to protect their own interests against Jewish national revival. Karsh has mined many of the Western, Soviet, UN and Israeli documents declassified over the past decade, as well as unfamiliar Arab sources, to reveal what happened behind the scenes on both the Palestinian and Jewish sides.”

Karsh is professor and head of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Programme, Kings College, London.

– David McLeod-Jones