Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

By Norman G. Finkelstein. Verso, 1995, 243 pp. List: $18.95 paper; AET: $16.50.

Reviewed by Edna Homa Hunt

Norman Finkelstein is a brave man. In writing Image and Reality, he has challenged important myths underlying the origins of Israel as a state, and many elements of the Israel-Palestine conflict. These myths, of course, are imbedded in Zionist doctrine evolved over a century and already widely documented elsewhere.

This is a particularly significant book for its extensive research and thorough documentation. Notes provided in 67 pages added to 171 pages of text are often as illuminating as the text itself.

These myths still are prominent in some public discussions and private conversations in the U.S., even though scholarship has discredited them. Therefore, the book is especially important for American readers. They are not as likely as Israelis to have access to updated and revised accounts of events that occurred during and after the overt hostilities that have punctuated the course of conflict between Israelis and Arab peoples.

The book’s narrative does not proceed along a continuous historical time line. Rather, Finkelstein chooses to dwell on several critical periods examined in the writings of historians such as the Israelis Benny Morris and Anita Shapira; and American putative scholar Joan Peters. Indeed, the meticulous research that ultimately led to the unequivocal exposure of Peters’ fraudulent scholarship was Finkelstein’s doctoral dissertation at Princeton.

The Falsehoods of Abba Eban in his “finest hour” as Israel’s diplomat par excellence during and after the June 1967 war are the third of Finkelstein’s central challenges.

The course of that very fateful war of 1967 and its aftermath—the October 1973 war—and the Camp David Accords as its ultimate denouement prior to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, become another “group” for Finkelstein’s in-depth object lessons. These deserve utmost attention because from the events in question there arose a web of “political correctness” that still holds exclusive sway in many circles in the U.S.

Above and beyond Finkelstein’s refutation of Joan Peters’ thesis that most of the Palestinians are descendants of very recent arrivals from Syria and elsewhere, and the mountain of ”evidence” she dredges up in support, his chapter “A Land Without a People” highlights a serious problem: the chorus of enthusiasm, praise and endorsement for the Peters book from such Jewish scholars and literary luminaries as Barbara Tuchman, Bernard Lewis, Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel, to mention but a few.

Certainly, one of the highlights of Finkelstein’s numerous accomplishments is his expose’ of the aftermath of Peters’ discrediting. He did a great service to those of us who still care about such things, by bringing to light those who subjugate integrity in the service of ideological propaganda. Sadly, even after Peters’ “evidence” became widely recognized as falsehood, few of the endorsers publicly admitted their mistaken gullibility.

The profound injustice done the Palestinian people has significant roots in the 1948 war, when a massive exodus from their villages, towns and neighborhoods took place, over a short period of months. The chapter “Born of War, Not by Design” could well be the most instructive for those readers—especially in the U.S.—whose memory does not extend back to that time.

In this chapter, focus is on the work of Israeli “new” historian Benny Morris. His books chronicle the political, military and also - in my view - significant human events of the 1948 war that set the stage for almost half a century of the most vigorous Zionist “settler colonialism” and expansion. Still ongoing, and entirely at the expense of the Palestinian people, this settler colonialism again has been eloquently described by Israeli Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi in his 1992 book, Original Sins.

Finkelstein focuses on one aspect of Morris’ historical scholarship. While Morris reveals political and military leaders, he steadfastly - but according to Finkelstein falsely - maintains that “the Arab exodus was not the result of a general, premeditated Yishuv (Jewish) policy” (quoted on p.64 of Image and Reality). The Morris thesis is that the mass exodus of Arabs from their major population centers all over present-day Israel was not the result of a well-formulated plan to get rid of as many Arabs as possible, as quickly as possible. Rather, Morris maintains that Arab flight was a by-product of war. As in all wars “things happen!” Finkelstein shows that Morris’ obfuscation of the widely-known Plan D’s real objective is a falsification of the facts, plain and simple.

Indeed, in May 1975 edition of a report on “Arab villages destroyed in Israel,” Prof. Israel Shahak states that “the truth about Arab settlements which used to exist in the area of [the present] Israel before 1948 is one of the most guarded secrets of Israeli life”. In the spirit of Palestinian historian and geographer Arif Al-Arif - on whose work the Shahak report on these villages is based - and also in the spirit of Image and Reality, but in contrast to Benny Morris, I am compelled to add, in the words of the Shahak report, that “falsifying facts in this way is a most grave offense in itself and also one of the most important causes for the prevention of any meaningful peace (i.e. not one based only on force and oppression).”

Of 475 Palestinian villages known to have existed before 1948, 385 have been destroyed, some without so much as a stone to mark their past existence.

“The June 1967 war marked a decisive crossroads in the history of the modern Middle East,” Finkelstein writes on p. 123 of his book. “It redefined the contours of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the terms of its settlement.” Indeed, I am convinced that the June war launched Israel on a path toward the exercise of power almost on a global scale.

With impressive military and diplomatic documentation, Finkelstein thoroughly rebuts Abba Eban’s edifice of falsehoods and linguistic acrobatics. For a long time indeed, Eban successfully diverted the blame for that war away from Israel. Moreover, his version of events served to bring Israel much of the glory and praise that still clings to its military and diplomatic image. But Finkelstein presents sufficient evidence to reverse the credibility of the received truth of Eban’sassessment.

As his finale, Finkelstein takes readers through the labyrinthine “career” or U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, even as it wound its way through another war, that of October 1973, and the “neutralization of Egypt” at Camp David. For those who were not around to read the newspapers in the post-October war period, the final chapter, “Language of Force,” recalls the Jarring mission, its aftermath, and Anwar Sadat’s dramatic opening to Israel which led to Camp David, which in turn opened the way to the 1982 Lebanon invasion.

As for Resolution 242, no one has formally announced its death and internment. But is that not what actually happened in Oslo and Cairo?