Talk about unreconstructed, the New York Times book review section today is a real doozy. Between celebrating the Israel of today and yesteryear, along with resuscitating the specter of the "Islamofacist" boogeyman, it really hits all the marks. But here is one passage from Jonathan Tepperman’s review of A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel that really put me over the edge:
Truman’s remarkable perseverance is recounted by the Radoshes in readable prose, with good anecdotal color, a general sense of fair-mindedness (except perhaps toward the Arabs) and impressive detail. . .
Nor do they do quite enough to substantiate their claims that without Truman’s help, Israel might never have come into being or have survived its first few years. After all, the real work of midwifing the nation wasn’t done in Washington conference rooms but on the rocky soil of Palestine itself, where a ragtag bunch of European immigrants fought to establish a new country.
In 2009 is it too much to ask that a phrase like "a general sense of fair-mindedness (except perhaps toward the Arabs)" not appear in an article dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Forgive me for saying so, but at this point in history "fair-mindedness toward the Arabs" is all that really matters given the decades of skewed and ignorant history that has been propagated about the Israel/Palestine. Any serious discussion of Israel/Palestine should be considered incomplete with out it.
Sadly, this shoddy, biased view of history is displayed in Tepperman’s review itself. The second half of that quote above – "the rocky soil of Palestine itself, where a ragtag bunch of European immigrants fought to establish a new country" – is an excellent example of Exodus in action. Too bad that view of history has been out of vogue for at least 20 years (except in the Jewish community). Sorry to say Mr. Tepperman, but your review doesn’t show "fair-mindedness toward the Arabs." Shame on the Times for running it.
