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July 26, 2002/Av 17 5762, Vol. 54, No. 45
This summer, read for Israel
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Trying to get a bead on the Middle East? Go beyond scanning daily news reports to reading books with a little more heft and scope that can broaden historical perspective. Placing the current conflict within the framework of the past will help immeasurably in enhancing understanding - and in creating sorely needed knowledgeable advocates for Israel. Now how's that for purposeful summer reading?
First choice on the list would be the newly released "Six Days of War, June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" (Oxford University Press, $30 hardcover) by scholar Michael B. Oren. Oren, an American who hails from my native New Jersey, has lived and worked in Israel for more than 25 years. He received his doctorate in Middle East Studies from Princeton, and served as director of Israel's Department of Inter-Religious Affairs in the government of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and as an advisor to the Israeli delegation to the United Nations. He has written widely on the Middle East and currently is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
As he explains in the foreword, the affable Oren, who spoke in the Valley last winter, hoped to write a comprehensive book about the war. Many others have been written over the past 35 years, he notes, but he sought to take advantage of newly opened archival sources to write a more definitive account. His goal, he writes, is to "relive a period of history that is profoundly our own."
And that he does, with assiduous research, carefully drawn characters, readable style and impeccable organization. Taking the reader from the first incursion into Israel on Dec. 31, 1964, by a band of al-Fatah guerrillas led by then 35-year-old Yasser Arafat, through the six days of the conflict to the victorious battle for Jerusalem, Oren captures the drama of the war while always making the reader aware of its broader political implications.
"The War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, the Munich massacre and Black September, the Lebanon War, the controversy over Jewish settlements and the future of Jerusalem, the Camp David Accords, the Oslo Accords, the Intifada - all were the result of six intense days in the Middle East in June 1967," he writes. "Rarely in modern times has so short and localized a conflict had such prolonged, global consequences. ... In a very real sense, for statesmen and diplomats and soldiers, the war has never ended. For historians, it has only just begun."
A likely choice after reading Oren's tome might be Lt. Gen. Mordechai Gur's "The Battle for Jerusalem," (ibooks, inc., $14 paperback, available online at www.ibooks.net.) Originally published in 1974 and re-released this year, Gur's first-person account of the critical battle differs widely from Oren's scholarly work. Missing is the skillful research, the lengthy endnotes, the distanced academic gaze. Gur, the Israeli chief of staff and field commander of the battle, writes with an arresting energy and emotion that can come only from a military officer in the heat of war. It is an action story from the get go with the roar of planes signaling its beginning, taking the reader through each advance, each maneuver, interspersing Gur's simple storyline with plenty of dialogue sprinkled liberally with exclamation points. But Gur captures the terror of the conflict as well as the euphoric return to Jerusalem with effect.
On June 12, 1967, Gur addressed the paratroopers on the Temple Mount:
"When the Temple Mount was conquered by the Greeks, the Maccabees liberated it. When the Second Temple was destroyed, the Zealots and Bar-Kochba resisted the Romans heroically but in vain. For two millennia, no Jew could enter the Temple Mount. ... And then you came, you paratroopers, and you restored the Mount to the bosom of the nation. The Western Wall - the heartbeat of every Jew, the place to which every Jewish heart yearns, is once more in our hands."
How's that for historical perspective?
Last, to round out your summer reading, how about Wendy Orange's "Coming Home to Jerusalem" (Touchstone Books, $14 paperback).
In case you've forgotten Israel's seductive appeal, Orange's lyrical prose reminds.
"When I finally lie down to sleep, I can't wait for morning, for the dawn sun rising over the Old City in brilliant red, for the sounds of Hebrew and Arabic prayers mixing in the air."
Her intensity and alertness infiltrates Orange's take on the political scene, her sharp mind as keen as her ear for dialogue. Orange, a psychologist by training, listens in on the national conversation and gives her read on the current situation. Making frequent trips across the Green line to places that the majority of American travelers have never been, she talks to peaceniks and religious fanatics, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian refugees, politicians and the man and woman on the street. Her memoir of her years living in Jerusalem provides a kaleidoscopic view of Israel's complex social, cultural and political landscape and its incipient seeds of conflict.
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