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Writing Assignment: The Debate About 1948, Avi Shlaim - Coggle Diagram
Writing Assignment: The Debate About 1948, Avi Shlaim
General information
main emphasis & thesis:
wants to point out the different versions of events between old and new Israeli historians
explains the argumentations of these two schools of Israeli Historians about Israelis perspective on several events of the 1st Israeli-Arab War in 1948
author: Avi Shlaim
year published: 1995
where was it published: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3
title: The Debate about 1948
events that were discussed
the ratio of the Israeli forces to the Arab forces in the 1st Israeli-Arab war
old: "a little Jewish David confronting a giant Arab Goliath" 294 // Britsh Foreign Minister Bevin
new:
Bevin warned Jordan not to invade the area allocated by the U.N. to the Jews
mid-May: total number of Arab troops and Palestine 20,000 and 35,000 troops on Israeli side
Yishuv better prepared, better mobilized, and better organized when the struggle for Palestine reached its crucial stage 294
Haganah/ IDF: large reserve of Western-trained and homegrown officers with military experience; effective centralized system of command and control
relations between Jordan and Israel before and during the war
new
Sela Central thesis 296: unwritten agreement between King Abdullah and the Jewish Agency to divide Palestine between themselves in Nov 1947
Sela subsidary thesis: Britain knew and approved of this secret Hasemite-Zionist agreement to divide up Palestine between themselves
Shabtai Teveth; "Israel and Jordan did maintain a dialogue" but goes on to argue that "at most theirs was an understanding of convenience..." 297 but no understanding with the Palestinian side
relationships of the Arabic states to each other
new: each Arab state looking after its own interests 300 // no love lost between Abdullah and the other Arab rulers // deeply devided among themselves 297
old: Arab-Israeli conflict as simply bipolar affair // "unbroken circle of Arab hostility" 297
the goals of each Arabic state during the war
new: each Arab state looking after its own intersts 300 // at least Jordan not in favour of creating an independent Arab state in part of Palestine 298
sending the Jews to the see
the ending of the war: armistice agreement - who started the initiative? 300
old: notion of Arab intransigence
new: postwar Israel was more intrasigent that the Arab states; Israel would have a larger share of the responsibility for the political deadlock
root of the Palestinian refugee problem
old: Palestinians left the country on orders from their own leaders and with teh expectation of a triumphant return
new: Morris; The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem; no evidence of Arab leaders issuing calls to Palestine's Arabs to leave their homes and villages; no blankets handed down for above for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians; "The Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design" 295
differences between old and new Israeli Historian School
old
"deals mostly with the military side of the war" tried to dress the balance by looking at the policial side of the war 298
axiom of their narrative that Israel is the innocent victim 292
"If Israel was born tarnished, besmirched by original sin then it was no more deserving of that [Western] grace and assistance than were its neighbours"
criticism
old - very short political analysis of war, more military reports of heroic success
new
critism of them
"farrage of distortions, omissions, tendentious readings, and outright falsifications" Teveth 291
politically motivated, pro-Palestinian, and aimed at delegitimizing Zionism and the State of Israel; Teveth 291
challenging of standard Zionist version of several historical critical events
carried out extensive archival research in Israel, Britain, and America; Arguments are backed by hard documentary evidence and by a Western-style scholarly apparatus
conflict between calling the parites
new or revisionists?
literature about 1948
Israeli
30 year rule for official documentary
most literature not written by professional historians but by participants, by politicians, soldiers, official historians, and large host smpathetic chronicles, journalists, biographers, and hagiographers
very short political analysis of the war; long on chronicles of the military operations, especially the heroic feats of the Israeli fighters
Palestine
series of Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel
little access to materials on the 1948 war in Arab archives allowed 290
negligible literature in Arabic that consists of first-hand accounts of the disaster