Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel's Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe

As centuries of brutal oppression in Europe culminated in the Holocaust, Zionism offered Jews a homeland to call their own, the one land where they could be safe. Reality fell short of hopeful theory; open warfare began in 1948 as Arab and Jew struggled for control of what was to one Palestine and the other Israel; Israel prevailed but with a substantial Palestinian minority. As journalist Roberts documents, the result is a land shared by two peoples whose interests are largely incompatible, irreconcilable nations that cannot agree on the facts of history and certainly not on their interpretation. Sixty-five years have done nothing to reconcile the two groups, and, in fact, there is little evidence of widespread desire for peaceful coexistence on either side. The Israelis methodically do their best to erase the presence and history of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians, seemingly favored by simple demographic extrapolation, respond with violence. Roberts does a masterful job of presenting all perspectives in their proper context. While a minority seem willing to try to reconcile, this work offers little hope that they will be successful; the future appears to hold only continued struggle, mass ethnic cleansing or worse, willful annihilation of one side by the other. Agent: Bill Hanna, Acacia House. (Sept.)