Righteous Victims

Making sense of any particular episode in the long and convoluted conflict between Arabs and Israelis can seem a Sisyphean task–engineering peace in the Middle East has become nearly clichéd in its complexity, with each individual dispute traceable back to years of anger, mistrust, and mutual misunderstanding fueled by cycles of violence and revenge. To add to this confusion, the historical record has been colored by “emphatic partisanship by commentators and historians from both sides, as well as by foreign observers,” adds Middle East historian Benny Morris . So what Morris has undertaken in this volume–an inclusive, dispassionate, and rigorous history of the conflict, from Zionism’s birth in the wake of the Russian pogroms through to the uncertain prospects for peace in 1999–is no mean feat. A calm, balanced voice (although a controversial one among some who fear revisionism), Morris has previously proven his scholarship with such definitive titles as Israel’s Border Wars and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Righteous Victims likewise doesn’t waver in its task, methodically unearthing the political and military roots of the struggle, from early friction between Zionist “colonizers” and native Arabs slowly through to the establishment of Israel and the bloody wars and terrorism that followed.