nelsta's review against another edition
5.0
This book was fantastic. It is, undoubtedly, the best (non-textbook) single-volume history of the modern Middle East I've ever read. The author kept the material engaging, informative, and relevant. He deftly strung the histories of different nationalities, cultures, and religious persuasions together into a cohesive story that made sense as it progressed chronologically.
Despite the book's title, this book began in the Ottoman era. For those of you more unfamiliar with the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire was not ruled by Arabs, but by Turks. It's an important difference. There should have been some indication that this was a modern history and not a total history as the title implies, but it wasn't a deal-breaker for me.
The story kicked off with an over-arching history of the Ottoman Empire. I eventually came to understand that Rogan was describing Ottoman rule so that we could understand why the Arabs developed as they did. And truthfully, the Arab story cannot be told without understanding the Ottoman Empire, so it makes sense. After describing the fall of the Ottomans and the never-ending European interference in the region, Rogan went on to recount the histories of the various Arab nations in the Middle East and North Africa. I especially enjoyed learning about Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt. He concluded the book with a slightly outdated, but still relevant, history of Israel, Palestine, Iraq, and the Arab Spring.
This book is absolutely worth the price of admission. It is a fantastic primer. If you want to understand modern Arab politics, religious issues, etc, this is the perfect place to start. Reading it would probably be a bit dry for the casual reader, but listening to it on Audible solved that problem easily. I fell back in love with the Middle East all over again while listening to this book.
Despite the book's title, this book began in the Ottoman era. For those of you more unfamiliar with the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire was not ruled by Arabs, but by Turks. It's an important difference. There should have been some indication that this was a modern history and not a total history as the title implies, but it wasn't a deal-breaker for me.
The story kicked off with an over-arching history of the Ottoman Empire. I eventually came to understand that Rogan was describing Ottoman rule so that we could understand why the Arabs developed as they did. And truthfully, the Arab story cannot be told without understanding the Ottoman Empire, so it makes sense. After describing the fall of the Ottomans and the never-ending European interference in the region, Rogan went on to recount the histories of the various Arab nations in the Middle East and North Africa. I especially enjoyed learning about Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt. He concluded the book with a slightly outdated, but still relevant, history of Israel, Palestine, Iraq, and the Arab Spring.
This book is absolutely worth the price of admission. It is a fantastic primer. If you want to understand modern Arab politics, religious issues, etc, this is the perfect place to start. Reading it would probably be a bit dry for the casual reader, but listening to it on Audible solved that problem easily. I fell back in love with the Middle East all over again while listening to this book.
cstack's review against another edition
4.0
Very detailed history of Arab countries (e.g. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, etc). The general takeaway I got is that Arabs have been subject to imperialism and foreign influence for a long time. The tone was a little too dense for me: too many names and dates. Especially since I listened to it on audiobook with a monotone narrator.
aerlenbach's review against another edition
5.0
20,000 characters isn't enough! This is the criminally abridged version
This book encompasses a 100+ year history of the Arabic people within the Middle East, touching briefly in Muslims within Central Asia. I have made highlights in my ebook copy and have attempted to compile the most interesting factoids, quotes, and my thoughts in a mildly cohesive narrative. This isn’t really a review of the book itself than a book report. The report is really long and misses A LOT. But I tried my best.
I found the book highly informative, straightforward, and balanced. I wish it drew more through-lines of ‘how this event happening now connects to that event from 50 years ago’. The author did that a bit, but not enough IMO. Also not nearly enough about the US-Saudi Arabia relationship. I’mma need to read another book about that.
But my overall thoughts on the historical events are this:
US and European meddling has done more harm than good in the Greater Middle East region and to the Arabic people. The best thing to be done is for the West to remain as neutral and un-involved as possible. Everything we touch turns to shit. Leave these people alone.
Good place to start
“Western policymakers and intellectuals need to pay far more attention to history if they hope to remedy the ills that afflict the Arab world today. All too often in the West, we discount the current value of history. […] This could spare them not from repeating history so much as from repeating historic mistakes.”
—
Culture Clash
• In the late 1700’s, The French brought post-Revolution classical liberalism to Egypt, and argued that their ideals were “universal”. There is truly no better tool for a zealot or conqueror than to claim that their firmly held beliefs are the pinnacle and all others are “barbaric”.
• I do hold many of the liberal, materialist beliefs espoused by the European invaders of the time, including “the exercise of human reason over revealed religion”, it’s clear their intentions were not to improve the material conditions of the people they sought out, but to conquer their lands and stick it to their centuries-long enemy, Britain.
—
Pre-WW1 Imperialism, Colonialism, and Neo-Colonialism
• Tunisia, a small African country just south of Italy would be a victim of Europe’s newest plot of conquest: Not gunboat diplomacy, but something more insidious.
• After Tunisia’s 1861 constitution, a guy named Khayr al-Din was appointed president of the Grand Council, but didn’t like how things were run, “and so in 1863 he tendered his resignation. The issue that provoked his resignation was the government’s decision to contract its first foreign loan, which Khayr al-Din predicted would drag his adoptive country ‘to its ruin.’ […] “The result was the surrender of Tunisia’s sovereignty to an international financial commission.” And there it is. That’s how they get you.
• I always thought that the Neo-Colonial “dollar diplomacy” of Europe and the US started after regular old colonialism fell out of fashion in the mid-1900’s. Turns out they were both happening in lock-step for over 150 years.
• Long-story short: Europe offers usurious loans to developing countries, the country can’t pay the loan back, thus the European empire takes over whatever is making the country money, and drains the wealth as quickly as possible, while diverting any funding that benefits the people of that country. It’s a story as old as time. It’s still going on today, and it’s never stopped happening in over 150 years. Though now it’s mostly done by “The World Bank” and the “International Monetary Fund”, which are puppets to the interest of US & EU corporate interests. That’s how the world works. This is neo-colonialism, AKA neo-liberalism.
• “The single greatest threat to the independence of the Middle East was not the armies of Europe but its banks. Ottoman reformers were terrified by the risks involved in accepting loans from Europe. In 1852, when Sultan Abdulmecid sought funds from France, one of his advisors took him aside and counseled strongly against the loan: ‘Your father [Mahmud II] had two wars with the Russians and lived through many campaigns. He had many pressures on him, yet he did not borrow money from abroad. […] If this state borrows five piasters it will sink. For if once a loan is taken, there will be no end to it. [The state] will sink overwhelmed in debt.’”
• Thus these countries and the Ottoman Empire itself sank deeper and deeper into the claws to the European empire without even firing a shot.
• “[Europe] gained tremendous power over the finances of the Ottoman Empire as a whole, which the European powers used not just to control the actions of the sultan’s government but to open the Ottoman economy to European companies for railways, mining, and public works.”
• “Open up the economy” is one of those euphemism capitalists have been using for centuries to describe “let the oligarchs suck the country dry”. That’s what that phrase has always meant. Remember that the next time CNN or the NYT suggests it for some poor under-developed nation.
• “Between 1862 and 1873, Egypt contracted eight foreign loans, totaling £68.5 million ($376.75 million), which, after discounts, left only £47 million ($258.5 million), of which some £36 million ($198 million) were spent in payments on the principal and interest on the foreign loans. Thus, out of a debt of £68.5 million ($376.75 million), the government of Egypt gained only about £11 million ($60.5 million) to invest in its economy.”
So 23% of the loan was actually usable by the country and the rest was stolen back by Europe. If that’s not the textbook definition of usury I don’t know what is.
• Then these countries exploited by Europe began selling their assets. And who was there to buy for pennies on the dollar? Why the exploiters, of course!
• “As this desperate measure failed to staunch the hemorrhage, the viceroy sold the government’s shares in the Suez Canal Company to the British government in 1875 for £4 million ($22 million)—recouping only one-quarter of the £16 million ($88 million) the canal is estimated to have cost the government of Egypt.” Truly truly evil.
• The vultures of Europe picked clean the carcass they themselves killed. But their “financial advisers” had no interest in returning these countries to fiscal solvency. “With each plan, the foreign economic advisors managed to insinuate themselves deeper into the financial administration of Egypt.” That was their goal, of course.
• The insatiable European powered couldn’t stop there. “Over time, informal imperial control hardened into direct colonial rule, as the whole of North Africa was partitioned and distributed among the growing empires of Europe.”
• Ultimately, England stole Egypt, France stole Algeria & Tunisia, Italy stole Libya, France & Spain stole Morocco. And again this is BEFORE WW1.
• The imperial nations stole these countries’ autonomy and wealth. The countries’ people fought back, and ultimately the imperial nations had to occupy the under-developed nations to put down any further notion of independence fro European domination. This is a very common pattern we see in history.
—
Arab Nationalism and the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt
• Despite my aforementioned support of “anti-nationalism”, what I hate more than nations is imperialism. The rise of Arab Nationalism, and the merging of Arab nations into a united singular nation seemed like viable opponent to European imperialism.
• Resistance to European & US imperialism after WW2 resulted as anyone might expect with some Arab countries asking for help from the big bad USSR.
• Egypt even had the audacity of extending diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic of China in 1956. How dare these countries do what’s in their own best interest instead of falling in line with US, British, & French hegemony‽
• “[T]he United States and Britain never intended to give the full amount Egypt needed, pledging only one-third the sum requested—not enough to guarantee the dam but rather just enough to exercise influence over Egypt during the years it would take to build it.”
• Remember this whenever you hear people talk about “why are we giving money to these other countries”? It’s so we can control them. That’s always the goal. Never altruism, or the betterment of humanity, but to advance the interests of the USA, usually meaning the interests of the multinational corporations that control the USA.
• But so Egypt had a plan: pay for the dam by nationalizing the Suez Canal, which was at the time owned by a corporation listed in France with the British government as the largest shareholder.
• Britain didn’t want that because that would weaken their control over their former colony. I mean…the idea of a country believing that the wealth generated by that country belongs to its people and not international corporations and foreign empires? how could anyone believe such a thing‽ (Fun fact: Any time a weaker nation under the thumb of Europe or the US ever “nationalizes” anything or does “land reform,” you best believe that country is about to get invaded)
• This became known as “The Suez Crisis,” AKA “The Tripartite Aggression” because after Egypt nationalized it, Britain, France, and Israel went to war with Egypt. This obvious act of imperial aggression destroyed the credibility of both France and Britain among the Arab countries, helping to ferment Arab nationalism and ended their influence in the region (except for in Israel, of course)
• The US was appalled by this needless aggression, simultaneously “the Central Intelligence Agency had itself been plotting a coup against the Syrian government, to be executed on the very day the Israelis began their attack.” Why don’t these countries like us again? Silver lining: the crisis derailed the US’s regime change efforts in Syria.
• Credit where credit is due: “Eisenhower administration resorted to outright threats against Britain and France to secure compliance with their demands for an immediate cease-fire. Both countries were threatened with expulsion from NATO, and the U.S. Treasury warned it would sell part of its Sterling bond holdings to force a devaluation of the British currency.” Sometimes wielding a big stick can actually be anti-imperialist.
• Arab nationalism when so far as to merge Egypt and Syria into a singular country for a few years. That was pretty crazy.
• Since before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, The West has been terrified of Arab unity. That’s one of the reasons why they were so obsessed with meddling in Arab affairs. A united Arab people challenged European & US hegemony.
--
Post-WW1 and King-Crane
• Britain lied, cheated, and stole to secure pretty much everything they wanted after WW1, blindly carving up the region with no sense of understanding its history, peoples, or sectarian concerns. This has resulted in the issues the region has faced ever since.
• Though completely ignored at the time, President Wilson’s 1919 King-Crane Commission insights foreshadowed the region’s inevitable problems that are still unresolved.
• For example: “King and Crane argued that the Balfour Declaration’s promises, both to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine and to respect ‘the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,’ could not be reconciled.” Holy moly. They knew this would happen.
• Europe knew that the people of the region did not support Zionism. Europe (and later the US) pushed for it anyway. Then the new nation went to war with its neighbors for decades, and it slowly colonized and ethnically cleansed their country. But we’ll get more into that later…
—
Occupied Palestine - ‘One cannot fill a cup that is already full.’
• …and by later I mean now.
• The colonization of Palestine by Imperial-backed zionists is one of the most contentious issues of the modern era.
• This is the 3rd or 4th book I’ve read that covers this topic. Something like half of this book ended up being about the creation of Israel, its internal strife, and the decades of external conflicts with its neighbors.
• After reading these books, watching documentaries, and following the news about what’s going on most recently, I can emphatically say that I cannot in good conscious support this country’s “right to exist” as it keeps demanding from anyone and everyone.
• From the very beginning, the Zionists’ goals required ethnic cleansing: “the Peel Commission held out the possibility of ‘population transfers’ to remove Arabs from territories allocated to the Jewish state—something that in the later twentieth century would come to be called ethnic cleansing.” A country founded on ethnic cleansing of the natives…hmmmm…history doesn’t repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.
• The British Empire cracked down on Palestinians trying to resist colonial domination. “Every Arab attack against the British and the Yishuv brought massive reprisals. The British, determined to suppress the revolt militarily, dispatched 25,000 soldiers and policemen to Palestine—the largest deployment of British forces abroad since the end of the First World War. They established military courts, operating under “emergency regulations” that gave the mandate the legal trappings of a military dictatorship. […] Combatants and innocent civilians alike were interned in concentration camps—by 1939, over 9,000 Palestinians were held in overcrowded facilities. Suspects were subjected to violent interrogation, ranging from humiliation to torture. […] Palestinians were used as human shields to prevent insurgents from placing land mines on roads used by British forces.”
• And yet the Brits and colonizers are “the good guys?” Concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, collective punishments (war crime), mass graves. The nation born out of blood. What right does it have?
Occupied Palestine - The Six Day War, AKA: That time Israel bombed a US Navy ship
• The 1967 Arab-Israeli war was more of a proxy-war between the Western-backed Israel and the Soviet-backed Arabs. This ultimately resulted in the US finally and forever picking a side on this conflict: “The 1967 war would utterly transform America’s position in the Middle East. It was then that the special relationship between the United States and Israel began, commensurate with Arab antagonism toward the United States. The split was bound to happen, given the differences in their respective geostrategic priorities. The Americans could not convince the Arabs to take their side against the Soviet menace, and the Arabs could not get the Americans to respect their views of the Zionist threat.” And then…something strange happened...
• “On the fourth day of the war, Israeli air and naval forces attacked a surveillance ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, killing thirty-four U.S. servicemen and wounding 171. […] “The fact that such an unprovoked attack, incurring so many American casualties, could so easily be forgiven reflected the nature of the new special relationship between Israel and the United States.” Insane.
—
Occupied Palestine - Peace was never an option
• The US and Israel have refused to negotiate with Palestinian organizations that it claims has committed terrorist attacks against Israel (from the PLO to Hamas). While these assertions may be valid, remember that one man’s ‘terrorist’ is another man’s ‘freedom fighter.’ And it’s easy to claim the moral high ground when you’ve actually just got a state police force to do all the terrorism for you (The IDF) with help from the biggest global terrorist organization in the world (the US government) against the people you’ve colonized in the land you stole. Far more terrorism, in fact, than any Palestinian group could even dream to achieve. Not to mention the Imperialist backers that have done their own share of terrorism in the region. But the goal is to derail effective negotiations by refusing to meet with organizations that have substantive standing with the Palestinian people. Just hand wave them away as “terrorists”. A classic move of the last ~50 years.
• There are two diametrically opposed ideologies that cannot coexist in this area the size of New Jersey:
1: “The Jewish people’s divine right to the whole of the Land of Israel.” And…
2: “End the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and bring about the full restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. […] fighting against Israel to liberate Muslim lands [is] a religious duty”
• When any peace process does gain traction, a more extremist faction on one side or the other, holding a more absolutist version of one of the two above mentioned ideologies ends up assassinating the peace negotiator or overthrows them violently or electorally, resulting in a backtrack of the previously decided peace.
• This usually happens on the Israeli side, as they have less to lose and more to gain by backtracking on peace. They hold more power. They are on the side of the imperialists.
• An example of this happening would be the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, derailing the Oslo process, and beginning another Israeli terror campaign, codenamed “Operation Grapes of Wrath”. The 1996 election in Israel resulted in famous Hitler apologist Benjamin Netanyahu winning the premiership.
• Rabin, of course, was hardly a dove. In 1992, he said “I wish I could wake up one day and find that Gaza has sunk into the sea.” And he was a moderate in that country who got assassinated for seeking peace.
• “Netanyahu’s minor land for peace deal left Israel in full control of more than 71 percent of the West Bank, and in control of security over 23 percent of the other territories. This was a far cry from the 90 percent transfer the Palestinians expected from the Oslo II agreement.”
• Israel has slowly eaten away at Palestinian land, block by block, street by street, In fits and starts for over a century. They won’t stop until they have settled the entire West Bank, Gaza, and beyond.
• A “two-state solution,” while noble, is not feasible in my opinion. The two diametrically opposed ideals are simply irreconcilable. Any good-faith effort to achieve that goal will be undermined by those who hold a more absolutist version of their side’s ideology either through assassination, electoralism, or terrorism. This will continue until one side wins and the other is “sunk into the sea”. Given the track record, it’s clear which side that’ll be…
• Israel has continually found any opportunity to prolong their expansion, domination, and extermination of the Palestinian people. They don’t want peace. They’ve never wanted peace. They want land.
• Israel maintains a theocratic apartheid state and has committed countless war crimes, acts of ethnic cleansing, terrorism, and arguable genocide against the Palestinian people. This book didn’t even have time to mention the highly effective propaganda campaign Israel has enacted onto their Imperial overseer the USA. The USA is implicated in every single one of the atrocities Israel has perpetrated. We give them the guns. We give them the cover in the international community. No one in good conscience can stand with Israel.
Here is my final favorite quote:
“The inconvenient truth about democracy in the Arab world is that, in any free and fair election, those parties most hostile to the United States are most likely to win. This is not because of any animosity toward Americans per se, but because Arab voters are increasingly convinced that the U.S. government is hostile to their interests. The war on terror has only confirmed Arab voters in this view. American hostilities against Muslim and Arab states, combined with unconditional American support for Israel, led many Arab citizens to conclude that the U.S. was exploiting the war on terror to extend its domination over their region.”
This book encompasses a 100+ year history of the Arabic people within the Middle East, touching briefly in Muslims within Central Asia. I have made highlights in my ebook copy and have attempted to compile the most interesting factoids, quotes, and my thoughts in a mildly cohesive narrative. This isn’t really a review of the book itself than a book report. The report is really long and misses A LOT. But I tried my best.
I found the book highly informative, straightforward, and balanced. I wish it drew more through-lines of ‘how this event happening now connects to that event from 50 years ago’. The author did that a bit, but not enough IMO. Also not nearly enough about the US-Saudi Arabia relationship. I’mma need to read another book about that.
But my overall thoughts on the historical events are this:
US and European meddling has done more harm than good in the Greater Middle East region and to the Arabic people. The best thing to be done is for the West to remain as neutral and un-involved as possible. Everything we touch turns to shit. Leave these people alone.
Good place to start
“Western policymakers and intellectuals need to pay far more attention to history if they hope to remedy the ills that afflict the Arab world today. All too often in the West, we discount the current value of history. […] This could spare them not from repeating history so much as from repeating historic mistakes.”
—
Culture Clash
• In the late 1700’s, The French brought post-Revolution classical liberalism to Egypt, and argued that their ideals were “universal”. There is truly no better tool for a zealot or conqueror than to claim that their firmly held beliefs are the pinnacle and all others are “barbaric”.
• I do hold many of the liberal, materialist beliefs espoused by the European invaders of the time, including “the exercise of human reason over revealed religion”, it’s clear their intentions were not to improve the material conditions of the people they sought out, but to conquer their lands and stick it to their centuries-long enemy, Britain.
—
Pre-WW1 Imperialism, Colonialism, and Neo-Colonialism
• Tunisia, a small African country just south of Italy would be a victim of Europe’s newest plot of conquest: Not gunboat diplomacy, but something more insidious.
• After Tunisia’s 1861 constitution, a guy named Khayr al-Din was appointed president of the Grand Council, but didn’t like how things were run, “and so in 1863 he tendered his resignation. The issue that provoked his resignation was the government’s decision to contract its first foreign loan, which Khayr al-Din predicted would drag his adoptive country ‘to its ruin.’ […] “The result was the surrender of Tunisia’s sovereignty to an international financial commission.” And there it is. That’s how they get you.
• I always thought that the Neo-Colonial “dollar diplomacy” of Europe and the US started after regular old colonialism fell out of fashion in the mid-1900’s. Turns out they were both happening in lock-step for over 150 years.
• Long-story short: Europe offers usurious loans to developing countries, the country can’t pay the loan back, thus the European empire takes over whatever is making the country money, and drains the wealth as quickly as possible, while diverting any funding that benefits the people of that country. It’s a story as old as time. It’s still going on today, and it’s never stopped happening in over 150 years. Though now it’s mostly done by “The World Bank” and the “International Monetary Fund”, which are puppets to the interest of US & EU corporate interests. That’s how the world works. This is neo-colonialism, AKA neo-liberalism.
• “The single greatest threat to the independence of the Middle East was not the armies of Europe but its banks. Ottoman reformers were terrified by the risks involved in accepting loans from Europe. In 1852, when Sultan Abdulmecid sought funds from France, one of his advisors took him aside and counseled strongly against the loan: ‘Your father [Mahmud II] had two wars with the Russians and lived through many campaigns. He had many pressures on him, yet he did not borrow money from abroad. […] If this state borrows five piasters it will sink. For if once a loan is taken, there will be no end to it. [The state] will sink overwhelmed in debt.’”
• Thus these countries and the Ottoman Empire itself sank deeper and deeper into the claws to the European empire without even firing a shot.
• “[Europe] gained tremendous power over the finances of the Ottoman Empire as a whole, which the European powers used not just to control the actions of the sultan’s government but to open the Ottoman economy to European companies for railways, mining, and public works.”
• “Open up the economy” is one of those euphemism capitalists have been using for centuries to describe “let the oligarchs suck the country dry”. That’s what that phrase has always meant. Remember that the next time CNN or the NYT suggests it for some poor under-developed nation.
• “Between 1862 and 1873, Egypt contracted eight foreign loans, totaling £68.5 million ($376.75 million), which, after discounts, left only £47 million ($258.5 million), of which some £36 million ($198 million) were spent in payments on the principal and interest on the foreign loans. Thus, out of a debt of £68.5 million ($376.75 million), the government of Egypt gained only about £11 million ($60.5 million) to invest in its economy.”
So 23% of the loan was actually usable by the country and the rest was stolen back by Europe. If that’s not the textbook definition of usury I don’t know what is.
• Then these countries exploited by Europe began selling their assets. And who was there to buy for pennies on the dollar? Why the exploiters, of course!
• “As this desperate measure failed to staunch the hemorrhage, the viceroy sold the government’s shares in the Suez Canal Company to the British government in 1875 for £4 million ($22 million)—recouping only one-quarter of the £16 million ($88 million) the canal is estimated to have cost the government of Egypt.” Truly truly evil.
• The vultures of Europe picked clean the carcass they themselves killed. But their “financial advisers” had no interest in returning these countries to fiscal solvency. “With each plan, the foreign economic advisors managed to insinuate themselves deeper into the financial administration of Egypt.” That was their goal, of course.
• The insatiable European powered couldn’t stop there. “Over time, informal imperial control hardened into direct colonial rule, as the whole of North Africa was partitioned and distributed among the growing empires of Europe.”
• Ultimately, England stole Egypt, France stole Algeria & Tunisia, Italy stole Libya, France & Spain stole Morocco. And again this is BEFORE WW1.
• The imperial nations stole these countries’ autonomy and wealth. The countries’ people fought back, and ultimately the imperial nations had to occupy the under-developed nations to put down any further notion of independence fro European domination. This is a very common pattern we see in history.
—
Arab Nationalism and the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt
• Despite my aforementioned support of “anti-nationalism”, what I hate more than nations is imperialism. The rise of Arab Nationalism, and the merging of Arab nations into a united singular nation seemed like viable opponent to European imperialism.
• Resistance to European & US imperialism after WW2 resulted as anyone might expect with some Arab countries asking for help from the big bad USSR.
• Egypt even had the audacity of extending diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic of China in 1956. How dare these countries do what’s in their own best interest instead of falling in line with US, British, & French hegemony‽
• “[T]he United States and Britain never intended to give the full amount Egypt needed, pledging only one-third the sum requested—not enough to guarantee the dam but rather just enough to exercise influence over Egypt during the years it would take to build it.”
• Remember this whenever you hear people talk about “why are we giving money to these other countries”? It’s so we can control them. That’s always the goal. Never altruism, or the betterment of humanity, but to advance the interests of the USA, usually meaning the interests of the multinational corporations that control the USA.
• But so Egypt had a plan: pay for the dam by nationalizing the Suez Canal, which was at the time owned by a corporation listed in France with the British government as the largest shareholder.
• Britain didn’t want that because that would weaken their control over their former colony. I mean…the idea of a country believing that the wealth generated by that country belongs to its people and not international corporations and foreign empires? how could anyone believe such a thing‽ (Fun fact: Any time a weaker nation under the thumb of Europe or the US ever “nationalizes” anything or does “land reform,” you best believe that country is about to get invaded)
• This became known as “The Suez Crisis,” AKA “The Tripartite Aggression” because after Egypt nationalized it, Britain, France, and Israel went to war with Egypt. This obvious act of imperial aggression destroyed the credibility of both France and Britain among the Arab countries, helping to ferment Arab nationalism and ended their influence in the region (except for in Israel, of course)
• The US was appalled by this needless aggression, simultaneously “the Central Intelligence Agency had itself been plotting a coup against the Syrian government, to be executed on the very day the Israelis began their attack.” Why don’t these countries like us again? Silver lining: the crisis derailed the US’s regime change efforts in Syria.
• Credit where credit is due: “Eisenhower administration resorted to outright threats against Britain and France to secure compliance with their demands for an immediate cease-fire. Both countries were threatened with expulsion from NATO, and the U.S. Treasury warned it would sell part of its Sterling bond holdings to force a devaluation of the British currency.” Sometimes wielding a big stick can actually be anti-imperialist.
• Arab nationalism when so far as to merge Egypt and Syria into a singular country for a few years. That was pretty crazy.
• Since before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, The West has been terrified of Arab unity. That’s one of the reasons why they were so obsessed with meddling in Arab affairs. A united Arab people challenged European & US hegemony.
--
Post-WW1 and King-Crane
• Britain lied, cheated, and stole to secure pretty much everything they wanted after WW1, blindly carving up the region with no sense of understanding its history, peoples, or sectarian concerns. This has resulted in the issues the region has faced ever since.
• Though completely ignored at the time, President Wilson’s 1919 King-Crane Commission insights foreshadowed the region’s inevitable problems that are still unresolved.
• For example: “King and Crane argued that the Balfour Declaration’s promises, both to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine and to respect ‘the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,’ could not be reconciled.” Holy moly. They knew this would happen.
• Europe knew that the people of the region did not support Zionism. Europe (and later the US) pushed for it anyway. Then the new nation went to war with its neighbors for decades, and it slowly colonized and ethnically cleansed their country. But we’ll get more into that later…
—
Occupied Palestine - ‘One cannot fill a cup that is already full.’
• …and by later I mean now.
• The colonization of Palestine by Imperial-backed zionists is one of the most contentious issues of the modern era.
• This is the 3rd or 4th book I’ve read that covers this topic. Something like half of this book ended up being about the creation of Israel, its internal strife, and the decades of external conflicts with its neighbors.
• After reading these books, watching documentaries, and following the news about what’s going on most recently, I can emphatically say that I cannot in good conscious support this country’s “right to exist” as it keeps demanding from anyone and everyone.
• From the very beginning, the Zionists’ goals required ethnic cleansing: “the Peel Commission held out the possibility of ‘population transfers’ to remove Arabs from territories allocated to the Jewish state—something that in the later twentieth century would come to be called ethnic cleansing.” A country founded on ethnic cleansing of the natives…hmmmm…history doesn’t repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.
• The British Empire cracked down on Palestinians trying to resist colonial domination. “Every Arab attack against the British and the Yishuv brought massive reprisals. The British, determined to suppress the revolt militarily, dispatched 25,000 soldiers and policemen to Palestine—the largest deployment of British forces abroad since the end of the First World War. They established military courts, operating under “emergency regulations” that gave the mandate the legal trappings of a military dictatorship. […] Combatants and innocent civilians alike were interned in concentration camps—by 1939, over 9,000 Palestinians were held in overcrowded facilities. Suspects were subjected to violent interrogation, ranging from humiliation to torture. […] Palestinians were used as human shields to prevent insurgents from placing land mines on roads used by British forces.”
• And yet the Brits and colonizers are “the good guys?” Concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, collective punishments (war crime), mass graves. The nation born out of blood. What right does it have?
Occupied Palestine - The Six Day War, AKA: That time Israel bombed a US Navy ship
• The 1967 Arab-Israeli war was more of a proxy-war between the Western-backed Israel and the Soviet-backed Arabs. This ultimately resulted in the US finally and forever picking a side on this conflict: “The 1967 war would utterly transform America’s position in the Middle East. It was then that the special relationship between the United States and Israel began, commensurate with Arab antagonism toward the United States. The split was bound to happen, given the differences in their respective geostrategic priorities. The Americans could not convince the Arabs to take their side against the Soviet menace, and the Arabs could not get the Americans to respect their views of the Zionist threat.” And then…something strange happened...
• “On the fourth day of the war, Israeli air and naval forces attacked a surveillance ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, killing thirty-four U.S. servicemen and wounding 171. […] “The fact that such an unprovoked attack, incurring so many American casualties, could so easily be forgiven reflected the nature of the new special relationship between Israel and the United States.” Insane.
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Occupied Palestine - Peace was never an option
• The US and Israel have refused to negotiate with Palestinian organizations that it claims has committed terrorist attacks against Israel (from the PLO to Hamas). While these assertions may be valid, remember that one man’s ‘terrorist’ is another man’s ‘freedom fighter.’ And it’s easy to claim the moral high ground when you’ve actually just got a state police force to do all the terrorism for you (The IDF) with help from the biggest global terrorist organization in the world (the US government) against the people you’ve colonized in the land you stole. Far more terrorism, in fact, than any Palestinian group could even dream to achieve. Not to mention the Imperialist backers that have done their own share of terrorism in the region. But the goal is to derail effective negotiations by refusing to meet with organizations that have substantive standing with the Palestinian people. Just hand wave them away as “terrorists”. A classic move of the last ~50 years.
• There are two diametrically opposed ideologies that cannot coexist in this area the size of New Jersey:
1: “The Jewish people’s divine right to the whole of the Land of Israel.” And…
2: “End the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and bring about the full restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. […] fighting against Israel to liberate Muslim lands [is] a religious duty”
• When any peace process does gain traction, a more extremist faction on one side or the other, holding a more absolutist version of one of the two above mentioned ideologies ends up assassinating the peace negotiator or overthrows them violently or electorally, resulting in a backtrack of the previously decided peace.
• This usually happens on the Israeli side, as they have less to lose and more to gain by backtracking on peace. They hold more power. They are on the side of the imperialists.
• An example of this happening would be the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, derailing the Oslo process, and beginning another Israeli terror campaign, codenamed “Operation Grapes of Wrath”. The 1996 election in Israel resulted in famous Hitler apologist Benjamin Netanyahu winning the premiership.
• Rabin, of course, was hardly a dove. In 1992, he said “I wish I could wake up one day and find that Gaza has sunk into the sea.” And he was a moderate in that country who got assassinated for seeking peace.
• “Netanyahu’s minor land for peace deal left Israel in full control of more than 71 percent of the West Bank, and in control of security over 23 percent of the other territories. This was a far cry from the 90 percent transfer the Palestinians expected from the Oslo II agreement.”
• Israel has slowly eaten away at Palestinian land, block by block, street by street, In fits and starts for over a century. They won’t stop until they have settled the entire West Bank, Gaza, and beyond.
• A “two-state solution,” while noble, is not feasible in my opinion. The two diametrically opposed ideals are simply irreconcilable. Any good-faith effort to achieve that goal will be undermined by those who hold a more absolutist version of their side’s ideology either through assassination, electoralism, or terrorism. This will continue until one side wins and the other is “sunk into the sea”. Given the track record, it’s clear which side that’ll be…
• Israel has continually found any opportunity to prolong their expansion, domination, and extermination of the Palestinian people. They don’t want peace. They’ve never wanted peace. They want land.
• Israel maintains a theocratic apartheid state and has committed countless war crimes, acts of ethnic cleansing, terrorism, and arguable genocide against the Palestinian people. This book didn’t even have time to mention the highly effective propaganda campaign Israel has enacted onto their Imperial overseer the USA. The USA is implicated in every single one of the atrocities Israel has perpetrated. We give them the guns. We give them the cover in the international community. No one in good conscience can stand with Israel.
Here is my final favorite quote:
“The inconvenient truth about democracy in the Arab world is that, in any free and fair election, those parties most hostile to the United States are most likely to win. This is not because of any animosity toward Americans per se, but because Arab voters are increasingly convinced that the U.S. government is hostile to their interests. The war on terror has only confirmed Arab voters in this view. American hostilities against Muslim and Arab states, combined with unconditional American support for Israel, led many Arab citizens to conclude that the U.S. was exploiting the war on terror to extend its domination over their region.”
doruga's review against another edition
4.0
Pretty solid overview of Arabian history from the Ottomans until the Arab Spring of 2011. There were some minor conclusions I disagreed with but the facts are laid out incredibly well. Too dense to be fully worthwhile as an audiobook so I might have to actually read this one later down the road.