A New History of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict Is a Study in Distortion

In the preface to his book Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel 1917-2017, Ian Black claims that he tries “to tell the story of, and from, both sides,” yet, notes Asher Susser, these two sides turn out to be “the victorious Israeli villain and the vanquished Palestinian victim.” Although Black breaks with the now-popular academic view that Zionism is a form of colonialism, and recognizes the Jews’ historical and religious attachment to the Land of Israel, he fails, writes Susser, to grasp the intensity of Arab anti-Semitism or to display skepticism toward the claims of Arab propagandists and anti-Zionist historians—accepting unquestioningly, for instance, the tale of a “massacre” at Lydda. Susser also notes more subtle problems: