Fabricating the History of the Six-Day War
With little evidence, a new book blames war-mongering generals on both sides.
July 7, 2017
Fabricating the History of the Six-Day War
With little evidence, a new book blames war-mongering generals on both sides.
In his new history of the 1967 conflict, Guy Laron claims to upend previous scholarship by arguing that the conflict was precipitated by war-mongering generals in Egypt, Syria, and Israel; in the last case, these militarists were in cahoots with “settlers” with whom they shared an obsession with territorial expansion. Meanwhile, the pressure of economic problems in Egypt and Israel left President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol without the political clout to rein in their respective generals. Reviewing the book, Uri Bar-Joseph finds it disorganized, crammed with “too much information about too many irrelevant issues,” and “filled with factual errors,” some of which “show an alarming lack of expertise.” But the book’s real problem lies elsewhere:
July 7, 2017
In France, Anti-Semitism Is a Hatred That Cannot Be Named
Lessons from the murder of Sarah Halimi.
A Strong Sense of Nationhood Isn’t Just Compatible with Democracy, It’s a Necessity
The decline of the nation-state explains the West’s political crisis.
Sex, Law, Religion—and a Secularist’s Morality Tale
A struggle between good secularism and bad religion?
Could an Italian Jew Have Created the Book That Baffled Researchers for a Century?
The Voynich Manuscript’s “mikveh” pictures.