The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History

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The Uneven Age of Speed: Caravans, Technology, and Mobility in the Late Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Middle East. Here are some of the chilling promises of a second holocaust thundered by Arab leaders , and their evil Soviet instigators , before and during the Six Day War. Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War is probably the most comprehensive book published on Israel's 1967 conflict with the Arab world to date. Painstakingly researched and scrupulously fair, Oren's strength is dealing with the causes and effects of the war. He discusses every diplomatic move and counter-move that the belligerent countries and their superpower allies (the U.S. and U. S. S. R.) made, and how those decisions impact Middle East policy to this day. Oren is noticeably weaker when discussing the actual tactics of the war, choosing to view the military units as pieces in a diplomatic chess game rather than giving the reader a sense of what the soldier on the ground was feeling, although he does do a fantastic job in describing the climactic battle for Jerusalem.

The Making of the Modern Middle East - Pan Macmillan The Making of the Modern Middle East - Pan Macmillan

I'm 36, and it's not uncommon to hear people younger than me (and maybe some older) think gloom and doom about the world today, particularly the situation in the Middle East. "What has the world come to?" "Surely this is the end times." Nuclear Iran, ISIL in Iraq and Syria, Syrian civil war, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Saudi and Iranian proxy war in Yemen, etc. But let's examine 1967: When Palestinians Became Human Shields: Counterinsurgency, Racialization, and the Great Revolt (1936–1939).Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: This is a well researched book and weaves the palace intrigues as reported by various key political and military players with information gleaned from official records and first hand accounts from the field to give a blow by blow account of the war. It takes its time to establish the context of the war, which I appreciated given how dynamic the Middle East is/ was. The six days of action are also well narrated and I had little trouble if any with following the action, though I did digress several times to look up maps and Wikipedia entries on people, places, and events, as any good history buff should when reading. I just wish the author had been as careful in recounting the aftermath and that the book had elaborated on the thesis implied by that subtitle: the last chapter does a somewhat hurried job of this and disappoints a bit in by questioning whether or not this conflict on its own was as significant as suggested or not! I felt a bit cheated!

The Making of the Modern Middle East | SOAS

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening. Michael B. Oren (Hebrew: מיכאל אורן; born Michael Scott Bornstein on May 20, 1955) is an American-born Israeli historian, author, politician, former ambassador to the United States (2009–2013), and current member of the Knesset for the Kulanu party and the Deputy Minister for Diplomacy in the Prime Minister's Office.It's true the Arab armies were routed, but they did fight hard, especially Jordan's troops in the West Bank and Syrian soldiers on the Golan. The Israelis could have easily conquered Cairo, Damascus, and Amman, but such actions would have had brought the Jewish state solid international condemnation, including from the United States. It must be very frustrating for Israel - its enemies fight for its destruction, and it cannot retaliate in kind. And somehow, the Israelis are considered the bad guys by many people. Nazis, Islamists, And The Making Of The Modern Middle East Book Review By Dr. Ludwig Watzal". www.countercurrents.org . Retrieved 2020-06-24.

The Making of the Modern Middle East by Jeremy Bowen

Adam Brookes Interviewed by Rana Mitter Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 4:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this eventPrior to my work on the 1967 war, I believed the politics in the Middle East—as elsewhere in the world—were the product of rational decision making, a reflection of cogent analyses on the part of Arab and Israeli leaders. Today I know differently. Of all the insights I gleaned from my research—the extent of Egyptian war planning, for example, or the depth of Israeli fears—none altered my thinking more than the realization that politics in the Middle East are, more often than not, random and unpredictable, arbitrary in their course and potentially explosive in their outcome. Read a little under half of this book while touring Israel-Palestine for work (The New Israel Fund), which definitely changed my perception of it. Kept returning to the story about the gas canisters, especially when touring East Jerusalem with the excellent NGO Ir Amim. The reasons are complicated, but Oren makes a strong case that Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer, supreme commander of Egyptian forces, filled the upper ranks of the Egyptian military with cronies, shoving aside talented leaders preparing for a coup against his childhood friend President Gamel Abdel Nasser. Initially, Israel wished to confine its actions to Egypt, even giving King Hussein the opportunity to stay on the sidelines. Hussein did not, however, which allowed Israel to capture the West Bank, including the entirety of Jerusalem. Ultimately, using Syrian shelling as a casus belli, Israel took the Golan as well. Jordan dismissed al-Hamarsha as a Zionist spy, 'in liaison with an Israeli belly dancer named Aurora Galili or Furora Jelli,' and then produced its own deserter," he writes.

The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History

When taken in the larger context of other agreements, declarations and promises to the players in the region over the years, we see how the agreement is at the root of so many contemporary problems. The Ottoman defeat in the First World War, however, shattered the visions of imperial reconstruction long cultivated by this last Ottoman generation. The victors of the war, namely Britain and France, had made plans to partition the Ottoman territories, but it proved to be a rather complicated business to reconcile a variety of promises they had made to different parties and reach a post-war settlement. In chapter two, Provence details these negotiations and the imposition of the mandate framework onto the region, showing how the Ottoman educated elite responded by appropriating Lenin and Wilson’s language of self-determination to advance their own agendas. As Provence skilfully shows, however, what proved more effective in challenging the dictated terms of the post-war settlement was armed resistance: locally rooted but led by the war-hardened ex-Ottoman officers. In this sense, the successful Kemalist struggle against the partitions in Asia Minor became a source of inspiration for the Ottoman-Arab officers operating in Mesopotamia and Greater Syria (i.e. today’s Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Jordan). Due to strategic calculations, the Kemalists were also willing to help their former classmates or ‘brotherly officers’, as Provence calls them, to wage a similar struggle against Britain and France. While both imperial powers struggled greatly to establish control in Greater Syria due to a series of uprisings that featured these itinerant ex-Ottoman veterans, they managed to contain all the insurgencies, except the one led by Mustafa Kemal. This book] is a definitive study of this crucial period in Middle Eastern history, tracing the period through popular political movements and the experience of colonial rule. In doing so, Provence emphasizes the continuity between the late Ottoman and Colonial era, explaining how national identities emerged, and how the seeds were sown for many of the conflicts which have defined the Middle East in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. An invaluable read for students of Middle Eastern history and politics …'If Israelis become drunk with success, and pursue their aggression further , the future of this little country will be a very sad one indeed" a b c Houwink ten Cate, Johannes (2013). "Review of Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East". Jewish Political Studies Review. 25 (3/4): 122–124. ISSN 0792-335X. JSTOR 43150883. Select 3 - Losing the War and Fighting the Settlement: The Post-Ottoman Middle East Takes Shape, 1918–1922 Ignorance Can be the greatest ally or the greatest enemy of an army at war. In the book Six Days of War, Michael B. Oren explains in considerable detail how Arab ignorance and mistrust was the real key to the vastly outnumbered Israelis defeating three Arab armies in just six days. The most significant, at least historically, has been the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More recently, it’s the breakdown of Arab nation states in the area and the rise of Islamic State (IS).