it's about the 1947-1948 war between the formative Israeli state and their Palestinian/Arab counterparts.
without delving into the article too deeply there were a few points that stand out:
1. the Israelis were immigransts. many of them were urban and educated. they had a defining 'national' identity. although many of them spoke different languages and probably had special little 'cliques' or enclaves to seperate them somewhat--they were also 'united' in their sense of "Jewishness" whether they actually practiced the faith or not.
2. the immigrants had a powerful motive to find a new safe haven, a place to call their own. they feared (and rightly so) a second Holocaust unless they could secure a land for themselves. Stalin had already begun purging Jews in Russia--so their fears about the local Arabs and Palestinians was well founded.
3. the Arab world, although united in their contempt for the Jews (which I use in the most general sense--as surely many of these 'culturally Jewish' people were probably atheists by now) were NOT united together. which is a significant detail. sure, they had a common enemy, but many of them also hated each other. while the Arabs might pledge loyalty to their clan, tribe, or warlord they had no greater sense of community or 'national' identity in the same (albeit artificial) sense that the Jews had.
4. war is a viciously unpleasant business. one must create an artificial and even exaggerated conflict of "us against them". one of the big problems that the Arabs and Palestinians had was that, for lack of a better way of putting it, there was no "us against them" so much as "THEM". while the Israelis had managed to organize themselves for war--the Arabs could not unite themselves against their enemy. there was still too much of the rural mentality, I suppose.
I guess what I'm driving at, is comparing the recent elections in America to the Israeli Palestinian conflict-- I see a common thread. urban vs rural conflict. however, the comparison obviously fails because all rural Americans still acknowledge that they're part of one nation-state: the United States of America.
I was thinking about large cities--where you have millions of people who don't know each other, and really couldn't care less about one another--but they can be unified by this artificial sense of "togetherness" when called upon by the city-state.
they have a larger, artificially-instilled sense of community that goes far beyond mere neighborhoods, or place of employment.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Israelis were able to win because they were better organized, they had a stronger sense of national identity, and were willing to put aside their internal differences to win the war. I've noticed in my various readings that the Palestinians and Arabs were unwilling to, or incapable of, doing the same thing.
the Arab leadership, although no less self-interested than their Israeli adversaries, apparently couldn't set aside their own sense of benefit and self-preservation.
it's worth pointing out that Benny Morris is a prof at Ben-Gurion University--so he's naturally a bit biased. still, it's an interesting read. I could draw this out longer... but that seems rather unreasonable at this point.
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