Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939-1945 / Edition 1

by Monty Noam Penkower

Overview

Professor Penkower's latest book, Decision on Palestine Deferred, offers the first sustained, documented account of Palestine and the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War. Firmly grounded in three decades of archival research, his spirited narrative offers a fascinating cast of characters against the backdrop of the larger Middle Eastern context. The latter relates to Jewish and Arab activities during the War, the grave threat of Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, U.S. interest in Saudi Arabian oil, and the effort to achieve Arab unity. Zionism's shift to viewing the United States as the center of decision making in international affairs, and hence the Archimedean point for forging Jewry's destiny, occurred in these same six years. British anxieties about imperial security, while administering the Palestine mandate by means of a stringent immigration quota, jostled with the first American steps taken to formulate a stance vis-à-vis Palestine, and the region as a whole. The differing approaches of Churchill and Roosevelt to the Palestine imbroglio are also explored, as are the varied avenues that were then championed within the Jewish camp. The impact of the Holocaust, with both governments breathing the very spirit of defeatism and despair, surfaces throughout.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780714652689
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/30/2002
Series:	Israeli History, Politics and Society , #24
Edition description:	ANN
Pages:	402
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

an important addition to the histories of both wartime diplomacy and the foundation of Israel"

- Middle East Journal

Editorial Reviews

'Decision on Palestine Deferred provides an invaluable contribution to Holocaust and World War II scholarship, as well as the history of the creation of the State of Israel. Whereas historians have tended to address each subject separately, Penkower details their important interrelationship.' - Middle East Quarterly

From the Publisher

A diplomatic history of the Allied response to the Holocaust and to Zionist efforts to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Arguing that the two phenomena were intimately connected, Penkower (modern Jewish history, Touro College) condemns British and American inaction on both situations, suggesting that opposition to the active settlement of European Jewish refugees in Palestine contributed both to the tragedy of the Holocaust and to current tensions in the Middle East. Distributed by ISBS. Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data shows the title as . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews