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Chronicle of a War Foretold: How Mideast Peace Became America’s Fight

by Norman Spector

This book is a compilation of published articles spanning almost a decade, from the early 1990s to the post-Sept. 11 world. The articles, by Norman Spector, ex-chief of staff to the prime minister and former Canadian ambassador to Israel, comment on various Israeli and Palestinian issues and events and profile such key political players as Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat. Spector is now a political commentator for various Canadian newspapers.

There is an inherent problem with trying to turn old newspaper commentaries into a book, Chronicle of a War Foretold fails to connect these fragments of thinking into a coherent narrative structure. Spector also tends to write from an overly personal point of view, offering sweeping generalizations about Mideast issues based on anecdotes from what he admits is the sheltered life of a diplomat. For example, Spector claims that he has never met a Palestinian who does not believe that Jews have stolen Palestinian land. By contrast, he assures us that all Jews accept the inevitability of the two-state solution.

There is a recurring conclusion in Spector’s articles that the root cause of the strife in Israel is the Palestinian inability to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. From the establishment of Israel in 1948 to the events of Sept. 11, Spector focuses on what he perceives as the Muslim inability to go with the inevitable flow of history. His views remain fairly rigid, and rarely go beyond pro-Israeli arguments that, even if worthwhile, have been heard many times.. He certainly doesn’t acknowledge the existence of voices in the Jewish community that dissent from his own mainstream position, nor does he ever touch upon Israel’s own troubling history of state-generated violence.

 

Reviewer: Marina Glogovac

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre

DETAILS

Price: $24.95

Page Count: 192 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 1-55054-975-8

Issue Date: 2003-2

Categories: History