Exile and Return; The Struggle for a Jewish Homeland

Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, c1978. First Printing. Hardcover. very good/good. 24 cm, 364 pages. Illustrations. Name in ink on flyleaf. Card "With the compliments of the author" laid in. The focus is on British chicanery in this dramatic study of the Jewish struggle for a national home in Palestine. Following an introduction expressing the Jewish claim to the disputed area, Oxford historian Gilbert, further pursues the theme of British appeasement during the inter-war years--appeasement this time of their numerous Muslim colonial subjects vis-a -vis the Jews. Requiring Jewish assistance against Germany in the First World War and sympathetic to the Jewish need for a haven from persecution, the British in 1917 issued the Balfour Declaration. But the exigencies of postwar foreign policy required the gradual retraction of the promise, first by limiting Jewish immigration and Arab land sales in Palestine, then by attempting to create a permanent Jewish minority in an Arab-controlled country--until, in futility, they unloaded the problem on the UN. The scene deftly shifts from Palestine to England and back, laying bare--in documentary form--interactions between the British and the Zionists, officials in London and locals on the scene. Excerpted from newly-available British archives, diaries, and memoirs as well as from well-known secondary works, the first-person selections are/ skillfully linked with connective narrative. Though scholars will have some difficulty in identifying specific sources, Gilbert's technique of letting the participants tell their story makes for a vivid, authentic record. Sir Martin Gilbert, (25 October 1936 - 3 February 2015) was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He was the author of eighty-eight books, including works on Winston Churchill, the 20th century, and Jewish history. He was a member of the Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's role in the Iraq War. After two years of postgraduate work, Gilbert was approached by Randolph Churchill to assist his work on a biography of his father, Sir Winston Churchill. Gilbert spent the next few years combining his own research projects in Oxford with being part of Randolph's research who were working on the first two volumes of the Churchill biography. When Randolph died in 1968, Gilbert was commissioned to take over the task, completing the remaining six main volumes of the biography. Gilbert spent the next 20 years on the Churchill project, publishing a number of other books throughout the time. Each main volume of the biography is accompanied by two or three volumes of documents, and so the biography currently runs to 26 volumes (over 25,000 pages), with another 7 document volumes still planned. In the 1960s, Gilbert compiled some historical atlases. His other major works include a definitive single-volume history on the Holocaust, as well as the single-volume histories The First World War and The Second World War. He also wrote a three-volume series called A History of the Twentieth Century. Gilbert described himself as an "archival historian" who made extensive use of primary sources in his work. Interviewed by the BBC on the subject of Holocaust research, Gilbert said he believes that the "tireless gathering of facts will ultimately consign Holocaust deniers to history." By the 1980s Gilbert's academic attention had also turned towards the Refusenik movement in the Soviet Union. Gilbert authored Jews of Hope: The Plight of Soviet Jewry Today (1984) and Shcharansky: Hero of Our Time (1986), and he presented on behalf of the Soviet Jewry Movement in a variety of contexts, ranging from large forums such as formal representation before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to smaller forums such as an educational slideshow for the general public on behalf of the Soviet Jewry Information Centre.