Nevertheless the King’s warmth and humanity, the two words constantly applied to him, charmed those who met him: his own staff, American hospital workers, many Israelis. In 1992, during the first Gulf war, even Yitzhak Shamir, then Prime Minister of Israel, said that King Hussein’s word was enough for him. Among Middle East leaders at a White House meeting, Clinton thought him physically the weakest, but morally the strongest. The King’s ‘over-arching aim’, Shlaim writes, was the survival of his dynasty. To this end even his own brother, the loyal and competent Crown Prince Hassan, was dismissed and attacked by the King in a public letter. As an Arab proverb says, ‘there are no relationships in the families of kings’.
Thanks to King Hussein, Jordan, originally a dynastic accident, is perhaps even more of a miracle than Israel. Shlaim shows that a King with a love of cash and fast cars could do more for peace — therefore for the lives of ordinary people — than many incorruptible idealists. Many will hope that Israel, as well as Arab countries, will find leaders as unvengeful, unfanatical and capable of seeing other points of view, as King Hussein — and, what is perhaps less likely, that such a leader will survive fanatics’ bullets. Avi Shlaim is pessimistic. He describes the Balfour Declaration as ‘one of the worst mistakes in British foreign policy’ which ‘sowed the seeds of a never-ending conflict in the Middle East’. King Hussein was more optimistic.
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Hilluk Eben Mitzur
January 23rd, 2008 11:18amAvi Shlaim is well-known for being of the far left, and an anti-Zionist. Thus the concluding citation of his words deploring the establishment of Israel. No doubt his writings on Arab leaders are far more sympathetic and satisfactory than his writings on Israeli and Jewish topics, which have to be admitted to be traitorous, although he lives comfortably and without fear of retaliation in the very country he despises, Israel, demonstrating despite himself Israel's liberal and democratic culture. The glowing endorsement of Schlaim's views by Mansel, the reviewer, is problematic to say the least. The problem in the Middle East is not Israel and never was: it is that Muslims and Arabs cannot bring themselves to accept ANY non-Muslim, non-Arab state in their midst, especially not a liberal democracy, and especially not one established by Jews. That is the problem. And if the West capitulates to this, and abandons Israel as Schlaim and Mansel wish, this will be a major set-back for liberal democratic values and Western culture generally. This is something the Arab world well understands. In effect, Schlaim and Mansel are endorsing religious fanaticism and totalitarian Islam against liberal Western values.
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Bart
January 11th, 2008 12:18pmThe simple fact that Avi Slime, an Oxford professor who couldn't get a job in his native land as a school bus driver, claims that the Balfour Declaration was 'one of the worst mistakes in British foreign policy' should be enough to demonstrate his anti-Zionist biases. His writings over the years have simply fed into the standard-issue anti-Jewish bias of the British chattering classes and, taken together, have less intellectual merit that a pile of dog droppings. An endorsement of the pipsqueak King's 'moral character' by, of all people, Bill Clinton, should also be an indicator of the judgment of Avi Slime and his fawning reviewer.
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