MY SAY: IN PRAISE OF CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN ( 1917 – 2008)
“Anti-Semitism is a light sleeper” from The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism (1986)
O’Brien, known as “the Cruiser” was an Irish politician, diplomat, journalist and author. In 1982, as editor of “The Observer”, responding to the avalanche of anti Israel sentiment, he published a series of columns defending Israel and justifying the Lebanon War. In his columns he argued that the Israelis should never return the “Occupied Territories” to the Arabs because it would lead to Israel’s strategic demise, and he declared that many of Israel’s detractors were anti-Semites. He then decided to write a short book on the history of Israel, to give “‘a somewhat better idea of how Israel came to be what and where it is, and why it cannot be other than what it is’. The “short”book grew and became a 789 page history of Zionism, Jewish destiny, the Palestine Mandate, British betrayals, and a state in permanent siege.
The greatest praise I can give this excellent book is that “The London Review of Books” trashed it. They prefer the ahistorical libels of Avi Shlaim and Benny Morris.
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