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The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1334-1335



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The Jordanian-Israeli War, 1948-1951: A History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. By Maan Abu Nowar. Reading, U.K.: Garnet Publishing, 2002. Tables. Notes. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xi, 515. $49.50. Distributed by ISBS in Portland, Oreg. (503-287-3093).

At the outset Maan Abu Nowar excises any doubt from the reader's mind: the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict go back to 1200 BC, when about 15,000 ferocious warriors known as "Bani Israel" occupied the central region of what is now Palestine. Over subsequent centuries this tribe devastated the towns and cities of the indigenous population, until expelled by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and eventually the Romans. Without so much as a single footnote the author brushes aside a highly contentious topic of debate within contemporary Western scholarship. One of the debaters, Hershel Shanks, warns us: "Certainty eludes us when we are talking about the history of ancient Israel. We must talk about possibilities, likelihoods, plausibility and, at most, probability." Certainty, however, does not elude Nowar and as a result his book fails to meet any reasonable scholarly standard. Its sourcing is uneven and extremely narrow; footnotes clarify some obscure points while lengthy passages and sweeping assertions go undocumented. With tiresome regularity the author lapses into recycled Arab propaganda about Jewish deceit, wartime atrocities, and the suffering of refugees. Nowar is commendably frank about the shortcomings and disunity of the Arab armies and irregular forces mobilized in 1947-48, and his combat narratives are detailed and rendered in clear if somewhat stilted prose. However, they are accompanied by few (and skeletal) maps, with little in the way of useful order of battle information.

This is not to say that the book is without value as a primary source for scholars. Nowar served a long career in Jordan's Arab Legion, eventually retiring as a general and enjoying a subsequent career as a politician within the Hashemite oligarchy. Stripping away pretensions to scholarship, his book is a heartfelt tribute to the professionalism and courage displayed by the Arab Legion during the Israeli War of Independence. The Legion was manned by long-service recruits, trained and equipped to British standards (with many seconded British officers), capable of fortifying and stoutly defending fixed positions as well as conducting deliberate, set-piece assaults on enemy positions. At Latrun in 1948 the Arab Legion earned lasting respect, holding a key outpost blocking the main highway to Jerusalem in the face of repeated attacks by superior Israeli forces. The Legion was the only Arab force to consistently treat captured Israelis in accordance with the rules of war—a fact Nowar states proudly in connection with the surrender [End Page 1334] of the Jewish defenders of Kfar Etzion in May of 1948. However, he omits any mention of the slaughter of over a hundred Jews from three neighboring settlements in the Etzion district who surrendered to Arab irregulars. Israel is the only party to the conflict with blood on its hands: Nowar includes an obligatory reference to Deir Yassin and repeats without source or comment the recent and somewhat suspect allegation that Israeli troops massacred some 200 Arabs at the village of al-Tantura, near Haifa.

Among Nowar's favorite sources are letters from long-retired British officers who served with the Arab Legion. Written almost fifty years after the fact, these letters contain a wealth of detail about specific actions, based (one hopes) on contemporary diaries. However, it does the author no credit that he includes passages in these letters that are of no relevance beyond echoing Nowar's own anti-Semitism. One excerpt goes so far as to suggest, for example, that Col. David "Mickey" Marcus—an American volunteer who briefly commanded Israeli forces in the Jerusalem corridor—was murdered by jealous rivals within the Haganah. The circumstances surrounding Marcus's death from friendly fire have been well documented, and Nowar's inclusion of this passage cannot be attributed to anything other...

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