New Men
Divide and Lose. By Michael lonides. (Bles, 21S') MICHAEL IONIDES was an irrigation engineer in Iraq and Transjordan before the war, he served in the region during the war, and from 1955 to 1958 he served on Nun's Development Board. He knew the inside of the Nun i regime. But he als° knew 'a new and quite different breed of younger Arabs,' whom Nun i was bound to try to repreo. He returned to Britain just before the whtlier Anglo-Arab epoch collapsed in the shambles 01 Baghdad's 1958 Quatorze lull/et. His central theme of a new Arab nationalist and neutralist generation is now more genera understood, but there is still considerable relne" tance to take Arab nationalism seriously, to se!' it as an integral part of the Afro-Asian anti. imperial revolt. At the very outset Mr. lonidet provides the key to an understanding of 111 Middlc East. The Arabs were supposed to b. free, 'equal partners by treaty,' because they weren't orthodox colonial subjects. 'For years on end, therefore, Arabs were demanding freedoOl from a state of dependence that was not supPosed to exist, but did in fact exist.' Year after Ye'r Eden and then Macmillan suavely referred to th' need to support 'our friends.' Yet as rvir' lonides brilliantly shows, when this sYsteill of hidden hegemony—far worse for all concerne.° than outright colonialism—failed, and direct null: tary action was taken against the 'artificial enemies led by Nasser, it ruined 'our friends 'd Nun i above all. Mr. lonides is going to be savage,. by Zionist writers, because he has woven into tr narrative the most trenchant analysis of the of Zionism to appear in print. But he makes 1`, clear at the outset that he is as opposed to an) 'Arab eliminationism' as he is to 'Zionist exPall. sionism.' More than this, no fair reader ought t° demand. And it was high time for an accurate, account of the most superb feat of international persuasion which this century has seen. Before the war, for example, Zionists had quite so', ccssfully depicted Palestine as having abunda.n` land and water for its Arabs and for masslief Jewish immigration. But after the victory ° 1948-49, and the Arab Exodus, the problein changed: Where were the refugees to go? . . . Now it, was time to go into reverse : no longer abon, dance, but shortage. . . . The true facts abo.ipc the economic absorptive capacity of Palesttri..t were now taken as the essential basis of Zio_nt5c propaganda, and turned against the Arabs. In. myth of abundance had justified the Jews CO. ing in. The truth of shortage justified 1004 the Arab refugees out.
The pithiness of Mr. lonides' logic and the magni- tude of Western delusion that it reveals are almost overwhelming.
ERSK INE Cli ILDERS
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