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Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein. London and
New York: Verso, 1995. 171 pages. Notes to p. 237. Index to p. 243. $18.95.
Reviewed by Robert J. Bookmiller In this work, Norman Finkelstein attacks traditional, official and revisionist accounts of the Israel-Palestine conflict and challenges myths and mythmakers across the political spectrum. His stated purpose "is to use, as the foil of my critique, an influential piece, or standard body of scholarship...to point up the systematic bias of, as well as to make a modest contribution to, the extant literature"(p. 2). He succeeds in both goals.
The "foils" or works utilized by Finkelstein are well known to those engaged in Middle East studies. They include: Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial; Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949; Anita Shapira's Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948;' and the vast body of writings produced by former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban. While the author does an admirable job of integrating these works into the larger discussion of image and reality, readers will be at a disadvantage if they are not familiar with the original...