Content area
Full text
BIOGRAPHY
Betrayal of Palestine: The Story of George Antonius, by Susan Silsby Boyle. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001. xxv + 304 pages. Photos. Appends. to p. 328. Sel. bibl. to p. 337. Index to p. 347. $38 paper.
Originally the topic of her doctoral dissertation,1 Susan Silsby Boyle has expanded her study into a major exposition of the life and times of George Antonius. She roots Antonius' political efforts in the context of the post-Ottoman period, especially the years of the British Mandate of Palestine (1923-48).
Antonius had two major foci in his life's work: Arab nationalism; and holding Great Britain to its pledges of statehood for the Arabs, including Palestine, and later Palestine separately. Silsby Boyle notes that Antonius' Arab nationalism was rooted in Arab/Muslim culture, which he defined as caring, hospitable, moral and rich in social capital, and amply qualified to develop an independent moral democracy. Even after Great Britain and France fragmented the area of Greater Syria into four mandates, he believed that eventually the separated areas could, and...