The book features interviews with Arabs, Palestinians, Jews, and English political figures who are crucial in creating the Jewish state in 1948. The author, Hadara Lazar, is a well-known Israeli journalist. She has been interviewing people who were able to witness 1948’s historic events. Those she interviewed have lived in the British Madate. Jewish State’s founding is said to be more like a work of history rather than a founded by a group of distinct voices. She was able to interview housewives, teachers, soldiers, intellectuals, policemen, and lawyers. She personally visits them in their homes and offices and gets to know them better. Basically, her book gives a narrative on how Israel came to be Israel.
The rule of the British over Palestine went on for almost three decades. This may just be a fraction of how old the country is since it is almost three thousand years old. But no matter how tiny this event is in the country’s history, its influence is indeed wide-ranging and deep. Palestine actually became a political unit and they made Jerusalem its capital. They brought about a civil society and introduced professional civil service. They build airfields and roads, and provided police and legal institutions.
This frame of rule by the British came from the mandate that was conferred by the League of Nations on Britain. It was a transitory trusteeship so as to prepare Palestine to be the Jews’ national home without disregarding the religious and civil rights of the indigenous Arabs. While this task may be contradictory, it was deeply embedded in “The Mandate”. This mandate was actually the reason why the term Palestine was revived. It is an old term actually that describes the area between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River.
This mandate did not provide political independence and collective liberty. It did not bring elections for the localities that would be under the control of the British. But the sense of personal freedom was widely felt. Since the Millet system of the Ottoman Empire, the mandate paved way for religious communities to achieve internal autonomy.
In Lazar’s book she succeeds in narrating her interviewees’ accounts vividly. She did not just interview recceptionists in the King David Hotel but instead, she provided clients’accounts. At times, her British interviewees seem to be distant but Lazar is a quick and good observer. She looked at jews being single-minded fanatics. But in reality, that might not be the reason why they are irritated. The British tend to make use of their sense of snobbism more so the result is them feeling an air of intellectual superiority.
Basically, the book of Lazar is not really about comparative colonialism. It is more about the mandate. With all the historical memories she have gathered from the interviews, she was able to weave them into tales of morality. In reading this book, you can’t help but compare the Israel rule to other colonial rules. Sometimes, you may think that the mandate is good, sometimes not. The book definitely scratches parts of the readers’ minds which keep them interested.
About the Author
Hadara Lazar was born in Haifa, Israel. She is the author of five novels, and her two non-fiction books explore life in Israel and British-Mandate-era Palestine. She lives in Tel Aviv.
In this book, Eric Etheridge, a journalist, narrates his interviews and photographs. What he did was to track down over 70 Freedom Riders. They are known to be those who were arrested and served jail time as they challenged the state segregation laws of Mississippi in the summer and spring of 1961. In the book, the original mug shots were displayed as well as the contemporary portraits of Etheridge.
Fernando Baez, a Venezuelan historian, spent almost 12 years just to assemble the chronicles of this book which would depict a horrific assault on human memory. It all starts in Baghdad in 2003 when US soldiers are just idly standing as mobsters loot everywhere and later on, burn the National Library which causes the loss of a million books in estimate. This act of biblioclasm is not new, according to Baez. Some may have reasons of merely invasion and vandalism while others just do it out of viciousness. In history, more than 80% of Egyptian literature has been gone. Sophocles has 120 plays but only 7 of them survived and millions of ancient scrolls and tablets have been gone. 
The Nayers encountered a violent accident just because of a match that was lighted in the wrong place and the wrong time. When the author’s mother lighted a match in the cellar of the vacation home they were staying in, her mother and father were consumed by a flash fire. Their mother barely survived and she had scars which made her unrecognizable. She had to undergo 37 operations. 
More than two decades ago, particularly in 1992, Jonathan Brent flew to Russia just to obtain rights in publishing some materials from the Soviet archives. He is now the CEO and executive director of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research then and he was the director of Yale University Press’ Stalin Digital Archive Project. Before flying to Russia in 1992, Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s newly appointed leader, declared the opening of state, secret party, and K.G.B. archives would be opened for publishers and scholars all around the world. 
Dominique Browning used to be someone who had everything that she wanted. She was able to write two books that was widely known and was able to inspire. These were memoirs including meditations that are able to heal. “Around the House and in the Garden” was her first book explains how she healed herself through the help of her own house after her marriage of 15 years ended. Meanwhile there’s “Paths of Desire” which is a follow-up book where she introduced humanity and humor in her writing style. She rarely mentioned that for 13 years, she was editor in chief of House & Garden magazine. 
During the 1980s, China was under tremendous changes. Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 loosened the Communist party’s grip and it paved way to a better economy where the urban youth could start building what they desire.
With all the natural resources crises that we are experiencing such as raw material shortage, high energy prices, and global warming, have we ever really stopped to think what our olives could be a million years from now? With the current technology that we have, it is never impossible to predict what lies ahead.