Challenging the culture of denial
Challenging the culture of denial From John McHugo From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949, Victor Kattan Pluto Press, London, 2009, £22.99 ISBN: 9780745325781 A legal historian cannot bring a murder victim back to life, but what they write may have a powerful impact on how attitudes change or unresolved disputes are reassessed. This is particularly so when (as in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute) the issues are emotive and the parties have a desperate need to believe that their positions rest on firm moral foundations. In From Coexistence to Conquest, Victor Kattan takes international law as his standpoint from which to examine the issues of the Palestine problem up to the 1949 armistices and the failure to resolve the dispute at that time. The book includes chapters on the relationship between Zionism, colonialism and anti-Semitism, the scramble for the Ottoman Empire (which Kattan sees as essentially part of the same pro