Volume 32, Number 14 · September 26, 1985
Passage to Palestine
By Avishai Margalit
Palestinian Leadership on the West Bank
by Moshe Ma'oz
Frank Cass (London), 217 pp., £9.95 (paper)
1949—The First Israelis
by Tom Segev
Domino Press (Jerusalem), 354 pp., 12,920 shekels
During the war with Japan, so the story goes, American intelligence succeeded in breaking the Japanese code—all except one adjective. This adjective would occur in sentences like 'This nation is…,' 'That leader is not….' Having gathered much data the decoders concluded that this adjective must be 'pro-Japanese.' It was only after the war, when the code books were captured and studied, that it turned out that the adjective was 'sincere.' In the Israeli case, the missing adjective in expressions like 'This Arab nation is…' or 'That Arab leader is not…' would probably have been interpreted, in the light of the evidence, as 'pro-Western and willing-under-duress-to-consider-the -Labor-party's-Jordanian-solution.' It would have taken the capture of the Israeli code books to learn that the adjective is 'moderate.'
Review, 5270 words
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