The Holocaust and the Birth of Israel: The Middle East in History, is the book I wrote after realizing how often this history is told in fragments. We hear the names-Stanley Milgram, Auschwitz, Kristallnacht, the Wannsee Conference-but rarely do we see them arranged on the same timeline. (A note on Milgram: his famous obedience experiments were conducted in the 1960s, after the war, yet they illuminate the psychological dynamics that help explain how ordinary people comply with destructive orders.) In these pages I weave together psychology, ideology, and state power to show how social pressure, bureaucratic logic, and political violence converged, turning compliance and prejudice into mass murder. This book begins before the gas chambers, with questions about obedience, conviction, and the slow normalization of cruelty.
As the narrative moves deeper into Nazi Europe, I follow the arc from Kristallnacht to Operation Barbarossa, from overflowing ghettos to extermination complexes such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. I move through day-to-day life and death inside the ghettos, trace the progression from invasion and occupation to large-scale killing-including the mass shootings carried out by Einsatzgruppen in the East-and describe the chilling bureaucratic coordination outlined at the Wannsee Conference. I confront the uncomfortable realities of stolen Jewish property, dormant and hidden bank accounts, and the long, ambivalent silence that followed the war, including the contested roles played by Switzerland and other so-called "neutral" actors.
Not every chapter takes place in Europe. Some of the most human stories unfold elsewhere. I write about the Evian Conference of 1938 and the global reluctance to open doors to Jewish refugees; about Shanghai - one of the few remaining ports of refuge where fleeing Jews could arrive without the usual visas - and about figures from Thessaloniki whose lives, and the communities they belonged to, could be erased from memory within a single generation. These chapters force a painful question: who could have acted, and who chose not to?
The focus then shifts to the Middle East in the wake of the Ottoman Empire's collapse after World War I. I trace Palestine under British rule during the Mandate, the waves of Aliyah that reshaped its population, and the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. Leaders and movements come into view: Amin al-Husseini, the White Paper of 1939 that curtailed Jewish immigration, and Mussolini's colonial ambitions - ambitions partly shaped by Italy's lingering humiliation after the 1896 defeat at Adwa. Above all, these chapters show how local tensions, imperial decisions, and global geopolitics collided on that narrow strip of land.
The final sections trace the long road from King David-the ancient symbol of Jewish memory-through Auschwitz, from Theodor Herzl's visionary ideas to David Ben-Gurion's pragmatic leadership, and from the Balfour Declaration to the convulsions of 1948. I examine the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun and consider how that act, among a sequence of events and pressures, helped push the British Mandate and the competing communities toward open conflict.
