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THE MAKING OF ISRAEL by James Cameron

THE MAKING OF ISRAEL

By

Pub Date: Sept. 7th, 1977
Publisher: Taplinger

Prize-winning journalist and TV producer Cameron presents a brief and very general survey of the last phase of the British mandate in Palestine and the birth of the state of Israel. Liberally interspersed with photographs of the era, Cameron's never dry narrative covers the Balfour Declaration, the illegal immigration to Palestine and the Cyprus internments, the last minutes of the British High Commissioner in Palestine, and the onset of the War of Independence. An eyewitness of the events he writes about, and for long involved in reporting from the Middle East, Cameron writes sympathetically and understandingly of British, Jews, and Arabs alike; yet, at times his condescending manner (""poor Harry Truman"") and quasi-theatrical approach to the unfolding drama is abrasive. Neither history nor indeed pure journalism, the book is Cameron's own brand of anecdotal, though always accurate, story of the end of one era and the beginning of another. There is little unique or innovative in the slim volume; and, as the author himself notes in his foreword, this is hardly the account of the birth of Israel.