Martin Gilbert is one of the top historians in the world today. His various books on Churchill, Jews, World War I and other topics are without parallel for factual representation, intelligence and historical accuracy. His range, detail, knowledge, work-ethic, and fairness are justly famous. He is simply one of the best, if not the best, investigator of what actually happened, and why.

Mr. Gilbert is also of course a British secular Jew. So it was with interest a while back, that I read his massive essay on the history of the Jewish state, appropriately titled 'Israel' which runs to about a 1000 pages. The second edition was re-published and updated during the early part of this millennium. 'Israel' is a monumental assessment of the Jewish state, displaying in one volume, all of the facts, events, people, culture, and trials of forming one of the world's most important, vibrant, diverse, and moral of nations. The book is so dense with anecdotes, wisdom, discussions, and mostly unbiased testimony, that it is impossible to properly review, since the review would necessarily have to include so much. The only review which is logical is to tell the would-be reader, who is curious about Israel and the reality of its inception and struggle to survive, to simply read it.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is how it changes. This may be due to the second edition 'upgrade' in the past decade. In the book's first release it was criticized as overly supportive of the 'Jewish' position. Given the reality of how Israel was formed; and the fact that the Jews pre-date the Arabs in the area by some 2000 years, this criticism seems rather absurd. Perhaps due to this negative feedback from his academic, media, and cultural Marxist friends, Gilbert chose to update the book, to establish his 'independent' bona-fides. Thus we have the new edition and the last 1/3 of the book which is rather bizarrely a long compendium on peace, giving up 'land for peace' and flaying the religious and secular 'right' of Israeli politics. It does little more than destroy the value of the entire book.

In this version upgrade, Mr. Gilbert basically extols the ideas of the “Peace Now” movement, which is a secular Jewish movement that believes that peace at any costs is the only way Israel will survive. Given Mr. Gilbert's professional regard for facts and history, the Peace-Now position is hard to comport to reality and facts. Israel has consistently given up land since the early 1980s, yet the attacks, the rockets, the homicide bombers, Hizbollah, Hamas, and Arab-Muslim fascism has only grown much stronger, not weaker.

For some reason Gilbert repeats the self-hating Jewish left and socialist secularists, in describing for some 200 pages, the supposed, and quite evanescent benefices of what is in reality, a policy of submission to Arab fascism. Gilbert repeatedly calls Yitzhak Rabin the peace-at-any-costs politician who in the 1990s signed the 'Oslo accords' with Arafat, only to have the Muslim immediately repudiate the agreements, a 'Great Man'. Rabin and his 'Labor Party' initiated the hasty and unnecessary land-for-peace program which resulted in an increase in Israeli civilian dead – a fact Gilbert admits but makes light of. The more insidious aspect of 'Rabinism', and one which is ignored by Gilbert, is of course the sapping of cultural and moral strength through equivocation and assuming that Israel is no better than the Arabs and that Israeli society is just as bad as the poverty of morality, economics, politics and irrationality displayed in Arab-Islamic culture. In this regard we see the empowerment of Hamas in both Gaza and along the West Bank as Israel retreats and gives the Arabs yet more land; and the widespread belief within Israel that Hizbollah in southern Lebanon can never be defeated in combat. Arab 'demands' are accepted as valid by the Rabbinists, whilst Jewish self-determination is pilloried and calumnied.

Mr. Gilbert for all his brilliance and intelligence, displays more than just a little of the 'self'-loathing' Jew. Two-thirds of his book which outlines the almost impossible journey from idea to realization, of a Jewish-Zionist home state, which by law, common-sense and morality must have the ability to house and defend Jews; makes a mockery of the last one-third, with its absurd calls for peace at any costs; and accommodation to any and all Arab demands. Gilbert essentially ignores the fascism embedded in both Arab and Islamic culture; and the desire of Arabs and Muslims to see Jews impoverished; humiliated; and exterminated. There is no 'rational' discussion, or 'accommodation', with Islamic fascism, premised on Arab culture; which has such extreme demands. Gilbert as a historian, completely ignores the Jihad which has been an animating feature of Islamic society for 1400 years.

Gilbert is a secular Jew which as a group, seem rather indifferent to the Jewish mission. As Jewish commentator David Solway writes:

“The same is more or less true of another Jewish luminary, Avishai Margolit,  feted as Israel’s “foremost philosopher.” A founding member of Peace Now, which should tell us all we need to know, Margolit insists that Israel should lift the “siege” of Gaza, forgetting that the so-called siege allows thousands of tons of supplies, medicines and electrical power to transit from Israel into Gaza, except when the crossings are closed owing to Hamas sniper fire and mortar bombardments or when the Ashkelon generator comes under attack. The great philosopher also appears untroubled by the prospect of suicide bombers and guerilla fighters sifting into Israel as students, laborers and patients. Further, Margolit does not seem aware of the fact—he has much company here—that Israel is under no obligation, neither domestic nor international, neither legal nor moral, to victual and replenish an uncompromising enemy. What other nation on the planet would commit a folly of this nature? Margolit may be an acclaimed “thinker” but he is neither wise nor street-smart; the fatuousness of his proposals is exceeded only by the dangers they would unleash. In short, Margolit is a typical Jewish savant of emeritus caliber, crowned with laurels and showered with awards, dispensing nuggets of pseudo-sagacity, and completely irrelevant.”

The point is very well made. Jews are smart in specialties, able to win Nobel prizes, and dominate whole sectors of the media and political-economy, not to mention the scientific-technological domains. But too many smart Jews are stupid about Israel. Einstein for example disavowed the Jewish state, this only a few short years after the Holocaust. No other 'race' in human history, outside of central Black Africans taken as slaves and eunuchs by Muslims, has had to endure the virulent pathology of racist homicide, like the Jews. Of course they need their own protective state. What person, so drenched in 'morality' and 'sensitivity' could ever deny this ? Or put another way. What type of a hypocrite, so concerned about 'rights'; 'humanity'; and multi-culturalism, can possibly deny the Jews a state ? The absurdity of such a person and a position reeks of the most abject imbecility.

Israel is not perfect – but it is far superior to anything that the Arab-Islamic world can produce.

The problem with Israel and the Arabs lies almost wholly with the Arabs. Until the Arabs recognise Israel's right to exist; stop their terrorist activities; and commit themselves to modernisation, there will be no peace. Until Arabs value their children's lives more than bombing Jews, there will be no peace. Until Arabs understand that the Jewish state has existed in some form in the Holy Land for 3.000 years, there will be no peace.

Israel deserves to exist. As Israel goes, so goes the West to paraphrase an apt observation from 1967. Israel is a part of the West. It must succeed where the Arabs and Muslims have so brutally failed. It must stand up to Muslim hate and violence. It is the Arabs not the Jews who are the problem. Former Clinton U.S. Delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Jeff Robbins, puts it very well in an article he wrote some time ago:

"It was, of course, the Arab bloc, including the Palestinian leadership, that decided to reject the U.N.'s 1947 partition of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, living side by side. Instead it invaded the nascent Jewish state rather than coexist with it, spawning the conflict that has so burdened the world for the last 60 years.

We are also not responsible for the Arab world's choice not to create a Palestinian Arab state in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, when it easily could have done so -- before there were any Jewish settlements there to serve as the public object of Arab grievance.”

Arabs and Muslims have no interest in Israel. The Jewish state is modern, successful, and advanced. The Muslim and Arab world are barbaric, impoverished, dumb and brutish. The Jews build, create and find joy in life. The Muslims and Arabs kill, hate and find succor in death. Therein lies the gravest difference. Israel is a cult of life. Arabia and Islam, a cult of death. This base fact should have informed Mr. Gilbert's opus on Israel. Sadly it didn't, but secular Jews are amongst the least dedicated to the survival of Israel.