Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the
Making of Modern Middle East
Book Review
The book "Lawrence in Arabia" is written by Scott Anderson and originally
published on 6th August 2013. Scott Anderson is an American novelist, journalist, and correspondent for the veteran war. He contributes frequently to the New York Times Magazine, GQ magazine, Esquire, Vanity Fair and other publications. Theories of Coercion, Political Philosophy and Value theory vividly reflects in the author's writings. Scott Anderson elaborates the famous Lawrence story in his new book and contextualizes it – as his title, Lawrence in Arabia, suggests Instead of depicting a hero in isolation, he places Lawrence alongside three spokes who rubbed his shoulders with him in the Middle East: Aaron Aaronson, who was a Palestinian Jewish colonist who spied on Britain as a way to advance Zionism; Carl Prufer, who was a German diplomat who spied on Britain as a way to advance Zionism Who dreamed of fostering jihad against the British ; and William Yale, a well-connected oilman (his great-grand uncle founded Yale University) who, in August 1917, became the "special agent" for the Middle East of the State Department. The supporting characters of Anderson are colorful, although in stature and pathos none approach Lawrence. Prufer was a brilliant linguist and an energetic lothario – his numerous girlfriends included Minna "Fanny" Weizmann, whose brother Chaim was the most prominent Zionist in Europe and became the first president of Israel. The usual ethnic blink, however, narrowed his vision of the Middle East (Cowardly Arabs, docile Jews), and irrelevantly ended the war scheme. Yale finished on the winning side at least, but America still had to get involved in the Middle East, and he made little contribution. Mercenary, priggish and inept, even when the US government called him "as an expert on Arab affairs" at the 1919 peace conference in Versailles, he was shocked. Aaronson is by far the most intriguing and important of Anderson's trio. "A towering man given to portliness, brilliant and arrogant, passionate and combative," in 1915 the Ottomans put this celebrated agronomist in charge of acampaign to suppress a plague of locusts. But 1915 was also the Armenian genocide year; Aaronson feared that Palestine's Jewish colonists would be next. By 1917 he had overcome British suspicions of establishing a spy ring, including his sister, Sarah, who was passing on Turkish information in Palestine. Sarah was captured in October of that year by the Ottomans, whom she challenged, first by resisting brutal treatment, then by killing herself. Her brother conferred at the time with Chaim Weizmann in London. The Aaronson’s were no longer interested in self-defense alone; the new goal, as Weizmann articulated, was a Jewish Palestine "under British protection." Anderson is a dark but fair-minded historian, alive to the cynicism and prejudice that all sides have decided to take action. For example, he shows how an ill-advised contempt for Ottoman abilities hampered the British war effort – evidenced during the disastrous campaign of Gallipoli when the allies landed on the very shoreline where the Turks were strongest. For their Arab neighbors in Palestine, Aaronson and his fellow agents felt similar revulsion.The dishonest depiction of the Turks ' evacuation of Jaffa harbor city in 1917 as a vicious antiJewish pogrom was "one of the war's most consequential disi nformation campaigns," because it was undoubtedly accepted in the West and hard ened the world Jewry's opinion in favor of Zionism. Crucial to the Zionist effort was the expansion of its appeal to Western policymakers, including a prominent race of well-heeled British romantics floating around the Middle East offering solutions of amazing (and often contradictory) simplicity to problems that are considered intractable even now. The landowner of Yorkshire, Sir Mark Sykes, was the nonpareil of these mischievous amateurs; in 1916, in a secret deal with France, he divided the Middle East only to propose an alliance of Jews, Arabs and Armenians to freeze out the French. The idea of a Jewish return to the Holy Land cheered Sykes ' Christian faith; he adopted Zionism and became Aaronson’s ally. It was Sykes who announced the decision of the British cabinet to endorse a "Jewish national home" with the immortal words, "Dr. Weizmann, he's a boy!" to his future first president. TE Lawrence did not hide his dismay at the moral and political "hole" Sykes was digging for him, ducking behind Turkish lines to blow up railway tracks and stiffen Arab morality. Lawrence loved the fragile, headstrong and thoroughly unhouse trained Arab tribes and was proud to have championed their field commander, Emir Faisal, a Hashemite scion, Mecca's hereditary custodians. However, whatever Faisal's and his men's exploits in trouncing the Turks, after the war they would not be able to resist the Anglo-French desire for total control of the realization. Lawrence was among the first to predict that it would not all be plain sailing for the Jews in their new home, telling Yale in 1917 that "if a Jewish state is to be created in Palestine, it must be made by force of arms in the midst of an overwhelmingly hostile people." As for Faisal, in 1920 the French kicked him out of Syria, and the Iraqi monarchy he later founded under British auspices lasted until 1958, when it was overthrown in a republican revolution. Hashemite power nowadays survives only in Jordan's tiny state. Lawrence himself was a failed kingmaker for all of his heartfelt Arabism. So why continues to impress his finely grained character on our Middle East vision and on Anderson's smart and original, if somewhat unevenly written, group portrait? One reason is his glorious irreverence, vanishing into the desert in order to avoid unwelcome orders, exulting in his ignorance of the commissariat's protocols. He also acknowledged in many things what subsequent military historians tended to confirm before the Gallipoli debacle: that Alexandretta's port, on the exposed underside of Turkey, would have been a preferable launch pad for an assault. Needless to say, there has been no action on his recommendations to that effect. And yet, for all the outsider status and unconventional views of Lawrence, Britain's Middle East military machine contained enough sound men for him to thrive – and one of Britain's most admired men to emerge from the war. In his well-constructed demolition of the "amateurs" of Britain, Anderson neglects the paradox that the greatest amateur of them all was Lawrence, an archaeologist who never received a day's military training, a scholar and an aesthete in the midst of blood and guts.