LAUSR

sides in the Western/non-Western encounter. Though it is doubtful whether an adoption of such approach will be universally beneficial for academic literature on Palestine/Israel, in this particular instance the choice is absolutely justified. By departing from standard methodology Cohen guaranteed that his book will become a landmark study. 1929 brims with surprising facts and illuminating insights that are certain to make any orthodox Israeli or Palestinian nationalist swerve with unease. Notable is the Palestinian Arabs’ pre-1948 attitude to Zionist Jews, which portrayed them as foreign usurpers with only a superficial connection to the Land; this rejection of Zionism, however, went oftentimes hand in hand with a strong denunciation of European anti-Semitism. Cohen emphasizes that some Arab-Palestinian leaders and Mandate officials were strongly opposed to anti-Jewish violence and even actively worked to prevent attacks on Jews. Likewise, there were Jews who saved Arabs from lynchings; their heroism was suppressed by Zionist collective memory, since admitting this would concede that Arabs also fell victim to unprovoked murders and revenge killings by Jews (and British forces; Cohen documents several such cases). The author reminds us that two Jews were sentenced to death for precisely such atrocities (though only three Arabs were eventually executed). Most surprisingly, Jews and Arabs cooperated by Arab initiative to commute the numerous death sentences passed. Finally, Cohen observes that the sanctity of the Western Wall in Jewish religious tradition is a relatively new phenomenon, and that the Muslim denial of the historicity of the Temple and the Sharia ban on land sales to Jews and on Jewish settlement in Palestine are recent developments. Despite the richness of Cohen’s study some issues are treated only in passing. For example, Cohen gives relatively little attention to the role of the British in the events. His reappraisal of the origins of the conflict calls for an extension: In light of this new knowledge, how, for instance, should one judge the 1936–1939 Palestinian rebellion? Cohen does not speak of this. Lastly, Cohen omits the influence of 1929 on the Samaritan community, which is currently divided into an Israeli and a Palestinian branch. This book deals with a heavily politicized topic, yet Cohen masterfully avoids any explicit advocacy or apologetics. The only veiled political comment he makes is on p. 14: ‘majority communities throughout the world often oppose the concept of equal rights... vociferously and sometimes violently’. Although the reference is to nineteenth-century Ottoman legislation, the allusion to contemporary Israel is unmistakable.