Synopsis

Scientist, diplomat, and spy, Aaron Aaronsohn was one of the most extraordinary figures in the early struggle to create a homeland for the Jews. Born to Jewish settlers in Palestine, he ran a spy network that enabled the British to capture Jerusalem during World War I and made him the rival of his contemporary, T. E. Lawrence—who may also have been his flamboyant sister Sarah’s lover. A rugged adventurer, Aaronsohn became convinced during his explorations of the Middle East that water would govern the region’s fate. He compiled both the area’s first detailed water maps and a plan for Palestine’s national borders that predicted and—in its insistence on partnership between Arabs and Jews—might have prevented the decades of conflict to come. And he paid for his devotion to the new nation with his life. A history that speaks directly to the present, Aaronsohn’s Maps reveals for the first time Aaronsohn’s key role in establishing Israel and the enduring importance of Aaronsohn’s maps in Middle Eastern politics today.

Publishers Weekly

Journalist Goldstone (Making the World Safe for Tourism) puts scarce Mideastern water resources front and center in this flawed biography of Aaron Aaronsohn (1876-1919), a founder of NILI, a group that spied for the British in Palestine during WWI, and a pioneering agronomist and hydrologist. Goldstone is best at depicting British diplomacy and intra-Jewish politics leading up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine-a British declaration influenced, she shows, by a 1916 memo from Aaronsohn on Palestine's potential to absorb million of Jews. Goldstone makes errors (such as stating that Israel lost the Sinai Peninsula in the 1973 Yom Kippur War) and offers the tendentious, unsourced claim that in 2003, "right-wing Jewish lobbyists" hoped that a defeated Iraq would be "used as a haven for persecuted Palestinians run out of Israel." Above all, she never makes a case for her thesis that Aaronsohn's plan for regional sharing of water resources could have prevented the longstanding Arab-Israeli conflict. (For another account of Aaronsohn's life, see Lawrence and Aaronsohn,reviewed on p. 46.) 8 pages of b&w photos. (Sept.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Biography

PATRICIA GOLDSTONE has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and has written for the Washington Post, Maclean's, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, among others. She is the author of Making the World Safe for Tourism. She lives in New York.