side with and even to fight alongside the Zionists. Perhaps the most shocking allegation in the book is that Husayni often put his own position in Palestinian politics above the interests of the Palestinian nation, most crucially so in 1939. The result was that Husayni rejected the British White Paper of 1939, which reneged on the promise of a Jewish homeland made in the Balfour Declaration and effectively promised the Palestinian Arabs majority rule and independence within a decade. According to Cohen, Husayni rejected the offer because Britain did not guarantee his position as ruler of the Palestinian Arab state that it proposed to create. Critical acclaim Writing in The Nation, Neve Gordon calls Army of Shadows "groundbreaking" for exposing a "particularly nefarious side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," the manipulation of paid Arab collaborators by Zionist organizations. When the book came out, he says it caused a stir among Jewish and Arab intellectuals since both sides found the evidence presented by Cohen unpalatable. Benny Morris commented on Cohen's view of the integral role of Islam in the Palestinian national identity: "From the first, the nationalism of Palestine's Arabs was blatantly religious. Almost all the 'nationalist' statements Cohen quotes were couched in religious or semi- religious terms. We are dealing here with an Islamic nationalism." In The New Republic he wrote: "His perspective—and this is one of his book's strengths--is neither pro-Palestinian nor anti-Palestinian, neither pro-Zionist nor anti-Zionist. Cohen argues-—with Talleyrand, who famously quipped that "treason is a matter of dates"—that "treason is ultimately a social construct. Definitions vary with circumstances," and "collaboration" is "in the eye of the beholder." So Cohen leaves "the moral and political judgment" to his readers". The most notable aspect of the book according to Stephen Schwartz, writing in the Weekly Standard, is the idea that some Palestinian Arabs refused to take up arms against Israel in 1948 out of hatred for Husayni. According to Cohen, Palestinian Arabs were in no hurry to join the battle: "Only a minority of Arabs were involved in offensive activities, this unwillingness to fight was frequently buttressed by agreements with Jews in nearby settlements." References Books about the Arab–Israeli conflict Israeli–Palestinian conflict books Books about Palestinians Zionism in Mandatory Palestine Zionism in Ottoman Palestine