Columbia Magazine: Review of “No Enchanted Palace” - on the UN

Yet, for all the author’s erudition and insights, this book spins off the rails...Mazower’s chief beef with the UN is its role in the establishment in 1948 of the nation of Israel. He details the process with indignation, glancing over the industrial-scale murder of 6 million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, and dismissing the aspect of partition that offered not only the Jews but the Palestinians a state of their own — which the Palestinians refused. Focusing chiefly on Jewish thinkers of the day, Mazower draws parallels between the “Hitlerite” pursuit of ethnic purity in Europe and the Jewish quest for a secure homeland. This is delicately done. Mazower does not bluntly equate the two, but he scatters select historical crumbs to point his readers down exactly that trail.