Review Of “Economics, Land And Nationalism: Issues In Economic History And Political Economy In The Mandate Era And The State Of Israel” By Jacob Metzer

Recently, we have been fortunate to have Jacob (Kobi) Metzer assemble and translate some of his English publications over the last 50 years into Hebrew. The collected essays appeared in Hebrew under the title “Economics, Land and Nationalism: Issues in Economic History and Political Economy in the Mandate Era and the State of Israel”.1 It is almost impossible to review such a wide range of articles summarizing, in its way, the career of one of the more influential members of the Israeli group of economic historians. This, as Kobi asserts in the introduction, is not a summary but an attempt to close a door on some of the issues that have troubled him over his rich half-a-century career. He addresses a broad range of issues, including the interactions between the Jewish and the Arab economies during the British Mandate era, the impact of World War II on the economy of Palestine, the Zionist land regime during the Mandate era and the land regime in Israel, the Jewish employment status in the diaspora, Mandatory Palestine, and Israel, (concentrating on the extent of self-employment), the special features of the Jewish “colonization” of Palestine and their parallels in world history, and more. Needless to say, pointing out the novelties in the various papers is an impossible task. Suffice it to say that this is an important addition to the ever-growing economic literature on the economy of Palestine over the last 150 years. The book provides a magnificent chapter in the tradition started by the Fifth-Aliya members (e.g., Dusterwald-Dorot, Grunbaum-Gaathon and others) 90 years ago, followed by Palestine: Problem and Promise, the book authored by Nathan, Gass and Creamer, and the first generation of the Hebrew University economists, led by Szereszewski and Gross. As the list of references of this book (which ranges over 34 pages) testifies, this is a story written by so many, and Kobi is clearly one of their leaders.