‘The bride is beautiful, but married to another man’ was the famous report on Palestine by a Zionist fact-finding team, in 1897. Whatever their historical or emotional attachment to the land they came to rule, the Jews of Israel supplanted another people – who would not forget. Theodor Herzl’s dream of a national home for the Jews was achieved in little more than half a century, made possible not only through the deaths of millions of European Jews but also the fragmentation of Palestinian society. This illuminating study shows how little the dynamics of the conflict have altered over the years and how ‘modern’ leadership is anything but.