My Amazon Review of Tom Segev's "A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion"

Implementing the Zionist Dream

Israeli journalist/historian Tom Segev has written a very detailed and somewhat biased biography of Israel’s first prime minister. He tells the story of how David Gruen, born in Plonsk, Poland, in 1886 becomes David Ben-Gurion the labor leader and for a time Israel’s leading politician after his arrival in Palestine in 1906.

Segev’s Ben-Gurion has a single minded focus on bringing the Israeli state into being. He analogizes him to Lenin, but there is also the all consummate Stalinist bureaucrat in him as he first gains control the Histadrut labor union and ultimately the Mapai (Socialist Labor) Party, Israel’s largest political party until 1977.

Ben-Gurion is a complete bibliophile as he reads voraciously and with his autodidact style become learned on science and military affairs. After the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 he immediately recognizes that it would bring a revolution in military affairs and in 1956 he starts the Israeli nuclear program.

We see him as a very lonely man subject to severe depression and although he was married to his wife Paula for over 50 years he undertook a series of affairs and he was far from a doting father to his children. His life was totally enmeshed in the politics necessary to bring into being the Zionist state.

Where Segev and his fellow “revisionist” historians go astray is when they argue that there was defined plan to uproot the Palestinians from 1948 Israel thereby creating the refugee problem. There was no central order given and while many Palestinians were forced to leave more of them left on their own accord. Segev pays little heed to Israel’s geopolitical reality of 1948 where there was no strategic depth. Hence it is unfair to characterize Defense Minister Dyan a warmonger in the 1956 War against Egypt. The strategic reality facing Israel is that it had to win quickly or lose a war of attrition. That lesson was learned in 1973 War, where Egypt attacked first and almost won.

Although Segev gives us a great deal of discussion on Ben-Gurion hot and cold relationship with Chaim Weitzman, there is far too little discussion on why Ben-Gurion’s relationship with Vladimir Jabotinsky, his political rival in the 1920’s and 30’s was so vitriolic. It had to be more than politics. That vitriol extended to Jabotinsky’s successor Menachem Begin.

To me Segev’s book is way too filled with minutia. Nevertheless, given the caveats mentioned above, he offers great insight into the life of Ben-Gurion and the creation of the Israeli state.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1LLSNFVJT73TD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Dennis Ross' and David Makovsky's "Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped its Destiny"

A Plea for Israeli Pragmatism

Dennis Ross a seasoned American diplomat who spent the bulk of his career dealing with middle-eastern issues and David Makovsky a distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute have written an important book about the fundamental dilemma facing Israel. To them, both committed Zionists, Israel faces a choice: will it be a Jewish-democratic state without most of the occupied territories or will it be a larger democratic- binational state with all of the problems that entails? To them Israel can’t hold on to the bulk of the Palestinian population and remain a Jewish-democratic state.

The authors make a call for pragmatism on the part of the current Israeli leadership by invoking the memories of four prior prime ministers. They being David Ben Gurion who accepted the 1947 U.N. partition plan, Menachem Begin who returned the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace, Yitzhak Rabin who accepted the PLO as a negotiating partner and Ariel Sharon who told the settlers to give up their dreams in Gaza. All of these men were security conscious and it was their belief that pragmatism should dominate over ideology in exchange for what they believed to be a more secure Israel.

Now don’t get me wrong, Ross and Makovsky are not wild eyed peace at any price advocates. They are hard-headed realists who currently believe that very little can be accomplished over the near term in negotiating with the Palestinian Authority. Nevertheless when the time does come for negotiations they offer a series concrete proposals of what Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. can do to create an environment for an ultimate deal. These are too lengthy to go into here, but at its core the Israeli Right, which I am sort of a supporter, has to accept that the current situation is not stable in the long run if Israel is to be true to its Zionist and democratic character.

My main criticism of the book is that there are no maps. This is especially relevant to understand the geographic reality of the proposals they are making. Ross and Makovsky have made an important contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue making their book very relevant for today.

I received this book as a gift.

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My Amazon Review of Idina Hoffman's "Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures

On the Front Page of the Twentieth Century

Adina Hoffman has written an important biography the great screen writer Ben Hecht. She takes his life from the Lower Eastside of the 1890s, to Racine, Wisconsin, and then on to the newspaper world of Chicago, to Broadway and then on to Hollywood. In the 1930s Hecht became the highest paid screen writer in Hollywood turning out such classics as Scarface, Viva Villa, Gunga Din, Twentieth Century, Monkey Business and Wuthering Heights. He would also rewrite without credit Gone with the Wind, The Shop around the Corner, Mutiny on the Bounty and much later Casino Royal. Quite the career.

While in Chicago he would meet Sherwood Anderson, Carl Sandberg and Theodore Dreiser all of whom would later become literary giants. It was his experience in Chicago newsrooms that inspired his Broadway hit, Front Page. Also as a reporter he covered postwar Berlin in 1919.

Hecht received perhaps the most famous telegram in all of Hollywood history. In late 1926 while in New York he received a telegram from his friend Herman Mankiewicz stating,

   “Will you accept three hundred per week to work for Paramount Pictures.

      All expenses paid. ……..”

And as they say, the rest is history.

Perhaps most interesting to me is how Hecht rediscovers his Jewishness in 1939-40 with the onset of World War II and the growing horror facing European Jewry.  He meets up with Peter Bergson who was the Irgun’s (Jewish liberation group) man in the United States and starts raising dollars to rescue the Jews of Europe. In 1943 he puts on an extravaganza in Madison Square Garden highlighting the plight of European Jewry titled “We Will Never Die.” He is assisted in the work with such show business legends as Billie Rose, Moss Hart and Ernst Lubitsch. The show would go national. Along the way he battles the then Jewish establishment figures who were reluctant to highlight the seriousness of the disaster.

Later in 1946 he works with Bergson to put on a Broadway show entitled “A Flag is Born” to call attention to the struggle to create the Jewish state. Again he uses is influence to raise money for the cause. He was so important that future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would attend his funeral.

I would have really liked to know Ben Hecht. He was vibrant and full of energy and Adina Hoffman tells his story well.

The full Amazon Reviews appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R33KSBH77UVJ91/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Daniel Gordis' "Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn"

The Impossible Dream

After reading Daniel Gordis’ magnificent biography of Menachem Begin, I looked forward to his history of Israel. Although I liked his new book, I was somewhat disappointed in that I don’t think it is as good as Ari Shavit’s , “My Promised Land.”

Nevertheless Gordis brings to life the idea of a national homeland for the Jews from the proto-Zionists of the mid-1800s to Zionism becoming a mass movement under the leadership of Theodor Herzl after the first Zionist Congress in 1897. To dream of a state after nearly 2000 years of statelessness was truly an impossible dream, but it came true 50 years later after the horror of the holocaust that befell European Jewry.

What Zionism did was that it transformed the cowering Jew of the shtetl to the muscular member of the Israel Defense Forces of today. This is truly a major accomplishment. However early Zionism was secular and socialist and along the way it lost some of its Jewish soul which it is now returning to.

Gordis highlights the role of David Ben Gurion and his labor socialism in building the institutions necessary for statehood. After all, a state cannot be created out of thin air. The stat he built was dominated by the Ashkenazi Jews of northern Europe to the detriment of the Sephardi Jews of Africa and the Middle East. This would come home to roost with Begin’s surprise victory of 1977 giving power to the Israeli right.

As with most histories of Israel  Gordis discusses the Balfour Declaration, the White Paper, the war for independence, the 6-day war of 1956, the 1967 war and the 1973 war. Truly it is a history of conflict with the native Palestinian population and the neighboring Arab states. A conflict that continues to this day and in all likelihood it will not be resolved until the Palestinians accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish State.

What I found lacking in the book was the absence of any real discussion about the economy.  To be sure you need institutions to have a state, but you also need an economy. There should have been more discussion on the role of agriculture in the early days and the shift to a modern high-tech economy. He also neglects the importance of German Reparations in the 1950s, contributions form worldwide Jewry and foreign aid from the United States. While few in 1900 would have predicted the arrival of a Jewish state, even fewer would have predicted the modern economy that Israel has created. That is an important story worth telling. That said Gordis’ work puts in one volume a very readable history of Israel.

For the complete Amazon URL see:

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Concise-History-Nation-Reborn-ebook/dp/B01B19O4FA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482250196&sr=1-1&keywords=daniel+gordis+israel

My Amazon Review of Roger Moorhouse's "The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941"

In “The Devils’ Alliance” British historian Roger Moorhouse delivers a highly readable account of the immediate aftermath of the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 1939. His keen eye focuses in, not on the hows and whys the alliance was formed, but rather on how it operated to the advantages of both parties and how brutally efficient they both were in their respective occupation zones in Eastern Europe. He sheds much light on this aspect of World War II that few Western historians focus on. But it is certainly part of the history of Poland and the Baltic states.    

He goes into great detail about economics of the deal in terms pricing and delivery of raw materials from Russia and capital goods from Germany. Though this sounds like boring stuff, he shows how the Germans lost patience with the Soviets nit-picking the terms of each and every shipment. Remember that at the outset, Hitler needed the deal more than Stalin, but after the German lightening victory in France, Stalin needed the deal far more than Hitler. It is no accident that Stalin occupies the Baltic States as France is falling. Hence we get a ringside seat to Molotov’s visit to Berlin in November 1940 which sets into motion a reorientation of Hitler’s thinking. As a sidebar the tactics used by Stalin in the Baltics in 1940 are identical to what Putin is using in the Ukraine today.

It is with the German victory in France and the subsequent German defeat over the skies of Britain that Hitler turns east and according to Moorhouse the flashpoint that ended the pact was the territorial division of the Balkans which was mostly outside of the initial deal. I think Moorhouse makes too much of the disputes in the Balkans, in particular the disagreements in the rather obscure Danube Commission. My guess is that Hitler’s decision to invade Russia was more on the level of grand strategy than a localized dispute. 

Moorhouse puts to rest the myth that Stalin was surprised by the German invasion in June 1940.  For the prior six months he spent practically every waking hour trying to avoid war and to get his armies battle ready for the coming onslaught. His problem was that he couldn’t mobilize for fear of giving Hitler an excuse to invade. Simply put he was practicing the very same appeasement policy that Britain and France followed three years earlier.

Along the way Moorhouse brings to life the dour personality of Molotov and the rather flippant personality of his counterpart, Ribbentrop. Both of whom were at the beck and call of their puppet masters. One interesting note Moorhouse follows up with the British-Russian –Polish conference of July 1941 where Russia offers concessions to the Polish government in exile to receive British support in their new war against Germany. One of those concessions was the freeing of Polish nationals held in the Soviet gulag. Although Moorhouse doesn’t mention it, one of those so freed was Menachem Begin.

For the Amazon URL see:
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My Amazon Review of Hillel Halkin's "Jabotinsky (Jewish Lives)"

Hillel Halkin brings to life in a short and very readable biography, the story of Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinsky was far from the prototypical Zionist of the early 20^th Century. Being born in the cosmopolitan port city of Odessa, he was far from the shtetls of Poland and Russia. He was far from religious and didn’t really like living in the Palestine of the 1920s.

Nevertheless he was extraordinarily clear-eyed about the future of Zionism. Jabotinsky understood:

·       * The real need for Jewish Legion to assist in the British invasion of Ottoman Palestine thereby establishing the first organized Jewish fighting force in nearly 2000 years.

·      *  The local Arab population would not be passive to a surge in Jewish immigration. He leads in the formation of the Haganah out of the remnants of the Jewish Legion. The Haganah was the forerunner of today’s Israel Defense Forces.

·      *  The Nazi nightmare would wipe out European Jewry and urged the Jewish community to pack up and leave. He supplied chartered steamers to illegally transport Jews to Palestine.

·        *The Israeli economy organized along the socialist lines of Labor Zionism would not be viable and urged more market oriented policies.

Halkin discusses in great detail Jabotinsky’s long time and very acrid rivalry with David Ben Gurion. They fought each other for control of the Zionist Organization in the 1930s. To put it mildly they did not like each other and Ben Gurion prevented Jabotinsky’s reburial in Israel until after he stepped down as prime minister in 1964.

A failing of the book is that Halkin expends too many words on Jabotinsky the journalist and the writer and not enough on his leading his Revisionist Zionist group and his founding of Betar, its youth group. Menachem Begin was so inspired by Jabotinsky that he joined and became a leader of Betar. Nevertheless I would recommend “Jabotinsky” for those readers who want to go beyond the standard Labor Zionist version of the founding of the State of Israel. A great companion piece would be Daniel Gordis’, “Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel’s Soul.”

For the Amazon URL see:

http://www.amazon.com/review/RESMO3223GCQU

My Amazon Review of Daniel Gordis' "Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel's Soul"

The history of Israel has largely been written from a secular Labor-Zionist or a Palestinian perspective. In those histories Menachem Begin has either been air-brushed out or vilified as a terrorist by Jew and Arab alike. Daniel Gordis a rabbi from a family of rabbis and vice president of Shalem College in Israel makes a huge contribution in correcting the historical record. Simply put, although Menachem Begin was not the George Washington of Israel, he certainly was a founding father and was it not for him the State of Israel might not have been brought into being.

Begin was born in 1913 in the town of Brisk (now Brest in Belarus) under grey Polish skies compared to the sunny Mediterranean skies most of the early Zionist leadership who were either born in then Palestine or arrived there when very young. As a result Begin stood out as Polish formal compared to Israeli casual. Begin did not arrive in Palestine until he was 30. As an aside his birth was midwifed by Ariel Sharon's grandmother. Begin learned his Zionism from his father and the everyday Polish anti-Semitism he witnessed while growing up. He also, unlike the Zionists in Palestine, grows up religious and very knowledgeable in the biblical texts.  In time he would become, according to Gordis, the most Jewish of Israeli prime ministers. As a teenager he became a convert to the Revisionist Zionism of the charismatic Vladimir Jabotinsky and quickly became a leader of its Betar youth group. Revisionist Zionism differed from Labor Zionism in that it was more clear-eyed about the fate of the Jews, in Europe, market oriented versus socialist, and was pessimistic about the prospect of peaceful coexistence with the Arab population living in Palestine.

Imprisoned by the Russians in 1940 he is released after the German invasion and finds his way to Palestine in 1943 where almost immediately assumes the leadership of the Irgun. It here where Menachem Begin enters history. He adopts "an eye for an eye" policy with respect to the British. For every Irgun member executed by the British, a British soldier would be kidnapped and executed. He plots along with the more establishment Haganah the 1946 bombing of the King David hotel, the headquarters of the British Army. It was Begin’s terror campaign that forced the British out. In too many histories it is the Irgun alone who were responsible for the bombing. Prior to the imposition a temporary cease fire in Israel's War for Independence the Atalena, an Irgun arms carrying ship was fired upon by Haganah troops just outside of Tel Aviv. The government under Ben Gurion wanted to show that Israel would support the U.N. cease fire ordered the attack. The columnist Tom Friedman has cited this as an important step in establishing the credibility of the new government. However, the historical record is murkier, because the government was told by Begin that the ship was coming after the cease fire was put in place. Begin made attempts at compromise, but Ben Gurion fearing Begin as a rival, opened fire. Twenty years later Ben Gurion reconsidered.

By most histories Begin is blamed for the 1948 massacre of Deir Yassin, an Arab village near Jeruslaem. Yes, there was a massacre, but the nascent state was struggling to keep the road to Jerusalem open. Moreover the entire operation was being run by the Haganah. Thus there is plenty of blame to go around, but to most histories the blame falls fully on Begin. 

With the labor Zionists fully in control Begin spends the next 30 years in all but political exile. To be sure he is a member of the Knesset, but he doesn't enter the government until the 1967 war. He leaves it soon thereafter. However a political revolution is brewing under the surface. The population is becoming more Sephardic and become restive under the more elitist labor Zionist Ashkenazim, corruption was growing, and the early failures of the Israeli Army during the 1973 War highlighted military unpreparedness. Thus in 1977 a political revolution took place brought Menachem Begin to the prime ministership with his Likud coalition. One of his acts is to admit and make full citizens of 66 Vietnamese boat people who were picked up by an Israeli freighter in the South China Sea. No Asian country wanted to take them in; Israel did.

Begin is most well known for making peace with Egypt's Anwar Sadat. He won the Nobel Peace Prize with Sadat in 1979 for the Camp David Accords which established peace with Egypt and returned the Sinai to Egyptian control. In the Sinai he showed no hesitation in removing the Jewish settlements there. This would not be the case for the West Bank. Recall the Sinai was never part of biblical Israel.

Begin made the big call in June 1981 when he ordered the Israeli Air Force to take out the Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction at Osirak. His action was condemned by most of the world, but in the light of history it represented one of the most clear eyed acts statesmanship of the 20th Century.

Perhaps the biggest stain on Begin was his delegating too much authority to Ariel Sharon during the 1982 Lebanon War. There is a straight line from that delegation to the massacre by Christian phalangists of the Arab towns of Sabra and Shatila. Begin resigned over this. Not only was the Lebanon War a political disaster, it was also a moral one.

Begin died in 1992. He lived his life under the precept of hadar (Dignity). Gordis brings this to life.

The full Amazon URL is:

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