Finally, a book written by insiders in regard to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Certainly a rare find. This book is actually a compilation of papers/essays/letters written by numerous authors all of Israeli Jewish decent. Noted authors include Uri Avnery who fought in the '48 war and served in the Knesset, Ishai Menuchin who is a Major the Israel Defense Forces reserves, Dr. Yigal Shochat who served as a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force during the War of Attrition, as well as numerous well-known and published professors of Political Science, all of whom teach at universities across Israel.

The book subverts many myths about Israeli politics in the OPT, but it does not do so in a black and white manner as so many other books do. It is a critical analyses of how certain decisions by those in power are creating a threat not only to Israeli citizens within Israel proper, but also a to Israel's democracy itself. This book criticizes key flaws in Israeli politics in regard to the Palestinian issue and provides solutions in their place; rather than simply attack Israel for all it's worth.

In addition to the logical, critical, thought-provoking, Jewish-perspective information this book provides, it also serves to effectively undermine anti-Semitic attitudes towards Israel. Many other books simply criticize Israel without providing alternate solutions given from Israeli Jewish perspectives.. those types of books end up in the hands of some anti-Semites who use the text (most often taken out of context) as metaphorical ammunition. This book is no such source for such idiocy.

To criticize one's own government is nothing new, but to do so in such a well-articulated manner, without ostracizing 1000s of years of Jewish culture, and all the while defending democracy while putting your public reputation on the line is not only genius; it's heroic. Read this book!

A book that challenges so much that one hears about the "justice" of Israel occupying Palestinian land is an important, necessary book. Although the title makes somewhat grandiloquent claims on the part of its individual writers (there is no risk whatsoever to these people, in terms of social position or even income, in writing these articles), it is important for Americans to hear other perspectives coming from Israel. Most of the articles are worth reading, although Anthony Lewis's contribution to the volume unfortunately shows his characteristic clunky prose and banality of polemic. But that is a minor quibble to make. This is a fine book.

I have read many great books that adequately cover the Israel-Palestine conflict, but this is one that achieves a high position on my list of books for those who also want an intro to the topic. Besides the fact that it thoroughly covers and exposes many myths, it also does it from an Israeli perspective, hence perhaps removing discomfort of anyone who might be tempted to read some truth but question it's source.

The book absoutely redefines Pro-Israel as something that is tied together with Pro-Palestine. The two are intertwined. What the American media projects as "Pro-Israeli" is really in the worst interest of both the Palestinians AND the Israelis and the book covers this quite well.

The book is split up into sections dealing with the rise of the conflict, escalation and so on. For example, a section is dedicated to purely military dissidents (very brave men) who speak out against crimes that they may have been forced to help once.

All in all, this book is recommended to the nth degree.

The Shoah and the State of Israel is a very important topic. Tom Segev in his book The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust sets out to tackle this sad instance in Jewish History. Even though the book is written extremely well and has an enormous bibliography the book actually fails in adding any new insight to our understanding of the Shoah and Israel. All Segev does is regurgitate conspiracy and fact about this dark moment in History. Segev writes about every conspiracy and critic known about Ben Gurion and the Shoah from the extreme right to the extreme left and also the religious fanatics. What he leaves his reads is a 'mish mash' of stories that are questionable at best. Even though this book is a good intro for anyone who wants the read about the Shoah and Israel it is defiantly not the final word.

I recommend you read this book in addition to: The Transfer Agreement, Jews For Sale?, Ben Gurion and the Holocaust, and Perfidy.

Segev, renowned for his other books 'One Palistine: Complete' and '1949 the First Isrealis' has tackled a subject that to my knowledge has never been fully documented in another single book.

the only problem with this book is that Segev is a biased writer, coming from the left of Isreali politics and taking a decidedly revisionist tone in his documenting the birth of the Isreali state. nevertheless this book is the finer of the three he has written for it documents such interesting aspects of the holocaust as the Eichman trial, the Kastern affair, the Havarra agreements and the treatment german jews(Yekkes) recieved on arrival in palistine. He rigourously documents a myriad of sources and illuminates the struggle that Isreal has gone through to come to grips with the Holocaust.

I strongly recommend this book because it touches on so many subjects and no other account will provide the reader with such a variety of historical events, from retribution to reparations.

In the the span of only two weeks, Jews mark three separate modern holidays: Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom Hazikaron (Israel's Memorial Day), and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel's Independence Day). These holidays, while observed separately, share many commonalities. This is a book that combines the Holocaust with the State of Israel, focusing on the issue of communal memory.

It is no secret that the modern Jewish State would not be in existence without the Holocaust having occurred. Yet, we often do not consider the relationship between Israel and Israelis to the Holocaust. Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum has long been the first stop in Israel for visiting world leaders, and virtually no Jew who visits Israel leaves without stopping there. However, as author Tom Segev documents in his study of Israelis and the Holocaust, the story of Israel's response to the Holocaust and its commemoration of the greatest atrocity to humankind is not so simple. Looking at the role of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in pre-1948 Palestine) during the Holocaust, how Israelis received survivors in the early years of the nation, and the struggle to establish national memory, Segev tells the story of the Israeli path from contempt to acceptance, and finally to compassion and commemoration.

Israelis reacted very critically to Segev's controversial book when it first appeared in Israel in the late 1980s. By the time it was translated into English and brought to the American audience, much of the controversy had subsided, yet it still makes for an uncomfortable reading, as it is very critical of Israeli society in the first few decades following World War II. As Segev describes, most Israelis were of the belief that their European relatives walked "like sheep to the slaughter." Also telling of the Israeli sentiment toward the Holocaust was the moniker "sabon" (soap) given to survivors during the first decades of Israel's statehood, taken from the myth that the Nazis made soap from the skin of Jewish victims in the camps.

Segev writes passionately about the refugees who found themselves despised by a society devoted to heroism. The new Jewish nation wanted to focus on the heroes of the Holocaust who in the face of death rose up to revolt (note that Yom Hashoah takes place on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising). Much of Israel's identity in the years after the Holocaust was defined by the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, the secret negotiations between Germany and Israel over reparation payments (how much for a human life?), and the revenge schemes against former Nazis (including a plot to poison the water systems of major German cities hoping to exact the same outcome on six million Germans). The decisions to create a national day of memory and to construct a Holocaust museum were major controversies in Israel. The focus was to be not on the sorrow of the demise of European Jewry, but rather on the stories of courage by some who chose to fight back. After all, to the brave young pioneers, the Holocaust was nothing short of embarrassment to the Jewish people.

This controversial and compelling book shows the divisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel. Segev was able to use many documents, previously classified by the Israeli government, for his research, and for this reason, many of his stories will come as a surprise to the reader. Was David Ben-Gurion involved in secret negotiations to buy Jews out of the camps? How did Prime Minister Menachem Begin's "survivor syndrome" affect his governing of Israel? In The Seventh Million, Segev answers these questions and expertly shows how the Holocaust continued to shape the experience not only of the individuals who experienced it, but also the experience of an entire nation.

It has taken much healing and newfound understanding for Israel to confront the Holocaust. We can now see how meaningful it is that immediately after Passover (our national commemoration of our ancestors' exodus from Egypt), we first remember our six million European ancestors, and then a week later, we pay homage to those who fell while defending our Jewish homeland only to advance to joy and merriment the next day celebrating another year of Israel's independence. As we learn from this important book, we must not take these acts of commemoration for granted.

Segev's book gives insight into the men of the Nazi party who before this weren't really that researched. Most of the Nazi concentration camp men don't have huge Bio's to read on so it's a interesting read if you are a World War II buff who likes specific topics of choice such as this. My initital motivation was to read up on Amon Goeth, the imfamous Schindler List Protagonist. This was pretty much the only book I could find with any info at all on him. It's a good, but short read.

Professor Yehoshua Porath wrote probably the best assessment of this revisionist history, in the spring, 2000 issue of Azure. Segev claims, he notes, that the British came to rule Palestine with no clear idea of what they wanted. Segev posits that a well-organized Arab nationalist movement, vigorously opposed to British rule, mounted the murderous Arab "revolt" of 1936-1939 and forced Britain to conclude it had no interest in Palestine and should leave.

Why it took them until 1948 Segev does not bother to explain. As to voluminous evidence that the British themselves stirred up Arab nationalism and the anti-Semitic revolt, and joined in fighting the Arab's first war against Israel, Segev is silent. Nevermind that British general John Glubb commanded the Transjordanian army.

Segev asks big very political questions: Why did the British conquer Palestine? Why did they commit in 1917 to establish a Jewish National Home? Why did they stay in Palestine? And why did they leave? But he derides official British papers as too tiresome and voluminous. He also effectively ignores the evidence and conclusions of historians like Howard Sachar (History of Israel); Efriam Karsh (Empires of the Sand); Elie Kedourie (In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth; Chatham House Version); David Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace) and Conor C. O'Brien (The Siege), to name a few. Rather, he bases his conclusions entirely on gleanings from diaries, personal letters, articles and books written by local Britons, Arabs and Jews, none previously consulted by historians--probably because they describe the social scene, not politics.

The resultant fiction about Mandatory Palestine repeats the old Arnold Toynbee canard that Britain promised Palestine twice. (It didn't. See Karsh, Kedourie, Isaiah Friedman or Samuel Katz' Battleground.)

And it gives no overriding sense that Britain's conquest of Palestine was part of a calculated political and military strategy to establish a land bridge between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. This was intended to enable rapid deployment of troops to the Gulf, defend the Empire's East Indian interests, protect against possible Russian invasion, and to be both an alternative to and a protection of the Suez Canal in Egypt. Segev briefly claims that "[The British] gave [Palestine] to the Zionists because they loved 'the Jews' even as they loathed them" and feared them. He claims that they were not guided by strategic considerations, "and there was no orderly decision-making process." (p. 33) This neither eliminates nor disproves the fact that the land bridge was the driver of British policy decisions.

Also missing is the effect of Britain's 1939 White Paper, which slowed the immigration of Jews into Palestine, mandated by the League of Nation in 1922, to a trickle. Britain trapped Europe's Jews inside Nazi-controlled Europe, denying them their one viable escape hatch. Segev effectively suggests that the White Paper had no practical result, since even the quota established was not filled.

This reading is quite problematic. The White Paper exponentially increased the difficulty to European Jews of getting immigration papers, as account after Holocaust survivor account attests, along with many esteemed Holocaust scholars and histories. David Wyman's Abandonment of the Jews, for example, shows that besides refusing to consider any plan to save Europe's Jews, the British deployed 100,000 troops and a large armada in Palestine and the Mediterranean to capture Jews who escaped the European hell--policies spelled out in the White Paper. Britain intended to limit Jewish immigration, and did so very effectively.

Decades later, Britain opened Palestine Mandate and foreign office records. Historians discovered gaping holes. All British correspondences concerning wartime immigration into Palestine, among other items, had mysteriously disappeared. Other historians have concluded that British officials, mortified post facto by the inhumane intention and effect of the 1939 White Paper, destroyed the damning evidence. They believe that, in 1939 and throughout the war, British officials in London and Palestine well understood the effects that the White Paper would have on Europe's Jews. Whatever happened to those records, Segev's thesis does not square with the facts.

Segev also gives short shrift to the 7-nation Arab attack on Israel upon her founding in 1948, the Arab intention to destroy the Jewish state. Arab League Secretary General Azzam Pasha in 1948 promised "a war of extermination," "a momentous massacre" to be remembered "like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades"-and gruesome acts followed. Israel lost 6,373 casualties in the war, more than twice the Arab dead, or nearly 1% of her population. These included 600 mostly noncombatant men, women and children, all but one who were abused, mutilated beyond recognition--and decapitated by their captors. Britain assisted the Arab blockades, turning a blind eye to illegal Arab gun-running. She supported and joined Arab military efforts.

Overall, Segev fails to ask: What violence led up to the 1947-8 war? Who started the war? Why? Who was forced to mount a defense? What were casualties? Why did Britain participate? As I note in an online article, "Mourning the Death of Peace," Israel agreed in 1947 to accept a further partition of less than 20% of the land allotted by the League of Nations in 1922 as a National Home for the Jews. The Arabs, however, begrudged Israel even that small patch of land. In every war since, Arabs have mounted an effort to destroy Israel, either militarily or politically, just as they did in 1947. In 1967, Egyptian leader Gamel Nasser promised to wash Israel into the sea. (This intention remains sadly evident today in the Fateh Constitution--and countless Arabic reports, statements and broadcasts, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.) Alyssa A. Lappen

This is a captivating book about Palestine with immense detail. Written with superb academic prowess by Tom Segev, we get a detailed look at the history of the country/region known in modern times as Palestine. Highly recommended for those looking for an objective look at the area.

It takes skill to teach history through engaging personal narratives. Segev did exactly that, and I enjoyed the book thoroughly as a result. I picked it up because I am very interested in the Isael-Palestine issue and wanted an introduction. Segev's book answered all the factual questions I had, and more. I understand, however, that this is a controversial book -- for portraying the British as being more sympathetic than perhaps they actually were and for creating the appearance of equivalence between violence on the Palestinian side and violence on the Israeli side. I can't comment on the validity of these criticisms. I should say, however, that his book has left me as committed to Israeli as I ever was...

"Elvis in Jerusalem" is not a good title for this collection of reflections on present-day Israeli society. It is, in my opinion, a direction-less appendix to his more substantial (and more laudable) works: "One Palestine Complete", "The Seventh Million", and "The First Israelis." (I would love Segev to tackle the settler movement next, or perhaps secret relations between Israeli and Arab governments over the years, or maybe the complex and evolving identity of Palestinian citizens of Israel.)

As for this piece, it is enjoyable but has a "snack food" quality to it. Anything Segev is better than your run-of-the-mill work by a journalist-cum-sociologist; nonetheless, I would have preferred this to be an outline for a meatier book on conflicts between Zionism, Modernism, Judaism and Americanization.

Fascinating, and he's among the best, but this was an afterthought at best and a retread of covered ground otherwise.

Not only does Tom Segev talk about Israel's future, he also talks about its past. He tells facts as they are including some shocking facts regarding Zionism that are unattractive and brutal. This book provides important insights -- only the truth will set people free to pursue peace.

Is VAPID Americanization bad for Israel? Is national unity a pejorative? According to Segev, social collectivism is dead, Americanism is thriving in Israel. Private parties now supplant group celebrations. If Paul Newman were to reprise his role as Ari Ben Canaan from the 1961 film, "Exodus," he might portray a capitalist in Ramat Aviv Gimmel, and not a committed Kibbutznik. Segev feels that more Israeli's pay homage to the Elvis statue at an Elvis Diner on the road to Jerusalem, than to a Herzl statue that stands outside of Herzliya, that beachside bastion of prosperous capitalism. Personally, aside from this post-Zionist's thesis, the book is worth reading if only for the bounty of tidbits of Israeli social history and the voices of Israel's scholars that are included. Segev smartly uses a recurring theme of statues, and the reader is left with a fresh look at the future of Israeli society.

This was one of the worst-written books I have read on Israel. Segev seems to take inordinate joy in character assassination regarding anyone who may be an exception to his politics. The hopelessly inaccurate information he gives regarding Orde Wingate, the brilliant British military commander, and ardent Zionist and friend of the Jews is a case in point. Since Segev attempts to paint the British in general as pro-Israeli, he must perforce cast the aruably greatest friend the Jews had during the Mandatory years. On the whole, a very questionable piece of pseudo-scholarship that I would advise against wasting time on. Good only as a reference on how distorting this new breed of 'revisionist' historian is.

This book by Tom Segev attempts to shed new light on a trying period for the middle-east. I believe that one of his main points, that the British were pro-zionist throughout, is the result of trying to be controversial, a la the "new historians" of Israel's post-modernist, left-wing intelligentsia.

However, when I read about how the British thought the Jews "all powerfull", controlling businesses throughout the world, I got flashbacks to the fictitious (and evil) "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

The British USED the Jewish quest for liberation of their homeland as an excuse to achieve what English monarchs have tried to do for over a thousand years - conquer Jerusalem. They used (and flamed the passions of) the Jewish-Arab conflict in order to maintain control, as presumed "peace keepers." The British practically INVENTED Arab Nationalism, which did not exist before, in order to divide and conquer the Arabs, and control their natural resources (which had recently been discovered.) To this day, the Arab nation is divided into over 20 states, often in conflict with each other, with borders based on those drawn by British and French statesmen. The Jews were also constant victims of British deceptions and incitement of Arab anger.

Overall, this book is an expert's attempt to rewrite history. For those who don't know middle-eastern history very well, this book will give a very skewed and inaccurate picture of what went on. For those well versed in the region's history, the book offers a challenging perspective that forces the reader to reevaluate the period, but the backbone is lacking.

If you want to truly understand the conflict, the history, and the possible (or impossible) solutions, you need to read both:

1) A Durable Peace (released in the past as A Place Among the Nations) by former Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

2) The Question of Palestine by literature Professor Edward Said

These two very well-written books, TOGETHER, will give you the best perspective and the best historical account. The final opinion will be yours to make!

This is a colorful montage of various people's experiences under the British Mandate. Lots of intriguing characters and entertaining stories. The unpublished letters and journals Segev draws on, as well as published memoirs, are mostly by relatively obscure Arabs, Jews, and Brits--and this is the book's greatest strength.
But you'll have to look elsewhere if you're interested in a competent description and analysis of British rule. Segev apparently couldn't be bothered to do much background reading on British politics. When he strays from his diaries and memories, he blunders repeatedly. Lloyd George, he writes, was an "Englishman" who was "elected prime minister" in Dec. 1916. (L.G. was Welsh and there were no elections between 1910 and 1918.) Herbert Samuel, when he went into politics, "joined Lloyd George's Liberal Party"--two decades before any such entity existed.
There are a great number of other trivial mistakes, but more disturbing is Segev's persistent, if low-key, anti-Zionism. This is particularly evident in his treatment of Arab attacks on Jews. To take only the first, at Tel Hai on March 1, 1920, Segev concludes, without any evidence, that the Jews may have opened fire, and w/o provocation. He then starts referring to the "myth" of Tel Hai, as if the shootings were a figment of Zionist imagination. (He meanwhile accepts uncritically the myth of "the Arab Revolt" during WW I, discredited for decades.) Segev's treatment of subsequent violence is even more distorted. The role of the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al Husseini, is suppressed and, in the case of the Arab Rebellion of 1936-8, the focus is almost entirely on British countermeasures rather than the terror that inspired them.
But the book's claim to fame is its argument that the British were pro-Zionist because they feared the Jews. In a volume of about 600 pp., the evidence for this consists of four or five scattered, out-of-context quotations, and a distorted interpretation of Prime Minister MacDonald's "Black Letter" of 1931. Conspiracy theories about Jews circulated widely in the '20s (thanks to the success of the Bolsheviks) and Zionist spokesman Chaim Weitzman always emphasized the clout of U.S. Jews, but Segev simply never makes his case.
As for the claim that the British running the Mandate were pro-Zionist, Segev quietly abandons this. He himself provides a mountain of evidence refuting the idea, and no serious historian would try to argue it. Most British officials shared High Commissioner Chancellor's view that the Balfour Declaration was a "colossal blunder."
Particularly as the narrative winds down, there are instances of bias that would make any fair-minded historian wince--Segev's treatment of the White Paper of '39, of Bevin, of the immigration of Jews from Arab countries into Israel, etc. Still, the book is worth reading for the light it sheds on daily life in Palestine under the Mandate. You really appreciate how much of today's conflict is deja vu all over again. Some readers might want to go directly to the original sources--like the memoirs of one of Segev's favorite characters, Khalil al-Sakakini, a Christian Arab educator, nationalist, and Nazi sympathizer. But anyone interested in a thorough and accurate history of British rule in Palestine should look elsewhere, and preferably to an historian rather than a leftist journalist. There are good general histories by C. C. O'Brien and H. Sachar. On the Mandate, take a look at E. Kedourie, E. Karsh, D. Fromkin, B. Wasserstein, John Marlowe, and Christopher Sykes.

Segev, noted suthor of 'One Palistine: complete' and 'the Seventh million' now writes 1949: the first israelis. He documents the early issues faced by the Jewish state. Relations with arabs were paramount. Settling the borders and making them peaceful. Mr. Segev wants us to beleive that the evil Jewish state forced Arabs from their homes and wouldnt let them return.
Lets first analyze what the Arabs did in the early days of the war of independence(1948). When they took the etzion Block they massacred all but 3 of the jews left alive. Every Jew was killed in the settlement. Butchered. This was the fate awaiting the 600,000 Jews living in Israel in 1948. SO when the Jews won the war the Arabs fled. The Palistinians had no respect for the land and they fled without firing a shot. And then, after cuasing chaos and murdering any Jew they could find, these mobs wanted to return to their homes. Well mr. Segev wishes they had. He secretly wishes the first israelis had been the last and he wishes they had been thrown into the sea, to swim back to europe, back to the ovens. This is a revisionist account. This book is full of antithapy towards the Jewish state and its founders like Ben Gurion, Golda, and Begin. If you hate Israel, or you want another point of view, or your one of these people that feels the Jews are always at fault and the nice, peaceful, palistinians deserve ALL the land back, then read Mr. Segev because his books do contain good information. But please pick up a copy of "From Time Immemorial' to balance your accounts of this period.

Mr. Segev has written yet another history of Israel. THis time the topic is Israels first year in existence. He touches on such topics as; secularism vs. religion, settling the territories, arab lands, immigration. His argument is simple. THe Jews, having defeated the Arab in the 48 war, treat their neighboors badly while at the same time creating a theocratic state and encouraging Jews(who according to him were living peacefully with their arab neighboors) to emigrate to Israel. This book is very informative and well written but its argument is wrong. For a less biased account I would recommend "From time immemorial". For an account of the war read 'O Jerusaleum'. Segev does no justice to the heroics of the early Jews who built a strong state in the face of enemies, but he does try and substantiate Arab claims that they were forced off their lands(after murdering thier Jewish neighboors of course). Be careful with this book it is biased.

In this study, initially published in Israel and updated for the English edition, Segev traces the attitudes and policies of Israel's founders toward the resident Arab population, Arab neighbors, incoming Jews from Arab lands, and the orthodox Jewish population of Israel. In each case, he exposes the cynicism behind many of their efforts to suppress the identity of each group or to isolate it from the body politic. The book is clearly written and avoids polemics. Segev, an Israeli journalist, has relied primarily on state archives and diaries of the period to produce the best available account of the early stages of independent Israel. In Segev's own words, the book ``shattered a firmly established self-image and exposed as mere myths a number of long accepted truisms.'' Essential for specialists and for anyone interested in domestic Israeli or Israeli-Arab tensions, it illustrates the origins of problems whose ramifications affect current Israeli society as shown in Amos Oz's In the Land of Israel (1983).