Authors: Tom Segev, Arlen Neal Weinstein
ISBN-13: 9780805058963, ISBN-10: 0805058966
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: April 1998
Edition: REV
Tom Segev is a columnist for Ha'aretz, Israel's leading newspaper, and author of three works on the history of Israel, 1949: The First Israelis, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, and One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. He lives in Jerusalem.
The founding of Israel in 1948one of the seminal events of the centuryoffers a heroic narrative with few parallels in modern history. In 1949, a controversial best-seller in Israel, Tom Segev draws on thousands of declassified documents along with personal diaries and correspondence to reconstruct the unvarnished story of Israel's first year.
Segev reveals the lofty aspirations that guided the state's leaders as well as the darker side of the Zionist utopia: the friction between the early settlers and the immigrants, the lack of good-faith negotiations with the Arabs; the clash between religious and secular factions; the daily collision of the Zionist myth with the severe realities of life in the new state. Unflinching in its observations, this bold chronicle is indispensible for understanding the dilemmas that continue to confrontand divideIsraeli society.
Preface: Ten Years Later | v | |
Introduction | ix | |
Part I | Between Jews and Arabs | 1 |
1. | The Green Line | 3 |
2. | Face to Face | 43 |
3. | Dividing the Spoils | 68 |
Part II | Between Veterans and Newcomers | 93 |
4. | The First Million | 95 |
5. | Working and Fighting Hands | 117 |
6. | Nameless People | 155 |
Part III | Between the Orthodox and the Secular | 195 |
7. | Each in the Name of His God | 197 |
8. | The Battle for the Sabbath | 233 |
Part IV | Between Vision and Reality | 263 |
9. | The Quest for a National Identity | 265 |
10. | Codfish with Everything | 296 |
Notes | 324 | |
Bibliography | 368 | |
Index | 372 |