Yigal Allon Native Son

Born in 1918 into the fabric of Arab-Jewish frontier life at the foot of Mt. Tabor, Yigal Allon rose to become one of the founding figures of the state of Israel and an architect of its politics. In 1945 Allon became commander of the Palmah—an elite unit of the Haganah, the semilegal army of the Jewish community—during the struggle against the British for independence. In the 1947-49 War of Independence against local and invading Arab armies, he led the decisive battles that largely determined the borders of Israel. Paradoxically, his close lifelong relations with Arab neighbors did not prevent him from being a chief agent of their sizable displacement. A bestseller in Israel and available now translated into English, Yigal Allon, Native Son is the only biography of this charismatic leader. The book focuses on Allon's life up to 1950, his clash with founding father David Ben-Gurion, the end of his military career, and the watershed in culture and character between the Jewish Yishuv and Israeli statehood. As a statesman in his more mature years, he formulated what became known as the "Allon Plan," which remains a viable blueprint for an eventual two-state partition between Israel and the Palestinians. Yet in the end, the promise Allon showed as a brilliant young military commander remained unfulfilled. The great dream of the Palmah generation was largely lost, and Allon's name became associated with the failed policies of the past. The story of Allon's life frames the history of Israel, its relationship with its Arab neighbors, its culture and spirit. This important biography touches on matters—Israel's borders, refugees, military might—that remain very much alive today.

Yossi Beilin was a seminal figure during the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. As deputy foreign minister in the second Rabin government, he was responsible for leading the Oslo process, which was the most important attempt to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This book is the first to tell the story of the left wing and the peace process based on the private archive of Beilin himself. The thousands of documents – shared exclusively with the author - reveal a far more complete picture of Israel's political-diplomatic history in the late 20th century, and provide new information on key events. Avi Shilon offers a critiques of the 'liberal peace-building' project and analyses the connections between the Labour party's economic policy and foreign policy since the 1970s. This book is both a political biography of Beilin and a new history which recounts the diplomatic processes and social-political changes that occurred in Israel in the past four decades.

A controversial examination of the internal Israeli debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a best-selling Israeli author Since the Six-Day War, Israelis have been entrenched in a national debate over whether to keep the land they conquered or to return some, if not all, of the territories to Palestinians. In 2017, best-selling Israeli author Micah Goodman published a balanced and insightful analysis of the situation that quickly became one of Israel's most debated books of the year. Now available in English translation with a new preface by the author, Catch-67 deftly sheds light on the ideas that have shaped Israelis' thinking on both sides of the debate, and among secular and religious Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Contrary to opinions that dominate the discussion, he shows that the paradox of Israeli political discourse is that both sides are right in what they affirm--and wrong in what they deny. Although he concludes that the conflict cannot be solved, Goodman is far from a pessimist and explores how instead it can be reduced in scope and danger through limited, practical steps. Through philosophical critique and political analysis, Goodman builds a creative, compelling case for pragmatism in a dispute where a comprehensive solution seems impossible.

Hasbara (explaining), the Israeli variant of public diplomacy, is the subject of endless domestic debate. Israel in the 1960s and 1970s saw many changes in its political and military international stage. This was a period of unusually intensive attention to the problems of hasbara, beginning with the appointment of Yisrael Galili as minister with responsibility for government communications and ending with the dismantling of the Ministry of Information in 1974, less than a year after it had been created. Israel had only been able to “muddle through,” and, at the end, there was no greater sophistication in Israeli thinking and no stronger administrative structure in spite of many organizational changes. Accessible to anyone interested in the history of Israel as well as political history and diplomacy, the book serves as a case study of how entrenched political culture can limit policy options and casts light on the emergence of public diplomacy as a feature of foreign policy.

Yair Auron's important, innovative and instructive book relates critically to the narratives created by Israeli society regarding the events of 1948: the establishment of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba. Auron proposes a humanistic approach of dialogue to foster the brotherhood of the victims and an identification with each other’s suffering, replacing the current relations of force driving the two peoples to a disaster of terrifying international implications.

Despite the dramatic circumstances of its founding, Israel did not inspire sustained, impassioned public discussion among Jews and non-Jews in the United States until Leon Uris's popular novel Exodus was released in 1958. Uris's novel popularized the complicated story of Israel's founding and, in the process, boosted the morale of post-Holocaust Jewry and disseminated in popular culture positive images of Jewish heroism. Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel's Founding Story examines the phenomenon of Exodus and its largely unrecognized influence on post-World War II understandings of Israel's beginnings in America and around the world. Author M. M. Silver's extensive archival research helps clarify the relevance of Uris's own biography in the creation of Exodus. He situates the novel's enormous popularity in the context of postwar America, and particularly Jewish American culture of the 1950s and early 1960s. In telling the story of the making of and the response to Exodus, first as a book and then as a film, Silver shows how the representation of historical events in Exodus reflected needs, expectations, and aspirations of Jewish identity and culture in the post-Holocaust world. He argues that while Uris's novel simplified some facts and distorted others, it provided an astonishingly ample amount of information about Jewish history and popularized a persuasive and cogent (though debatable) Zionist interpretation of modern Jewish history. Silver also argues that Exodus is at the core of an evolving argument about the essential compatibility between the Jewish state and American democracy that continues to this day. Readers interested in Israel studies, Jewish history, and American popular culture will appreciate Silver's unique analysis.

Two decades ago, the idea that a "radical right" could capture and drive Israeli politics seemed highly improbable. While it was a boisterous faction and received heavy media coverage, it constituted a fringe element. Yet by 2009, Israel's radical right had not only entrenched itself in mainstream Israeli politics, it was dictating policy in a wide range of areas. The government has essentially caved to the settlers on the West Bank, and restrictions on non-Jews in Israel have increased in the past few years. Members of the radical right have assumed prominent positions in Israel's elite security forces. The possibility of a two state solution seems more remote than ever, and the emergence of ethnonationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman suggests that its power is increasing. Quite simply, if we want to understand the seemingly intractable situation in Israel today, we need a comprehensive account of the radical right. In The Triumph of Israel's Radical Right, acclaimed scholar Ami Pedahzur provides an invaluable and authoritative analysis of its ascendance to the heights of Israeli politics. After analyzing what, exactly, they believe in, he explains how mainstream Israeli policies like "the right of return" have served as unexpected foundations for their nativism and authoritarian tendencies. He then traces the right's steady rise, from the first intifada to the "Greater Israel" movement that is so prominent today. Throughout, he focuses on the radical right's institutional networks and how the movement has been able to expand its constituency. His closing chapter is grim yet realistic: he contends that a two state solution is no longer viable and that the vision of the radical rabbi Meir Kahane, who was a fringe figure while alive, has triumphed.

Focusing on the character and personality of Menachem Begin, Gerald Steinberg and Ziv Rubinovitz offer a new look into the peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s. Begin's role as a peace negotiator has often been marginalized, but this sympathetic and critical portrait restores him to the center of the diplomatic process. Beginning with the events of 1967, Steinberg and Rubinovitz look at Begin's statements on foreign policy, including relations with Egypt, and his role as Prime Minister and chief signer of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. While Begin did not leave personal memoirs or diaries of the peace process, Steinberg and Rubinovitz have tapped into newly released Israeli archives and information housed at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and the Begin Heritage Center. The analysis illuminates the complexities that Menachem Begin faced in navigating between ideology and political realism in the negotiations towards a peace treaty that remains a unique diplomatic achievement.