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WORK TITLE: A STATE AT ANY COST
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LAST VOLUME: CANR 225
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/books/03book.html http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/02/entertainment/la-et-book-tom-segev-20101002 http://www.jewishreviewofbooks.com/publications/detail/simon-wiesenthal-and-the-ethics-of-history
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 1, 1945, in Jerusalem, Israel.
EDUCATION:Hebrew University of Jerusalem, B.A.; Boston University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and scholar. Maariv, Bonn, Germany, correspondent, 1970s; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, visiting professor, 2001-02; University of California at Berkeley, visiting professor, 2007; Northeastern University, Boston, MA, visiting professor; Haaretz, Tel Aviv, Israel, journalist.
AWARDS:Best book, New York Times, 2000, and National Jewish Book Award, both for One Palestine, Complete.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Tom Segev was born in Jerusalem, the son of German Jewish parents. He earned a doctorate in history from Boston University but now lives in Israel, where he is a journalist for the left-wing daily newspaper Haaretz. He has written several books about Israel and Jewish history. In the New Republic, Anita Shapira called Segev “one of Israel’s most prominent and most controversial journalists. Gifted with a sharp eye and a barbed tongue, he presents himself as the ironic, even cynical critic of Israeli reality.”
Segev’s 1949, the First Israelis describes the experiences of the first immigrants to the new state of Israel and what the Arab people of the region went through during the same time period. In the New York Times Book Review, Elmore Jackson wrote: “This book should be required reading for all who want to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps is a collective portrait of the commandants of these death camps. Drawing on interviews with the commandants and their families, Segev portrays the origins of these men, their identification with the Nazi Party, and their identity as soldiers.
In The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, Segev contends that the Zionist leadership preferentially chose only committed Zionists to save from the Nazi Holocaust, and left the rest of the European Jews at the mercy of Hitler and Stalin. However, he leaves the question open: perhaps they really did all they could.
In the New Republic, Shapira wrote: “This ambiguous formulation infuriated readers, who interpreted it as an unforgivable innuendo on a matter of the utmost sensitivity.” In the Journal of Palestine Studies, though, Milton Viorst wrote that Segev “has written a brilliant study of the impact of the Holocaust on his countrymen” and commented that the book, “though simply written, even anecdotal, is subtle and complex.”
In One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the Mandate, Segev tells the story of Israel and Palestine, beginning with the British conquest of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Both Palestinians and Jews welcomed the British, believing the British would give them independence. By 1947, the British had left the region after the United Nations resolved to divide the country into two separate states; this resolution led to a bloody war that ended in the establishment of the state of Israel and the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians. Segev tells this story through the actual experiences of people from all sides of the conflict, filling the book with material gathered from letters, diaries, and archives. In the London Guardian, Colin Schindler wrote: “It is a kind of literary theatre rather than history, and Segev moves his actors on and off stage with great skill.” Omer Bartov wrote in the New York Times Book Review: “Instead of telling his story through the loud pronouncements of political leaders, he has woven a fine tapestry of individual portraits, curious anecdotes and penetrating insights.” Bartov also wrote: “Segev has written an enormously important book, perhaps the best single account of Palestine under the British mandate. For the first time … the story of the [British] mandate has been told from all three perspectives—the Zionist, the Arab and the British.”
In the Middle East Journal, Lawrence Davidson wrote that Segev’s presentation of Palestinians is not as balanced as it initially appears to be. Davidson wrote that Segev “persistently describes Arab resistance to colonialism as ‘terrorism,’ and repeatedly reminds readers that, beginning in the 1930s, the Palestinians became ‘Nazi sympathizers.’” But he also noted: “When all is said and done, however, Segev’s presentation is broad enough and rich enough to allow the reader to see beyond the standard pro-Zionist viewpoint, and that is the great virtue of One Palestine, Complete.”
In 2002 Segev published Elvis in Jerusalem: Post- Zionism and the Americanization of Israel. With this book Segev moves away from the study of Israel’s past and focuses on its present. He cites many examples of how the collective identity of Zionism has slowly given way to the American notions of individualism and consumerism. In his opinion, that is a good thing. Many Israelis do not agree; the subject of post-Zionism is very sensitive in Israel but, according to a reviewer from Publishers Weekly, Segev “makes a powerful case for it in reasoned and measured tones.”
Segev’s 2007 work, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, which was translated into English by Jessica Cohen, looks at the six days in June of 1967 over which Israel defeated three major Arab armies (Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) and captured territories four times the size of pre-1967 Israel, transforming the geographic and political landscape of the Middle East.
“At well over 600 pages, this is a door-stopper. But anyone curious about the extraordinary six days of Arab-Israeli war … will learn much from it,” observed a reviewer for the Economist Web site. The reviewer went on to say that in the book Segev argues that to understand why this war happened, “it is not enough to know the diplomatic and military background: it also needs deep knowledge of the Israelis themselves. And this is what he brilliantly provides. By drawing on letters, diaries and interviews, as well as Israel’s rich official archives, Mr. Segev mixes a meticulous narrative with a shrewd analysis of the complex Israeli psyche.” This is a psyche that was shaped by an economy that was in recession, immigration trends that were turning citizens of European descent into the minority, escalating terrorist activity directed against Israel, and increasingly strained relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors. “Though it is never explicitly stated, Segev’s thesis is clear. Israeli fears of an Arab attack ‘had no basis in reality,’ he argues; ‘there was indeed no justification for the panic that preceded the war, nor for the euphoria that took hold after it.’ Rather than responding to an imminent Arab threat, Israelis were reacting out of a deep-seated trauma born of years of Jewish suffering,” Michael Oren explained in his review of the book for the Washington Post.
Booklist reviewer Jay Freeman felt that “many of his revelations are both startling and credible.” Further noting that Segev successfully depicts a nation that is “plagued by disillusionment, communal tensions, and anxiety about national survival,” David Margolick in his review of 1967 for the New York Times Book Review criticized the book for being “way too long, a temptation to which respected writers can sometimes succumb. A timid American editor hasn’t helped. Non-Israelis, even those who read Haaretz daily online, will find 1967 slow going.” However, Margolick also noted that “Segev’s look into the origins of the occupation is invaluable. His research is prodigious, his intelligence obvious, his ability to reconstruct complex chains of events impressive. He writes clearly and confidently and has an eye for the telling, and often witty, detail.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor touted the book as “absorbing and convincing: an exemplary work of journalistic history.”
Segev’s next work, Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, chronicles the life of the famous holocaust survivor turned Nazi hunter. A longtime admirer of Wiesenthal, Segev defends his actions and motives while still taking into account the criticisms that have been leveled against him.
Reviewing the work in the New York Times Book Review, contributor Dwight Garner described the work as a “forceful new biography.” Garner also put forth: “[Segev’s] biography of Wiesenthal is the most fully documented to date, relying on new material gleaned from his subject’s voluminous private papers and from more than a dozen governmental archives.” Los Angeles Times contributor Jonathan Kirsch reported: “Segev himself sticks to ‘the true story.’ That’s his stock-in-trade, and that’s what makes all of his work so compelling. But telling the unvarnished truth ultimately honors the man he is writing about, and Wiesenthal emerges from Segev’s book as an even richer and more consequential character than the one he invented for himself.” A contributor to the Economist explained: “Segev, justly celebrated for his histories of formative moments of the state of Israel, is as careful a biographer as he is a historian, and he excels at teasing apart these conflicting tales. The picture that emerges is often unflattering.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor labeled the work “an often repetitive but powerful biography.”
In A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, Segev profiles one of Israel’s founders and its first prime minister. Ben-Gurion was born in Plonsk, Poland in 1886. He became devoted to Zionism and relocated to Palestine when he was twenty years old. Ben-Gurion observed conflicts between Jewish settlers and native Palestinian as he worked for socialist causes. He came to believe that the two groups could not reconcile their differences and that the Jewish settlers should create a separate state. Segev discusses Ben-Gurion’s rise to prime minister, his political machinations, his stance on important events in Israeli history, and his death in 1973.
In an interview with Dashiel Lawrence, contributor to the Plus 61j website, Segev stated: “[Ben-Gurion] appears in all my books. I was always aware that he is a very central power and element in our history. [The book] is a very different picture of him; it’s a tri-dimensional picture.” Segev also told Lawrence: “What surprised me was his ability to move from a very deep depression—suicidal depression in fact—to uncontrollable happiness. Sometimes over weeks. He knew this about himself. At one point he writes in his diaries: ‘If anyone ever reads this they will think it was written by at least two different people.'”
A writer in Publishers Weekly remarked: “The book is sometimes weighed down by detail. The nonspecialist might be better served by less encyclopedic treatments.” In a more favorable assessment, a Kirkus Reviews critic described A State at Any Cost as “a fair portrait of a difficult, hard-nosed character who, like him or not, had enormous impact on twentieth-century events.” Andres Kabel, reviewer on the Read Listen Watch website, called the book “comprehensive, sophisticated” and asserted: “Segev retains superb control over his material, and writes vigorously and methodically.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Asian Affairs, June, 2000, Ivor Lucas, review of One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the Mandate, p. 203.
Booklist, September 1, 2000, Vanessa Bush, review of One Palestine, Complete, p. 5; May 15, 2007, Jay Freeman, review of 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, p. 15.
Commentary, November, 1999, Hillel Halkin, “Was Zionism Unjust?,” p. 29.
Daily Telegraph (London, England), January 20, 2001, John Simpson, “Gleams of Decency,” p. 4.
Economist, January 20, 2001, review of One Palestine, Complete, p. 4; March 29, 2003, “Patriots Too; Israeli Dissent”; May 26, 2007, “Jews and Prussians; the Six-Day War,” p. 98.
Guardian (London, England), February 3, 2001, Colin Schindler, “Saturday Review,” p. 8.
Journal of Palestine Studies, winter, 1995, Milton Viorst, review of The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, p. 94.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2007, review of 1967; July 1, 2010, review of Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends; July 1, 2019, review of A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion.
Library Journal, September 15, 2000, Nader Entessar, review of One Palestine, Complete, p. 94.
London Review of Books, November 1, 2007, “Orchestrated Panic,” p. 24.
Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2010, Jonathan Kirsch, review of Simon Wiesenthal.
Middle East Journal, spring, 2001, Lawrence Davidson, review of One Palestine, Complete, p. 335.
Middle East Policy, fall, 2006, Edward C. Corrigan, review of The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.
Nation, July 26, 1993, Norman Birnbaum, review of The Seventh Million, p. 142.
National Review, March 19, 2001, Amos Perlmutter, “Bad Tidings to Zion.”
New Republic, October 18, 1993, Moshe Halbertal, review of The Seventh Million, p. 40; December 11, 2000, Anita Shapira, “Eyeless in Zion—When Palestine First Exploded,” p. 26.
New Statesman, January 22, 2001, Philip Ziegler, “This Monstrous Canker,” p. 51.
New York Review of Books, September 26, 1985, Avishai Margalit, “Passage to Palestine,” p. 23; September 28, 1989, Istvan Deak, “The Commandants,” p. 63.
New York Times Book Review, February 2, 1986, Elmore Jackson, “The Past as Prologue,” p. 13; November 12, 2000, Omer Bartov, “The Promised Land,” p. 12; August 14, 2001, “Mideast Nationalism, with Nowhere to Go,” p. A16; July 15, 2007, David Margolick, “Peace for Land”; September 2, 2010, Dwight Garner, review of Simon Wiesenthal.
Publishers Weekly, August 19, 1988, review of Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps, p. 64; February 8, 1993, review of The Seventh Million, p. 62; October 23, 2000, review of One Palestine, Complete, p. 66; April, 2002, review of Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel; June 17, 2019, review of A State at Any Cost, p. 59.
Sunday Telegraph (London, England), January 14, 2001, David Pryce-Jones, “Was Zionism Just a British ploy?”
Sunday Times (London, England), January 14, 2001, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, “When the British Ruled Palestine,” p. 36.
Tikkun, January, 2001, “An Interview with Tom Segev,” p. 27.
Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1993, Amy Dockser Marcus, review of The Seventh Million, p. A12.
Washington Post, November 5, 2000, Gershom Gorenberg, “Foundation Myths,” p. X2; June 10, 2007, Michael Oren, “Who Started It?,” p. BW13.
ONLINE
Deborah Harris Agency, http://www.thedeborahharrisagency.com/ (August 16, 2019), author profile.
Economist, http:// www.economist.com/ (August 26, 2010), review of Simon Wiesenthal.
Jewish Book Council, https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/ (August 16, 2019), synopsis of A State at Any Cost.
Jewish Review of Books, http://www.jewishreviewofbooks.com/ (July 3, 2011), Deborah Lipstadt, review of Simon Wiesenthal.
London Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/ (August 16, 2019), author profile.
Metropolitan Books, http://www.holtzbrinkpublishers.com/ (February 17, 2003), synopsis of Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel.
Plus 61j, https://plus61j.net.au/ (October 30, 2018), Dashiel Lawrence, author interview.
Read Listen Watch, https://readlistenwatch.com/ (June 25, 2019), Andres Kabel, review of A State at Any Cost.
Tom Segev is among Israel's leading journalists and historians. His works include The Seventh Million; 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East; Simon Wiesenthal; and One Palestine, Complete (chosen one of ten best books of 2000 by the New York Times).
Tom Segev
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Tom Segev
Born
March 1, 1945 (age 74)
Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine
Occupation
Journalist, historian
Tom Segev (Hebrew: תום שגב; born March 1, 1945) is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.
Contents
1
Biography
2
Journalism career
3
Praise and criticism
4
Published works
5
References
6
Further reading
Biography[edit]
Tom Segev was born in Jerusalem to parents who had fled Nazi Germany in 1933. He earned a BA in history and political science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in history from Boston University in the 1970s.[1]
Journalism career[edit]
Segev worked during the 1970s as a correspondent for Maariv in Bonn.[2] He was a visiting professor at Rutgers University (2001–2002),[3] the University of California at Berkeley (2007)[4] and Northeastern University, where he taught a course on Holocaust denial. He writes a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz. His books have appeared in fourteen languages.
In The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (1993), Segev explores the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology and politics of Israel. Although controversial, it was praised by Elie Wiesel in the Los Angeles Times Book Review.[5]
In One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, a New York Times Editor's Choice Best Book (2000) and a recipient of the National Jewish Book Award, Segev describes the era of the British Mandate in Palestine (1917–1948).
Segev's history of the social and political background of the Six-Day War, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (2006) states that there was no existential threat to Israel from a military point of view. Segev also doubts that the Arab neighbours would have really attacked Israel. Still, there were large segments of the Israeli population that had a real fear that the Egyptians and Syrians would eliminate them. This would have increased the pressure for the Israeli government in such a way that it opted for a preemptive attack. The attack by the Jordanian army to West Jerusalem would have provided a welcoming reason to invade East Jerusalem, according to Segev. Even though the occupation of East Jerusalem was not politically planned, the author considers it was always desired. In February 2018 Segev published a biography of David Ben-Gurion.
Praise and criticism[edit]
The book "Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East" has been described by the historian Saul Friedländer as "probably the best book on those most fateful days in the history of Israel".[6]
Ethan Bronner in The New York Times Book Review wrote: "It does not tell the whole story of the war, barely focusing on Arab activity... What interests Mr. Segev is Israel: its moods, debates, generation gaps and anxieties" and that "You need not agree with Mr. Segev’s conclusions on how things could have been done differently to benefit from his research and narrative. If you plan to read only one book on the 1967 war, this is not it. It is too narrowly focused. At the same time Mr. Segev makes a compelling and fresh case that the war was at least partly a result of a delicate and vulnerable moment in Israeli history" and that Segev's exploration "is — while too long — persuasive and engaging".[7]
L. Carl Brown wrote in Foreign Affairs "The author of One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate has written another masterful history" in a review of Segev's book 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East.[8]
Writing in International Socialist Review (a paper "dedicated to advancing socialist theory and practice"),[9] Hadas Thier found the 688-page book "at times a tediously detailed read with thin analysis" but called it "an indispensable contribution". He summarised the book by saying "His focus on Israeli archival material should leave no trace of doubt that Israeli leaders knew that the war was not a defensive necessity, that it would be easily won, and that it was fought on the basis of cynical and strategic considerations of the state."[10]
For The Washington Post Book World, Michael Oren, an Israeli politician, historian and author of Six Days of War, gave Segev's 1967 a scathing review, writing, "Laboring to prove his point forces Segev not only to contradict himself but also to commit glaring oversights." He also says that "by disregarding the Arab dynamic and twisting his text to meet a revisionist agenda, he undermines his attempt to reach a deeper understanding of the war. Such an understanding is vital if Arabs and Israelis are to avoid similar clashes in the future and peacefully co-exist."[11] (In an interview in the online magazine Salon, Oren subsequently said of Segev (who has a doctorate in history) "[He] is a journalist. He's not really a trained historian.")[12]
Benny Morris also criticized the book in a review in The New Republic. Morris writes that he is open to historical revisionism but that Segev's central argument about Israel's internal condition leading up to the war "is essentially false." He adds: "For Segev, Arab politics and Arab society have no bearing upon the proper understanding of the origins of the war. ... [H]is book points readers and scholars in no worthwhile direction. Its argument is not merely wrong; it also makes a small contribution of its own to the contemporary delegitimation of Israel."[13]
Published works[edit]
1949: The First Israelis (Hebrew: 1984, ISBN 965-261-040-2; English: 1998, ISBN 0-8050-5896-6)
Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps (1988, ISBN 0-07-056058-7)
One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (2000, ISBN 0-316-64859-0)
The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust (2000, ISBN 0-8050-6660-8)
Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel (2003, ISBN 0-8050-7288-8)
Israel in 1967. And the land changed its visage (Hebrew: 2005, ISBN 965-07-1370-0)
1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, Metropolitan Books (2006)
Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, Jonathan Cape (2010)
A State at Any Cost - The Life of David Ben-Gurion (Hebrew and German: 2018; English: 2019)
Tom Segev is a leading historian and one of Israel’s most distinguished journalists. He was born in Jerusalem in 1945 to parents who fled Nazi Germany. Segev holds a BA in History and Political Science from the Hebrew University and a Ph.D. in History from Boston University. In 2000 and in 2010, Segev’s books were included in New York Times' Best Books of the Year lists. In 2001, Segev’s ONE PALESTINE, COMPLETE was the first title ever to win the National Jewish Book Award in two categories. Formerly a reporter and columnist for Ha’aretz, Segev has published nine works, most recently A STATE AT ALL COSTS: THE STORY OF DAVID BEN-GURION (2018).
Tom Segev, an Israeli historian and former Haaretz columnist, is the author of The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust and One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. He is working on a biography of David Ben-Gurion.
QUOTED: "[Ben-Gurion] appears in all my books. I was always aware that he is a very central power and element in our history. [The book] is a very different picture of him; it’s a tri-dimensional picture."
"What surprised me was his ability to move from a very deep depression – suicidal depression in fact – to uncontrollable happiness. Sometimes over weeks. He knew this about himself. At one point he writes in his diaries: 'If anyone ever reads this they will think it was written by at least two different people.'"
‘I envy you’: Tom Segev on Israel, parenthood and Australia
October 30, 2018
About Dashiel Lawrence
Dr Dashiel Lawrence, a graduate of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Melbourne, has written extensively about Australia's Jewish diaspora.His books include Australia and Israel: A Diasporic, Political and Cultural Relationship (2015) and People of the Boot: The Triumphs and Tragedy of Australian Jews in Sport (2018).
“WHO ARE YOU? And what do you want?” Tom Segev asks with a gentle smile. It is a radiant Melbourne morning and one of Israel’s most prominent historians is seated for a wide-ranging conversation about David Ben-Gurion, the future of Israeli democracy and fatherhood. But first, he has questions of his own: What is Plus61J’s ideology? Where does it sit on the left-right spectrum? What kind of questions do I want to ask?
“The major theme in my life is scepticism. I am sceptical of everything,” he admits later.
Segev, 73, was in Australia this month as a guest lecturer at Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation. It’s his second visit to Melbourne and Monash.
“I have a great time. It is so relaxing, it is so quiet. But I am trying hard to understand if Australia has any problems at all, anything to argue about and anything to discuss. I really envy you.”
Over the past four decades, first as a journalist with the newspaper Haaretz and later as a historian, Segev has continually stripped away the romantic ideals and mythology surrounding Israel’s establishment. His first two books, 1949: The First Israelis (1984) and The Seventh Million: Israel Facing the Holocaust (1993) confronted Israelis with the record of discrimination of Sephardim, the mistreatment of Holocaust survivors and the state’s earliest contradictions.
His latest book is about Israel’s mercurial founding father. Ben-Gurion: A State at All Costs (to be published in English in 2019) sheds light on his inner life: his many extramarital affairs, intimate relationships and personal turmoil. Much of the detail has never been published. The book has enjoyed almost universal praise.
“[Ben-Gurion] appears in all my books. I was always aware that he is a very central power and element in our history. [The book] is a very different picture of him; it’s a tri-dimensional picture.”
Segev discovered a writer and a poet, a sentimental friend, a needy lover and an unfaithful husband. He was obsessed with detail (diaries filled with election results from obscure polling booth results, reams of economic data) matched by a grand vision for Israeli demography (one in which the Arab population of Israel would only ever remain a tiny minority).
“What surprised me was his ability to move from a very deep depression – suicidal depression in fact – to uncontrollable happiness. Sometimes over weeks. He knew this about himself. At one point he writes in his diaries “If anyone ever reads this they will think it was written by at least two different people,” Segev says.
Photo Pola and David Gen-Gurion (Paul Goldman / GPO)
Ben Gurion has been an abiding curiosity (Segev first interviewed him as a young reporter when the former prime minister was living out his twilight years on a kibbutz in the Negev desert).
Just as Segev’s earlier books remain provocative, Ben-Gurion similarly sparked a public conversation in Israel about the much loved and revered founding prime minister.
Yet Segev doubts the lasting impact of his writing. “I have no illusions about the power of books to change. Or the power of newspapers to change either,” he says, before adding with a laugh: “I wrote for a newspaper that has had absolutely no effect over the last 30 years.”
Books usually take him five years to complete. Ben-Gurion took six, during which he made several separate trips to the British National Archives, searching for a single item – a coveted map drawn by Ben Gurion and handed to the British before the partition of Israel. When he discovered the map at the end of another long day of research, Segev rejoiced alone. Archival research is a lonely endeavour.
This commitment to archival research has seen him identified as a member of Israel’s “New Historians” a loosely categorised group who mined the state’s declassified state documents during the 1970s and 1980s. The group challenged popular understandings of Israel’s early history. They have been accused of distorting the record and their scholarship derided as ideologically motivated.
“Israeli democracy is under heavy attack – more than ever before. The systematic violation of Palestinian human rights has become routine.
Segev remains unperturbed by such accusations made over many decades. Although he spent many years writing for the left-wing Haaretz, unlike his contemporary Ilan Pape, his political learnings are not clear cut. Instead the hunt for a good story has remained his primary motivation in researching and writing.
Born in 1945 to communist German parents who fled the political turmoil of pre-war Europe, he has lived to see the emergence of the State of the Israel, it’s reckoning with its Holocaust past, the decline of its collectivist spirit and kibbutzim. Now, the decay of civil liberties under Benjamin Netanyahu has Segev troubled.
“I am very pessimistic. In fact, I am very depressed about it,” he says.
“Israeli democracy is under heavy attack – more than ever before. The systematic violation of Palestinian human rights has become routine. There is second or third generations of Israelis who go to the army as a gendarme oppressor. They oppress the Palestinian population. There is no way out of it.”
IN THE 1980S, while working as a columnist for Haaretz, Segev was posted to Ethiopia to cover Israel’s rescue of the country’s Jewish community. On the flight returning to Israel with hopeful Ethiopian migrants, he encountered a young boy named Itay who remembered Segev from his assignment. Itay and his mother warmed to Segev, and with their permission, he decided to write about the family’s integration into Israeli life. They would become a regular subject of his columns over several years.
When Itay was 14, Segev and Itay journeyed back to Ethiopia to track down the grave of Itay’s father. They walked for 18-hours. It was, Segev, remembers “very dramatic, very emotional.” When they eventually found the grave, a lifelong bond was forged.
“When we came back [to Israel] we knew – we are father and son. It was the most natural thing in the world,” Segev says.
No papers were signed and no social workers involved. The two, a middle-aged Israeli historian and journalist, and an Ethiopian-born teenager, were family.
Itay finished high school, completed his national service and entered the air force. He is now an electronic engineer, married and a father of three children. Segev, is now Sabba (Hebrew for grandfather) Tommy.
“Sometimes I think it would have been nice if my parents had settled in Australia instead of Palestine. But then I think, I would never have met my Itayu.
For the historian, who is unmarried and has no birth children, it was a profound awakening. His face softens. “It changed my outlook. It made very happy; less cynical and more considerate.”
Very often he thinks of his grandchildren, including the youngest, a three-year-old boy.
“What is his future? Where in the world will he find his happiness? Wherever he does, I will be happy for him. “What I wish him most, is that his country won’t force him to become a refugee, like what happened to my parents.”
“Sometimes I think it would have been nice if my parents had settled in Australia instead of Palestine. But then I think, I would never have met my Itayu.”
He pauses, before pressing on. “I really think that those [Jews in pre-war Europe] who chose not to live in Palestine very often made the right decision. Ben-Gurion was wrong [to assume that Jewish life could only ever flourish in the Israel].”
QUOTED: "a fair portrait of a difficult, hard-nosed character who, like him or not, had enormous impact on twentieth-century events."
Segev, Tom A STATE AT ANY COST Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Adult Nonfiction) $40.00 8, 27 ISBN: 978-0-374-11264-6
The eminent Israeli journalist and historian chronicles the life of a driven leader who galvanized others to the exhausting, relentless pursuit of a state of Israel.
Born in Poland, David Ben-Gurion (1886-1943) was, from an early age, laser-focused on the creation of a Jewish state, and he was often perceived as heartless, especially--tellingly--by those closest to him. Segev (Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, 2010, etc.) attributes this quality to the loss of his mother after another childbirth when he was 11, a trauma that colored all relationships Ben-Gurion had henceforth, especially those with women. Yet he also had an educated father who conducted legal business with Christians and established an early Zionist society in his Polish village which clearly influenced his son. The author clearly captures the relentless, rather oblivious quality of Ben-Gurion's personality as well as his quixotic side. He left for Warsaw as a teen, before his close group of boyhood friends did, and while he was confident he would gain entrance to a technological school--in order to learn skills to aid the new Jewish state--he lacked the essential ambition to complete the work. Instead, he immersed himself in the socialist labor alternative to Zionism, the Bund, and honed his leadership skills. As a leader, he traveled to America and the European capitals, drumming up support for the Zionist cause. The rise of Hitler and Nazi aggression changed everything, and Ben-Gurion regarded the tragedy not in terms of numbers of Jews murdered but rather as a setback for gaining settlers for the state. The 1948 declaration of the Jewish state signaled a celebration for everyone except Ben-Gurion, who knew it meant war and the sacrifice of Jewish lives. Essentially, he sanctioned the policy of forcible removal of Arab villagers during the war of independence; afterward, he noted, "an Arab is first and foremost an Arab." For him, there was no compromise, and the fortress mentality still festers to this day.
A fair portrait of a difficult, hard-nosed character who, like him or not, had enormous impact on 20th-century events.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Segev, Tom: A STATE AT ANY COST." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A591279030/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d9c960c8. Accessed 10 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A591279030
QUOTED: "The book is sometimes weighed down by detail. The nonspecialist might be better served by less encyclopedic treatments."
A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion
Tom Segev, trans, from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $40 (816p) ISBN 978-0-374-11264-6
Israeli historian Segev (1967) provides an exhaustive biography of the country's first prime minister. Drawing on his subject's prolific writings and historical archives, Segev traces David Ben-Gurion's life from his 1886 birth in the small Polish town of Plonsk to his death in 1973. As a teenager, Ben-Gurion lectured on Jewish independence; he moved to Palestine in 1906 (motivated by Zionist ideology but also personal unhappiness) and became a socialist labor organizer convinced that the conflict between his people's aspirations and those of Palestinian Arabs couldn't be resolved peacefully. He became a left-wing political leader and then the first prime minister of the new country upon its establishment in 1948. In perhaps the most newsworthy section, Segev writes that Ben-Gurion opposed the preemptive strike that launched the Six-Day Wat, because he accurately predicted that a victory involving the acquisition of mote territory would dramatically increase the number of Arabs under Israeli control. Segev's Ben-Gurion comes across as personally abrasive--an unfaithful spouse and indifferent parent who could be ruthless in pursuing his political goals. Segev persuasively shows how Ben-Gurion's early choices foreshadowed those he would make later, but the book is sometimes weighed down by detail. The nonspecialist might be better served by less encyclopedic treatments. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion." Publishers Weekly, 17 June 2019, p. 59. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A590762614/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6a85e18b. Accessed 10 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A590762614
QUOTED: "comprehensive, sophisticated."
"Segev retains superb control over his material, and writes vigorously and methodically."
June 25, 2019 by Andres Kabel
A State at Any Cost by Tom Segev [ 7/10]
I’m no expert on the history of Israel or the life story of its founder (self-declared and, in truth, actual) founder, David Ben-Gurion, but I found “A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion” to be comprehensive, sophisticated, and in line with the facts I knew. Using scads of archival material presumably never before available, Tom Segev, a leading, and at times controversial, historian/journalist, takes the enigma of Ben-Gurion and adds plenty of flesh to it. Ben-Gurion could be wild and woolly, almost insane, or he could be the most conscientious diplomat. His personality veered all over the spectrum. I was fascinated to discover that core elements endured through his life: his passion for politics and its power bases; the concept of a Jewish state, come what may, whatever was required; a love of reading; tempestuous relationships; and a deep hankering for his place in the panoply of history. Segev retains superb control over his material, and writes vigorously and methodically. Although this is the only bio of the icon I have fully read, any competitor for historical authority must surely be quite remarkable. I commend “A State at Any Cost” to both the keen modern history buff and the explorer of Israel’s genesis.
A State at Any Cost
Tom Segev
From the Publisher
As the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion long ago secured his reputation as a leading figure of the twentieth century. Determined from an early age to create a Jewish state, he thereupon took control of the Zionist movement, declared Israel’s independence, and navigated his country through wars, controversies and remarkable achievements. And yet Ben-Gurion remains an enigma — he could be driven and imperious, or quizzical and confounding.
In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around the man. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels, and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades.
The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state “at any cost” — at times through risk-taking, violence, and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation, and reason. Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but rather a historical actor who belongs in the company of Lenin or Churchill — a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.