Intriguing, insightful, and rigorous
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An excellent introduction to Israel's history in this day of make believe accounts about the nation. He shirks little, sifts and searches the tensions and tribulations around and within the nation during its extraordinary birth. His documentation is as meticulous and thorough as usual, yet the narrative is pacy and absorbing throughout. He underscores the extraordinarily plural and free character of this unique democracy, without ignoring its faults.
A highly recommended masterpiece by this eminent academic historian.
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Great overview of the History of Israel.
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A great book on the history of Israel. Very well written and easy to read with a lot of great detail. A must for all who want to get a better understanding of Israel.
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A fantastic history book
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Martin Gilbert's history of Israel is a great achievement and is a fascinating read. It is hard to put this heavy tome aside because despite its length, it is so well written that you hardly ever want to stop reading on. The new editon covers the period of the last ten years up to 2007, but perhaps even more revealing is the detailed account Gilbert gives of the first three decades of the modern State of Israel's existence, and the years prior to it when Zionists successfully reclaimed the homeland of their ancestors. While obviously written with a certain degree of sympathy for his subject, Gilbert always remains a fair and balanced chronicler who never spares with criticism of human rights abuses or errors of judgment when he deems it appropriate.
Most aspects of the current conflicts and debates that rage in (and around) the Middle East are difficult to grasp without knowledge of the facts - as opposed to the myths - of the past six or seven decades. Gilbert's book is authoritative and well-informed. It is a masterpiece of contemporary history writing.
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The ultimate account of a great nation
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Never before have I sped so quickly and enjoyably through such a dense history book.
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A comprehensive history of Israel from 1862 to 1997
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Martin Gilbert, in this comprehensive volume, chronicles the history of the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael), from 1862 to 1997.
He describes the ancient attachment of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, through the millenia. Since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in CE 70, the Jews who were dispersed all over the Roman Empire, had prayed for a return to Zion.
'Next year' in Jerusalem, has always been the hope expressed at the end of every Passover meal, commemorating the exodus from Egypt.
During the 1700s movements of Hassidic Jews took place to Eretz Yisrael, from Eastern Europe.
By mid-19th century there were around 10 000 Jews living in Eretz Yisrael.
More than 8000 of them lived in Jerusalem. A few hundred lived in the ancient holy city of Safed in the north, in Tiberius, Acre and Jaffa, and there was a community in Peki'in, where there has been a continuous presence of Jews since the destruction of the Second Temple.
He describes the origins of the modern Zionist movement born out of Jewish national aspirations and the ages old attachment to Israel: Moses Hess, George Eliot, Bilu and Hovevei Zion, the return to the land, the actualization of the Zionist programme by Theodore Herzl, and the rebuilding of the blighted and empty Palestine.
By 1914 there were 90 000 Jews living in the Land of Israel, of whom 75 000 were immigrants.
Gilbert reviews the Arab attacks on Jewish communities, in 1920-21, 1929 and 1936-1939, in which Jewish communities were attacked and thousands of Jewish men, women and children murdered.
The answers today to the problems posed by the opponents of Zionism, were already evident before the State of Israel was re-established.
Islamic radicals and the international extreme left demmand that Israel be dismantled and be replaced by a unitary Arab 'Palestine' in which the Jews would survive at the tolerance of Hamas and the PLO.
Zionist leader Arthur Ruppin wrote in 1931 that there was no hope for the Jews to rely, for their survival on Arab goodwill:
"At most the Arabs would agree to grant national rights to the Jews in an Arab state, on the pattern of national rights in Eastern Europe. But we know only too well from conditions in Eastern Europe how little a majority with executive power can be moved to grant real and complete real and national equality to a minority. The fate of of the Jewish minority in Palestine would always be dependent upon the goodwill of the Arab minority which would steer the state."
With Hamas in the ascendancy today, among the Palestinians, with it's aim to clear 'Palestine' of all Jews, and it's murderous apparatus, we all know that a 1 State Solution would lead to a second holocaust of Jews.
Israel was created so that Jews could rely on themselves for their own security and welfare, afetr two thousand years of being subjected to tyrants and murderous rabble.
This remains the case, more than ever today, and always will.
Gilbert covers the massive immigration to Israel, from Germany in the 1930's of hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing form Hitler's Nazi Reich, and how Britian later shut the doors to Jewish immigration into Israel, while allowing massive immigration from neighbouring Arab regions.
Millions of Jews, who could have fled, to Israel, were instead consumed in the Nazi infernos, in part due to Arab-British connivance.
We read of the indepth anti-Semitic and Nazi-inluenced culture, inculcated among arabs , since the time of Hitler's arch-ally and leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Mufti Haj amin el Husseini.
Later, for example, we read of how Egyptian troops captured by Israeli soldiers, during the Suez War of 1956, carried on them Arabic translations opf Hitler's Meim Kampf.
We read of the surivial of the Jews in Palestine during World War II, and how it miraculously survived being overhelmed by the Axis powers in neigbouring Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
Finally we read of the struggles of the state internally and externally.
The growth of a society of refugees, and their descendants, refugess either from Nazi-occupied Europe, and holocaust survivors, and of the 800 000 Jews brutally driven oput of Arab countries, after 1948.
Of the wars for survival, and of the countless terror attacks, across the borders from the 1950's.
The continuous provocation and murder from Israel's Arab neighbours , and we discover how every war, contrary to Islamic and radical left propaganda, was initiated by the Arabs and their allies.
Unfortunately, the last few chapters of the book, seems to have a bias towards the left of the Israeli political spectrum, and the demmand that Israel gives countless concessions to the 'Palestinians', with nothing in return.
The last word, for me, however go's to the former Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Chaim DAvid HaLevi who in response to one of the countless Arab atrocities against Israeli women and children, said at the funeral of a an elderly holocaust survivor, who dies in a Hamas suicide bombing:"These deaths are more painful than all of the losses of the Jewish people suffered while in exile. Here they are trying to flush us out of our homeland. But we will stay in this land, despite everything".
G-D Bless the Jews of the Land of Israel, forever!
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