1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East | Tom Segev

1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East | Tom Segev | Quite Good But One Sided

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1967: Israel, the ...

	1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East Tom Segev Metropolitan Books, 2007 - 688 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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From Israel?s leading historian, a sweeping history of 1967?the war, what led up to it, what came after, and how it changed everything Tom Segev?s acclaimed works One Palestine, Complete and The Seventh Million overturned accepted views of the history of Israel. Now, in 1967?a number-one bestseller in Hebrew?he brings his masterful skills to the watershed year when six days of war reshaped the country and the entire region.
Going far beyond a military account, Segev re-creates the crisis in Israel before 1967, showing how economic recession, a full grasp of the Holocaust?s horrors, and the dire threats made by neighbor states combined to produce a climate of apocalypse. He depicts the country?s bravado after its victory, the mood revealed in a popular joke in which one soldier says to his friend, ?Let?s take over Cairo?; the friend replies, ?Then what shall we do in the afternoon??
Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as government memos and military records, Segev reconstructs an era of new possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces the legendary figures?Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Gamal Abdul Nasser, and Lyndon Johnson?and an epic cast of soldiers, lobbyists, refugees, and settlers. He reveals as never before Israel?s intimacy with the White House as well as the political rivalries that sabotaged any chance of peace. Above all, he challenges the view that the war was inevitable, showing that a series of disastrous miscalculations lie behind the bloodshed.
A vibrant and original history, 1967 is sure to stand as the definitive account of that pivotal year.

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One of the Best Books of 2007

Rated by the Economist Magazine as one of the best books of 2007, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East provides exactly what it tries to provide, an insight into how the "Six Day War" affected Israel. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding of Israel and their view of the Middle East. This book also provides an inside look into Israeli politics now and then.

Quite Good But One Sided

This good book is a combined political and social history of Israel before, during, and after the Six Day War. Segev presents a detailed portrait of Israeli society and politics as being in the throes of a major transition. In 1966, Israel was in something of a funk. A major recession caused considerable distress, immigration had slowed, Israeli society was having difficulty assimilating Middle Eastern immigrants, and the Ashkenazi political elite was aging.

Against this background, Segev describes the crisis with the Arab states primarily in terms of internal Israeli politics and the difficut decision to take preemptive action. Segev does well in describing the complex political dynamics of politics leading up to the war and the decision to go to war. Segev sees internal Israeli politics as the major driver of the decision to go to war. He asserts that the war was avoidable and clearly sees the Israelis as the major decision makers. These views, however, are only assertions. Segev presents no real discussion of this contentious issue. A major problem with his assertion is that there is no discussion of the war from the Arab point of view or any documentation about Arab decision making. The issue of whether or not the war was avoidable, however, is not really the focus of the book.

Segev's recurrent theme, which runs throughout the whole book and emerges most strongly in the final sections, is the internal contradictions of the Zionist ideal. The Zionists exhibited a quasi-mystical desire to possess Palestine but also wished to establish a European style democratic state. This second goal, however, conflicted with the reality that fulfillment of the Zionist project meant the involuntary displacement of Palestinian Arabs.

The best parts of the book are the later parts dealing with aftermath of the war and the initial occupation. Segev rebuts the myth that the Israeli government offered to restore the conquests in exchange for peace. His description of the beginnings of the occupation is useful for explaining the genesis of the present disastrous situation.

As a social history and description of Israeli politics, this book is very good. In terms of the genesis of the war, Segev is unconvincing because he doesn't present any real data. I recommend reading this book in conjunction with Michael Oren's Six Days in June. Oren's book is a more conventional diplomatic and political history of the war. Unlike Segev, Oren did make an effort to examine Arab sources and his conclusion is that the state of Israel faced an 'existential' threat.

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a noble effort

Segev is a journalist who writes history through the lens of journalism. So 1967 is an attempt to capture this spirit of journalistic history, as Segev quotes newspaper accounts, letters to the editors of various Israeli newspapers and periodicals, during the prelude, action and aftermath of the Six Day War. Segev uses a technique he perfected in One Palestine, Complete: taking certain set-historical characters, ordinary people and introducing them throughout the book at various stages. He also, as in his previous books, takes aim against Israeli leaders with characteristic venom: Eskol and Dayan, for instance, do not come out smelling like roses in 1967. As with nearly ever work about the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict, not everyone will be satisfied with Segev's conclusion (that the taking of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights did not add to Israeli's security, but detracted from it), and here, as in other places in the book, Segev may falter a bit in his historical logic.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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