Preface Chapter 1
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Notes Preface 1. Reported in Joe Sexton, “How a Rabbi’s Rhetoric Did, or Didn’t, Jus- tify Assassination,” The New York Times, December, 3, 1995, Section 1, Page 51, Column 2. 2. The term the Jewish state is often relied on when referring to Israel, although with over 20 percent of the population Muslim, this is less than accurate. Still, my reference to the phrase as a synonym for Israel is in keeping with common usage. 3. Hemda Ben-Yehuda, “Attitude Changes and Policy Transformation: Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian Question, 1967– 1995,” in Efraim Karsh, ed., From Rabin to Netanyahu: Israel’s Troubled Agenda (Lon- don: Frank Cass, 1997), 203– 34. 4. Michael G. Kort, Yitzhak Rabin: Israel’s Soldier and Statesman (Brook- field, CT: Millbrook Press, 1996), 144. 5. The Fall and Rise of Political Leaders: Olof Palme, Olusegun Obasanjo, Indira Gandhi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Political Restoration in the Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 6. The religious metaphor is derived from Talleyrand’s aphorism: “Sol- diers die only once. Politicians die only to rise again.” Chapter 1 1. The dialogue comes from an ABC News documentary, “Rabin: Action Biography,” April 15, 1975, and is cited by Robert Slater, Rabin of Israel: A Biography of the Embattled Prime Minister (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993). 2. Slater, Rabin, 31– 32; David Horovitz, ed., Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin (London: Peter Halban, 1996), 27; Yehu- dit Auerbach, “Yitzhak Rabin: Portrait of a Leader,” in D. J. Elazar and Shmuel Sandler, eds., Israel at the Polls, 1992 (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), 288. Rabin was never to show great sympathy for religious settlers in territories later occupied by Israel. 3. Goodman cited in Horovitz, Shalom, Friend, ix. 186 Notes 4. Horovitz, Shalom, Friend, 37. Libby Hughes, Yitzhak Rabin: From Soldier to Peacemaker (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2001), 29. 5. Cited by Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008), 39– 40. 6. Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs: Expanded Edition (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1996), 383– 84. At the same cabinet meeting that blocked a return of the Palestinian refugees, Ben-Gurion described the towns as “two thorns” (Shindler, A History, 47). Whether these expul- sions were exceptional events or not is debated by post-Zionist Israeli historians. See the discussion in Daniel Gutwein, “Left and Right Post- Zionism and the Privatization of Israeli Collective Memory,” in Anita Shapira and Derek J. Penslar, eds., Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left to Right (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 9– 42. 7. David Makovsky, “Why I Still Miss Yitzhak Rabin,” FP (Foreign Policy), November 3, 2010, http://www .foreignpolicy .com/ articles/ 2010/ 11/ 03. 8. Slater, Rabin, 51– 52; Michael Bar-Zohar, Shimon Peres: The Biography (New York: Random House, 2007), 296. 9. Linda Benedikt, Yitzhak Rabin: The Battle for Peace (London: Haus Books, 2005), 33– 35. 10. Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), 36, 39. 11. Ben-Ami, Scars of War, 46. 12. Dan Kurzman, Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 309, 340. 13. Robert Slater, Warrior Statesman: The Life of Moshe Dayan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 139; Slater, Rabin, 92; Bar-Zohar, Shi- mon Peres, 297. However loyal he was to Palmach, Rabin realized the need to move on. This can be attributed to his serious and analytical mind and perhaps also to Ben-Gurion’s inspiration, which prevented him from crediting Palmach as the unit that won the 1948 war. I am indebted to Professor Michael Keren’s email to me for this view. 14. This phrase is taken from the title of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986). 15. Milton Viorst, Sands of Sorrow: Israel’s Journey from Independence (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 84. 16. Ibid., 84– 85. In another conversation with Viorst, Rabin said that “the purpose of the military strength of Israel was, first, to make sure that we stayed alive and, second, to shift the struggle from the battlefield. Our orders were to defend the country from attack, to destroy the attacking force, and then to acquire as much land as possible, to create conditions to shift the Arab-Israeli conflict to the negotiation table” (95). 17. Ibid., 85. 18. Ibid. 19. Guy Laron, “‘Logic Dictates That They May Attack When They Feel They Can Win.’ The 1955 Czech Arms Deal, the Egyptian Army, and Notes 187 Israel Intelligence,” The Middle East Journal 63, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 69– 70, 74, 79. 20. Ibid., 79. 21. Ibid., 79, 84. For the highly critical view that Israel, from its founding to the present, embraced a martial culture of “Sparta representing itself as Athens”—that is, holding “an ideology of state militarism with the objective of expanding borders and exploiting the weaknesses of the Arabs”—see Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Mili- tary Elite Who Run the Country and Why They Can’t Make Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), book jacket. 22. Ben-Ami, Scars of War, 77– 78, 80, 84. 23. Bar-Zohar, Shimon Peres, 297. 24. Ibid., 34, 38, 49, 70– 73, 83. 25. Rabin, Memoirs, 64. 26. Dayan quoted by Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), cited by Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 273. 27. Bar-Zohar, Shimon Peres, 87, 89– 90. 28. Bar-Zohar, Shimon Peres, 297; Efraim Infar, Rabin and Israel’s National Security (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999), 14. 29. An example of the “miscalculation or error” thesis may be found in Judt, Reappraisals, 273– 74. 30. Ben-Ami, Scars of War, 93, 94, 96. 31. This is the argument advanced by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, “The Spymaster, the Communist, and Foxbats over Dimona,” Israel Studies 11, no. 2 (2006): 89– 130, and Ginor and Remez, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2007). It is supported and amplified by Aronson and Oren. The quotation is that of Shlomo Aronson, “1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, and: Foxbats over Dimona—The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (review),” Israel Studies 13, no. 2 (Summer 1908): 177. 32. Aronson, “1967,” 178. 33. Ginor and Remez, Foxbats over Dimona, 89. 34. Aronson, “1967,” 180. 35. Aronson, “1967,”181. Chapter 2 1. Ben-Ami, Scars of War, 104, 195, 108. 2. Golda Meir, My Life (New York: Dell, 1975), 358. Curiously, in nei- ther edition of his own memoirs does Eban cite these words that Meir attributes to de Gaulle. 3. Slater, Warrior Statesman, 248– 49. 188 Notes 4. Le Monde, February 28, 1968. 5. Rabin, Memoirs, 75. 6. Ibid., 75–76; Kurzman, Ben-Gurion, 451. 7. Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life: An Autobiography (New York: Warner Books, 1976), 297. 8. Rabin, Memoirs, 80– 81, 83. 9. Leah Rabin, Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1997), 107– 8; Geoffrey Aronson, review of Rabin: Our Life, His Leg- acy, by Leah Rabin, Journal of Palestinian Studies 27 (Winter 1998): 104; Abba Eban, Personal Witness: Israel through My Eyes (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992), 364. 10. Slater, Rabin, 133– 34. 11. Shlomo Nakdimon, Zero Hour (published in Hebrew; Tel Aviv, Israel: Ramdor Publ. Co., 1968), 243, cited in Amos Perlmutter, The Life and Times of Menachem Begin (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 287. 12. Slater, Rabin, 151. 13. Slater, Warrior Statesman, 280– 83. 14. David Horovitz, ed., Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier of Peace (London: Peter Halban, 1996), x. 15. Nir Hafez and Gadi Bloom, Ariel Sharon: A Life (New York: Random House, 2006), 179– 81; Bar-Zohar, Shimon Peres, 306; Ariel Sharon, Warrior: The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 164, 189, 341, 347. 16. Perlmutter, Life and Times, 290– 91. 17. Matti Golan, The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger: Step-by-Step Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: Quadrangle Books/New York Times Books, 1976), 70–71. 18. Viorst, Sands of Sorrow, 99. 19. Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Anchor Books, 1995), 333. 20. Viorst, Sands of Sorrow, 103. 21. Rabin, Memoirs, 119, 121. 22. Shlomo Gazit, translated from the Hebrew as Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories (London: Frank Cass, 2003), cited in Amnon Barzilai, “A Brief History of the Misled Opportunity,” Ha’aretz, June 5, 2002. Chapter 3 1. Eban, Personal Witness, 478– 79. The Mapai Party, that of Ben-Gurion in 1968, together with other left-of-center bodies became the Israel Labor Party in January 1968. Rabin anticipated Eban’s reluctance (“he’s no fan of mine”) and later commented, “As is well known, dialogues with Eban have a way of turning into soliloquies, and it was very difficult for Notes 189 me to sound him out on ideas of my own.” Rabin, Memoirs, 122, cited in Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2010), 182. 2. O’Brien, The Siege, 379. 3. Ibid., 379; Abba Eban, Abba Eban: An Autobiography (Jerusalem: Steimatzky’s Agency, 1977), 173. 4. Efraim Inbar, Rabin and Israel’s National Security (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999), 34– 35.