This book provides a new, original description and analysis of a crucial period in Israel’s history and the history of the Middle East through the lens of the charming, lesser known, energetic, yet problematic persona of Israel’s third prime minister, Levi Eshkol. It examines Eshkol’s career from his arrival in Ottoman Palestine as a socialist pioneer in 1914, to his roles as the Czar of Israel’s rural settlement efforts before and after independence, his major contribution to the absorption of the waves of immigration in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, his decisive role in the development of Israel’s economy, and his controversial role as PM and Minister of Defence all the way to the Six Day War of 1967 and the subsequent ramifications. The author used newly opened domestic and foreign archives in his research.

This book offers a reappraisal of David Ben-Gurion's role in Jewish-Israeli history from the perspective of the twenty-first century, in the larger context of the Zionist 'renaissance', of which he was a major and unique exponent. Some have described Ben-Gurion's Zionism as a dream that has gone sour, or a utopia doomed to be unfulfilled. Now - after the dust surrounding Israel's founding father has settled, archives have been opened, and perspective has been gained since Ben-Gurion's downfall - this book presents a fresh look at this statesman-intellectual and his success and tragic failures during a unique period of time that he and his peers described as the 'Jewish renaissance'. The resulting reappraisal offers a new analysis of Ben-Gurion's actual role as a major player in Israeli, Middle Eastern, and global politics.

This book offers a new analysis of the Holocaust as a multiple trap, its origins, and its final stages, in which rescue seemed to be possible. With the Holocaust developing like a sort of a doomsday machine set in motion from all sides, the Jews found themselves between the hammer and various anvils, each of which worked according to the logic created by the Nazis that dictated the behavior of other parties and the relations between them before and during the Holocaust. The interplay between the various parties contributed to the victims' doom first by preventing help and later preventing rescue. These help and rescue efforts proved mainly self defeating, and various legacies about them emerged during the Holocaust and are heatedly debated even today. Their real nature is uncovered here on the basis of newly opened archives worldwide.

This book offers a reappraisal of David Ben-Gurion's role in Jewish-Israeli history from the perspective of the twenty-first century, in the larger context of the Zionist 'renaissance', of which he was a major and unique exponent. Some have described Ben-Gurion's Zionism as a dream that has gone sour, or a utopia doomed to be unfulfilled. Now - after the dust surrounding Israel's founding father has settled, archives have been opened, and perspective has been gained since Ben-Gurion's downfall - this book presents a fresh look at this statesman-intellectual and his success and tragic failures during a unique period of time that he and his peers described as the 'Jewish renaissance'. The resulting reappraisal offers a new analysis of Ben-Gurion's actual role as a major player in Israeli, Middle Eastern, and global politics.

This book offers a new analysis of the Holocaust as a multiple trap, its origins, and its final stages, in which rescue seemed to be possible. With the Holocaust developing like a sort of a doomsday machine set in motion from all sides, the Jews found themselves between the hammer and various anvils, each of which worked according to the logic created by the Nazis that dictated the behavior of other parties and the relations between them before and during the Holocaust. The interplay between the various parties contributed to the victims??? doom first by preventing help and later preventing rescue. These help and rescue efforts proved mainly self defeating, and various legacies about them emerged during the Holocaust and are heatedly debated even today. Their real nature is uncovered here on the basis of newly opened archives worldwide.