Shabtai Teveth

Ben-Gurion's Spy is a riveting exploration of the scandalous Lavon affair in Israel, which in 1963 toppled the government and ended the political life of David Ben-Gurion, the nation's founding father. In the early 1950s, a team of Israeli agents was ordered - without prior knowledge of either the cabinet or the military high command - to stage a series of bombings of American and British institutions in Egypt, in an attempt to forestall Great Britain's planned withdrawal from the Suez. Betrayed by their commander, the agents were captured and put on trial in Cairo. Who gave the orders for the sabotage attempts? Was it defense minister Pinhas Lavon, Ben-Gurion's hand-picked successor? Or was it Director of Military Intelligence Benyamin Givly, a cunning and ruthlessly ambitious officer? Both denied responsibility, and their dispute turned into a charade of character assassination, forgery, cover-up, and vendetta that forced Lavon's resignation in 1955. Ben-Gurion's Spy explores the political implications of the Lavon affair, demonstrating how the episode helped to usher in Menahem Begin's Likud - whose doctrine claims the whole of Palestine - and to initiate a radical shift in defense policy from restraint to violent, sometimes reckless, retribution. Unlike similar incidents like Iran-Contra or the Dreyfus affair, the Israeli analogue saw no judicial inquiry or public hearings, nor any published documents. Teveth fills in the vital information, employing classified documents including minutes of secret cabinet and military tribunal investigations, as well as interviews with key actors and the private correspondence of Givly and his doting secretary, Dalia Carmel.

Did David Ben-Gurion, founder of the modern state of Israel, and other Zionist leaders sacrifice six million European Jews to the Holocaust for the sake of a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine? If not, then why did Ben-Gurion fail to arouse the American public to demand the mass rescue of Europe's Jews by the Allies? Or, for that matter, why did not Jews in the United States or Palestine make more of an effort to save Europe's Jews from Nazi death camps? The controversy rages on to the present day. Ben-Gurion's most forceful accusers were ultraorthodox rabbis in America and Israel; their charges have been taken up by Zionists, anti-Zionists, and post-Zionists. In this provocative work, Shabtai Teveth, author of Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground - winner of the 1988 National Jewish Book Award - offers a sober response. Bringing to bear voluminous evidence - including correspondence, declassified records, and personal interviews with the principal players - Teveth thoroughly dismantles the theory of Ben-Gurion's complicity in the Holocaust. He argues that, despite the pleas of Zionist leaders, the American and British governments refused to attempt the rescue of European Jews or the aerial bombing of Nazi death camps, mainly for fear of mass Jewish immigration to the United States, England, and Palestine.

"Martin van Creveld's Moshe Dayan tells the story of one man and of one people, to whom he was a figurehead - a symbol of their patriotism and their determination to survive. Born in a kibbutz in 1915, Dayan joined the Hagana when he was twenty-one years old, starting a military career that saw him serve in every war fought in the Middle East from the War of Israeli Independence in 1948 to the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Twice he led his country's forces into smashing victories. Having planned and executed the one and directed the other, 'with his one eye he towers over them like Nelson over the Battle of Trafalgar'." "Skilled in battle, skilled in diplomacy, Moshe Dayan, like many powerful public figures, had a private life that was far from mundane. The book quotes from some little-known sources, including accounts written by two of his mistresses, that reveal much about his character and his life away from the battlefield. This is an honest portrayal of both the private and the public figure, which seeks to understand a man whose contribution to the state of Israel in its developing years was immeasurable."--BOOK JACKET.

A biography of the first prime minister of Israel, with a section that presents Ben-Gurion in his own words.

Apt reading for young armored officers, in fact for armored officers of all ranks