Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert
A Comprehensive History Of Twentieth Century Israel
Israel is a small and relatively young country, but its turbulent history has
placed it squarely at the centre of the world stage for most of this century.
For two millennia the Jews, dispersed all over the world, prayed for a
return to Zion. Until the nineteenth century, that dream seemed a fantasy,
but then a secular Zionist movement was born and soon the initial trickle of
Jewish immigrants to Palestine turned into a flood as Jews fled
persecution in Europe. From these beginnings, Martin Gilbert traces the
events and personalities that would lead to the sudden, dramatic
declaration of Statehood in May 1948. From that point on, Israels history
has been dominated by conflict: Suez, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur
War, the Lebanon and the Intifada. Using contemporary documents and
eyewitness accounts, drawing on his own intimate knowledge of the
country and its people, Martin Gilbert weaves together a seamless, page-
turning history of a powerful and proud nation.
Personal Review: Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert

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 Hasidic 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 Britain 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 in depth anti-Semitic and Nazi-influenced 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
of Hitler's Meim Kampf.
We read of the survival of the Jews in Palestine during World War II, and
how it miraculously survived being overwhelmed by the Axis powers in
neighbouring 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, refugees
either from Nazi-occupied Europe, and holocaust survivors, and of the 800
000 Jews brutally driven out 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 demand 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 died in a Hamas suicide bombing, in
1997:"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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