1949 the First Israelis Paperback – August 14, 2018

1949 was a very compelling read and Mr. Segev's account is wonderfully done. I enjoyed this work immensely and learned a lot about the just who those first Israelis were and the adversity they had to overcome to create a state and society out of such an ethnically, religiously and politically diverse group of people. David Ben-Gurion is an amazing political figure and the more I learn the more I think he deserves to stand in the upper echelons of political figures.What really amazes me is how Ben-Gurion was able to steer Israel through the extremely turbulent waters of war, immigration and state building and keep Israel intact as a democratic state. There were so many sides battling for dominance within this tiny, infant nation, between the secularists, religious, socialists, communists, criminals and terrorists, the singular most amazing incident is the lack of a civil war ever erupting. There were so many people pulling in different directions and then on top of that there were hundreds of thousands of new immigrants that it was a huge feat for this nation to remain together. I think that without the war and the ever looming possibility of destruction then there in all probability would have been a civil war.This book helped to explode some myths of the creation of the state of Israel, and so many people have derided this work because it treats the subject honestly using the evidence from the Israeli archives and government. Those on who are pro-Israel (to a fault) feel they have to disparage this work, while those who are anti-Israel hold this book up to demonize the state, but the truth is that in war every nation commits excesses. Soldiers become different people and actions that would have been unthinkable become acceptable. The truth is that yes Israel ethnically cleansed areas under its control, and this was done with, at least, tacit approval of the government. It was the cynical (pragmatic?) belief that the Arabs could not or would not assimilate culturally or politically into the Israeli state, and that it was necessary to make sure that their numbers were very low within the new borders. It will never be known whether this decision was positive or negative for Israel. The fact is that Israel has never known sustained peace, but on the other hand there is still an Israeli state.The cynicism that guided much of the Israeli immigration policy was a trying item. The mad, almost suicidal, rush to bring in Jewish immigrants regardless of the states ability to absorb these people was an almost disastrous policy. The way the Jews from Arab and African countries were treated is a source of shame for a people who had just experienced similar prejudices, but even here there was a duality in that the immigration policy was partly pragmatic also. The state was in constant peril and there was a need to build up the state's population for protection.This is the thing about every state, politics and politician that they have to make these decisions that blur the lines between pragmatic realism and cynical nihilism. These decisions are not easy and they literally affect the lives of thousands of people. At the time the implications of these decisions are not readily apparent. In 1949 decisions were made that are still being felt today, whether they were the right decisions or not Israel and the rest of the world must acknowledge those choices and the implications that go along with them. Israel must make peace with its past before it will ever be able to achieve peace in the future. I would like to think this is pragmatic realism. This book is good start down that road. It is a necessary and important read.

Tom Segev's 1949: THE FIRST ISRAELIS was published by this honest Israeli historian nearly three decades ago but is still very germane to a study of Israelis and their role in the Middle East today. Carefully researched using the Central Zionist and Israeli State Archives in Jerusalem, countless Israeli memoirs and auto-biographies, and private papers of all the major leaders beginning with David Ben-Gurion who were principal architects of the Jewish State of Israel, the work is a true tour de force of one of the many young Israeli historians giving important insights into the policies and reasons for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, their homes, lands and culture in the context of the 1947 to 1949 First Palestine War. Sympathetically written from a progressive Israeli point of view, it should be on everyone's book shelf and well-read prior to first visits to Israel and the Occupied Territories. Prof. Segev continues to research and write about Israeli founding fathers and foundations to this day. I should add that the work was translated into Arabic in Beirut within its first year of publication with the approval of the Institute of Palestine Studies.

“1949 the First Israelis”, a review of the book by Tom SegevWritten in 2018, “1949 the First Israelis” says much about the current era in Israel, especially in terms of its then unpopular depiction of the plight of native and nonnative Palestinians under the leadership of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion—a reality which has only been further aggravated over time and has come to challenge accepted practices of the entire international order. The book starts with the relatively innocuous treaties achieved by Israel with Arab nations including Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the immediate wake of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, a time when European Israelis were recovering from the ravages of the Holocaust, but quickly transitions to the hard realities of its absorption of Palestinian territories and massive push to expand its Jewish population as a Zionist imperative.According to Ben-Gurion upon Israel’s independence, “[o]ur activities and policy are guided not by economic considerations alone but by a political and social vision we have inherited from our prophets and imbibed from the heritage of our greatest sages and the teachers of our own day.” Ostensibly deploying journal entries, letters, and declassified government documents, 1949 catalogs the seemingly mythical nature of this sentiment when faced with the nascent conflicts among settlers and Palestinians, laying bare the limitations of the formerly pervasive idealistic view of Israel’s beginnings.In short order in relation to Palestinian property, “whoever succeeded in placing a bed in a room and spending the night in it, acquired the right of possession.” The number of settlers from Europe in this fashion exceeded 400,000 at the nation’s very inception, largely subsuming migrants who had been deported by the former British authorities and were survivors of the Holocaust. This phenomenon of forced occupation apparently stands in stark contrast with “[t]he men of the early waves of Zionist immigration, up to the 1920s, [who] were proud of their achievements and zealously attached to the tradition they had created from personal struggle and backbreaking labor.” In Israel’s seeming defense, it was thought that “[t]he right of the Jewish people to be like any other nation, with a sovereign state of its own, was defined in the Declaration of Independence as a natural right.” Meanwhile the conflicts Israel faced weren’t limited to its usurpation of Palestinian property and land but also included disputes between native born Israelis and immigrants, as well as rifts among the religious and secular Jews.Segev’s timely achievement is a compelling example of what might be termed rebel journalism in its real politic assessment of a nation whose 20thcentury history was formerly bathed in myth but now stands at the threshold of international condemnation and admittedly Hamas-provoked implosion.