Product details
- ISBN 9781041248521
- Weight: 700g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In this ground-breaking and controversial history of the founding of Israel, originally published in 1987, noted Israeli scholar and peace activist Simha Flapan gives a candid account of one of the most momentous political events of the 20th century.
The official story is well known: the Zionists welcomed the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state; the Arabs rejected partition and launched a war to drive the Jews into the sea; the Palestinians fled Israel despite the efforts of Jewish leaders to get them to stay; after Israel’s victory in 1948 its hand was extended in peace, but not a single Arab leader responded. The Birth of Israel exposes these ‘historical truths’ as propaganda myths that have misguided Israel policy for decades.
Drawing on declassified material – from Ben-Gurion’s war diaries to the minutes of secret meetings – Flapan reconstructs the real events of that critical time. He demonstrates that the Zionist leadership accepted partition purely as a tactical strategy, that their intention was always to establish a homogenous Jewish homeland in most, if not all, of Palestine. Flapan shows, furthermore, how these objectives shaped Israeli actions: their expulsion of the Palestinians, their exploitation of the 1948 war for territorial gain and their refusal to make any concessions that might have brought about accommodation. Flapan’s lucid analysis sheds new light on the figures and events of that time: Ben-Gurion emerges as Menachem Begin’s forerunner, the ‘just’ war of 1948 as the precursor of the debacle in Lebanon. Full of unsettling revelations, The Birth of Israel is a seminal work for understanding the tragic Arab-Israeli stalemate which persists to this day.
Simha Flapan (1911–1987) was an Israeli historian and politician and had a long and distinguished career as a writer, publisher, peace activist and educator. From 1954 to 1981 he was National Secretary of Israel's Mapam party and Director of its Arab Affairs department. He was founder and editor-in-chief of the Middle East monthly New Outlook, and founder and director of the Jewish-Arab Institute and the Israeli Peace Research Institute. He was aFellow at he Harvard University Center for International Affiars, a visiting scholar at the Harvard Center for Middle East Sutdies, and a Foreign Associate of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
