This paper aims to shed further light on the response of Israeli society to the rise of the Black Panthers in 1971 by examining the attitude adopted by Menachem Begin and Gahal to the emerging ...Mizrahi protest movement. After discussing in detail Begin's response to the Black Panthers' protest, this paper analyses the factors that contributed to the divide between the Panthers and Israel's leading opposition party at that time, and the criticism levelled by party members against its leadership concerning its inaction regarding the Black Panthers' protest. Whereas right-wing Zionist research has hitherto focused on Begin's political and security-related outlook and activities, the affair being discussed may shift the limelight onto the socio-economic attitudes of Begin and his party.
Between 1969 and 1971 US diplomat Joseph Sisco was the driving force behind all initial steps to resolve the Israeli‒Egyptian conflict. But despite his tremendous efforts, his ability was limited as ...President Nixon did not throw his weight behind these efforts. Three main initiatives were taken during the discussed period: the Rogers Plan, the Rogers Initiative, and Sadat's initiative for an interim agreement. Most of Sisco's efforts concentrated on the latter initiative. His failure to reach an interim agreement, coupled with his inability to persuade Israel and Egypt to accept the Rogers Plan, led the region to political stagnation, from which the two parties only emerged in the aftermath of 1973 Yom Kippur War.
The article examines the American political efforts to bring about an agreement between Israel and Egypt between 1967 and 1969 and analyses the reasons for their failure. But it does not focus ...exclusively on the Americans; it also outlines the alternatives for Egyptian action during the period in question and looks at the political and military steps taken by Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, vis-à-vis Israel and the United States. The main conclusion is that despite Egypt's dependence on the Soviet Union for economic aid and the rebuilding of the decimated Egyptian army, Nasser knew that the only route to a political process to regain Sinai ran through the United States. His diplomatic efforts were all derived from this insight. At the same time, the Egyptian president's attempts to exploit American pressure to his benefit, as he had done in 1957, was undercut by his overestimation of his bargaining chips, a mistake that was one factor in the collapse of the efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement in the region.
The article presents a short history of the Matzpen group and aims at scrutinizing their history as a possible approach to broader questions of Jewish, Israeli, and general history. Starting with the ...political origins of the group as split from Israeli communism, it concentrates mostly on Matzpen's dealing with the Palestine conflict. Based on a socialist “horizon of expectation”, Matzpen struggled for a so-called de-Zionization of Israeli society and simultaneously for the recognition of Israeli Jewry as a Hebrew Nation within the Arab world. It concludes by discussing the central tension arising from the Israeli Left's struggle for a Hebrew nation and a socialist revolution. It led them to maintain distance from a new collective notion of Jewishness after Auschwitz, which regarded the existence of a Jewish state as a guarantee for Jewish life after the Holocaust.
Between 1967 and 1973, Israeli governments took no initiative to set a peace process in motion. Instead, they simply responded to proposals that were raised from time to time, and, for the most part, ...rejected all of them - the Rogers Plan, Sadat's willingness to sign a peace agreement and his initiative for an interim settlement - with the sole exception being the ceasefire agreement reached in August 1970. While Israeli policy lacked initiative on the political front, it dedicated much effort to convincing the United States that the greater Israel's military power, the better its deterrence capabilities would be, which in turn would increase the likelihood of achieving peace. Hence, Israeli leaders' repeated requests to be supplied with advanced aircraft.
The second volume in the history of the Union Pacific begins after the financial panic of 1893, which pushed the railroad into bankruptcy.Maury Klein examines the challenges faced by the Union ...Pacific in the new century and how, under the innovative leadership of Edward H. Harriman, the Union Pacific again played the role of industrial pioneer.
This article attempts to contradict the commonly accepted assumption in Israel and the West that in April-May 1973 Egypt and Syria were about to open war against Israel and were deterred by a series ...of measures that Israel took, including partial mobilization of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) reserves. The article ventures to separate the apologetics and (flawed) memories from the information provided by the now available documentary evidence. After presenting the prevailing Israeli version, the article analyses the memoirs on the Egyptian side about the preparations for war and determining D-Day, to refute this version. Based on the contemporary protocols of government and general staff meetings and political-military consultations, it argues that the Israeli government, general staff and intelligence community did not regard at the time the outbreak of war as an imminent threat. The steps they took concerned the medium and long run, and were irrelevant in the short run. Similarly, the mobilization of reserves was not connected to the alarm of war but to the Day of Independence parade in Jerusalem. The article claims on the basis of these protocols that the reason for the excitement was the collapse of the Israeli intelligence's conception that Egypt would not resume hostilities before it could hit at the interior of Israel, and Syria would not go to war without Egypt. The arrival of Libyan Mirages and Iraqi Hunters to Egypt in April fulfilled this condition and the possibility of war could not be dismissed offhand. Israel responded to the new situation by the book. It shared the information and analysis with the White House and the CIA; it refreshed the IDF planning down to the divisional level and the IDF general staff held a series of thorough discussions to estimate the situation. The bottom line of this process was a government directive to the IDF to prepare for war at the end of the summer of 1973 (as it actually happened). In the latter portion of the article I explain why this directive was ignored when it was put to test in late September and early October of 1973.
The surprise of the Yom Kippur War (1973) rivals that of the other two major strategic surprises in the twentieth century—Operation Barbarossa, the German surprise attack on the Soviet Union and the ...bombing of Pearl Harbor. The major difference between these events is that Israeli intelligence had a lot more and better quality information leading up to the attack than did the Soviet Union or the United States prior to those attacks. Why, then, was the beginning of the Yom Kippur War such a surprise? While many scholars have tried to explain why Israel was caught unawares despite its sophisticated military intelligence services, Dalia Gavriely-Nuri looks beyond the military, intelligence, and political explanations to a cultural explanation. Israeli Culture on the Road to the Yom Kippur War reveals that the culture that evolved in Israel between the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War played a large role in the surprise. Gavriely-Nuri’s analysis provides new and innovative insights into the relationship between culture and socio-political phenomena and security.
The Yom Kippur War was a watershed moment in Israeli society and a national trauma whose wounds have yet to heal some four decades later. In the years following the war many studies addressed the ...internal and international political background prior to the war, attempting to determine causes and steps by political players and parties in Israel, Egypt and the United States. But to date there has been no comprehensive study based on archival materials and other primary sources. Classified documents from that period have recently become available and it is now possible to examine in depth a crucial period in Middle East history generally and Israeli history in particular. The authors provide a penetrating and insightful viewpoint on the question that lies at the heart of the Israeli polity and military: Was an opportunity missed to prevent the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War? The book provides surprising answers to long-standing issues: How did National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, succeed in torpedoing the efforts of the State Department to bring about an interim agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1971?; Would that agreement have allowed Israel to hold on to most of the Sinai Peninsula for many years and at the same time avert the outbreak of the war; Did Golda Meir reject any diplomatic initiative that came up for discussion in the years preceding the war?; Was the White House's Middle East policy throughout 1973 a catalyst for war breaking out?
