Sublime

IN DECEMBER 1973, to add even more pain to a country still in agony, just months after the war, David Ben-Gurion died. He had been ailing for some time, but given the trauma that Israel had just endured, the death of the country’s founder and father figure was another painful blow.

The diminished ideological passion of secular Zionism created a vacuum that afforded religious Jews an opportunity to become Zionism’s new leaders, the pioneers of Israel’s third decade. If previous Jewish religious leaders had assailed Zionism because it was overly secular and had sought to create a new Jew, after the war, some religious leaders a

America’s commitment to Israel’s defense climaxed in President Bush’s offer to provide the Jewish State with $30 billion of military aid over a ten-year period. Roughly 75 percent of these funds were spent in the United States, stimulating its economy and creating tens of thousands of jobs. Israel, in turn, shared its world-class intelligence and c

Rabin’s rise to the office of prime minister marked the beginning of a new era. He was the first prime minister born in the twentieth century and the first native-born. He was the first who had received his entire education in Israel and was the first to emerge from the ranks of the army. Israelis felt ready for a new sort of leader.

BEN-GURION UNDERSTOOD THAT TIME was not on his side. He had mobilized half of Israel’s able-bodied male population and some of the women, and the conflict clearly could not go on endlessly. Yet there were still Syrian, Egyptian, and Jordanian forces in pockets of the land originally assigned to Israel under the partition plan, and Ben-Gurion wanted

By August 12, 1982, Arafat conceded. Forced out of Jordan in 1971, the PLO now had to leave Lebanon, too. Between August 21 and 30, some nine thousand PLO fighters (and another six thousand Syrian troops) were escorted out of the city. Arafat, in the company of some of his fighters, set sail for Tunisia.

On September 28, 1978, at roughly three A.M., after hours of acrimonious debate, the Knesset voted 84 in favor, 19 opposed, and 17 abstentions; the Camp David peace agreement was approved. Begin had the beginning of his peace with Egypt. The man the British had once called terrorist number one had made peace with Israel’s most powerful enemy.

Israel proceeded, undeterred, animated by a sense of justice. David Ben-Gurion also had an educational agenda. Israel’s young people had been raised in a society that had thus far avoided confronting the Holocaust. It was time for a public reckoning, the prime minister believed. “Israeli youth should learn the truth of what had happened to the Jews