DS127.S4413

Includes bibliographical references (p. [587]-642) and index

I: Between Rishon Lezion and Manhattan -- Sussita days -- Other people -- II: Between Israel and Palestine -- Maps and dreams -- The Syrian syndrome -- III: The forty days of private Yehoshua Bar-Dayan -- Three weeks to war: what does Nasser want? -- Eleven days to war: Noa''s father is waiting -- Ten days to war: what does America want? -- Nine days to war: a terrible situation -- One week to war: the generals'' revolt -- Five days to war: the ouster -- Three days to war: the devision -- Day one -- Day two -- Day three -- The final days -- IV: They thought they had won -- A new land -- Victory albums -- The enlightened occupation -- Teddy''s project -- Face-to-face with Ishmael -- The blunder -- Hawks and doves -- Starting over -- Absalom days

From Israel’s leading historian, a sweeping history of 1967—the war, what led up to it, what came after, and how it changed everything Tom Segev’s acclaimed works One Palestine, Complete and The Seventh Million overturned accepted views of the history of Israel. Now, in 1967—a number-one bestseller in Hebrew—he brings his masterful skills to the watershed year when six days of war reshaped the country and the entire region. Going far beyond a military account, Segev re-creates the crisis in Israel before 1967, showing how economic recession, a full grasp of the Holocaust’s horrors, and the dire threats made by neighbor states combined to produce a climate of apocalypse. He depicts the country’s bravado after its victory, the mood revealed in a popular joke in which one soldier says to his friend, “Let’s take over Cairo”; the friend replies, “Then what shall we do in the afternoon?” Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as government memos and military records, Segev reconstructs an era of new possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces the legendary figures—Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Gamal Abdul Nasser, and Lyndon Johnson—and an epic cast of soldiers, lobbyists, refugees, and settlers. He reveals as never before Israel’s intimacy with the White House as well as the political rivalries that sabotaged any chance of peace. Above all, he challenges the view that the war was inevitable, showing that a series of disastrous miscalculations lie behind the bloodshed.