David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Renaissance

This book offers a reappraisal of David Ben-Gurion's role in Jewish-Israeli history from the perspective of the twenty-first century, in the larger context of the Zionist 'renaissance', of which he was a major and unique exponent. Some have described Ben-Gurion's Zionism as a dream that has gone sour, or a utopia doomed to be unfulfilled. Now - after the dust surrounding Israel's founding father has settled, archives have been opened, and perspective has been gained since Ben-Gurion's downfall - this book presents a fresh look at this statesman-intellectual and his success and tragic failures during a unique period of time that he and his peers described as the 'Jewish renaissance'. The resulting reappraisal offers a new analysis of Ben-Gurion's actual role as a major player in Israeli, Middle Eastern, and global politics.

Introduction; 1. The intellectual origins of Ben-Gurion's Zionism; 2. The Holocaust and its lessons; 3. Ben-Gurion between left and right; 4. Ben-Gurion and the Israel Defense Forces - from its formation to the Suez-Sinai campaign of 1956; 5. From the 1956 war to the 'Lavon Affair'; 6. From 'the Affair' to the Six-Day War; Conclusion: the waning of an age and its leader.

Shlomo Aronson is Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University and Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College, as well as Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His scholarship has focused on Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, Israeli domestic and foreign policy, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, 'Post-Zionism', and current anti-Zionism. He is the author of a number of books, including Conflict and Bargaining in the Middle East, The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East, and Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews.