Customer Reviews

Ben-Gurion: A Political Life (Jewish Encounters)

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4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A biography like this has such great potential. Unfortunately, this flopped. The potential is obvious -- Shimon Peres was "in the room" and knew Ben-Gurion. Landau was a writer for HaAretz. With this much talent and access in addition to an amazing and inspiring subject, this should be a great book. Insider status and writing talent like this made Yehuda Avner's The Prime Ministers unbelievable.

The book was "written" orally. It rambles. It often strays into Peres' experiences and does not stay focused on Ben-Gurion's. What should be a great book does not hold up.

If Israeli history and politics interest you, read The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership. It is amazing.

Overall, this book was a letdown. I had much higher expectations since this book was written by Shimon Peres, someone who was apparently very close to Ben Gurion during the years that the State of Israel was in its infancy.

Instead of getting deep into historical information and events, this book more or less touched on some history while spending more time debating on the effects of the events that actually happened. What we get is a dialogue with different opinions on the cause and effects of political events and decisions from Ben Gurion. I was actually hoping for more of a historical perspective similar to other books I have read.

In addition, the style of the writing seems to be very weak. It's written more as an essay or a long article than it is as a book. I found this style to be distracting and even boring.

If anyone is really interested in a solid and detailed historical narrative, I highly recommend reading The Prime Ministers by Yehudah Avner. That book is more than three times the size of this one but is about ten times better in the information it provides as well as the style in which it was written. It's actually an easier read.

However, I do recommend that people skim rough this book in a few hours as some of the info provided can be useful if you are a person that is interested in the History of Israel.

Neither co-author is trustworthy on this, or any issue pertaining to Israel. Landau formerly wrote for Haaretz which is more anti-Israel than some of the Arab press. He now writes for The Economist an implacable enemy of Israel.

Peres, always looks like a deer caught in the headlights and is partly responsible for the decline of the Labor Party which he headed to its regret.

Here you get the Labor party line on Ben-Gurion and the state's founding. You'll have to go to other sources for an accurate portrayal of the Prime Minister.

What Ben Gurion may have lacked in objective perspective, it amply contained in wisdom. humor and readability. The book beautifully described Ben Gurion's and Peres' love of the land and BG's nearly insurmountable struggles to claim it as a nation. Both ancient and modern history were well articulated. I enjoyed the candid discussions with David Landau. It was my opportunity to enjoy a portrait of a Lion of Judah as described by his brilliant protege.

Anyone reading this book for an "objective" view of Ben Gurion should look elsewhere. Considering how strong a personality Ben Gurion was and how controversial some of his actions were, I don't think such a book will be written for a few hunderd years. This book is in fact an attempt by Peres, who was as close to Ben Gurion as anyone, to preserve and promulgate the legacy of Ben Gurion and his brand of Zionism. So it is extremely subjective and partisan - but that doesn't make it any less fascinating or less important a book.

Anyone who wants am insider's view of how Ben Gurion thought about Zionism, anyone who wants a ringside seat at the creation of the State of Israel and the ideas and actions of the man without whom the State would never have come into being, should read this book. In fact anyone who wants insight into how great statesman think and act should read this book. Leaders of the calibre of Ben Gurion are rare indeed and love him or hate him, reading about his life enriches and challenges our own.

I enjoyed reading this book. It brought back many memories of the creation of the State of Israel under the leadership of Ben-Gurion and the many others mentioned in the book.

I think it helps to have some background other than the political one, understanding of the time and situation before, during and after the creation of the modern state of Israel.

It is amazing to be reminded of the many obstacles that the state and its leaders as well as the population faced.

GOOD JOB

Very well written book on Ben-Gurion. Written from the insight of Shimon Peres, who himself saw Ben-Gurion as a mentor.

thank you kindle for offering this enlightening biography.mr. peres provides his views and opinions concerning david ben gurion.he notes that ben gurion walked on human legs.as a prophet and pioneer,he was unequaled.as a man,the jury is still out.

Normally, one would say that the memories of one so close to a historical figure like Ben-Gurion as Peres was would be most valuable. The problem with this book is that Shimon Peres and David Landau are so biased and so committed to a radical political philosophy that it brings into question the value of what appears in this book. Looking at Ben-Gurion's career from the vantage point of the 21st century, his views today would be considered "Right-Wing". He would have been appalled at the Oslo Agreements that his disciple Peres foisted on an unwilling Yitzhak Rabin and the country. Ben-Gurion was a man committed to the Zionist platform of security, settlement and Jewish immigration. Thus, his security-mindedness would have rebelled at the seemingly endless wave of suicide bombings and rocket attacks that followed the Oslo Agreements and the subsequent flight of the Israeli army (IDF) without peace agreements from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and the claim that the IDF could not deal with the challenges these posed. He would have opposed the unilateral destruction of the Jewish settlements in Gush Katif (Gaza Strip) which Ariel Sharon carried out with the blessings of Shimon Peres and Ben-Gurion's Labor Party. His committment to Jewish immigration and Zionist values would have rejected the downgrading of those values in the IDF and Israeli Education System that occurred when Peres was in positions of influence in governments led by the Labor Party. Ben-Gurion would have fought tooth and nail against the division of Jerusalem now supported by the Labor Party. Ben-Gurion supported the rebuilding of the Jewish community in Hebron which was driven out by Arab pogroms in the 1920's and 1930's whereas his Labor Party demonizes the Jews who live in Hebron and other places in Judea/Samaria even though Peres and the Labor Party were instrumental in creating these communities in the first place in the 1970's. Is Peres' coloring his views on Ben-Gurion to justify his own reversals of all the positions and values his mentor Ben-Gurion held?

As an example of the unreliability of Peres' accounts of things, while the book claims that during the Altalena affair when Menachem Begins Irgun (ETZEL) brought at boat-load of arms to Israel during the summer of 1948, Ben-Gurion was supposedly afraid that the ETZEL would "try to use the arms to overthrow the government", yet Peres, during the crisis leading up to the Six-Day War in 1967, in order to get Begin's support told him that "Ben-Gurion had been 'misled' during the Altalena affair". What is the truth? Peres' justification for the dangerous concessions and abandonment of the security of the citizens of the country on the altar of his "peace process" based on his delusionary "New Middle East" was predicated on "inevitable Arab acceptance of Israel due to their (supposed) desire to get on board the globalized economy" today seems to be a bad joke with the rise of reaction Islamic regimes throughout the Arab Middle East. Someone so enamored with such discredited ideas is not likely to be a unbiased source on someone like Ben-Gurion.

David Landau, who actually wrote the book, was editor of the Left-wing Ha'aretz newspaper and holds radical Left-wing views, further out than any of the other people who have held that position and he said quite frankly that we was prepared to distort reporting of the news in order to further his political agenda.

Thus, someone wanting to really understand Ben-Gurion would be better off reading Dan Kurzman's or Shabtai Tevet's books on Ben-Gurion to get a more unbiased view of the man. After all, Ben-Gurion never won a Nobel Peace Prize....he wanted to build a Jewish State, Peres badly wanted a Nobel Peace Prize so he either wittingly or unwittingly began a process of dismantling it to find favor with those who grant the Prize. That says it all in my eyes.