SHALOM, FRIEND The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin

An absorbing portrait of the remarkable life of the late Israeli Prime Minister. David Horovitz, managing editor of The Jerusalem Report, deftly assembled the research of over two dozen of the Report's writers to produce a biography of Rabin that focuses on the recent peace process and the circumstances that led to his assassination. Earlier events in Rabin's life are covered in full--his early years in the Palmach, his military accomplishments in both the War of Independence and the Six Day War, and his stint as Israel's ambassador to the US--but this book's strength lies in its gripping analysis of Rabin's relationship with both the Palestinians and with Israeli settlers in the contested territory of the West Bank. Until the outbreak of the Intifada, Rabin paid almost no attention to the Palestinians. He knew little about them and had no interest in knowing more. His solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict leaned to the ``Jordanian Option,'' with its provision for continued Israeli settlement along the Jordan Valley. When the Intifada did break out in 1987, Rabin, misreading the Palestinians, dismissed it as insignificant. Yet it was precisely the Intifada that caused Rabin to realize that the Palestinians were an enemy with whom he would have to negotiate. The Intifada ``had turned the Palestinian people into a proper enemy. And, as such, they earned the right in Rabin's eyes to a proper peace.'' And if Rabin lacked insight into the Palestinians, he had even less into the West Bank settlers. He perceived most of them as obstacles to peace, and ``was positively infuriated by the vigilante elements among them.'' And as a secular Jew, Rabin had ``few sentiments for the area's past.'' It may well have been, in fact, the chasm between the secular Rabin and the religious nationalists that set the scene for his tragic death. Well-researched, engrossing, and admirably objective, Shalom, Friend is a significant contribution. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This is a collaborative effort by more than a dozen writers and editors of the Jerusalem Report, a prestigious Israeli newsmagazine, all of whom had close personal and professional knowledge of the former prime minister, assassinated in November 1995. Their views are supplemented by numerous interviews with knowledgeable people. Presented here is a detailed tribute offering a great deal of insight into a national leader in the context of Israeli, regional, and world politics. The reader gets a serious insiders' view not only of the man but also of Israeli party politics, relations with the United States when Rabin was his country's ambassador to Washington, the making of political and military decisions, and the events leading to Rabin's tragic death. An excellent supplement to Robert Slater's Rabin of Israel (St. Martin's, 1993). Recommended for a wide audience. [See also Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof's tribute to her grandfather, In the Name of Sorrow and Hope, LJ 4/15/95.?Ed.]?Sanford R. Silverburg Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C.
-?Sanford R. Silverburg Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.