War of Independence

Menachem Begin: A New Life

Ensuring that another Holocaust would never take place was Menachem Begin's paramount concern, even when he was Prime Minister of Israel, pursuing Yasir Arafat in his Beirut bunker.

The Challenge of Sovereignty

On the eve of Israel's independence, David Ben-Gurion sat alone, questioning whether a people so long accustomed to being the victims of sovereign power could take responsibility for themselves.

On Silence

Eschewing Jewish expressions of mourning, Israel's founding generations shaped a national ethos of silence and self-restraint, which found expression in the words of poet David Shimoni: “Don’t mourn, don’t cry/ at a time like this./ Don’t lower your head,/ Work! Work!”

Partition, Then and Now

Since the beginning of the Zionist project, the partition of the land into two states has never found enthusiastic support among either Jews or Arabs.