Epstein Secrets

r prime minister, just months after a right-wing Jew murdered Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin in a bid to halt the Oslo peace process. Peres succeeded Rabin, but then lost to Netanyahu by less than half a percentage point, leaving the Israeli left with the feeling that the assassin had won—and casting a

on if Israel wants to maintain its democratic character. Peres recently co-wrote a book with Landau about his mentor, Ben-Gurion. It concludes that Ben-Gurion's greatest decision was accepting the United Nations partition plan, which gave Israel a state but much less territory than it sought. The book is a

or prime minister, just months after a right-wing Jew murdered =sraeli leader Yitzhak Rabin in a bid to halt the Oslo peace process. Peres=succeeded Rabin, but then lost to Netanyahu by less than half a percentage=point, leaving the Israeli left with the feeling that the assassin had won—and casting a

ion if Israel wants to maintain its democratic character. Peres recen=ly co-wrote a book with Landau about his mentor, Ben-Gurion. It concludes =hat Ben-Gurion's greatest decision was accepting the United Nations partition plan, which gave Israel a state=but much less territory than it sought. The book is a h

d, were laid by Moshe Dayan and Shlomo Gazit, and of course by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan, and again Rabin and Shimon Peres. We must not allow the shortsighted populists that currently lead us to destroy this achievement, and the promise it brings with

ved into the actions of David Ben-Gurion. They are the heirs of Zionism at its best. The Zionism that is expressed in Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" and Ben-Gurion's musings on Israel's "strength and righteousness," in the Declaration of Independence and the morals of the Prophets—the Widow, the Orphan, and the

icity cable, and on the main oil pipeline from Suez City to Cairo. Still, for many weeks, the answer from the kirya was no. The man who had succeeded Rabin as chief-of-staff after the war, Chaim Bar-Lev, dismissed it as "a plan built on chicken legs." In the end, what got us the green light was a further

aculty at Hebrew University. He was convinced, perhaps with some reason, that his outspoken advocacy for Jabotinsky's Zionism in a country defined by Ben-Gurion's had frozen him out. He left to pursue his academic career in America, where both Yoni and Bibi spent much of their youth. He always remained bitter a

, something Bibi still clearly wanted to avoid as much as humanly possible. It was an attempt to engage with Syria. He asked me about the talks under Rabin and Peres, and my views on the possibility of a deal with President Assad. He also wanted my assessment about whether the army could work out arrange

with no first-hand army experience, did at least have the political experience in war that none of Olmert's other ministers could offer. He'd been by Ben-Gurion's side during the 1956 war, had been in Golda's government in 1967, and was Defense Minister after the 1973 war, through Entebbe, until Begin's defeate