Tom Segev

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Tom Segev (born 1945, Jerusalem) is an Israeli intellectual, journalist, and historian.

Segev's parents fled Nazi Germany in 1935 and settled in Palestine. His father was killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Segev writes for Ha'aretz, a major Israeli newspaper, and has published several books. He is generally considered to be a New Historian, a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have begun a reexamination of the history of Israel and Zionism.

In the book, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, Segev claims that the Jews in Palestine during World War II were more interested in their own state than in saving Jews in Europe. The book is highly critical of David Ben-Gurion, and created a strong reaction in Israel when it was published.

In One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, Segev contends that violent conflict between Jewish and Arab nationalism was inevitable as the two groups could not co-exist given their contrary aims. This departs from traditional Israeli histories which have concluded that Israelis never wanted conflict, and hence blames the Israel-Palestinian conflict on the Palestinians' violent reactions. Segev additionally argues that the British were pro-Zionist (a possibility often dismissed by Israeli historians), and that British support for Zionism stemmed from a misguided and anti-Semitic belief that Jews turned the wheels of history. Segev's works are often criticized by both right-wing Israelis (for being too 'pro-Palestinian') and by Palestinian Arabs as well, who feel that his works are too pro-Israeli. [1]

In his latest book, 1967, on the Six-Day War, Segev contends that Israeli university librarians robbed archives, libraries and private homes in East Jerusalem of anything valuable. The Israeli government, he adds, also discussed "exporting" 100,000 Israeli Arabs to Iraq when the war was over. The Prime Minister called this plan "population transfer". In the end the plan was not implemented, as they concluded that they could not expel Israeli citizens. The book will be published in English in 2006.

[edit] Books

1949: The First Israelis (Hebrew: 1984, ISBN 965-261-040-2; English: 1998, ISBN 0-8050-5896-6)
Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps (1988, ISBN 0-07-056058-7)
One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (2000, ISBN 0-316-64859-0)
The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust (2000, ISBN 0-8050-6660-8)
Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel (2003, ISBN 0-8050-7288-8)
The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent (2004, ISBN 1-56584-914-0)
Israel in 1967. And the land changed its visage (Hebrew: 2005, ISBN 965-07-1370-0)