Tom Segev

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Tom Segev (born March 1, 1945 in Jerusalem) is an Israeli journalist, and historian.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Segev's parents fled Nazi Germany in 1935 and settled in Palestine. His father was killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Segev studied history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a doctorate in history from Boston University in the 1970s.[2] Segev is a columnist for Ha'aretz, an Israeli liberal newspaper, and has published several books. He is considered a New Historian, a group of left-wing Israeli historians who have begun a reexamination of the history of Israel and Zionism. In 2007, Segev was Helen Diller Family visiting professor at the Berkeley campus of the University of California.[3]

[edit] Main ideas

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 blame 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."[4] Segev's works are often criticized by both right-wing Israelis for being too 'pro-Palestinian' and by Palestinian Arabs, who feel his works are too pro-Israel.[5]

In his latest book, 1967, on the Six-Day War, Segev contends that Israel considered deporting local Arabs to Iraq when the war was over as part of a "population transfer." The plan was never implemented.

[edit] Books

  1. 1949: The First Israelis (Hebrew: 1984, ISBN 965-261-040-2; English: 1998, ISBN 0-8050-5896-6)
  2. Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps (1988, ISBN 0-07-056058-7)
  3. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (2000, ISBN 0-316-64859-0)
  4. The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust (2000, ISBN 0-8050-6660-8)
  5. Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel (2003, ISBN 0-8050-7288-8)
  6. The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent (2004, ISBN 1-56584-914-0)
  7. Israel in 1967. And the land changed its visage (Hebrew: 2005, ISBN 965-07-1370-0)
  8. 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, Metropolitan Books (2006)

[edit] References

  1. ^ interdisciplinary humanities center
  2. ^ Conversation with Tom Segev, p. 1 of 7
  3. ^ Conversation with Tom Segev (2007), cover page
  4. ^ Segev, Tom. Book jacket. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. Trans. Haim Watzman. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
  5. ^ Salon.com Books | Beyond tribalism

[edit] External links