Uri Milstein
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Uri Milstein is a military historian, and poet.
As a military historian Dr. Uri Milstein has been described as : "Israel's most Cherished and Hated Revisionist Military Historian"[1] (Jewish Post of N.Y May 2000). He is an authority (Prof. Benny Morris, Jerusalem Post February 1991) on the War of Independence and author of the History of Israel's War of Independence, published in four volumes from 1996 to 1999. Milstein is also known for his controversial biography of Yitzhak Rabin The Rabin File: An Unauthorized Expose.(1999).
He published a book of poetry in the sixties, partially reappearing in his book "An End to Life", and his current poetry can be read in the poetry forum he founded, where he is involved in a poetic dialogue.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Israel in 1940 to Avraham, a volunteer in the British army in World War II, and Sarah Milstein, an itinerant kindergarten teacher. He studied in the "Hayal" school in the Yad Eliahu neighborhood in Tel Aviv, in the agricultural school "Hadasim" and concluded his high school studies in the urban high school "5" in Tel Aviv. According to the description in his biography "The Oasis of Dreams,The Legend of Hadassim" (2006), he started to investigate Israel's wars in a critical vein already at the time of his studies in "Hadassim". Already then he was occupied with breaking myths and he was immersed in dispute among the teachers and students. When he was 13, for example, he exposed the fact that the men of the "Lamed Hei" Platoon were sent from Jerusalem to Gush Etzion in January 1948 to bring plasma to the wounded in a battle on 14 January, but earlier on that day the British rapidly moved the wounded to Jerusalem, and therefore the 35 went and were killed for nothing.
[edit] Military service
In 1958 he enlisted in the IDF and served in Battalion 890 of the paratroop brigade as a soldier, company commander and battle medic. Before he was discharged from obligatory service deputy commander of the paratroop brigade, Rafael Eitan (Raful) appointed him as historian of the paratroops. As a historian and as a battle medic he fought in the Six Day War, the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War. As a historian of the paratroops secret archives and secret documents of the IDF were revealed to him. In 1974 the deputy commander of the brigade Yitzhak Mordechai dismissed him from his post as historian because of a critical writing on the Battle Of Chinese Farm. He concluded his reserve service as a professional academic officer in the history department of the Air Force.
[edit] Family
He is married to the actress Shifra (Ben David) Milstein, and the couple have two daughters. His daughter Dalit established with Avishai Milstein (no relation) Notzar Theater and she manages it.
Milstein, who is the son of the niece of Rachel Bluwstein, published her poetry and published her autobiography "Rachel's Poems – The Secret of Their Magic". He arranged three shows in her memory with Hava Alberstein, Naomi Shemer, Dudu Topaz and others. He even was named "Uri" on the inspiration of Rachel's poem "Uprooted" ("If I had a son…I will call him Uri") The biography sharply attacks the members of Kibbutz Dagania Aleph who ejected Rachel from their Kibbutz after they were informed that she had become ill with tuberculosis.
[edit] Academic path
After his discharge from obligatory service in the IDF in 1960 he studied at Hebrew University, Economics, Philosophy and Political Science. His doctorate work was on the religious argument in the process of legislation in Israel. During his studies and after their conclusion he devoted most of his time to developing military philosophy and researching Israel's wars. His posts during obligatory service and in the reserves enabled him to examine secret documents and interview many military figures. Until the writing of these lines he interviewed around 7,000 people. After the Six Day War he published his first research "War Of The Paratroops", and at the beginning of 1973 he published a military history of the early settlement and state "In Blood And Fire Yehuda". In continuing his research, and mainly after the Yom Kippur War, he started make allegations of basic flaws in the structure and functioning of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
In the 1980s he taught military history in the General Headquarters College. Toward the end of the 1980s he started to publish the critical books about the IDF. In 1989 he started to publish a series of books on The War of Independence, in which he alleged flawed functioning of commanders that were considered heroes in Israel, that established the IDF and commanded it until the First Lebanon War and after they were discharged stood at the head of the political and economic establishment. In 1993 he published his book "Crisis and Its Conclusion", in which was harsh criticism on the function of the IDF in the Yom Kippur War. This aroused much criticism among IDF commanders, and they tried to limit his steps and bring about his boycott. In 1995 he published a book of harsh criticism (The Rabin File: How the Myth Was Inflated) about Yitzhak Rabin, who was a commander of the Palmach, and on the Palmach in general. In particular the claims it raised aroused a public storm, whereby when Rabin commanded the Harel Brigade he fled from the battle field on 20 April 1948 and from then suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. After Rabin's murder he was discharged from University Bar Ilan on account of his writings about Rabin. For a certain period Milstein taught at the extension of The University of Latvia in Israel, and today he teaches in Tzfat College and the College Of Judea And Samaria in Ariel in the position as a minor lecturer.
He established "Survival Institute" and the book publishing house "Survival". He coordinates the forum for making available to citizens research on battles and deriving conclusions, that raised a claim that aroused a storm in 2006, that many heroism medals that were given to soldiers of the Chinese Farm Battle in the Yom Kippur War were not deserved. Following a decision of the High Court files of the medals from the IDF archives were opened to members of the forum. The secret documents in the files affirmed the claim that granting of the medals was undeserved.
[edit] Views
Milstein claims to have developed a new metaphysics: he claims that the essence of survival is the foundation stone in human behavior. Insofar as we live in a threatening environment the motivation for every phenomenon not only in human life and not only in the organic sphere but in everything found in the universe is the BIT – information containing an algorithm (an impression of flow) to neutralize threats. From here, that the entire universe, including human society, is composed of threats and threatened, that are of different dimensions of the same phenomenon. The difference between the non-organic and the organic and between the unicellular and mankind is the length of the chain of BITS of information that are contained not only in structural orders to neutralize threats but also strategy and tactics of how to do this in an optimal way. Scientific enterprise in its entirety deals in research on these chains in every field.
These views are marginal to and considered highly unorthodox among the philosophical and scientific communities both in Israel and abroad. Milstein has not presented them in any mainstream academic forum such as peer-reviewed journals or academic presses.
From this basic theory mentioned above Milstein derives that the basic anthropological model to understand human behavior is the battle in which each side makes an effort to neutralize the opposing side to the point of his annihilation. This is true not only in wars but also in the economic sphere, in relations between husband and wife, jealousy of writers, and so on. From here is the philosophical interest in Israel's wars, that indeed without the optimal conduct of the wars Israel would not succeed in neutralizing the threats against it and not survive.
Regarding Israel's wars he claims that:
- The IDF is an army possessing an anti-intellectual security concept, which essentially is not of a professional army, but an armed militia with advanced weapons.
- The 2006 Lebanon War proved that advanced weapons are not enough for victory in war, but there is a need for optimal tactics and strategy that the IDF is not adapted to develop in the present reality.
- The IDF Officers Course does not prepare the cadets for command posts but instead conducts political indoctrination and mythology.
- Most of the official history of Israel's wars is more myth than fact and is designed mainly to glorify the names of the commanders and of those giving political protection.
In his last book "The Blood Libel of Dir Yassin – The Black Book" he claims that a key incident in the development of Palestinian national consciousness, the massacre at Dir Yassin, was a myth created by the Israeli Left in the early settlement to prevent unification of the Hagana (a Leftist militia) and the Irgun (Etzel) (a national right militia), and to prevent the participation of Etzel commander Menahem Begin in Israel's first national unity government under David Ben Gurion.
[edit] Books
[edit] Poetry
- "After All",Kiriat-Sefer publishers,1965
[edit] Military History
- The Blond Bear 1970 Ramdor Publishers
- "The War Of The Paratroopers" 2 vols. 1968, (Hebrew)
- "The History of the Paratroopers",4 vols.1985-87(Hebrew)
- "History Of Israel's War Of Independence", 4 vols. out of 12 projected, 1996-1999 (English). University Press of America
- "The Shaked Patrol" Miskal Publishers, 1994.
- "The Rabin File: An Unauthorized Expose" (English),2000, Gefen Books
- "The Rabin File – The Myth And Its Collapse 2005 Survival Institute Publishers
- "Blood Libel at Deir Yassin – The Black Book 2007 National Midrasha Publishers and Survival Institute Publishers. Deals in disproving the claim that there was a massacre in Deir Yassin in the War Of Independence.
[edit] Critique of Military Reason Series
- The Outbreak of War 1992
- 'The Crossing Which Wasn't 1992 (Hebrew) Yaron Golan Publishers
- The Lesson of a Collapse 1993(Hebrew) Survival Publishers And Yediot Ahronot
Critique of the Present Civilization Series
- Razmach, Pamphlets Of Literature, 1970.
- "The General Theory of Security - the Survival Principle",(English&Hebrew) 1999 Survival Institute Publishers
- "New Administration for Israel-An Intellectual-Political Alternative",1993 (English&Hebrew)
- "An End to Life" 1994 Survival Institute Publishers(English&Hebrew)
- "The Oasis of Dreams,The Legend of Hadassim",2006 Survival Publishing,(English&Hebrew), (an autobiography of The Generation Of The State)
