“... of being upstaged by the right-wing militias of the underground – Menachem Begin’s Irgun and Yitzhak Shamir’s Lehi. But he postponed his confrontation with the British for as long as he could. When an Arab nationalist suggested that they join forces against the British, he replied that Jews would never fight the British – and notified the high ...”

“... breakthrough in the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. In one stunning move, Arafat and Rabin have redrawn the geopolitical map of the region. The Arab-Israeli divide was one not merely between Israel and the neighbouring Arab states, but also between Jewish and Palestinian nationalism. This last has always been at the heart of the conflict. Both ...”

“... and declared him ‘the most sympathetic fascist I ever met’. He cancelled a meeting with Yitzhak Rabin, then the army chief of staff, protesting that ‘I came to meet the people, the left and civil society, not the military. Besides, I had already spent an excellent evening with this fascist general!’ He even stood up David Ben-Gurion, the ...”

“... but the photographs are entertaining: Mum and Dad, then Alvin Stardust and Chris Rea, and then Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Yasir Arafat, President Assad, King Abdullah … No question, the man gives good schmooze. As with the other books, the section about Labour in office is much less interesting than the early part of the story. The ...”

“... Reagan Administration in El Salvador from their safe-havens on the East Coast. With the murder of Yitzhak Rabin and the rise of religious fanaticism among Israelis, her confidence had already begun to fray (it was the purpose of ‘all religion’, she’d written in a piece about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, to fight against the delegation of ...”

“... He began Tsahal in 1987, the year the First Intifada exploded, and completed it seven years later. Yitzhak Rabin (who had offered to finance a film on the 1948 war) put the army at his disposal, and Lanzmann conducted extensive interviews with senior military officials, including Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. In Tsahal, Lanzmann’s style of questioning ...”

“... as defence minister, after Sharon was forced to step down over the Sabra and Shatila massacre. But Yitzhak Shamir, the new prime minister, saw Netanyahu as ‘shallow, vain, self-destructive and prone to pressure’. As he put it, ‘the sea is the same sea and Netanyahu is the same Netanyahu.’ The ‘princes’ of Likud may have had little time for ...”

“... leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does ...”

“... themselves with Israel.Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia. Yitzhak Laor We’ve been here before. It’s a ritual. Every two or three years, our military mounts another bloody expedition. The enemy is always smaller, weaker; our military is always larger, technologically more sophisticated, prepared for full-scale war ...”

“... position of the more farouche exile leaders. Similarly, Bush and James Baker were anxious to see Yitzhak Shamir’s regime of petrified intransigence give way to Rabin and Peres. They therefore declined to make an unconditional loan guarantee to Israel, and as a result found themselves in a rugged domestic squabble with ...”