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“... Menachem Begin and his Likud union of nationalist and liberal parties won their first electoral victory on 17 May 1977, bringing to an end three decades of Labour rule. The Likud was to dominate Israeli politics for the next 15 years. Colin Shindler’s book provides the first comprehensive survey of the Party’s origins, rise and decline, while paying particular attention to the role played by its successive leaders ...”

“... blamed for the Lebanese disaster. Two of the country’s most distinguished military writers, Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, have declared: ‘Born of the ambition of one wilful, reckless man, Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon was anchored in delusion, propelled by deceit, and bound to end in calamity.’ The deceit is sustained throughout this book ...”

“... ten years later, the election for the first time of the right-wing Likud coalition under Menachem Begin. The colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 led many who witnessed its brutality to explore the events that preceded it. They came to disparage the notion that 1967 had transformed an ideal state into a violent expansionist power, concluding ...”

“... stages of the struggle for Palestine. The crux of this strategy – promulgated in 1923 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism – was that the Arabs could only be dealt with from a position of unassailable strength. Once Israel was sufficiently secure, a satisfactory settlement with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbours ...”

“... people who ‘kept faith’ throughout the Diaspora were the same as the ones who headed out to begin with? Did they share the same genes? Or were they as far removed from the original Jews as, say, Polish Galicians are from the Galicians of Spain? In The Invention of the Jewish People, Sand sought to demythologise his people’s identity. It was a ...”

“... Ben-Gurion enlisted in the British army’s Jewish legion, leaving his pregnant wife in the US to begin training in Canada. Made up of five thousand soldiers, the legion was a ‘Zionist illusion, of zero military value’, Segev writes, but it allowed Ben-Gurion to get back to Palestine, and he relished its symbolism: ‘One doesn’t receive a country; one ...”

“... 20 per cent of the population, but they are an internal pariah. Netanyahu’s Israel embodies what Ze’ev Jabotinsky, his father’s hero, called ‘an iron wall of Jewish bayonets’. Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, dreamed of an Israel on both banks of the Jordan. Netanyahu has made his peace with Hashemite rule over Jordan, but in his ...”

“... discern the seeds of a totalitarianism which would come to fruition in 1940 (the Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell has described the anti-Dreyfusard League of Patriots as the first proto-fascist organisation). France had submitted to the yoke of its generals. The rule of law was in thrall to the army, which had been raised to a ...”

“... world and undermine the war on terrorism, so he demanded that Sharon ‘halt the incursions and begin withdrawal’. He underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to ‘withdraw without delay’. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, told reporters: ‘“Without delay” means without delay. It means ...”