The Israelis: Founders and Sons; Revised Edition(ISBN=9780140169690)

   Israel was built on dreams and strivings, on humanistic princi-ples and hard labor. What was conceived as a country of peace and dignity, however, has emerged as a society of contradictions, ethnic tensions, clashes between the religious and the secular--a society buffeted by extreme changes in both national and interna- tional politics. The ideals of the founders have floundered in the reality of wars and violence.
   In this dramatic, fair-minded portrait of Israel, Amos Elon places the ongoing conflicts in the Mideast in brilliant historic perspective. In illuminating the political and philosophical back- ground of the State of Israel, he offers rare insight into the rise to power of Menachem Begin and the complications of the Egyptian- Israeli peace treaty, and he shows how Zionism, ironically, led to the development of its bitterest enemy, the Palestinian nationalist movement.