by

Haganah

Title: Haganah

Hardcover: 295 pages

Publisher: New American Library (1964)

ASIN: B000JJVW5E

I found this book at a rare and used bookstand at an antique sale on Randolph Street a couple of months ago, and I finally finished it.

Its a good book on a subject rarely covered, the defense (which is a loose translation of haganah) of Israel during its inception (the author was a leader of the Rekhesh, the part of the defense force that brought arms to Palestine).  Because its effectively a memoir, it has its good and bad points.  The author defends, at length, some actions that, in a history book, would just be noted as causes.  There are also few failures noted, and I have to assume there were more than the book mentions.

On the other hand, it gives a nice narative account of some of the covert actions taken by the Haganah to get arms and to smuggle Jews that survived the death camps into Israel.  I think the author recreates the sense of awe, fear and import of the events taking place to the participants.

If you’re interested in the period of history (well, it might not be history quite yet, but that’s yet another discussion), this book is worth finding and reading.

Revisions:

There are no revisions for this post.

Posted in Books, Tags: , ,

Leave a Reply