Fifty years after Israel’s creation, Jews tend to believe that the Jewish state was born out of the Holocaust. But eminent historian Martin Gilbert dismisses the notion.
Zionist Jews are the ones who laid the groundwork, he asserts, not the Nazis.
“Israel was the result of a wonderful, creative movement,” said Gilbert, who came to the Bay Area earlier this month to promote his just-released book, “Israel: A History.”
In fact, Gilbert said, World War II probably pushed back the declaration of the state.
By 1947, for example, Zionists had already established 250 Jewish villages and Tel Aviv. And between the World Wars, these Jewish pioneers also built institutions that laid the foundation for a government.
Equally important to the creation, Gilbert said, was Britain’s desire to end its rule over unstable and dangerous Palestine — not its pity for the Holocaust survivors.
“We now are very conscious of the Holocaust,” Gilbert said in an interview in San Francisco. Back then, it was “almost a thing of the past.”
During his career at Oxford, the world-famous historian has written more than 50 books — most focused on Winston Churchill, the two World Wars, the Holocaust, Soviet Jews and the Middle East.
Now 61, the Londoner was knighted in 1995.
His new book begins in the late 1800s with the founding of the Zionist movement and ends in fall 1997 — as close to the present as a history book can get.
Gilbert himself has been personally caught up in Israel’s history. As a child, he joined Habonim, a Zionist youth movement.
Today, he considers himself a secular Jew — one with an intense interest in Israel. Since he first visited Israel in 1971, he has been back two or three times every year.
He has taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and serves on its board of governors. He is also a member of the international board of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial.
Despite such ties, Gilbert harrumphed and shook his head at the suggestion that his history books might be pro-Israel or gloss over the country’s faults.
“I believe there is such a thing as accurate history or true history,” he said. “I’ve tried in all my books to give the balance.”
In Israel’s first 50 years, Gilbert said, its leaders have made both laudable decisions that united the people and horrible mistakes that divided the society.
Israel’s best decisions, in Gilbert’s eyes, include those to declare statehood against all odds, to let all Jews automatically become citizens and to choose Hebrew as the national language.
Although those decisions seem obvious today, they weren’t predetermined.
First, Gilbert said, the decision to declare statehood in May 1948 was “remarkable.” David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister, made the choice almost entirely on his own.
The odds were against the Jews because five surrounding Arab armies had warned they would attack after any declaration of independence.
When Gilbert met with Ben-Gurion in 1970, Israel’s founder described how he’d been in London during the blitz of World War II. While there, Ben-Gurion learned that national spirit — not simply numbers — led to victory.
“It has a weight of its own,” Gilbert said.
Secondly, Zionism’s leaders originally planned to settle their future state with an elite, self-sufficient group of Zionist Jews. These leaders officially reversed course when they decided to open the doors to all Jews.
That decision led to the immigration of any Jew, including those who were poor, “backward” and “didn’t know one end of the spade from the other.” But it also solidified Israel as a Jewish state, instead of a Zionist one.
Thirdly, he said, choosing Hebrew as the national tongue “created unity through language” that made a huge difference over time.
The Jewish state’s official language could have been German, French, Russian, Yiddish or English, Gilbert said. Israel, he predicted, would have become a Tower of Babel.
Hebrew, in contrast, linked modern Jews back to the Bible, Gilbert said. “And it cemented the nationalism.”
According to Gilbert, Israeli leaders’ worst choices include merging religious and secular authority, invading Lebanon and marginalizing diaspora Jews.
Ben-Gurion made certain concessions to the religious establishment, but he never predicted that religious political parties would have “blackmail power” in the Knesset or that they would make “grotesque demands on the state,” Gilbert said.
Much closer to the present, Gilbert called the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 “a turning point from which Israel has not yet emerged.” The war was designed to destroy the power base of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Instead, the Jewish state has been mired in Lebanon for 16 years.
“It was the first and last war where Israel went and smashed people up,” he said. “It was a very traumatic and disturbing time.”
The last major mistake in Gilbert’s eyes was the sometimes vicious reaction to diaspora Jews.
“I think it’s always been so hard for Israelis. They’ve been so isolated,” he said, adding that they have lived under the pressure of Arab enemies, mandatory military service and hard economic times. The author said he believes Israelis resented Jews who lived abroad and didn’t face the same hardships.
Today, he said, animosity toward diaspora Jews is fading as Israel becomes economically stronger and Israelis begin to travel abroad more frequently.
Israelis, he said, “don’t feel quite so isolated or inferior.”