Sublime

Using this alternate route, the Harel Brigade (under the command of Yitzhak Rabin, then twenty-six years old) succeeded in resupplying and defending the western parts of the city—but they were still unable to recapture the Old City.

“Even unavoidable occupation is corrupting occupation,” he wrote soon after the war in a column for Davar, then the Labor Party newspaper. It was a position he would espouse, along with other Israeli novelists like David Grossman, for decades.*

AFTER QIBYA, CONDEMNATIONS POURED in from across the globe, including from the American Jewish community.13 But Ben-Gurion was unmoved. When the prime minister called Sharon in to discuss the details of the notorious night, Sharon recalled Ben-Gurion’s reaction: “It doesn’t make any real difference what will be said about Qibya around the world. Th

Shimon Peres, who had long had a bitter rivalry with Rabin over leadership of the Labor party, became acting prime minister upon Rabin’s death.