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Abstract

This book focuses on bitter confrontations that agitated the Jewish and the
Israeli public of its time, from the period before the establishment of the
State of Israel until recent years.
Eight confrontations and controversies occurred over more than a century,
from 1903 to 2005. Although the events took place in different periods and
different places, in Israel and abroad, almost all of them involved dignitaries
as well as ordinary people who found themselves in the eye of the storm.
More than once a question arises: are we, the Jewish people, more
prone to confrontations and controversies, sometimes almost to the point of
bleeding? Probably, and maybe human nature, in general, brings people at
specific times, to lose common sense and courtesy and start fights, more than
once causing severe harm, sharp divisions and even destruction.
Three of the eight chapters of the book address the early period, before
the establishment of the State of Israel, but all the chapters are connected to
the Jewish National Movement, hence Zionism and the establishment of the
State of Israel: Theodor Herzl and his failed attempt to turn the Zionist ship
to Uganda instead of the land of Israel, even for a short time; the struggle
between the left and the right in the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in
Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel, and its two leaders
David Ben-Gurion and Ze’ev Jabotinsky (respectively), who astonishingly
almost found a common ground and signed a ‘peace agreement’ that was not
realized; and the stormy struggle in Tel Aviv after the death of the “father of
the city” Meir Dizengoff and the decision of the British authorities that led to
a solution. However, not everyone accepted it.
One chapter focuses on a media-related issue: the passionate journalistic
‘Putsch’. In 1948, the year of the War of Independence and the establishing
of the State of Israel, almost the entire staff of the newspaper “Yedioth
Ahronoth” resigned and then founded the competing newspaper “Ma’ariv”.
The confrontation between these two newspapers continued since then for
decades.
Four chapters introduce the reader to better-known subjects: relations
between religion and state – one of the most loaded and sensitive issues

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