Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis Between the U.S. and Israel
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. 320 pages. Illus., maps, index, slight wear and soiling to DJ. Moshe Arens (born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli aeronautical engineer, researcher and former diplomat and Likud politician. During World War II, Arens served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers as a technical sergeant. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, Arens moved to the new State of Israel and joined the Irgun. In March 1949, he returned to Israel, and became a founding member of the Herut party, which had grown out of the Irgun. He began working as an engineer for an American company dealing in designing water systems for Tel Aviv. From 1962 until 1971 he was a Deputy Director General at Israel Aircraft Industries, where he was in charge of most major development projects, including the Kfir fighter jet project. In 1971, he won the Israel Defense Prize. A member of the Knesset between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens has also served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. Inscribed to Ida Lee, perhaps the person a Virginia recreation center was named after and/or Ida Lee the actress, known for Grandmother's House (1988), Defending Your Life (1991) and Guncrazy (1992). Extract from Kirkus reviews: "Arens, a former Israeli foreign minister, has written an embittered but insightful and illuminating book about what he, as a conservative, sees as a severe breach of faith. The party that broke its covenant with Israel was the current protector of the Jewish state, the United States. When Arens arrived in Washington in 1981 as the Likud party's newly appointed ambassador to the US, he was determined to communicate the Begin government's message with conviction. Upon meeting President Reagan, he felt like he was with an old friend. When Israel bombed Iraq's reactor in 1981, Baker and Bush contemplated punitive measures, and did likewise when Israel invaded Lebanon a year later. And so the stage was set for what Arens feels was a radical deterioration in relations when Bush became president and Baker secretary of state. Arens writes that the Bush administration tried to muscle the Likud government into concessions to the Palestinians. As Arens sees it, this amounted to unprecedented interference in Israeli domestic affairs and was responsible for Labor's victory over Likud in 1992--but also, ironically, for Clinton's victory over Bush the same year, because of defections among US Jews from the Republican camp. A former engineer who was largely responsible for the creation of Israel's formidable aerospace industry and who served as a technical adviser to several Labor governments even as he was rising in Likud, Arens is as good a guide as any to the small, often claustrophobic world of Israeli politics. Animated by a sense of betrayal, Arens makes penetrating observations about political leaders and situations, and historical conundrums." Condition: Very good / very good.
Keywords: Foreign Policy, Israel, James Baker, Likud, Richard Cheney, George Bush, PLO, Gulf War, Signed, Palestine Liberation Organization, Terrorism, Abd el-Meguid, Camp David Accords, Jews, Zionism, David Levy, Shimon Peres, Peace Process, Yitzhak Rabin, Yi
ISBN: 0671869647
[Book #56379]
Price: $100.00