Philip Rubenstein
Israel’s Prime Ministers, Part 7: The Soldier and The Dreamer

The story of Yitzhak Rabin (1922–95) and Shimon Peres (1923–2016) is also the story of modern Israel. Reserved, disciplined, and deeply sceptical, Rabin represented the Israel forged through siege, war, and sacrifice. Urbane, ambitious, and future-oriented, Peres represented another Israel—one that sought legitimacy not only through military strength, but through regional transformation and peace. From the battlefields of 1948 to the bitter internal struggles that shattered Labour’s political supremacy, their rivalry became one of the defining dramas of Israeli public life. This lecture—the first of two in which they feature—traces their parallel journeys, from the founding generation of the state, through war, political upheaval in the 1970s, and uneasy cohabitation with Likud in the 1980s, before Oslo brought them together one final time in the 1990s for the dramatic gamble of peace.