Author: Shabtai B. Beit-Zv

Shabtai B. Beit-Zvi (1906-1994) was born in Lithuania in 1906. He studied electric engineering and worked as an engineer in Russia. In 1947, he immigrated with his family to Palestine. After his son, Zvi, fell in battle during the 1948 war, he changed his last name to Beit-Zvi. At the end of the 1950s, he realized that Israeli society, the Israeli authorities and the Zionist movement put the narrow interest of the struggle over the land of Israel above the importance of helping and rescuing Diaspora Jews, whenever they felt these two interests are opposed. This motivated him to investigate the roots of this narrow Zionist approach. He also studied the Holocaust's historiography written by the research authorities in Israel. He found what he called "an aimed tendentiousness" in the history written by these researchers. In 1977, after a long research of about 20 years, he published his results in a Hebrew version text. After its publication, the book was ignored by the Israeli academic establishment. However, in the early 1990s, researchers started to give the book more recognition, leading to publication of an English version on 1991.