Abba Video:

		List Price: $59.95		Label: Homevision Salesrank: 49090 Released: June 24, 2003
		Our Price: $49.79
		Used Price: $46.00
		MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
This six-part chronicle of the birth and development of the Jewish state is hosted and narrated by former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Abba Eban, who also hosted Heritage: Civilization and the Jews. Eban, who played a pivotal role in realizing the dream of a Jewish state, points out that "the series is designed to provide an essential context to an inspiring human story."

Among those featured in interviews and rare archival footage are U.S. Presidents Harry Truman and Richard Nixon, and key leaders Winston Churchill, Anwar Sadat, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Rabin. Together with Eban's firsthand testimony, this series achieves a diverse perspective of both the Arab and Israeli experience. According to Eban, Israel: A Nation Is Born is a "depiction of the turbulent and dramatic history of Israel, through the conflicts and tensions of five decades, climaxing in the brighter prospects of Arab/Israeli peace."

Israel: A Nation Is Born Reviews:
From World War II, on
2009-02-05 - This is an excellent six-hour documentary series, beginning with the Holocaust and the loss of 6 million Jewish civilians during World War II---two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.

As one other reviewer noted, that is a disadvantage for the uninformed, for much background concerning World War I, and the subsequent peace accords is of great interest and importance in this story. Palestine, after all, was not the only Mandate established by the League of Nations. There were also mandates in Iraq, Syria and so on. Nor were the Jewish people the only ones who did not ultimately receive all they were promised by the League of Nations: World leaders also reneged upon the League's promises to the Armenians and the Kurds.

Moreover, there is a great deal missing from this series about the suffering of the one million Jewish people indigenous to the Middle East, that is, those were were expelled with virtually nothing from their homes in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Iran, Libya, Algeria and elsewhere in the Muslim World, beginning in about 1920---before the Jewish people assumed any realistic hope whatsoever of establishing a Jewish state.

Furthermore, virtually nothing is reported here about the perpetual Islamic jihad that began against the indigenous Jewish people of Palestine. For a video compilation of that information, one can turn to Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran, and The Revolt of Islam as well as Islam: What the West Needs to Know.

Having said that, however, the films narrated by Abba Eban are quite detailed and very informative on the periods covered, from World War II through 1990.

There are clips of Jewish people from the world over---and it should be noted that half the population of Israel hails from the Middle East and North Africa. If you have the misconception that Israel is a nation of European Jews, this film will certainly help to straighten you out on that score.

However, you should also make an effort to obtain the Silent Exodus as well as The Forgotten Refugees. (The latter is now available for free viewing on Google.)

Despite its shortcomings, this documentary series is excellent.

Very engrossing story of the birth of Israel and subsequent
2007-01-03 - This is a very engrossing story of the birth of Israel, the subsequent ingathering of the exiles, and the development of the young country.

Lightweight, and biased
2007-01-02 - Abba Eban clearly loves his own role in history, and focuses heavily on events that he was a part of -- there's more about Israel's struggles at the U.N. in the late 1940's than, say, the '48 war. But Eban glosses over events in a rather underhanded way. For example, in describing the "Altalena" boat affair, he simply states that the specific events were deeply traumatic for Israeli society in the years to come... but I think we could stand to hear that the Haganah/Palmach actually shot at and killed Jewish Irgun fighters who were bobbing helplessly in the water, and this happened long after the Altalena had waved the white flag of surrender. In this and other ways, Eban displays a shocking bias toward the left. It simply is not honest about the events that modern-day Jews ought to know about. Because of his tendency to overload the brief chapters with diplomatic initiatives, rather than focus on other aspects of Israeli history or the conflicts as they occured on the ground, this series ends up being rather lightweight. And it lacks the emotional 'umph' that it ought to have. Cold, dry, not-so-factual.


An inspiring series
2006-04-20 - This six-part series does a great job of telling the story of the rebirth of the State of Israel. There are interviews with and footage of so many historical and political figures, such as Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion, Yitzchak Rabin, Moshe Dayan, Anwar Sadat, King Hussein, Harry Truman, Abba Eban (the narrator), and Jimmy Carter. There are also interviews with Arabs living in Israel, among them Hanan Ashwari, whom I admire on one hand for her feminist work (esp. since it's not often you see such a prominent feminist in the Arab world) but also feel misgivings about because she's said a lot of anti-Israel things, as though Israel is almost 100% wrong and her own people are almost 100% right, with no gray area or just owning up to some of the basic historical facts presented in this series, instead of painting Israel as an evil monster that can do no right. It really disturbed me to see a poster of Arafat, the father of modern-day terrorism, on the wall behind her. The historical facts as presented here show the nation's miraculous rebirth, the struggle it had on its way to being reborn, all of the wars Israel has had waged against it over the years just to defend its existence (the first of which was waged against it when it had barely declared its independence), the anti-Israel bias demonstrated by the UN while at the same time turning a blind eye to terrorism and wars waged against it at every turn, the years when it has experienced peace and calm instead of constant terrorist attacks or preparations for war, what a good job it did of taking in so many immigrants (from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, Europe, Northern Africa, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and those who voluntarily came from Western nations as opposed to immigrating because they had no other choice), what really caused the refugee crisis among the Arabs who fled Israel in the wake of the War of Independence, political developments, and, yes, the fact that it has made some mistakes over the years. But even though the government has made some mistakes, as all governments have, it doesn't change the fact that in 70 years, it went from a sparsely-populated near-wasteland to a thriving modern nation with a huge population, many new citizens taken in and made a part of society, and saw the rebirth of Hebrew, the only language to date which has come back from the dead. I don't see how it could be called one-sided, since the historical facts and evidence support these things so strongly, contrary to the lies spun by the anti-Israel lobby. Sometimes there is only one right side. They even, as aforementioned, had a number of interviews with people who have a different perspective on things.

However, I do agree that for the uninitiated, it might seem a bit overwhelming, since it does kind of start in media res. Someone not incredibly familiar with Israeli history might indeed want a lot more background information to put it all in perspective and understand the meaning of these names, organizations, and Hebrew and Arabic terms. It might have been better had it begun in the wake of WWI instead of on the eve of WWII, since the events that happened in the interwar years were so instrumental in shaping the course of Israeli history and its struggle for rebirth. It isn't fair to assume that just because you're already intimately familiar with this material, all other viewers are too. One also wishes there were a fourth disc in the series, to cover everything that has happened since 1997, the final year covered. Still, all in all, there's a lot of great material here and it should leave the viewer wanting more, inspired to read more and to find more documentaries like this one.

Not for the beginner
2006-02-09 - I rented this DVD because of the glowing reviews here and because I wanted a better understanding of the origin of the modern problems in the Middle East. Overall, I was disappointed by this offering because it didn't give sufficient background and seemed to speak primarily to those who already had a knowledge of the subject. (It also seems to me to be *a bit* biased in Israel's favor vis-a-vis the Palestinians, but that flaw could be accepted and filtered appropriately.)

For instance, the documentary jumps right into the last Zionist Congress in 1939 (or whenever it was), but they never define what the Zionist movement is or where it came from. I know some of this from my reading, but it would be nice to have a summary here -- especially as it relates to the main players in the rest of the documentary. I wish the documentary would have at least started with WWI and the British occupation of Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, rather than picking up at WWII and mentioning some of the WWI details later. Doing so would have answered questions like, "Why are the British so important here?"

Another example is keeping track of the people, places, and organizations, which are often named in Hebrew or Arabic and are unfamiliar to the uninitiated. It made the sequence of events hard to follow because we had a hard time keeping track of who was doing what and where. Using more text on the screen, more maps, more recaps, and perhaps more English translations would have improved things greatly, methinks.

The film certainly has value, not least because it is told by a participant and first-hand observer, but it is not for those without much familiarity with the people, places, and issues at hand.