Uri Milstein

Uri Milstein (אורי מילשטיין; born 29 February 1940) is an Israeli historian and philosopher, specializing in military history.

Uri Milstein was born in Tel Aviv to Avraham Milstein, a volunteer in the British army in World War II, and Sarah Milstein, a kindergarten teacher.

His parents were among the founders of Kibbutz Afikim, and his father was a member of David Ben-Gurion's party; the Mapai, and on the "Haganah" (the leftist parties' defense organization).

His older brother was a member of the "Palmach".

Uri himself was a member of Mapai's youth party, HaTnuah HaMe'uchedet (The United Movement).

Milstein studied at Hayil school in Tel Aviv's Yad Eliyahu neighborhood, Hadassim youth village and a high school in Tel Aviv.

Milsteins favorite claim on Rabin is that he fled the battle he commanded on April 20, 1948, and that altogether, for his 54-year involvement in matters relating to Israel's security; "Rabin has not one known military action worthy of praise!"

Milstein established the Survival Institute and a book publishing house called "Survival".

After that, Milstein taught at the Ariel University Center of Samaria.

Milstein was one of the first academics to openly criticize the Israeli defense establishment.

He is described as being too extreme in his conclusions, but his “contribution to the knowledge is enormous (Milstein has been researching Israeli military history for over 50 years, and claims to have conducted thousands of interviews, and to have a total of 500 gigabytes of interviews and documents. )

When the judges asked him to elaborate he told of Yitzhak Rabin (then minister of defense) fleeing the battle he commanded on April 20, 1948 (the “blood convoy”).

The judges ignored his testimony and Rabin’s office refused to speak to journalists about it.

In 1958, he was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and served in the 890th Airborne Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade as a soldier, squad commander and combat medic.

Before being discharged, deputy commander of the brigade, Rafael Eitan, appointed him as the historian of the paratroopers.

He served as a medic in the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War, and did his reserve duty in the history department of the Israeli Air Force.

After completing his service in the IDF in 1960, he studied economics, philosophy and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He wrote his PhD on religion and legislation in Israel.

After the Six-Day War, he published War of the Paratroops, and at the beginning of 1973 he published a military history of the early days of Israeli statehood, By Blood and Fire Judea.

In 1974 he was relieved of his post as historian of the paratroopers by Yitzhak Mordechai, commander of Paratroop Brigade 35.

Milstein says this was on account of his publicizing his research on the "Battle of the Chinese Farm" in which Mordechai was involved.

Milstein is married to the actress Shifra (Ben David) Milstein, with whom he has two daughters.

His daughter Dalit is the co-founder and director of Notzar Theater.

In the 1980s, he taught military history at the IDF Command and Staff College.

In 1988 in Military Court in defense of the sentry from the “Night of the Gliders, Milstein testified that fleeing in the face of danger is a normal phenomenon, that even men who achieved high rank in the IDF acted thus.

In 1989, Milstein published the first volume of his series on the War of Independence, in which he alleged flawed functioning of commanders who were considered heroes in Israel.

Time Magazine assessed it as "the definitive history of the war".

Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University wrote then in The Jerusalem Post and later in Yedioth Ahronoth that until the publication of these books, all that had been written on the war was "a historical smear" and that only from these books is the true story being told.

Professor Louis Rene Beres of Purdue University, writing on the books, called them "a strategic asset for the state of Israel".

Only four of the planned twelve volumes had been published when publication was stopped in 1991.

Milstein blamed this on "pressure from Palmach veterans Yitzhak Rabin, Amos Chorev, Zvi Zamir, and others, who were harmed by the truth finally coming out".

Milstein is presently trying to raise the resources to continue publication himself.

In 1993, he published Crisis and Its Conclusion, criticizing the functioning of the IDF in the Yom Kippur War.

In 1995 he published The Rabin File: How the Myth Was Inflated about Yitzhak Rabin as a commander of the Palmach.

In 2010 he reprinted it as "Rabin's Way and Legacy" [in Hebrew] with some changes, and an additional volume dealing with Rabin's later years, and contributions from other authors about what they term "Rabin's real legacy".

In his introduction, Milstein writes: "as Rabin had so much influence on the people of Israel, I endeavor to understand as much about the man as I can, I will investigate everything that had an effect on him, his genealogy, his personal early life, and everything else".

Milstein writes that Rabin had a deprived childhood due to his parents-especially his mother- being preoccupied with their socialist

activism, and not showing him love and attention.

Milstein maintains that this caused Rabin to have an underdeveloped personality

and strong feelings of insecurity, which would manifest themselves throughout the life of Rabin the adult.