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A life in Zionism

为犹太复国主义终其一生

英文部分选自经济学人190824Books and arts版块

A life in Zionism

为犹太复国主义终其一生

注：一个国家(以色列）在其灭国1900年后还能复国，这在世界上是绝无仅有的。小编推荐大家阅读两本相对比较通俗的书《丝绸之路》和《耶路撒冷三千年》

The price of power

权力的代价

A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion. By Tom Segev. Translated by Haim Watzman.Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 816 pages; $40. Head of Zeus; £30

He cut an unprepossessing figure: short, with a large head and a squeaky voice. Self-centred and humourless, he used people, including women, then discarded them. He was dogged by self-doubt.

他的外表不讨喜：身材矮小、头颅硕大、嗓门尖利。他以自我为中心、不言苟笑，善于利用人，包括女人，然后用完就抛弃。同时他还长期深陷在自我怀疑中。

How David Ben-Gurion, a flawed and in many ways unattractive man, created the state of Israel is the theme of Tom Segev’s fascinating biography. Ben-Gurion’s career began unpromisingly. Born in 1886, he grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family in tsarist Poland; his mother died when he was 11, leaving him introverted and aimless. Zionism, then in its infancy, rescued him, giving him a purpose—and an escape from a stiflingly dull provincial town.

汤姆•塞格夫这本传记围绕本-古里安展开，精彩地讲述了这个平淡无奇且浑身是缺点的男人创造以色列的过程。古里安的起步并不辉煌。1886年，古里安出生在讲意第绪语的波兰统治者家庭；11岁丧母后的古里安很内向，也没有生活的目标。但是方兴未艾的犹太复国主义挽回了他，不仅给了他生活的目标——还让他得以逃离沉闷得令人窒息的蔽塞之地。

The story takes off when, not yet 20, Ben-Gurion arrives in Palestine in 1906. Life for the early Zionist settlers was hard, and he was not cut out for it. His route to power was as a brilliant labour leader. The trade-union federation that he helped establish, the Histadrut, became an essential building-block of the future Jewish state.

故事开始于1906年，不到20岁的本-古里安来到巴勒斯坦。早期复国主义者在那里的生活艰难，本-古里也无意于投身于此。他迈向权力的道路是通过成为一名优秀的工党领袖。在他的努力下以色列总工会得以建立，为今后建立一个犹太民族的国家奠定了坚实基础。

Mr Segev is one of Israel’s “new historians”, who have stripped away the mythology around its birth. One legend that he skewers is that Ben-Gurion believed in the possibility of peace with the Arabs. “There is no solution,” he declared as early as 1919; the Arabs wanted Palestine as their state, the Zionists wanted it as theirs. The answer to Arab hostility lay not in compromise but military strength. Though he paid lip-service to peace initiatives, he never changed his mind. When war came in 1948, he hoped for a state containing as few Arabs as possible. If they fled, fine; if they had to be expelled, so be it. In public he sought to justify Israel’s actions (and his own) during the fighting. Privately, says Mr Segev, the Arab exodus haunted him: it was the moral ambiguity at the heart of Israel’s existence.

作者塞格夫先生是一位以色列“新生代历史学家”。他们把围绕犹太国诞生前后的种种历史传说从历史中剥离开来。例如，赛格夫否定了一个关于本-古里安曾相信犹太人和阿拉伯人能和谐共处的传说。早在1919年，本-古里安就宣称“二者的矛盾不可调和”，因为阿拉伯人想在巴勒斯坦建国，而犹太复国主义者则希望建立自己的国家。唯有军事铁拳，而非妥协，才能应对阿拉伯人的敌意。虽然口头表示希望和平，但本-古里安的决心从未改变。1948年，第一次中东战争爆发，他的预想是尽可能驱逐阿拉伯人。如果阿拉伯人自动逃离，就让他们走；如果必须用武力驱逐，那就用武力解决。公开场合，他都努力维护以色列（和他自己）的行为。然而，据塞格夫先生所说，阿拉伯人的大批撤离令他惴惴不安：以色列建国从本质上说在道义上是模棱两可的。

注：

1.犹太复国主义（Zionism），又称锡安运动，得名于耶路撒冷的古称“锡安”（Zion），兴起于19世纪下半叶的中东欧地区，目标是在犹太人故地（希伯来语：Eretz Yisra’el，以色列之地）巴勒斯坦建立犹太民族国家。

参考链接：https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism

2.Lip-service: 口头支持

3.Skewer：to criticize or ridicule sharply and effectively（原意：烤肉叉）（Defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary）

第一次中东战争：为一起由1947年联合国大会181号决议引起的矛盾冲突。1948年5月15日开始，以色列和阿拉伯国家之间为争夺巴勒斯坦爆发第一次中东战争，以色列获胜后建国，96万巴勒斯坦人逃离家园。以色列宣称对巴勒斯坦拥有主权，其中一条理由是因为以色列人的祖先曾在巴勒斯坦生活过，于是便有了后文的“道义上站不住脚”一说。

参考链接：https://baike.so.com/doc/5398982-5636452.html

Ben-Gurion dominated the new country’s politics into old age; his two stints as prime minister amounted to over 13 years. Mr Segev describes the fierce opposition to two of his most important policies—securing German reparations for the Holocaust and launching a nuclear-weapons programme. His achievements and energy were undeniable—but so were his failings. He had an authoritarian streak, wanting, in Mr Segev’s words, to be a “Zionist Lenin”. Politics took precedence over everything. He treated Paula, his wife, shabbily; so distant was he from his family that he repeatedly asked his son how old he was. He had a chip on his shoulder because, unlike the rest of the Zionist elite, he lacked a university degree. A restless autodidact, he collected diverse books in several languages.

一直到老，本-古里安都掌控着新生国家的政权，他曾连任两届总理，共13年。塞格夫先生在书中阐述了对本-古里安所施行的两项最重要的政策的大力反对——这两个政策是要求德国对二战时期的大屠杀向以色列赔款和启动核武器计划。但是本-古里安的充沛精力和成就正式和他的过失一样都是无法否认的。塞格夫先生认为，他有独裁者的倾向，希望成为“犹太人的列宁”。政治对他而言比什么都重要。他对妻子宝拉很差，与家人也非常疏远，他甚至曾反反复复的问他儿子多大了。他动不动就会发脾气，因为在众多犹太复国运动的精英当中，只有他没念完大学。但他一直刻苦自学，收集不同语言的各式各样的书籍。

The dilemma of every biographer is what to put in and what to leave out. Mr Segev’s focus is on Zionism and its politics; the Arabs are mostly present as a problem, the British hardly at all. (His earlier book, “One Palestine, Complete”, superbly evokes the years of British rule.) Even at more than 800 pages, the author has evidently found it hard to squeeze everything that matters into “A State at Any Cost”. The result, though, is a masterly portrait of a titanic yet unfulfilled man. If others paid a price for Zionism’s success—the Arabs, his family, the rivals he crushed—Ben-Gurion did, too. This is a gripping study of power, and the loneliness of power.

每一位传记作者都会面临取舍的难题。塞格夫先生把重点放在了犹太复国主义和围绕复国主义的政治问题上，书中主人公面对的主要敌人是阿拉伯人，而不是英国人。（作者早先的著作《只有一个完整的巴勒斯坦》则详细描述了英国统治的岁月）。作者发现，即便写了八百多页，但《孤注一掷的建国》仍然做不到面面俱到。尽管如此，这部作品仍然将这位伟大却又壮志未酬的领袖刻画得淋漓尽致。如果说有人为犹太建国付出了代价——比如阿拉伯人、本-古里安的家人以及被本-古里安消灭的敌人——那他自己也同样出除了代价。作者对权力的探索引人入胜，同时也揭示了权利背后的孤独。

翻译组：

Frank，男，小硕，经济学人的死侍

Nikolai，子承父业，蛋糕厂员工，AKB49

校核组：

Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译

Helen，女，坐标武汉，职业翻译，翻硕已毕业英语二笔二口，爱好陶笛洞箫古诗词