TV REVIEWS : Eban’s ‘Israel’ Balances Insider’s Passion, Analysis

Suddenly, public television is providing a crash course in the politics and history of the Middle East in the 20th Century. While the subject of “The Prize” entailed the global reach and impact of oil, its center was the volatile Levant. And now, with the five-hour “Israel: A Nation Is Born With Abba Eban” (at 1 p.m. Sunday on KCET-TV Channel 28), the heart of Middle East turmoil is explored with an uncommon humanistic breadth.

What might seem a great limitation here--Israeli history seen through the eyes of one man--is in fact a vital strength. Eban balances the passions of a patriot with the analysis of a political historian, and blends his long involvement in Israel’s diplomatic struggles with a storyteller’s skill at distilling a hash of details into a driving, compelling narrative. This is unashamedly personal history, but also history without xenophobic defensiveness or apology, history with the long view.

As Eban takes us chronologically from the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust to the postwar call for a Jewish state and the creation and defense of Israel against profound odds, we realize that the luck of Israel’s birth mirrors the luck of the United States’ own. Both countries were founded by gifted leaders, and if David Ben-Gurion was Israel’s Washington, Eban was the country’s Benjamin Franklin, the diplomat and wise man.

Eban’s story is largely a vast diplomatic history, defined by Israel’s impact on its Arab neighbors, and the Arabs’ uneven reaction to the Jewish state. The early hours of the program are especially revealing in the detailed telling of Arab attacks on the new country within 24 hours of its founding, and how Israel’s defense was largely a case of people armed more with fresh memories of the Holocaust than with weapons.

Since Eban’s focus is on foreign policy, the country’s rapid internal development from agricultural country into a prosperous, high-tech society is shunted to the background. But Eban shows that Israel’s special international role proved critical in the exiting of England and France as superpowers, and the entrance of the United States as central to Israel’s existence.

With his insider’s view curtailed in recent years when his own Labor party played the opposition to the ruling Likud-led coalition, he openly condemns the tragic attacks led by defense chief Ariel Sharon against Palestinian forces in Lebanon. And while Eban avoids recommending his own solution to the question of a Palestinian homeland, he suggests that some kind of solution is a moral imperative for a country founded on moral grounds.