Uri Milstein

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".

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

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

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. 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. Milstein claims that shortly before his death, at a gathering of ex-Palmach members (hosted by Micha Peri in Tel-Aviv) Rabin admitted fleeing the battle.

In "Rabin's Way and Legacy" Milstein writes in the prologue: "Even if we hadn't known that Rabin fled the battlefield he commanded on April 20, 1948, that he was fired from all his active military commands in Israel's Independence War, and that he received electric shocks in a psychiatric hospital in May 1967, even so we would have to follow the principle of Rene Descartes: I think (question), therefore I am (Cogito ergo sum), or to the motto of the Royal Society "Do not believe the words of man"(nullius in verba)." Milstein maintains that Rabin, long revered as "Mr. Defense" and "The Warrior Par Excellence" achieved nothing militarily, knew nothing about economics, and had violent confrontations with his wife.

Milstein is a supporter of the thesis that the Soviet Union intended to assault Germany in 1941. [Milstein explains his involvement in this by saying that due to the way his own research was ignored when it led to provocative revelations,(which was most of the time,) he developed an interest in research that upset the common wisdom-and got ignored.]

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