RABIN OF ISRAEL

A new and significantly expanded edition of Time correspondent Slater's 1977 biography (not reviewed) of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's past and present prime minister. About half of the text is new, as Slater (Warrior Statesman, 1991, etc.) covers Rabin's political exile in the late 70's; his stint as Israel's defense minister in the 80's; his triumphant return to power in 1992; and the dramatic first six months of his new government. Earlier chapters trace the career of Rabin from the 1948 War of Independence onward. As the triumphant hero of the Six-Day War in June 1967, Rabin went on to become a successful ambassador in Washington, and, when he replaced Golda Meir as prime minster in June 1974, became Israel's first sabra (``native-born'') prime minister. Replete with anecdotes based on interviews with ``two hundred people who have known Rabin at various stages of his life,'' and containing interviews with Rabin and members of his immediate family, a sympathetic portrait emerges here of a complex but sincere human being. Slater sees Rabin as a major voice of reality in Israeli politics, one who dares to change an unworkable status quo: ``I've learned,'' he quotes Rabin as saying in 1988, ``[that] you can't rule by force over one and a half million Palestinians.'' Slater's admirable and admiring portrait of Rabin contends that only this ruffled but proud bird, this hawkish dove, can deliver the olive branch to the contentious Middle East. (Eight pages of photographs—not seen)