I was born in 1948 in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh and grew up in Jerusalem and New York. After service in the IDF Nahal - 1967-1969) I did a BA in European history and philosophy at the Hebrew University and a Ph.D. at Cambridge niversity in modern European history. Returning to Israel, I joined the Jerusalem Post, where I worked as a reporter and editor for 12 years. In 1997 I joined the faculty of Ben-Gurion University as an associate professor, where I have worked ever since. I have published nine books on Middle Eastern and European history, starting with The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988) and The Roots of Appeasement (1991). Most recently I lished 1948, A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008) and One State, Two States (2009). I have published articles, academic and others, in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek, The Guardian, Corriere della Sera, Middle Eastern Studies and The Middle East Journal.

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge University Press, 1988; ‘Am ‘Oved (Tel Aviv) (Hebrew), 1991; Dar al-Jalil (Amman) (Arabic), 1995

1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians, Oxford University Press, 1990; ‘Am ‘Oved (Tel Aviv) (Hebrew), 2000; Rizzoli (Milan) (Italian), 2004

The Roots of Appeasement, the British Weekly Press and Nazi Germany during the 1930s,  Frank Cass Ltd. (London), 1991

Israel’s Secret Wars, a History of Israel’s Intelligence Services  (co-authored with Ian Black), Weidenfeld\Grove 1991; Palmyra (Heidelberg) (German), 1994; Bonus (Prague) (Czech), 1996; Rizzoli (Milan) (Italian), 2003; forthcoming in Hebrew (Resling), 2011

Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956, Oxford University Press, 1993; ‘Am ‘Oved (Tel Aviv) (Hebrew), 1996; forthcoming in Italian (LEG), 2011

Righteous Victims, A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, Knopf (New York), 1999; ‘Am ‘Oved (Tel Aviv) (Hebrew), 2003; Editions Complexe (Brussels) (French), 2003; Rizzoli (Milan) (Italian), 2001

The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews, Tauris (London), 2002; ‘Am ‘Oved (Tel Aviv) (Hebrew), 2006

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, 2004; Rizzoli (Milan) (Italian), 2005; forthcoming in Arabic (Cairo), 2011

1948, A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, Yale University Press, 2008; Rizzoli (Milan) (Italian), 2007; in Hebrew, Am Oved, 2010

One State, Two States; Resolving the Israel\Palestine Conflict, Yale UP, 2009; Rizzoli (Italian), 2008

 Making Israel, a volume of essays on Israel’s historiographic debates, with contributions by Anita Shapira, Yoav Gelber, Mordechai Bar-On, Yehiam Weitz, Yossi Ben-Artzi,  Yaron Tsur, Avi Shlaim, Uri Ram, Moshe Lissak, and Mustafa Kabha (Michigan University Press, Ann Arbor, 2007)