How My Grandmother Prevented a Civil War

In the winter of 1948, only a few months before the establishment of the State of Israel, the tension mounted between the Haganah and the Irgun, two competing bands of Zionist freedom fighters. When the corpse of Irgun fighter Yedidya Segal was discovered at the foot of Mount Carmel, the Irgun accused the Haganah of murder. It would not have taken much for the incident to trigger a bloody civil war, even with the Arab enemy on the threshold. But Yedidya's bereaved mother begged the would-be avengers to lay down their arms. Nearly seven decades after the tragedy, journalist Haggai Segal, Yedidya's nephew, reopened the case. Now the full story -- which involves well-known figures who led and shaped Israel -- has finally come to light.