Today there are two seemingly mutually exclusive notions of what “the Jews” are: either a religion or a nation/ethnicity. The widespread conception is that the Jews were formerly either a religious community in exile or a nation based on Jewish ethnicity. The latter position is commonly known as Zionism, and all articulations of a political theory of Zionism are taken to be variations of that view. In this provocative book, based on his decades...

"Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as a Zionist, the word connotates liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived for...

First published in German in 1896, "The Jewish State" is the important political treatise arguing in favor of creating an independent Jewish country by Theodor Herzl, the Austro-Hungarian playwright, journalist and political activist. Herzel was born in 1860 in Budapest, Hungary, and raised by an Orthodox Jewish father and an unobservant Jewish mother. He became the founder of the World Zionist Organization and was such an influential figure in the...

The Oldest Guard tells the story of Zionist settler memory in and around the private Jewish agricultural colonies (moshavot) established in late nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine. Though they grew into the backbone of lucrative citrus and wine industries of mandate Palestine and Israel, absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants, and became known as the "first wave" (First Aliyah) of Zionist settlement, these communities have been regarded-and...

Offers a novel exploration of the relationship between religion and the state in Israel. The question of Jewish sovereignty shapes Jewish identity in Israel, the status of non-Jews, and relations between Israeli and Diaspora Jews, yet its consequences remain enigmatic. In Sovereign Jews, Yaacov Yadgar highlights the shortcomings of mainstream discourse and offers a novel explanation of Zionist ideology and the Israeli polity. Yadgar argues that secularism's...

Comprehensive and critical analysis of the post-Zionist debates and their impact on various aspects of Israeli culture. Post-Zionism emerged as an intellectual and cultural movement in the late 1980s when a growing number of people inside and outside academia felt that Zionism, as a political ideology, had outlived its usefulness. The post-Zionist critique attempted to expose the core tenets of Zionist ideology and the way this ideology was used,...

Nitzan Lebovic claims that political melancholy is the defining trait of a generation of Israelis born between the 1960s and 1990s. This cohort came of age during wars, occupation and intifada, cultural conflict, and the failure of the Oslo Accords. The atmosphere of militarism and conservative state politics left little room for democratic opposition or dissent. Lebovic and others depict the failure to respond not only as a result of institutional...

Widely respected as a civil libertarian, legal educator, and defense attorney extraordinaire, Alan M. Dershowitz has also been a passionate though not uncritical supporter of Israel. In this book, he presents an ardent defense of Israel's rights, supported by indisputable evidence. Dershowitz takes a close look at what Israel's accusers and detractors are saying about this war-torn country. He accuses those who attack Israel of international bigotry...

"Operation Protective Edge, Israel's most recent assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure the United States and Israel to end their human...

Jacqueline Rose is Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, States of Fantasy, the novel Albertine, and On Not Being Able to Sleep: Psychoanalysis in the Modern World (Princeton). Zionism was inspired as a movement--one driven by the search for a homeland for the stateless and persecuted Jewish people. Yet it trampled the rights of the Arabs in Palestine. Today it has become so controversial...