The Myths of Zionism

The Myths of Zionism PDF Author: John Rose
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This is a controversial book. It is a critical account of the historical, political and cultural roots of Zionism. John Rose shows how this powerful political force is based in mythology; ancient, medieval and modern. Many of these stories, as with other mythologies, have no basis in fact. However, because Zionism is a living political force, these myths have been used to justify very real and political ends -- namely, the expulsion and continuing persecution of the Palestinians. Chapter-by-chapter, John Rose scrutinises the roots of the myths of Zionism. Mobilising recent scholarship, he separates fact from fiction presenting a detailed analysis of their origins and development. This includes a challenge to Zionism's biblical claims using very recent and very startling Israeli archaeological conclusions. He provides a detailed exploration of Judaism's links to the Middle East. He shows clearly that Zionism makes many false claims on Jewish religion and history. He questions its rationale as a response to European anti-Semitism, and shows that, if there is ever to be peace and reconciliation in the land of Palestine, this intellectual dishonesty must be addressed.

The Myths of Zionism

The Myths of Zionism PDF Author: John Rose
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a controversial book. It is a critical account of the historical, political and cultural roots of Zionism. John Rose shows how this powerful political force is based in mythology; ancient, medieval and modern. Many of these stories, as with other mythologies, have no basis in fact. However, because Zionism is a living political force, these myths have been used to justify very real and political ends -- namely, the expulsion and continuing persecution of the Palestinians. Chapter-by-chapter, John Rose scrutinises the roots of the myths of Zionism. Mobilising recent scholarship, he separates fact from fiction presenting a detailed analysis of their origins and development. This includes a challenge to Zionism's biblical claims using very recent and very startling Israeli archaeological conclusions. He provides a detailed exploration of Judaism's links to the Middle East. He shows clearly that Zionism makes many false claims on Jewish religion and history. He questions its rationale as a response to European anti-Semitism, and shows that, if there is ever to be peace and reconciliation in the land of Palestine, this intellectual dishonesty must be addressed.

Parting Ways

Parting Ways PDF Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231517955
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Judith Butler follows Edward Said's late suggestion that through a consideration of Palestinian dispossession in relation to Jewish diasporic traditions a new ethos can be forged for a one-state solution. Butler engages Jewish philosophical positions to articulate a critique of political Zionism and its practices of illegitimate state violence, nationalism, and state-sponsored racism. At the same time, she moves beyond communitarian frameworks, including Jewish ones, that fail to arrive at a radical democratic notion of political cohabitation. Butler engages thinkers such as Edward Said, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Mahmoud Darwish as she articulates a new political ethic. In her view, it is as important to dispute Israel's claim to represent the Jewish people as it is to show that a narrowly Jewish framework cannot suffice as a basis for an ultimate critique of Zionism. She promotes an ethical position in which the obligations of cohabitation do not derive from cultural sameness but from the unchosen character of social plurality. Recovering the arguments of Jewish thinkers who offered criticisms of Zionism or whose work could be used for such a purpose, Butler disputes the specific charge of anti-Semitic self-hatred often leveled against Jewish critiques of Israel. Her political ethic relies on a vision of cohabitation that thinks anew about binationalism and exposes the limits of a communitarian framework to overcome the colonial legacy of Zionism. Her own engagements with Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish form an important point of departure and conclusion for her engagement with some key forms of thought derived in part from Jewish resources, but always in relation to the non-Jew. Butler considers the rights of the dispossessed, the necessity of plural cohabitation, and the dangers of arbitrary state violence, showing how they can be extended to a critique of Zionism, even when that is not their explicit aim. She revisits and affirms Edward Said's late proposals for a one-state solution within the ethos of binationalism. Butler's startling suggestion: Jewish ethics not only demand a critique of Zionism, but must transcend its exclusive Jewishness in order to realize the ethical and political ideals of living together in radical democracy.

Zionism

Zionism PDF Author: Milton Viorst
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250078008
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
From serving as the Middle East correspondent for The New Yorker to penning articles for the New York Times, Milton Viorst has dedicated his career to studying the Middle East. Now, in this new book, Viorst examines the evolution of Zionism, from its roots by serving as a cultural refuge for Europe's Jews, to the cover it provides today for Israel's exercise of control over millions of Arabs in occupied territories. Beginning with the shattering of the traditional Jewish society during the Enlightenment, Viorst covers the recent history of the Jews, from the spread of Jewish Emancipation during the French Revolution Era to the rise of the exclusionary anti-Semitism that overwhelmed Europe in the late nineteenth century. Viorst examines how Zionism was born and follows its development through the lives and ideas of its dominant leaders, who all held only one tenet in common: that Jews, for the first time in two millennia, must determine their own destiny to save themselves. But, in regards to creating a Jewish state with a military that dominates the region, Viorst argues that Israel has squandered the goodwill it enjoyed at its founding, and thus the country has put its own future on very uncertain footing. With the expertise and knowledge garnered from decades of studying this contentious region, Milton Viorst deftly exposes the risks that Israel faces today.

Zionism

Zionism PDF Author: Michael Brenner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781558765368
Category : Zionism
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
This title presents a comprehensive overview of the political movement that culminated in the state of Israel. The book explores the origins of Zionism within Jewish tradition, the variety of Zionist ideologies, and the political circumstances that fostered this movement.

The Crisis of Zionism

The Crisis of Zionism PDF Author: Peter Beinart
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
ISBN: 0522861768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organisations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream, the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals, may die. In The Crisis of Zionism, Peter Beinart lays out in chilling detail the looming danger to Israeli democracy and the American Jewish establishment's refusal to confront it. And he offers a fascinating, groundbreaking portrait of the two leaders at the centre of the crisis: Barack Obama, America's first 'Jewish president', a man steeped in the liberalism he learned from his many Jewish friends and mentors in Chicago; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who considers liberalism the Jewish people's special curse. These two men embody fundamentally different visions, not just of American and Israeli national interests, but of the mission of the Jewish people itself. Beinart concludes with provocative proposals for how the relationship between American Jews and Israel must change, and with an eloquent and moving appeal for American Jews to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.

The Jewish Radical Right

The Jewish Radical Right PDF Author: Eran Kaplan
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299203832
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The Jewish Radical Right is the first comprehensive analysis of Zionist Revisionist thought in the 1920s and 1930s, and of its ideological legacy in modern-day Israel. The Revisionists, under the leadership of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, offered a radical view of Jewish history and a revolutionary vision for its future. Using new archival material, Eran Kaplan examines the intellectual and cultural origins of the Zionist and Israeli Right, when Revisionism evolved into one of the most important movements in the Zionist camp. He presents revisionism as a form of integral nationalism, rooted in an ontological monism and intellectually related to the radical right-wing ideologies that flourished in the early twentieth century. Kaplan provocatively suggests that revisionism's legacies can be found both in the right-wing policies of Likud and in the heart of Post Zionism and its critique of mainstream (Labor) Zionism. Published with support from the Koret Jewish Studies Program

The Returns of Zionism

The Returns of Zionism PDF Author: Gabriel Piterberg
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789603978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
In this original and wide-ranging study, Gabriel Piterberg examines theideology and literature behind the colonization of Palestine, from the latenineteenth century to the present. Exploring Zionism's origins in Central-EasternEuropean nationalism and settler movements, he shows how its texts can beplaced within a wider discourse of western colonization. Revisiting the work ofTheodor Herzl and Gershom Scholem, Anita Shapira and David Ben-Gurion, andbringing to light the writings of lesser-known scholars and thinkersinfluential in the formation of the Zionist myth, Piterberg breaks openprevailing views of Zionism, demonstrating that it was in fact unexceptional,expressing a consciousness and imagination typical of colonial settlermovements. Shaped by European ideological currents and the realities ofcolonial life, Zionism constructed its own story as a unique and impregnableone, in the process excluding the voices of an indigenous people-thePalestinian Arabs.

A Threat from Within

A Threat from Within PDF Author:
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." These words by the poet Leonard Cohen could aptly describe this book, which takes history as a witness to the exceptional nature of Zionism in Jewish history. It explains many points of discord between the political ideology of Zionism and what most people consider Judaism. It also shows how Jewish traditional conscience offers a hope for the solution of the Middle East crisis. The conflicts in Israel/Palestine acquire a different meaning when seen in the context of Jewish opposition to Zionism. This book has attracted Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike who find this story inspiring in today's world of mobile identities.

A Land With a People

A Land With a People PDF Author: Esther Farmer
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583679308
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"A Land With A People began as a storytelling project of Jewish Voice for Peace-New York City and subsequently transformed into a theater project performed throughout the New York City area. A Land With A People elevates rarely heard Palestinian and Jewish voices and visions. It brings us the narratives of secular, Muslim, Christian, and LGBTQ Palestinians who endure the particular brand of settler colonialism known as Zionism. It relays the transformational journeys of Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Palestinian and LGBTQ Jews who have come to reject the received Zionist narrative. Unflinching in their confrontation of the power dynamics that underlie their transformation process, these writers find the courage to face what has happened to historic Palestine, and to their own families as a result. Stories touch hearts, open minds, and transform our understanding of the "other"-as well as comprehension of our own roles and responsibilities. A Land With a People emerges from this reckoning. Contextualized by a detailed historical introduction and timeline charting 150 years of Palestinian and Jewish resistance to Zionism, this collection will stir emotions, provoke fresh thinking, and point to a more hopeful, loving future-one in which Palestine/Israel is seen for what it is in its entirety, as well as for what it can be"--

Deconstructing Zionism

Deconstructing Zionism PDF Author: Gianni Vattimo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441115560
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This volume in the Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series provides a political and philosophical critique of Zionism. While other nationalisms seem to have adapted to twenty-first century realities and shifting notions of state and nation, Zionism has largely remained tethered to a nineteenth century mentality, including the glorification of the state as the only means of expressing the spirit of the people. These essays, contributed by eminent international thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Gianni Vattimo, Walter Mignolo, Marc Ellis, and others, deconstruct the political-metaphysical myths that are the framework for the existence of Israel.Collectively, they offer a multifaceted critique of the metaphysical, theological, and onto-political grounds of the Zionist project and the economic, geopolitical, and cultural outcomes of these foundations. A significant contribution to the debates surrounding the state of Israel today, this groundbreaking work will appeal to anyone interested in political theory, philosophy, Jewish thought, and the Middle East conflict.