Download or read book The Dark Side of Zionism written by Baylis Thomas and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dark Side of Zionism: Israel's Quest for Security through Dominance arises out of the scholarship of the 'new historians, ' a group of mostly Israeli scholars who have uncovered a history widely ignored in the popular media. Baylis Thomas argues that both the early Zionists and, later, the Israelis sought their security through the military domination of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. This strategy required both avoiding negotiations with the Palestinian-Arabs and provoking the weak Arab states-opposed to the Israeli takeover of Palestine-into entering wars they would lose. The role of British imperial power was crucial in this early history, as was the later U.S. support of Israel, right or wrong. Thomas explores the larger context of this history in chapters on colonization, hegemony, weapons diplomacy, terrorism, nationalism, religion, Zionism, and prospects for resolution of the conflict. While students and scholars of Middle Eastern studies and international relations will find this book valuable, it is intended for the intelligent general reader who is curious about current events yet puzzled about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel's national identity, founded on the memory of being victims of the Holocaust, focuses on current events that seem consistent with the past, even as the nation uses force to thwart Palestinian national aspirations. The Dark Side of Zionism argues that peace for both Israelis and Palestinians can only come if Israel relinquishes military rule.
Download or read book How Israel was Won written by Baylis Thomas and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the only book you need in order to comprehend the complexities of the modern Middle East. Unlike most writing on the Arab-Israeli conflict, How Israel Was lion is a balanced, well researched, and insightful chronicle of Israel in the twentieth century. Baylis Thomas's concise history synthesizes for the general reader the vast number of historical studies and recently declassified documents from the United States and Israel to create a sophisticated and completely original interpretation of this conflict. The narrative reveals the complex story behind Israel's founding, its early struggle for survival, and its movements toward reconciliation with its Arab neighbors. Thomas also investigates the critical roles played by Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, and he explores the political and psychological attitudes of the protagonists and of the international community. How Israel Was Won is the most current and most accessible account of the Arab-Israeli conflict written to date. To understand the events behind tonight's breaking news in the Middle East, read this book.
Download or read book Original Sins written by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and published by Olive Branch Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting from a non-idealizing, non-demonological review of Judaism, Jewish history and anti-Semitism, this book presents a sympathetic analysis of the development of political Zionism - and goes on to show how a dream can become both a living reality and a nightmare. While Beit-Hallahmi does not fault the idea of a Jewish state in the abstract, he shows how Zionism in practice and power becomes a kind of settler colonialism trying to ignore its victims - the Palestinians. The purpose of Original Sins is to counter the mystification on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict, to examine causes and principles, and to reach an analysis of the current political and moral crisis, in search for a solution to end the suffering on both sides.
Download or read book The Crisis of Zionism written by Peter Beinart and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book My Promised Land written by Ari Shavit and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today Not since Thomas L. Friedman’s groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land. Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family’s story, illuminating the pivotal moments of the Zionist century to tell a riveting narrative that is larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and national, both deeply human and of profound historical dimension. We meet Shavit’s great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine’s booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe’s Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv’s booming club scene; and today’s architects of Israel’s foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country. As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape. Praise for My Promised Land “This book will sweep you up in its narrative force and not let go of you until it is done. [Shavit’s] accomplishment is so unlikely, so total . . . that it makes you believe anything is possible, even, God help us, peace in the Middle East.”—Simon Schama, Financial Times “[A] must-read book.”—Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times “Important and powerful . . . the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read.”—Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times Book Review “Spellbinding . . . Shavit’s prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear.”—The Economist “One of the most nuanced and challenging books written on Israel in years.”—The Wall Street Journal
Download or read book God s Country written by Samuel Goldman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is Israel's closest ally in the world. The fact is undeniable, and undeniably controversial, not least because it so often inspires conspiracy theorizing among those who refuse to believe that the special relationship serves America's strategic interests or places the United States on the right side of Israel's enduring conflict with the Palestinians. Some point to the nefarious influence of a powerful "Israel lobby" within the halls of Congress. Others detect the hand of evangelical Protestants who fervently support Israel for their own theological reasons. The underlying assumption of all such accounts is that America's support for Israel must flow from a mixture of collusion, manipulation, and ideologically driven foolishness. Samuel Goldman proposes another explanation. The political culture of the United States, he argues, has been marked from the very beginning by a Christian theology that views the American nation as deeply implicated in the historical fate of biblical Israel. God's Country is the first book to tell the complete story of Christian Zionism in American political and religious thought from the Puritans to 9/11. It identifies three sources of American Christian support for a Jewish state: covenant, or the idea of an ongoing relationship between God and the Jewish people; prophecy, or biblical predictions of return to The Promised Land; and cultural affinity, based on shared values and similar institutions. Combining original research with insights from the work of historians of American religion, Goldman crafts a provocative narrative that chronicles Americans' attachment to the State of Israel.
Download or read book Strangers with the Same Dream written by Alison Pick and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, astonishing and politically timely page-turner set in 1921 Palestine, from the author of the bestselling novel Far to Go, nominated for the Man Booker Prize. This beautifully written, shocking and timely novel whisks us back to 1921, when a band of young Jewish pioneers set out to realize a dream: the founding of a settlement on a patch of land that would, twenty-five years later, become Israel. One by one, we enter the minds of three compelling characters--Ida, an idealistic young woman escaping violence brewing in Europe; David, the charismatic and volatile group leader; and Hannah, a wife and mother struggling with her roles--to witness how the utopian dream is punctured by messy human entanglements. This is also the story of the land itself, revealing with compassion and irony how the pioneers chose to ignore the fact that their valley was already home to people whose lives they did not understand. Writing with restrained power, award-winning novelist Alison Pick creates unforgettable characters who, isolated within their utopian dream, are haunted by ghosts, compromised by secrets, and finally, despite flashes of love and hope, worn down by hardship, human frailty, and the pull of violent confrontation. Her astonishing conclusion forces us to confront the question of what is truly knowable in the human heart.
Download or read book The Dark Side of Democracy written by Michael Mann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Deconstructing Zionism written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Other Side of the Coin the Negative Impact of Zionism on Mizrahi Jews written by Raphael Werner and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject History - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Potsdam (Historisches Institut), course: Utopia in Distress: Israeli Politics and Society, language: English, abstract: The focus of this paper is primarily going to be set on the downsides of Zionism for Oriental Jews who arrived from the 1950s to the 1970s. Hereby, I claim that the Zionist movement has not been a liberation movement for all Jews, but rather worked in favor of the Ashkenazim. I will support this claim by displaying not only the disadvantages Zionism carried for Mizrahim but also by examining the unequal treatment of the Sephardim which show parallels to colonial oppression.
Download or read book Rooted Cosmopolitans written by James Loeffler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunningly original look at the forgotten Jewish political roots of contemporary international human rights, told through the moving stories of five key activists The year 2018 marks the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events in twentieth-century history: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remain tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global antisemitism, and American foreign policy. Yet the surprising connections between Zionism and the origins of international human rights are completely unknown today. In this riveting account, James Loeffler explores this controversial history through the stories of five remarkable Jewish founders of international human rights, following them from the prewar shtetls of eastern Europe to the postwar United Nations, a journey that includes the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, the founding of Amnesty International, and the UN resolution of 1975 labeling Zionism as racism. The result is a book that challenges long-held assumptions about the history of human rights and offers a startlingly new perspective on the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Download or read book Zionism Racism written by Walter Lehn and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What Do Zionists Believe written by Colin Shindler and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each title in the 'What Do We Believe?' series introduces different beliefs from across the world in lively, accessible, intelligent short books. This book focuses on Zionism - a movement of national liberation.
Download or read book The End of the Middle East Peace Process written by Samer Bakkour and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-06-23 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting the Middle East peace process as an extension of US foreign policy, this book argues that ongoing interventions justified in the name of ‘peace’ sustain and reproduce hegemonic power. With an interdisciplinary approach, this book questions the conceptualisation and general understanding of the peace process. The author reinterprets regional conflict as an opportunity for the US through which it seeks to achieve regional dominance and control. Engaging with the different stages and components of the peace process, he considers economic, military and political factors which both changed over time and remained constant. This book covers the US role of mediation in the region during the Cold War, the history and present state of US-Israel relations, Syria’s reputation as an opponent of ‘peace’ compared with its participation in peace negotiations, and the Palestinian-Israel conflict with attention to US involvement. The End of the Middle East Peace Process will primarily be of interest to those hoping to gain an improved understanding of key issues, concepts and themes relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict and US intervention in the Middle East. It will also be of value to those with an interest in the practicalities of peacebuilding.
Download or read book Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land written by Donald E. Wagner and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical examination of political Zionism, a topic often considered taboo in the West, is long overdue. Moreover, the discussion of Christian Zionism is usually confined to Evangelical and fundamentalist settings. The present volume will break the silence currently reigning in many religious, political, and academic circles and, in so doing, will provoke and inspire a new, challenging conversation on theological and ethical issues arising from various aspects of Zionism--a conversation that is vital to the quest for a just peace in Israel and Palestine. The eight authors offer a rich diversity of religious faith, academic research, and practical experience, as they represent all three Abrahamic faiths and five different Christian traditions. Among the many themes that run through Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land is the contrast between exclusivist narratives, both biblical and political, and the more inclusive narratives of the prophetic Scriptures, which provide the theological foundation and the moral imperative for human liberation. Readers will be drawn into a compelling, readable, and stimulating series of essays that tackle many of the complex issues that still confound clergy, politicians, diplomats, and academic experts.
Download or read book Goliath written by Max Blumenthal and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Notable Book Award In Goliath, New York Times bestselling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens. Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's war on Gaza in 2008-09, which brought into power the country's most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process. As Blumenthal reveals, Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like Avigdor Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu are sacrificing democracy on the altar of their power politics; where the loyal opposition largely and passively stands aside and watches the organized assault on civil liberties; where state-funded Orthodox rabbis publish books that provide instructions on how and when to kill Gentiles; where half of Jewish youth declare their refusal to sit in a classroom with an Arab; and where mob violence targets Palestinians and African asylum seekers scapegoated by leading government officials as "demographic threats." Immersing himself like few other journalists inside the world of hardline political leaders and movements, Blumenthal interviews the demagogues and divas in their homes, in the Knesset, and in the watering holes where their young acolytes hang out, and speaks with those political leaders behind the organized assault on civil liberties. As his journey deepens, he painstakingly reports on the occupied Palestinians challenging schemes of demographic separation through unarmed protest. He talks at length to the leaders and youth of Palestinian society inside Israel now targeted by security service dragnets and legislation suppressing their speech, and provides in-depth reporting on the small band of Jewish Israeli dissidents who have shaken off a conformist mindset that permeates the media, schools, and the military. Through his far-ranging travels, Blumenthal illuminates the present by uncovering the ghosts of the past -- the histories of Palestinian neighborhoods and villages now gone and forgotten; how that history has set the stage for the current crisis of Israeli society; and how the Holocaust has been turned into justification for occupation. A brave and unflinching account of the real facts on the ground, Goliath is an unprecedented and compelling work of journalism.
Download or read book A State at Any Cost written by Tom Segev and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist "[A] fascinating biography . . . a masterly portrait of a titanic yet unfulfilled man . . . this is a gripping study of power, and the loneliness of power." —The Economist As the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion long ago secured his reputation as a leading figure of the twentieth century. Determined from an early age to create a Jewish state, he thereupon took control of the Zionist movement, declared Israel’s independence, and navigated his country through wars, controversies and remarkable achievements. And yet Ben-Gurion remains an enigma—he could be driven and imperious, or quizzical and confounding. In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around the man. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels, and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades. Along the way, Segev reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion’s secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel’s independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbors, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional “nutty moments”—from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. Segev also reveals that Ben-Gurion first heard about the Holocaust from a Palestinian Arab acquaintance, and explores his tempestuous private life, including the testimony of four former lovers. The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state “at any cost”—at times through risk-taking, violence, and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation, and reason. Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but rather a historical actor who belongs in the company of Lenin or Churchill—a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.
