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Using recently uncovered writings by Leon Pinsker, the proto-Zionist thinker, the current article challenges the generally accepted understanding of Pinsker's intellectual development as moving 'from assimilation to nationalism.'In particular, the article reevaluates the idea that in his pamphlet 'Autoemancipation!' Pinsker proposed territorial nationalism as an ideological substitute for Jewish civic emancipation in the Diaspora, particularly in the Russian empire. Rather, Pinsker held that the establishment of a national Jewish territory would, by its very existence, pave the way for the enhanced emancipation of those Jews who continued to live outside the territorial homeland. Key words: Zionism, Russian empire, Leon Pinsker, Jewish emancipation, Read today [Pinsker's] pamphlet, 'Autoemancipation!'. ... Dumbfounding agreement on the critical side, great similarity in the constructive. A pity that I had not read it before my own pamphlet was [...]

In 1964 an Israeli film was nominated for the first time ever for an Oscar as the best foreign film. This film has since become the most popular Israeli film [...]

INTRODUCTION In May of 2010, I directed a study abroad program for St. Mary's University graduate students studying human security within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (1) The program [...]

This issue of IJWP contains articles on three different topics, Chinese economic growth, politics in Turkey, and Zionism. The first article, 'Reinterpreting the 'Chinese Miracle'' by Xingyuan Feng, Christer Ljungwall, [...]

Challenging the widely accepted premise that the 1948 war was a war of Jewish self-defense, the author demonstrates that the 1947 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) partition resolution was fundamentally a green light for the Yishuv's fully mobilized paramilitary organizations (supported by the resources of the World Zionist Organization) to effect the long-planned establishment of a Jewish state by force of arms. He further argues that as a national movement, Zionism was inherently conquest-oriented from the moment of its birth in Basel in 1897 and that it most closely resembles--in the alchemy of its religious and secular motivation and its insatiable land hunger, irredentism, and indifference to the fate of the 'natives'--the Iberian Reconquista of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. DOI: jps.2010.XXXIX.1.24.

This article deals with the place of the oriental Jewish immigrant question within the matrix of policy debates and political dilemmas faced by Mapai in the early years of the state. Its main argument is that conflicts over the oriental Jewish immigrant question were, in part, a manifestation of a conflict-ridden political culture, which fluctuated between two poles: centralism and egalitarianism. Alongside support and endorsements of a policy that would encourage paternalism, dependency, and patronage in the relationship between the government and the country's new immigrants, we can also find clear, well-articulated, and not infrequent protests against the promotion of passivity in political life. These oppositional voices sought to advance a distinct vision of their own that called for giving real political power to immigrants in order to transform them from a controlled public into an active partner in government. Key words: Mapai, oriental Jews, immigration, Zionist-socialism, Hundreds of thousands of immigrants arrived in Israel from Islamic countries following the Jewish state's independence in 1984. These "oriental" Jews constituted approximately half of a mass of newcomers who [...]

The article examines the Zionist Revisionist movement and discusses its key features, ideologies as well as shortcomings.

ABSTRACT Since the 1960s, when he emerged as one of the main literary voices of a new generation of Israeli writers, Amos Oz came to represent, both in his writings [...]

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION: DISTORTED LANGUAGE AND DEVASTATED LIVES IT MAY HAVE TAKEN PROPHETIC inspiration to write in 1921, as Ameen Rihani did in The Descent of Bolshevism, that the Bolshevik [...]

IN 1989, THE MA'ALE SCHOOL of Television, Film, and the Arts was founded in Jerusalem with the primary purpose of providing religiously observant Jews with the opportunity to receive the […]

THE AIM OF THIS PAPER is to identify and survey some significant voices in the current post-Zionist critique of Israel among Jews and Israelis, and assess their development and political […]

FOR A LONG TIME, studies of Zionism were focused on the development of Zionism, its history, its ideas, its internal struggles, and debates as par of Jewish history. It was […]

Former Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini once said that Italy never had financial or military resources commensurate with its foreign policy ambitions, and that its efforts to maintain friendship with all [...]

In a search for some keys to understanding the complex relations between workers, Labour and nationalism, this article focuses on the problematic presence of nationalism in strikes in Mandate Palestine. [...]

It is perhaps because the greatest unifier of Jews during the past half-century has been the idea that Israel is the Jewish homeland, that one of the least doubted notions [...]

Since the original goals of Zionism have largely been accomplished or are less relevant today, conditions are ripe for Israel's transition from Zionism to post-Zionism. A post-Zionist Israel -- while maintaining its Jewish character and special relationship to world Jewry -- would be a state primarily committed to protecting and advancing the interests of its citizens, regardless of ethnicity. In a post-Zionist Israel, the status of non-Jewish Israelis would be upgraded and the status of non-Israeli Jews downgraded. Moreover, Israel would be integrated into the region and engaged in normal, peaceful relations with its neighbors. Many forces are promoting this transition, including the peace process, changes in Israel-Diaspora relations, and the liberalization of the society Countervailing forces stem mostly from the ultranationalist and Orthodox religious sectors in the society. To advance the transition, Israel will have to address four major divisions within the society: the divisions between citizens and noncitizens, Jewish and Palestinian citizens, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, and religious and secular Jews.

For some time past I have been occupied with a work of infinite grandeur. At the moment I do not know whether I shall carry it through. It looks like [...]

Items of popular culture in Israel such as film, theater, novels, music and poetry indicate a trend which goes beyond Zionism and negative views of the Arabs. These post-Zionist materials are still very minimal in number and are authored by those who do not belong to Israel's leadership. Nevertheless, this trend shows that Zionism is beginning to lose its identity as Palestinians, some Jews from the Arab states and other Jews are starting to question the validity of Zionist views.

Cultural discourse in Israel on Zionism and Palestinians has undergone changes since the 1980s. The privatization of print and electronic media in the early 1990s, for instance, increased the coverage on human rights abuses against Palestinians and corruption in the armed forces. However, it is argued these changes had no impact on the representations of Palestinians and Arabs in media.

Scholarly debates on Israeli history and sociology were launched by new discoveries in the Israeli archives and propelled by Zionist-critical ideology during the 1980s. The debates were also influenced by economic and sociopolitical transformations triggered by the Oct. 1973 war. 'New historians' and 'critical sociologists' are challenging the Zionist interpretation as well as the role of Israeli academic in furnishing he scholarly foundations for the interpretation.

An expert on Jewish history discusses the shaping of Israeli identity in the post-Zionism period and its likely impact on the Israeli elections and the Middle East peace process. Economic liberalism has impelled a post-Zionist revisionism, which questions the relevance of Zionism in defining Israeli identity. The debunking of Israel's past and the quest for a new Middle East via a driven peace process condones reality and is fraught with risks. The polarization of Israeli society and a new fundamentalist nationalism will crucially impact the elections and core issues in Israel's external affairs.

A study on whether Zionism is racist is presented. Scholars and some ex-government officials state their opinions and most agree that it is not Zionism that perpetuates racism but the government and its implementation of Israeli laws. The Jewish people only wish to assert their independence as a nation and their right to self-determination as defined by the UN itself. Their discriminatory attitudes do not result from racism but from political and military conflicts between Israel and Palestine.

The analytic framework that guides research and analysis is often value-laden and conforms to a.hegemonic culture or struggling counter-culture. I discuss five kinds of framework decisions: the sociopolitical boundaries of the collectivity under investigation, the historical periodization of the society, the terminology used to characterize sociological processes and phenomena, the way the research problem is posed, and the subjects deemed appropriate for investigation. In a case study of Israel, I show that the Palestinian minority and Jewish-Arab conflict were characterized by mainstream Israeli sociologists in accordance with dominant Zionist perspectives. Cultural commitments, perceived existential needs, and class, ethnic, and national interests, have shaped the way Israeli sociologists portray the basic features of Israeli society.

WHATEVER ITS GOAL--be it to destroy Israel or only reduce its size--the Palestine Liberation Organization is Israel's most intimate and permanent enemy. This makes it especially paradoxical to realize just [...]

The evolution of a Jewish international public movement in Europe and the Middle East in the mid-nineteenth century that led to the transformation of followers into representatives of opinion is described. These Jewish international modernities incorporated religion to construct a later secular Zionism that could enable a transnational unity of Jews.

The article discusses Arnold Schoenberg's path from 'Die Jakobsleiter' to 'Moses und Aron' with reference to his works of spoken drama 'Der biblische Weg'. The path which leads from the religious syncretism of 'Die Jakobsleiter' through Zionism in 'Der biblische Weg' to the negative monotheism in 'Moses und Aron' reveals his German, Lutheran and Judaist influences.

In war, said Churchill, the truth is so precious that it should not go abroad except with a bodyguard of lies. But wars are often won or lost, or caused [...]

Will there ever be peace between Israel and the Arabs? It is a question that, like many other questions of great moment, partakes of eschatological speculation. Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a distinguished [...]

'The Political Legacy of Theodor Herzl' by Natan Sharansky, in Azure (Summer 2005), 13 Yehoshua Bin-Nun St., P.O. Box 8787, Jerusalem 93145 Israel. Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik who [...]