Zionism and its Discontents

Zionism and its Discontents
Author: Ran Greenstein
Publisher: Pluto Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-10-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780745334677

Mainstream nationalist narratives and political movements have dominated the Israeli-Palestinian situation for too long. In this much-needed book, Ran Greenstein challenges this hegemony by focusing on four different, but at the same time connected, attempts which stood up to Zionist dominance and the settlement project before and after 1948. Greenstein begins by addressing the role of the Palestinian Communist Party, and then the bi-nationalist movement, before moving on to the period after 1948 when Palestinian attempts to challenge their unjust conditions of marginalisation became more frequent. Finally, he confronts the radical anti-Zionist Matzpen group, which operated from the early 1960s–80s. In addition to analyses of the shifting positions of these movements, Greenstein examines perspectives regarding a set of conceptual issues: colonialism and settlement, race/ethnicity and class, and questions of identity, rights and power, and how, such as in the case of South Africa, these relations are global.

Is the Dream Ending?

Is the Dream Ending?
Author: Isi Leibler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 39
Release: 2000
Genre: Israel and the diaspora
ISBN:

A response to Dr. Yossi Beilin's policy forum no. 20.

Parting Ways

Parting Ways
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231146116

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.

Cultural Disjunctions

Cultural Disjunctions
Author: Paul Mendes-Flohr
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2021-07-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022678486X

"Contemporary Jews variously configure their identity, which is no longer necessarily defined by an observance of the Torah and God's commandments. Indeed, the Jews of modernity are no longer exclusively Jewish. They are affiliated with many communities-vocational, professional, political, and cultural-whose interests may not coincide with that of the community of their birth and inherited culture. In Cultural Disjunctions, Paul Mendes-Flohr explores the possibility of a spiritually and intellectually engaged cosmopolitan Jewish identity for our time. To ground this project, he draws on the sociology of knowledge and cultural hermeneutics to reflect on the need to participate in the life of a community so that it enables multiple relations beyond its borders and allows one to balance a commitment to the local and a genuine obligation to the universal. Over the course of six provocative chapters, Mendes-Flohr lays out what this delicate balance can look like for contemporary Jews, both in the Diaspora and in Israel. Mendes-Flohr takes us through the ghettos of twentieth-century Europe, the differences between the personal libraries of traditional and secular Jews, and the role of cultural memory. Ultimately, the author calls for Jews to remain discontent with themselves (as a check on hubris), but also discontent with the social and political order, and to fight for its betterment"--

Utopia's Discontents

Utopia's Discontents
Author: Faith Hillis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190066334

Utopia's Discontents provides the first synthetic treatment of the Russian revolutionary emigration before the Revolution. It argues that neighborhoods created by Russian exiles became sites of revolutionary experimentation that offered their residents a taste of their anticipated utopian future.

Resisting History

Resisting History
Author: David N. Myers
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2010-01-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691146608

Nineteenth-century European thought, especially in Germany, was increasingly dominated by a new historicist impulse to situate every event, person, or text in its particular context. At odds with the transcendent claims of philosophy and--more significantly--theology, historicism came to be attacked by its critics for reducing human experience to a series of disconnected moments, each of which was the product of decidedly mundane, rather than sacred, origins. By the late nineteenth century and into the Weimar period, historicism was seen by many as a grinding force that corroded social values and was emblematic of modern society's gravest ills. Resisting History examines the backlash against historicism, focusing on four major Jewish thinkers. David Myers situates these thinkers in proximity to leading Protestant thinkers of the time, but argues that German Jews and Christians shared a complex cultural and discursive world best understood in terms of exchange and adaptation rather than influence. After examining the growing dominance of the new historicist thinking in the nineteenth century, the book analyzes the critical responses of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Isaac Breuer. For this fascinating and diverse quartet of thinkers, historicism posed a stark challenge to the ongoing vitality of Judaism in the modern world. And yet, as they set out to dilute or eliminate its destructive tendencies, these thinkers often made recourse to the very tools and methods of historicism. In doing so, they demonstrated the utter inescapability of historicism in modern culture, whether approached from a Christian or Jewish perspective.

History Of Zionism

History Of Zionism
Author: Hershel Edelheit
Publisher: Westview Press
Total Pages: 680
Release: 2000-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN:

This two-part volume deals with the emergence of Zionism from its earliest precursors to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Part One includes a general review of Zionist history based on both primary and secondary sources and examines key historiographical issues raised by studying modern Jewish nationalism. Part Two, the dictionary, provides an alphabetical listing of phrases, organizations, and other significant terms related to Zionism. Major entries include a general overview and tabular data of all material given over to quantification or graphic presentation. The text is illustrated throughout with photographs, facsimile documents, line art, and tables and graphs. It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2001.

For Lust of Knowing

For Lust of Knowing
Author: Robert Irwin
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2007-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0141901802

Robert Irwin’s history of Orientalism leads from Ancient Greece to the present. He shows that, whether making philological comparisons between Arabic and Hebrew, cataloguing the coins of Fatimid Egypt or establishing the basic chronology of Harun al-Rashid’s military campaigns against Byzantium, scholars have been unified not by politics or ideology but by their shared obsession. For Lust of Knowing is an extraordinary, passionate book, both a sustained argument and a brilliant work of original scholarship.