Since the June 1967 war, over 60,000 Jewish-Americans have settled in the occupied territories. Comprising 15 percent of the Israeli settler enterprise today, they have established major settlements, revolutionized the public relations of the movement and its engagement with the international community, and committed shocking acts of settler terrorism. City on a Hilltop unsettles stereotypes about Jewish-American settlers. It shatters the myth that they were messianic zealots, finding instead a group of young, highly-educated American Jews who were politically active in 1960s social movements and the Democratic Party prior to their immigration to Israel. Their generation didn't abandon their heritage when they settled over the Green Line-- rather they saw a historical opportunity to apply their liberal values to a new kind of "city on a hilltop." The story of Jewish-American settlers personifies the clash between liberal values and political realities at the heart of the crisis of liberal Zionism today.--

The bible gives the impression that all ancient Jews shared a common belief system with only an occasional group straying from the fold. The evidence paints a different picture. As Dr Patai states, "it would be strange if the Hebrew-Jewish religion, which flourished for centuries in a region of intensive goddess cults, had remained immune to them." Archeologists have uncovered Hebrew settlements where the goddesses Asherah & Astarte-Anath were routinely worshipped. In fact, we find that for about 3000 years, the Hebrews worshipped female deities which were later eradicated only by extreme pressure of a male priesthood. Then there's the matter of the Cherubim that sat atop the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. Fashioned by Phoenician craftsmen for Solomon & Ahab, an ivory tablet shows two winged females facing each other. One tablet shows male & female Cherubim embracing in an explicitly sexual position that embarrassed later Jewish historians. Even pagans were shocked when they saw it for the 1st time. This cult of the feminine goddess, tho often repressed, remained a part of the faith of the Jewish people. Goddesses answered the need for mother, lover, queen, intercessor & even today, lingers cryptically in the traditional Hebrew Sabbath invocation.--Utnapishtim (edited) Acknowledgments Introduction The Goddess Asherah Astarte-Anath The Cherubim The Shekhina The Kabbalistic Tetrad Matronit-The Goddess of the Kabbala Lilith The Sabbath-Virgin, Bride, Queen & Goddess Conclusion Appendix: The Goddess in the Dura Synagogue Notes Bibliography Index

This long-awaited reprint of Avi-Yonah's landmark work covers a period of historical geography in the land of Israel that has seen little additional comparable research. Spanning the Exilic, Intertestamental, New Testament, and later Roman periods, this volume is invaluable for Old Testament, Early Judaism, New Testament, and Talmudic studies. Professor Anson Rainey adds a useful toponymic index as well as text revisions. A new foreword is presented by Yoram Tsafrir, director of the Jewish National and University Library.

"On the eve of the Crimean War, about half a million people lived in the land of Palestine. They were Arabic-speaking. Most were Muslims, but about 60,000 were Christians of various denominations, and around 20,000 were Jews. In addition, they had to tolerate the presence of 50,000 Ottoman soldiers and officials as well as 10,000 Europeans. Their administrative life revolved around the sanjaq, the Ottoman sub-province, of which Ottoman Palestine had three: Nablus, Acre and Jerusalem. To some extent these administrative divisions corresponded to the topography. Palestine had four hilly regions: the Jerusalem mountains, the Nablus mountains, and two other areas: Hebron in the Jerusalem district, and Galilee in the Acre sub-province. Each geographical and administrative area had a major town as its capital, so that some of Palestine's most famous cities were foci of social and cultural life. Acre, Jerusalem, Hebron and Nablus were among these important towns, as were the smaller coastal towns of Haifa, Jaffa and Gaza"--

"The story of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, which was conceived in Palestine during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders, and which eventually became the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel's vaunted intelligence agency."--

Evelyn Sert journeys to Tel Aviv, where Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany are determined to forge a modern consciousness in the heart of the Middle East. Her story weaves together national identity, terrorism, love and the art of hairdressing.

"Israeli historiography has long been subjected to a sustained assault by self-styled 'new historians', vying to expose what they claim to be the distorted 'Zionist narrative' of Israeli history and the Arab-Israeli Conflict." "Fabricating Israeli History takes issue with these 'revisionists'. Through careful examination of the documentation that they have used, as well as of sources that the author believes they have either ignored or failed to trace, this book propounds that the historical facts tell a completely different story from the one they propagate."--BOOK JACKET.

The gripping true story of the murder, in Palestine in 1947, of a Jewish activist by a British counter-terrorist officer, and the subsequent cover-up. In May 1947, a Jewish teenager, active in a Zionist underground group fighting British rule in Palestine, was abducted. He was never seen again. Witnesses said he was seized by British policeman. A hat found at the scene was traced to Major Roy Farran, an ex-SAS officer leading a covert counter-terrorist squad. A sensational court martial followed, but Farran was acquitted, and the Zionist underground swore vengeance. Drawing on recently declassified files of the security services, the book explores the reasons why Britain lost Palestine and reveals the full extent and ambition of Jewish terrorist attacks on Britain in the late 1940s. Part Boys' Own adventure, part narrative history, Major Farran's Hat solves a murder mystery and exposes a shady episode in the final years of the British empire, and throws light on Britain's legacy in the Middle East.

In this long-awaited sequel to his international bestseller The Holocaust Industry, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an iconoclastic interrogation of the new anti-Semitism to a meticulously researched exposé of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein’s answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted. Finkelstein also scrutinizes the proliferation of distortion masquerading as history. Recalling Joan Peters’ book From Time Immemorial, published to great fanfare in 1984 but subsequently exposed as an academic hoax, he asks deeply troubling questions here about the periodic reappearance of spurious scholarship and the uncritical acclaim it receives. The most recent addition to this genre, Finkelstein argues, is Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s bestseller, The Case for Israel. The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz’s assertions on Israel’s human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community. Sifting through thousands of pages of reports from organizations such as Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, Finkelstein argues that Dershowitz has misrepresented the facts. Thoroughly researched and tightly argued, Beyond Chutzpah lifts the veil of controversy shrouding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Examines British policy towards the "Jewish problem" during World War II. Based on archival sources, the book explores the reasons for the near-total ban on Jewish refugee immigration into Britain, the restrictive immigration policy in Palestine, the failure to aid Jewish resistance in Europe and the rejection of the scheme for the Allied bombing of Auschwitz. The author presents a story of bureaucratic complacency, inhumanity and blindness to the Jewish catastrophe in Europe. This revised edition takes into account papers opened since the first edition, including intelligence materials, and subsequent scholarship.

The resurgence of Palestinian nationalism in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war tended to overshadow the fact that Palestinian national consciousness is not a new phenomenon, but traces its origins back to the time when the first stirrings of nationalism were being felt in many parts of the under-developed world. This work, first published in 1974, is based on both Arabic and Hebrew primary sources as well as English and French official and unofficial documents, and was the first detailed study of the infancy period of Palestinian nationalism. The book begins by establishing the position of Palestine and Jerusalem in Islamic history and their significance within the concepts of Islam, and outlines the social and political features of the Palestinian population at the beginning of the First World War. The author then charts in detail the development of Palestinian nationalism over the decade after the War. Two major forces influenced this development and reacted with it: Zionism, with its ambitious schemes for settling Jews in Palestine and creating a National Home for them there, and Arab nationalism on a wider scale, which was emerging spontaneously with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the spreading of ideas of self-determination. The growing threat posed by Zionism awoke the Palestinian population to the need for organization and the establishment of their own identity to oppose it, while the focus of their national aspirations widened or narrowed according to the ability which they felt at any given time to confront Zionism and achieve self-expression within a Palestinian rather than an all-Syrian national framework. The events of these turbulent years - the confrontations with the British, delegations, boycotts, proposals and rejections, the emergence of al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Wailing Wall conflict and its repercussions - are all described within the context of these wider considerations, which also include Britain's own role as holder of the Mandate over Palestine.

This book is a study of the roots of present day Israeli policy towards the Arabs. The point of departure is that Israeli olitical thinking was moulded during the pre-state period and in its crystallisation made a ritual of several basic concepts: gradual build-up of an economic and military potential as the basis for achievement of political aims: alliance with a great power external to the Middle East: noon-recognition of the existence of a Palestine national entity: Zionism's civilising mission in an undeveloped area: economic, social and cultural regregation as prerequisited for the renaissance of Jewish national life; the concept of 'peace for strength'. Part one of the bood describes the attitudes of the Zionist leaders in the pre-state period of 1917-48 towards the Arab national movement in general and towards the Palestinian Arabs in particular. Part two deals with the application of these attitudes in a number of critical situations which constituted turning points in Jewish-Arab relations: the Arab Revolt and the Zionist struggle for partition in 1936-8; the "White Paper' policy 1939-45 and the 1948 war in Palestine.

"William G. Dever offers a welcome perspective on ancient Israel and Judah that prioritizes the archaeological remains to render history as it was--not as the biblical writers argue it should have been. Drawing from the most recent archaeological data as interpreted from a nontheological point of view and supplementing that data with biblical material only when it converges with the archaeological record, Dever analyzes all the evidence at hand to provide a new history of ancient Israel and Judah that is accessible to all interested readers"--

With the Nazi era being one of the most discussed periods in history, there are still many people who are unaware of collaboration between Zionism and the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini. Now in paperback and featuring an updated article on the Iron Wall' by Vladimir Jabotinsky, 51 Documents brings to light the immense disservice the Zionists did to many other Jews during this period.'

"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 so many years after the establishment of the Israeli State. Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feelings whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement's history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish Identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world"--

The well-known historian and political scientist Zeev Sternhell here advances a radically new interpretation of the founding of modern Israel. The founders claimed that they intended to create both a landed state for the Jewish people and a socialist society. However, according to Sternhell, socialism served the leaders of the influential labor movement more as a rhetorical resource for the legitimation of the national project of establishing a Jewish state than as a blueprint for a just society. In this thought-provoking book, Sternhell demonstrates how socialist principles were consistently subverted in practice by the nationalist goals to which socialist Zionism was committed.Sternhell explains how the avowedly socialist leaders of the dominant labor party, Mapai, especially David Ben Gurion and Berl Katznelson, never really believed in the prospects of realizing the "dream" of a new society, even though many of their working-class supporters were self-identified socialists. The founders of the state understood, from the very beginning, that not only socialism but also other universalistic ideologies like liberalism, were incompatible with cultural, historical, and territorial nationalism. Because nationalism took precedence over universal values, argues Sternhell, Israel has not evolved a constitution or a Bill of Rights, has not moved to separate state and religion, has failed to develop a liberal concept of citizenship, and, until the Oslo accords of 1993, did not recognize the rights of the Palestinians to independence.This is a controversial and timely book, which not only provides useful historical background to Israel's ongoing struggle to mobilize its citizenry to support a shared vision of nationhood, but also raises a question of general significance: is a national movement whose aim is a political and cultural revolution capable of coexisting with the universal values of secularism, individualism, and social justice? This bold critical reevaluation will unsettle long-standing myths as it contributes to a fresh new historiography of Zionism and Israel. At the same time, while it examines the past, The 'Founding Myths of Israel' reflects profoundly on the future of the Jewish State.

This book, first published in 1977, continues the author's study of the Palestinian National Movement from the first volume, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929 . Based on Arab, Jewish and British archival and secondary sources, it examines in exhaustive detail the events in the crucial decade leading up to the Second World War.

Zionists began calling for a national Jewish home in Palestine in the nineteenth century, but the birth of Israel did not take place until 1948. This anthology presents the debates between Arab inhabitants and Jewish settlers--both of whom claim historic rights to the territory that is now Israel.