15 results for "History"

The case for Israel

Dershowitz, Alan M.
States that the Jewish nation of Israel stands accused in the dock of international justice. Throughout the world, Israel is singled out for condemnation, divestment, boycott, and demonization. This book refutes anti-Zionism in the format of posing 32 questions based on accusations made against Israel (e.g. "Is Israel a racist state?"). For each one, presents the accusation, the accusers, the reality, and the proof of the reality (as opposed to the false accusation). Stresses that Israel is being judged unfairly, by a double standard, and that comparatively and in context Israel is hardly among the worst human rights offenders in the world. Claims that such a subjective view of Israel encourages terrorist attacks by Palestinians and others. Blames the Palestinians for the lack of peace in the Middle East. Ch. 31 (pp. 208-216), "Are Critics of Israel Anti-Semitic?", differentiates between criticism of Israel and singling it out for unique sanctions, which is labelled antisemitism.
J. Wiley & Sons 2003-08 274 pages

City on a hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli settler movement

Hirschhorn, Sara Yael
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.--
Harvard University Press 2017-05-22 350 pages

Major Farran's hat: murder, scandal and Britain's war against Jewish terrorism, 1945-1948

Cesarani, David
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.
William Heinemann 2009-04-21 290 pages

Zionism: the birth and transformation of an ideal

Viorst, Milton
"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. "--
Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin's Press 2016-07-19 318 pages

Emma Lazarus

Schor, Esther H.
"Emma Lazarus's most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable life has remained a mystery until now. She was a woman so far ahead of her time that we are still scrambling to catch up with her-a feminist, a Zionist, and an internationally famous Jewish American writer before thse categories even existed. Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity. Born into a wealthy Sephardic family in 1849, Lazarus published her first volume of verse at seventeen and gained entree into New York's elite literary circles. Although she once referred to her family as "outlaw" Jews, she felt a deep attachment to Jewish history and peoplehood. Her compassion for the downtrodden Jews of Eastern Europe-refugees whose lives had little in common with her own-helped redefine the meaning of America itself. In this groundbreaking biography, Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus's place in history as a poet, an activist, and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today-a world that she helped to invent."--Publisher's website. A portrait of the iconoclastic poet and activist whose words are are set on the Statue of Liberty follows the complex life and times of Emma Lazarus, from her early literary success, to her roles as a feminist, Zionist, and renowned Jewish-American writer.
Nextbook 2006-09-05 347 pages

Chaim Weizmann

Reinharz, Jehuda
In the pantheon of modern Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann is a giant. One of the founding fathers of the State of Israel and its first president, he was also a president of the World Zionist Organization, and an eminent chemist, for whom Israel's renowned Weizmann Institute of Science was named. Yet, until now, there has never been an authoritative biography of Weizmann that removed the layers of myth obscuring our image of the man. Both a personal portrait of a fascinating man and a far-reaching history of the Jews in the modern world, this book, written by one of America's leading authorities on Jewish history, delves into the factors that shaped Weizmann's personality and worldview. Though the book focuses on the making of Weizmann as a Zionist leader, it also lays the foundations for understanding his extraordinary achievements as a scientist. This volume, the first of two that will cover his entire career, ends when, at the age of 40, Weizmann is thrust onto the center stage of world politics as a major negotiator for the Balfour Declaration.
Oxford University Press 1985 566 pages

Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the foundation of the Jewish State

Avineri, Shlomo
Theodor Herzl was born in 1860 in Budapest. He developed a successful career in journalism. As the Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, Herzl followed the Dreyfus Affair, a notorious anti-Semitic incident in France in which a French Jewish army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany. Herzl came to reject his early ideas regarding Jewish emancipation and assimilation, and to believe that the Jews must remove themselves from Europe and create their own state. In 1896, he published 'Der Judenstaat' to immediate acclaim, attracting international attention. As a result, he met Kaiser Wilhelm II on several occasions, once in Jerusalem, attempted and failed to obtain support for a Jewish homeland from Pope Pius X, secured an offer from the British government to facilitate a large Jewish settlement in East Africa, and visited St Petersburg to confront the Russian threat to the Zionist movement. Herzl died suddenly in 1904, over 40 years before the creation of a Jewish state in Israel.
Phoenix 2014 274 pages

Zionism and the fin-de-siècle: cosmopolitanism and nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky

Stanislawski, Michael
Michael Stanislawski's provocative study of Max Nordau, Ephraim Moses Lilien, and Vladimir Jabotinsky reconceives the intersection of the European fin de siecle and early Zionism. Stanislawski takes up the tantalizing question of why Zionism, at a particular stage in its development, became so attractive to certain cosmopolitan intellectuals and artists. With the help of hundreds of previously unavailable documents, published and unpublished, he reconstructs the ideological journeys of writer and critic Nordau, artist Lilien, and political icon Jabotinsky. He argues against the common conception of Nordau and Jabotinsky as nineteenth-century liberals, insisting that they must be understood against the backdrop of Social Darwinism in the West and the Positivism of Russian radicalism in the fin de siecle, as well as Symbolism, Decadence, and Art Nouveau. When these men turned to Zionism, Stanislawski says, far from abandoning their aesthetic and intellectual preconceptions, they molded Zionism according to their fin de siecle cosmopolitanism. Showing how cosmopolitanism turned to nationalism in the lives and work of these crucial early Zionists, this story is a fascinating chapter in European and Russian, as well as Jewish, cultural and political history.
University of California Press 2001 282 pages

American Jewish women and the Zionist enterprise

Reinharz, Shulamit,Raider, Mark A.
Product Description Despite a historical record that shows sustained involvement of American Jewish women with early Zionism and Palestine, this topic has received scant scholarly attention. A major contribution to Zionist history, women’s history, and American history, American Jewish Women and Zionism offers a much needed clarification to the historical record. Divided thematically, American Jewish Women deals with representative figures, events, and themes of the pre-state era. The essays in the book have three different foci: Several are concerned with significant personalities, such as Golda Meir, Marie Syrkin, Emma Lazarus, and Henrietta Szold, while others are concerned with the pivotal role played by American Zionist women’s organizations including Hadassah, the Pioneer Women’s Organization (later Naamat), the Mizrachi Women’s Organization (later Amit Women), and others. The remaining essays address broad themes and reveal the multidimensionality of the relationship of American Jewish women and Zionism, which includes agricultural and vocational training, religion, ideology, geography, and feminism and femininity. American Jewish Women and Zionism also includes several eyewitness documents and personal testimonies. No less significant than the corpus of memoirs and literature produced by male Zionist leaders, such data throws light on hitherto neglected facets of American Jewish and Zionist history, including the variety of roles played by Zionist women and their self-awareness as participants in one of the most dramatic and consequential episodes in the history of Jewish civilization. The volume includes a glossary of terms, a map of the principal locations referred to in the text, illustrations, and a timeline of American Jewish women and their relationship to Zionism. Each section opens with a prefactory note that places the essays in historical context. It concludes with a bibliographic note and suggestions for further readings. Review "Anyone interested in the significant role of women and Zionism should definitely find this book a must read."--The National Jewish Post & Opinion "Shulamit Reinharz and Mark Raider's magnificent study... challenges us to understand how faith in Zionism and in the American dream nourished and changed both projects. This is a story not of ideologies or, for the most part, of ideologues, but rather of the creators of a new tradition. The essays in this collection bring some of the leaders of Hadassah, Pioneer Women, and of Mizrahi beautifully to life and show how a dedication to the Zionist cause deepened a commitment to American values, and enlarged the Zionist perspective, to preserve a set of liberal principles reaching across the ethnic and national divide in Palestine...In this book Reinharz and Raider assemble essays that chart the rich profusion of movements, institutions, and activities - including aliyah - that Zionism inspired in Jewish women living in the United States."--Israel Studies "The organizations that women created as an expression of their goal are deftly analyzed. There is valuable and intriguing material here which calls for the attention of scholars in the fields of American history, women's history, feminism, and Zionism."--Jewish Book World From the Publisher 6 x 9 trim. 12 illus, 1 map, 3 tables About the Author Mark A. Raider is professor of modern Jewish history in the Department of History and director of the Center for Studies in Jewish Education and Culture at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author, most recently, of The Essential Hayim Greenberg: Essays and Addresses on Jewish Culture, Socialism, and Zionism.
Brandeis University Press 2005 393 pages

Moses Hess: prophet of Communism and Zionism

Avineri, Shlomo
This book's provocative treatment is a welcome contribution to an understanding of the origins of socialist and Zionist thought. This is a compact, lucid study of a notable thinker of the nineteenth century whose insight reached into the twentieth. This intellectual biography is for students of modern Jewish history and European history who have long been interested in this enigmatic figure. Avineri provides a subtle and interesting interpretation.
New York University Press 1985 266 pages

Tidings from Zion: Helen Bentwich's letters from Jerusalem, 1919-1931

Bentwich, Helen C.
Living in Palestine as the wife of the British Attorney-General, Helen Bentwich was immersed in the politics and society of the early years of the British Mandate. Despite her connections she remained in some ways an outsider - a critical observer, writing candid weekly letters to her mother that give insight into the cauldron of races and traditions, the intolerance and the idealism, that lie behind the history of 20th-century Palestine and the foundation of the state of Israel. The selection of her letters in this book mixes political comment with details of personal life and gossip. The gossip reveals a society that has gone, but the political and religious problems are familiar today. Her family were well aware of the situation in Palestine, and she wanted to amuse rather than alarm them, but the frustrations and worries break through the letters' superficial cheerfulness to provide a picture of the period.
I.B. Tauris Publishers in association with the European Jewish Publication Society 2000-01-24 206 pages

Rekindling the torch: the story of Canadian Zionism

Azrieli, David J.
Rekindling the Torch: The Story of Canadian Zionism begins with the long and troubled history of the Jewish people that informed the nineteenth-century idea of Zionism: the search for a homeland. After surviving anti-Semitic laws and pogroms, Jewish refugees faced not only the ultimate crime against humanity, but also the shocking indifference of the West when they were turned back from safe havens. Far from weakening the spirit, these combined tragedies strengthened their collective will. In Canada, Jewish immigrants created communities, pooled their resources, and rose to become captains of industry, among them the Bronfmans, the Batshaws, and the Hayes. They organized and actively pursued the goals of nationhood in Palestine. Richly illustrated and extensively researched, Rekindling the Torch celebrates the struggle of the Canadian Jewish people and their contributions to the state of Israel.
Key Porter Books 2008 272 pages