Zionism

Given to Antisemitic Rhetoric in Private, Why Did Harry Truman Champion Israel?

Despite expressing many negative stereotypes about Zionists and Jews in general, and facing pressure from George Marshall and other advisors, Truman recognized the new state of Israel. 

Leon Uris's "Exodus" Shaped Jewish Identity for a Generation—Does it Matter Today?

By fictionalizing many of the events surrounding the founding of the Israeli state (and ignoring others), Uris helped launch a profoundly influential view of Israel's place in the world and Jews' relationship to Israel. But a younger generation of Jewish readers seems indifferent. 

Daniel Boyarin's Argument for a Non-Zionist Jewish Nationalism

by Joshua Abramson Cohen

Boyarin's latest work makes provocative arguments that there is a real collective identity of the Jewish people as a nation, but that it is independent of the Israeli state and territory. 

Israel's Founding Contradictions Haunt 75th Anniversary

by Bernard Avishai

A bargain of tolerance between secular bourgeois and religious supremacist wings of Israeli society is being renegotiated by the right wing. Are concessions to religious groups made by David Ben-Gurion at the founding the root of conflict?

Will the Right Wing Israeli Government Break American Jews' Relationship with Israel?

Shaul Magid, Distinguished Fellow of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth, argues that the new government's agenda will force American Jews to recognize that Israel has become an illiberal country, while historian Hasia Diner says it has long been so. 

Eric Alterman on the Shifting Debate over Israel-Palestine in America

The writer discusses his conclusions about the evolution of the debate among American Jews about the nature of their relationship to Israel and the moral status of American policy. 

The Demographic Shift Behind Israel's Ascendant Religious Zionists

by Michael Brenner

Demographics are pushing Orthodox religious nationalists, who are led by West Bank settlers, to political power that is forcing confrontations over both secularism and the occupation. This bloc is growing rapidly less friendly to compromise with secularists, Arabs, or LGBTQ Israelis.

Beinart: Antisemitic Zionism Isn't a Contradiction in Terms

Conservative Zionists have reached accommodated American evangelicals' demands for a Christian-dominated America in exchange for support for a Jewish greater Israel. The media are reluctant to discuss this connection.

Israel's Ruling Coalition Turns Toward Theocracy

by Bernard Avishai

Netanyahu has engineered an alliance among three disparate strains of religious parties and secular Israelis favoring an aggressive nationalism and occupation policy. But the religious parties have broader goals of undermining secular society in Israel. 

Two Unlikely Champions of Fundamentalist Parties Show it's More about Power than Faith

by Donne Levy

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power after embracing religious fundamentalist parties in a coalition. Like his friend Donald Trump, he seems an unlikely leader for a faith-based constituency to embrace. 

Can Religious Zionists Reject the Religious Zionist Party?

by Gil Troy

Can religious Zionism survive being hijacked by a party of anti-democratic and anti-humanist zealots? One historian of Zionism says he's not on board with the Israeli far right.  

Is Israel Criticism the Reason Harvard Refused "Godfather" of Human Rights

by Michael Massing

Kenneth Roth retired from Human Rights Watch after nearly three decades, and expected to move to a fellowship at the Kennedy School. Dean Douglas Elmendorf told him his fellowship was rejected because HRW exhibited "anti-Israel bias." Is the school insufficiently independent of the American foreign policy establishment and its donors? 

Will MAGA Be the Last Straw for Conservative Jews' Partnership with the Christian Right?

by Eric Alterman

Since the 1970s, an alliance between Christian and Jewish conservatives has been brokered over mutual support for Israel's occupation and settlement of the West Bank. Are changing attitudes toward the occupation among American Jews and the naked antisemitism of the MAGA right breaking the alliance? 

Israel's Religious Right Pushes for Restrictive Changes to Law of Return

As Jews around the world are considering Israel as a refuge from antisemitism, that country's religious fundamentalist parties have the political leverage to decide that many fewer people are Jewish enough to qualify for immigration and citizenship. American Reform Jews are particularly affected.

From Torch to Tunis to El Alamein: Events 80 Years Ago Made the Modern Middle East

by Robert Satloff

80 years ago Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, opened a second front against Nazi Germany. Today, it has proven equally important for establishing models for America's relationship to the Middle East. 

The Women Who Secured the Balfour Declaration

by Natalie Livingstone

Women in the Rothschild family were instrumental in creating support among wealthy British Jews for Zionism, which they had previously rejected out of perceived self-interest and disdain for the Jewish masses.

Ken Burns's Holocaust History Has a Palestine Problem

by Rafael Medoff and Monty Noam Penkower

Although there was no sovereign government in Palestine between 1933 and 1945, British authorities there admitted a quarter million Jewish refugees. The filmmaker's focus on "sovereign" countries' record admitting refugees burnishes the Roosevelt administration's record. 

Walter Russell Mead: Non-Jewish Interest Groups, not "Israel Lobby" Drive Hawkish US Mideast Policy

Rejecting the idea of a Jewish-led "Israel Lobby" Mead emphasizes the historical influence of American Christian zionists and militarists in tilting America's mideast policy toward the goals of the Israeli right. 

Two Books on Israeli Nationalism Show a Growing Divide on Zionism in America

by Ari Hoffman

Books by Omri Boehm and Yossi Shain take diametrically opposed positions on the historical and contemporary merits of Zionism as institutionalized in the Israeli state, and signal the growth of a polarization in the American Jewish community. 

Two Donor Controversies Show the Precarious Position of Jewish Studies Programs

Financially precarious academic programs are potentially at the mercy of politically motivated donors whose philanthropy is subsidized by the tax code and affects public institutions without public input.