Israel and the Post-Zionists

Professor Emeritus Shlomo Sharan is the author of nine books and numerous journal articles. He taught at Tel Aviv University for 34 years, and has served as a visiting professor or research fellow at Stanford, Yale, UCLA and the University of Helsinki.

"Offers a rightist critique of post-Zionism. All the contributions are interesting and insightful... as Yoav Gelber notes in his very perceptive contribution, the genuine danger lies in subtle and widespread 'post-Zionist' trends in society." -- Israel Affairs."Professor Sharan claims that the luxury of denigrating one's country and demanding that the current regime should be dismantled is possible in an established Western democracy. However, Israel is a country fighting for its existence, and this sort of movement can cause tremendous damage... The participants do not mince their words. Raya Epstein, for example, talks of the dangers of 'totalitarian democracy', where anybody who is not 'politically correct' has no right to express his / her opinions. Hillel Weiss describes 'post-Zionism' as a pathology. The book includes examples of Israeli anti-Semitic cartoons. Norman Dodge writes a useful essay on Western democracy's reactions to Arafat... The collection is unusual. It is avowedly politically incorrect. But it offers the student of Israeli affairs a different viewpoint from that of most Israeli publications." -- AJL Newsletter."The authors believe that the writings and activities of the post-Zionists have greatly weakened Israel at home and abroad. They aver that post-Zionist thinking and activity (particularly in the academy and the media) not only work an insidious influence on the ability of Israelis to persevere in the face of the terror war, but provide aid and comfort to anti-Semites of Arab and non-Arab backgrounds. These are not easy times, and the book's assertion of foreboding danger confirms this. Most of the time, however, the authors stay true to their scholarly backgrounds. They examine the behavior of post-Zionist thought from its origins in anti-Zionist politics of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries through the current days of the second Intifadah. They seek to find the movement's confreres in the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxism and to place it within the context of a world tendency toward political correctness and post-Nationalism. Mostly, they strive to demonstrate the disingenuousness and danger that the post-Zionists present to Israel and its survival in a hostile world." -- Jewish Book World."Chapters develop a serious and balanced critique of post-Zionist arguments for a multi-national, multi-religious and multicultural state." -- The Australian Jewish News.

• Contents: Introduction; Redefining the Israeli Ethos: Transforming Israeli Society; Zionism, the Post-Zionists and Myth; Israeli Intellectuals and Israeli Politics; The Frankfurt School and Post-Zionist Thought; The Leftist Media and the al-Aqsa Uprising; Post-Zionism and Democracy; The Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West; The West and Yasser Arafat; Israeli Anti-Semitism; Post-Zionism and Anti-Zionism in Israeli Literature; The Messianic Theme in the Works of A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz; Pluralism, the Post-Zionists, and Israel as a Jewish Nation; Subject Index.