The Tragedy of Zionism

	Author(s): Avishai, Bernard Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications Format: Paper Textbook List Price:  $16.95
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Overview:
The subject of intense controversy when it was first published in 1985, The Tragedy of Zionism provides illuminating insight into the history behind the headlines. Now revised with a new prologue and epilogue, this groundbreaking book is republished at a time when Middle Eastern turbulence, Israeli-Palestinian relations, religious extremism, and democratic government are center stage in the world's political arenas. This poignant chronicle of the Zionist revolution in Europe and Palestine is a tale of the unexpected and tragic ways Zionism's heroic theories and institutions have come to threaten Israeli democracy since the Six Day War. It explores how the impetus to settle in the Land of Israel after 1967 derived from unexamined Zionist commitments which, over time, have become increasingly alarming for Israeli democrats. It also addresses timely and compelling questions: Could Israel, as a Jewish state, be a democratic state if it discriminated against non-Jews, including a fifth of its citizens who are Palestinian Arabs? Could Israel be a Jewish state without granting a privileged position to Jewish orthodoxy? The Tragedy of Zionism calls for democracy as an end to itself - not as a political luxury, but as an important means to settle disputes nonviolently.

Category: General