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The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited By Benny Morris (Author), Charles Tripp (Editor), Julia A. Clancy-Smith (Editor), Israel Gershoni (Editor), Roger Owen (Editor), Yezid Sayigh (Editor), Judith E. Tucker (Editor) Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2nd edition (January 5, 2004) 664 pages The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 By Benny Morris (Author), Roger Owen (Editor), Edmund Burke (Editor), Michael C. Hudson (Editor), Walid Kazziha (Editor), Rashid Khalidi (Editor), Serif Mardin (Editor) Publisher: Cambridge University Press (Reprint edition February 24, 1989). 404 pages This book is the first full-length study of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. Based on recently declassified Israeli, British and American state and party political papers and on hitherto untapped private papers, it traces the stages of the 1947-9 exodus against the backdrop of the first Arab-Israeli war and analyses the varied causes of the flight. The Jewish and Arab decision-making involved, on national and local levels, military and political, is described and explained, as is the crystallisation of Israel's decision to bar a refugee repatriation. Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel By Tom Segev Publisher: Metropolitan Books (April 23, 2002), 192 pages Tom Segev, Israel’s best-known journalist-historian, here confronts cherished assumptions about the country today, in the process tipping a number of sacred cows. Drawing on personal experience as well as all kinds of artifacts from Israeli popular culture—shopping malls, fast food, public art, television, religious kitsch—he puts forward his controversial view that the sweeping Americanization of the country, rued by most, has had an extraordinarily beneficial influence, bringing not only McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts but the virtues of pragmatism, tolerance, and individualism. 1949: The First Israelis By Tom Segev Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; (April 15, 1998, reprint edition), 379 pages Segev reveals the lofty aspirations that guided the state's leaders as well as the darker side of the Zionist utopia: the friction between the early settlers and the immigrants, the lack of good-faith negotiations with the Arabs; the clash between religious and secular factions; the daily collision of the Zionist myth with the severe realities of life in the new state. Unflinching in its observations, this bold chronicle is indispensible for understanding the dilemmas that continue to confront--and divide--Israeli society. The Founding Myths of Israel By Zeev Sternhell Publisher: Princeton Univ. Pr. (December 7, 1999), 440 pages 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. How Israel Was Won: A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict By Baylis Thomas Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield (June 1999), 352 pages The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military By Baruch Kimmerling Publisher: An S. Mark Taper Foundation Book in Jewish Studies (December 2001), 278 pages This thought-provoking book, the first of its kind in the English language, reexamines the fifty-year-old nation of Israel in terms of its origins as a haven for a persecuted people and its evolution into a multi- cultural society. Arguing that the mono-cultural regime built during the 1950s is over, Baruch Kimmerling suggests that the Israeli state has divided into seven major cultures. These seven groups, he contends, have been challenging one other for control over resource distribution and the identity of the polity. Kimmerling, one of the most prominent social scientists and political analysts of Israel today, relies on a large body of sociological work on the state, civil society, and ethnicity to present an overview of the construction and deconstruction of the secular-Zionist national identity. He shows how Israeliness is becoming a prefix for other identities as well as a legal and political concept of citizen rights granted by the state, though not necessarily equally to different segments of society. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World By Avi Shlaim Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 2001), 704 pages As it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, the State of Israel could count many important successes, but its conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world at large casts a long shadow over its history. What was promulgated as an "iron-wall" strategy--dealing with the Arabs from a position of unassailable strength--was meant to yield to a further stage where Israel would be strong enough to negotiate a satisfactory peace with its neighbors. The goal remains elusive. In this penetrating study, Avi Shlaim examines how variations of the iron-wall philosophy have guided Israel's leaders; he finds that, while the strategy has been successful, opportunities have been lost to progress from military security to broader peace. Israel in Search of a War: The Sinai Campaign, 1955-1956 By Moti Golani, Motti Golani Publisher: Sussex Academic Pr. (April 1998), 248 pages Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel By Israel Shahak, Norton Mezvinsky Publisher: Pluto Press (October 1, 1999), 160 pages This book provides a thorough assessment of fundamentalism in modern Israel. The authors trace the history and development of Jewish fundamentalism, examining the various different strains, and identify the messianic tendency as the most dangerous. Shahak and Mezvinsky place the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in the context of what the authors see as a tradition of punishments and killings of those Jews perceived to be heretics. The Jewish State By Theodor Herzl Publisher: Dover Pubs. (January 1, 1989), 160 pages Herzl, known as the founder of political Zionism, outlines his plan for establishing a homeland for the Jews in this historical document. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 By Benny Morris Publisher: Vintage (August 28, 2001), 800 pages Tracing the roots of political Zionism back to the pogroms of Russia and the Dreyfus Affair, Morris describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers into Palestine and the impact they had on the Arab population. Following the Holocaust, the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel, but it also shattered Palestinian Arab society and gave rise to a massive refugee problem. Morris offers distinctive accounts of each of the subsequent Israeli-Arab wars and details the sporadic peace efforts in between, culminating in the peace process initiated by the Rabin Government. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust By Tom Segev Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub (Reprint edition April 1994) This controversial and powerful history is the first to show the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel. Drawing on diaries, interviews, and thousands of declassified documents, Tom Segev reconsiders the major struggles and personalities of Israel's past-Ben-Gurion, Begin, Nahum Goldmann-and argues that the nation's charged legacy has, at critical moments-the Exodus affair, the Eichmann trial, the case of John Demjanjuk-been molded and manipulated in accordance with the ideological requirements of the state. ©2000-2007 electronicIntifada.net unless otherwise noted. Content may represent personal view of author. This page was printed from the Electronic Intifada website at electronicIntifada.net. You may freely e-mail, print out, copy, and redistribute this page for informational purposes on a non-commercial basis. To republish content credited to the Electronic Intifada in online or print publications, please get in touch via electronicIntifada.net/contact |