Prophets Outcast

by Shatz, Adam

• ISBN13: 9781560255093
• ISBN10: 1560255099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-28
• Publisher: Nation Books

Summary

Contrary to the claims of the American Jewish establishment and the Israel lobby, Jews do not speak with one voice about the Middle East. Since the early twentieth century some of the fiercest and most eloquent critiques of Israel and Zionism have been made by Jewish thinkers. They have hailed from political and intellectual traditionsZionism (Hannah Arendt), anti-Zionism (Maxim Rodinson), anarchism (Noam Chomsky), and Marxism (I. F. Stone). Unconditional supporters of the state of Israel have denounced them as heretics. Yet in the midst of the violence engulfing Palestine and Israel, their warnings about the Zionist project, with its vision of an ethnically pure Jewish state, have never seemed more prescient. These prophets outcast speak out as individuals in a wilderness, proposing solutions to the question of Palestine that range from a two-state solution to socialist internationalism. What links them is an understanding that Israeli policies have been a disaster not only for Palestinians, but for Jews as well. As Jews, they express a recognition of the tragic thread that connects the Palestinian catastrophe to the Holocaust, the destruction of European Jewry that made Israel possible, and that led many Jews to view Zionism as their only salvation.

Table of Contents

In Praise of Diasporism, or, Three Cheers for Irving Berlin
The Non-Jewish Jew
The Non-Jewish Jew	p. 3
Estranged Brothers: Reconsidering Jewish History	p. 17
The Other Zionism
Excerpt from Truth from Eretz Israel	p. 31
A Hidden Question	p. 35
Letter to the Keren Hajessod (Dr. Chaim Koffler) of the Palestine Foundation Fund	p. 53
Zionism and Zionism	p. 55
Three Statements	p. 61
'The Jew as Pariah': Peace or Armistice in the Near East?	p. 69
Marxists on the Jewish Question
Excerpts from On the Jewish Problem	p. 101
Zionism	p. 107
The Birth of Israel and the Destruction of Palestine
Introduction and Conclusion from The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (1987)	p. 121
Erasures	p. 145
From Preemptive Conquest to Protracted Occupation
The Israeli-Arab War, June 1967	p. 167
Holy War	p. 189
Pax Semitia	p. 211
Israel and the Palestinians	p. 223
Occupation and Terror	p. 265
Mercy and Truth	p. 271
Zionism's Internal Colony
Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Stadpoint of its Jewish Victims	p. 277
The Use and Misuse of Holocaust Memory
The Palestinian Uprising and the Future of the Jewish People	p. 325
Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors	p. 343
Talking About Anti-Semitism
The Charge of Anti-Semitism: the Risks of Public Critique	p. 357
In Praise of Resistance
A Discourse on the Border	p. 371
A Time to Speak Out: Rethinking Jewish Identity and Solidarity with Israel	p. 377
The End of Oslo and the Return of Binationalism
Israel: An Alternative Future	p. 395
Acknowledgments	p. 405
Permissions	p. 407
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