API tools faq
paste
Advertisement
jonstond2

Zionism from Its Inception to 1948

jonstond2
Mar 10th, 2016
272
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 86.02 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. Zionism is a variety of Jewish nationalism. It claims that Jews constitute a nation whose survival, both physical and cultural, requires its return to the Jews’ ancestral home in the Land of Israel. Pre-1948 Zionism was more than a nationalist movement: it was a revolutionary project to remake the Jewish people. Zionism’s origins lay in a confluence of factors: physical persecution of East European Jewry, Jewish assimilation in the West, and a Hebrew cultural revival that rejected or transformed traditional Jewish religiosity. At the end of the 1800s, Zionism’s first adherents were concentrated in the Russian Pale of Settlement and Rumania, but under the dynamic leadership of Theodor Herzl, Zionism established itself as a global political movement. During World War I, Chaim Weizmann and the British government came to a meeting of minds about the desirability of a Jewish national home in Palestine. During the interwar period, Zionism’s fortunes waxed and waned. On the one hand, the Zionist movement claimed millions of supporters, and Palestine’s Jewish community, the Yishuv, grew from a handful of settlements and urban enclaves into a protostate. On the other hand, Arab opposition and British policy restricted Palestine’s capacity to absorb mass Jewish immigration, and in the diaspora many Jews opposed Zionism on religious or political grounds. Jewish support for Zionism became nearly universal during and after World War II, and Jewish volunteer fighters and financial contributions played a key role in Israel’s victory in the 1948 war. Zionist historiography was pioneered by activists and became a scholarly enterprise only in the 1960s. Until the 1990s the vast bulk of the literature was available only in Hebrew, but Israeli scholarship has become increasingly available in English translation, and the number of scholars in the English-speaking world who work on Israel has grown markedly. There is considerable overlap between scholarship on Israel’s origins, diaspora Jewish politics, the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, and the development of Palestinian politics and society. In the early 21st century, literature on the Yishuv has increasingly integrated Zionist and Palestinian history through what Zachary Lockman has called a relational paradigm.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6.  
  7. Zionist historiography was first written by activists and ideologues who were directly involved in the Zionist Organization, a global body that changed its name in 1960 to the World Zionist Organization, and its constituent national chapters. Their work was heavily ideological and tendentious, but Adolf Boehm, president of the Austrian Zionist Federation (Boehm 1935–1937), adopted a more limited and professional approach in his comprehensive history. The transformation from ideological to reflective historiography began in the 1960s. Halpern 1969 combines elements of both activist and scholarly history, reflecting the author’s career as a Zionist functionary before turning to academia. Laqueur 2003 breaks Zionist historiography fully away from ideology and hagiography in what is in many ways still the finest overview of the Zionist movement to 1948. Lucas 1975 offers a deeply critical approach to Israeli nation building and Zionist–Arab relations, so much so that the book was largely overlooked, although from the perspective of later generations its analysis appears prescient. Sachar 2007 is mainly about the post-1948 period but provides a useful narrative of pre-1948 events. Lisak 1989–2009 is a multivolume Hebrew work that brings together dozens of essays on all aspects of the history of the Yishuv. Stein 2003 provides the most detailed narrative in a one-volume English work on the history of the Yishuv, and Engel 2009 compresses the history of international Zionism, Zionist diplomacy, and Jewish state building into a slim and highly elegant volume.
  8.  
  9. Boehm, Adolf. Die Zionistische Bewegung. 2 vols. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1935–1937.
  10. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11. Originally published 1920–1925. An invaluable source for the institutional history of the Zionist Organization up to World War I and of the Zionist Organization’s first settlement experiments in Palestine.
  12. Find this resource:
  13. Engel, David. Zionism. Short Histories of Big Ideas. Harlow, UK, and New York: Longman, 2009.
  14. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. The best starting point for a newcomer to the subject. Engel, a specialist in East European Jewish history, covers the history of both international Zionism and Jewish state building in Palestine, with trenchant analysis and an up-to-date bibliography.
  16. Find this resource:
  17. Halpern, Ben. The Idea of the Jewish State. 2d ed. Harvard Middle Eastern Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
  18. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. Halpern, who worked as a Zionist publicist and administrator for the Jewish Agency for Israel before turning to academia, offers a rich analysis of the relationship between the Zionist project and international Jewish politics of the 20th century.
  20. Find this resource:
  21. Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. New York: Schocken, 2003.
  22. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  23. Originally published in 1972, this is the first and in many ways still the best one-volume history of Zionism. Laqueur, a distinguished scholar of modern European history, places Zionism within the context of the ideological and political trends of the 20th century.
  24. Find this resource:
  25. Lisak, Moshe, ed. Toldot ha-yishuv ha-Yehudi be-Erets Yiśra’el me-az ha-‘aliyah ha-rishonah. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Byaliḳ, 1989–2009.
  26. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27. A collection of long essays by sundry authors, this work offers readers of Hebrew detailed accounts of all aspects of the Yishuv’s history. Much of the material here is not available in any English-language work.
  28. Find this resource:
  29. Lucas, Noah. The Modern History of Israel. New York: Praeger, 1975.
  30. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  31. Before turning to academia, Lucas was an official with the Political Department of the Israeli national trade union, the Histadrut. This volume is particularly commendable for its analysis of the formation of Zionist political parties and of the Histadrut.
  32. Find this resource:
  33. Sachar, Howard M. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. 3d ed. New York: Knopf, 2007.
  34. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. Originally published in 1976. Presents a detailed yet accessible narrative of the Zionist project and a massive bibliography.
  36. Find this resource:
  37. Stein, Leslie. The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel. Praeger Series on Jewish and Israeli Studies. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
  38. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  39. The only English-language volume dedicated to the history of Jewish state building in Palestine from the 1880s to Israel’s establishment in 1948.
  40. Find this resource:
  41. Document Collections
  42.  
  43. Almost from its inception, the Zionist movement was dedicated to self-documentation. Convinced of the significance of their actions and hoping to mobilize adherents to follow their example, Zionist activists, such as Alter Druyanov, collected documents (Druyanov 1982–1993) from the earliest days of the Chovevei Tzion in eastern Europe and the first wave of Zionist settlement of the 1880s. Bartal 1997 does the same for the Second Aliyah, most famous for its core of radical pioneers, who went on to found the Yishuv’s first Labor Zionist political parties. Sachar 1987 and Klieman and Klieman 1990–1991 are multivolume collections of reproduced documents without annotation or commentary. Raider and Raider-Roth 2002 illuminates the challenges facing Jewish women who aspired to be agricultural laborers in late Ottoman and early Mandate Palestine. Many important documents on the British Mandate and international attempts to impose a solution to the Zionist-Palestinian conflict are available in Laqueur and Rubin 2008 and Rabinovich and Reinharz 2008. Kaplan and Penslar 2011 brings to the English-language reader documents on the social, cultural, and political history of the Yishuv that were previously unpublished or available only in Hebrew.
  44.  
  45. Bartal, Israel, ed. Ha-‘aliyah ha-sheniyah. Vol. 2. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tsevi, 1997.
  46. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  47. The most up-to-date collection of sources from the turn of the 20th century, including the political and economic organizations founded by the pioneer youth who formed the core of the immigration wave of the time.
  48. Find this resource:
  49. Druyanov, Alter, ed. Ketavim le-toldot Ḥibat-Tsiyon ṿe-yishuv Erets-Yiśra’el. 7 vols. Revised by Shulamit Laskov. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1982–1993.
  50. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  51. Originally published 1919–1932. This new edition, edited by Shulamit Laskov, adds valuable annotation and commentary to the original collection of 1,500 documents from the Chovevei Tzion archive, covering the period 1882–1890. An outstanding source for the internal development of Zionism in eastern Europe as well as the beginning of Zionist settlement.
  52. Find this resource:
  53. Kaplan, Eran, and Derek J. Penslar, eds. The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History. Sources in Modern Jewish History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
  54. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  55. A counter to the existing documentary sources, this volume traces the social, economic, and cultural history of the Yishuv as well as its political and military development.
  56. Find this resource:
  57. Klieman, Aaron S., and Adrian L. Klieman. American Zionism: A Documentary History: A Fifteen-Volume Set of American Jewish and Zionist History from the Nineteenth Century to 1968. 15 vols. New York: Garland, 1990–1991.
  58. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  59. As its title suggests, the documents assembled here illustrate the fluidity of boundaries between the history of Zionism and that of the Jewish diaspora in general and of the Jewish diaspora and that of the states in which Jews have lived.
  60. Find this resource:
  61. Laqueur, Walter, and Barry Rubin, eds. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. 7th ed. New York: Penguin, 2008.
  62. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  63. Reproduced in numerous editions, this work provides selections rather than entire documents, but it is extremely useful for undergraduates and general readers.
  64. Find this resource:
  65. Rabinovich, Itamar, and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present. 2d ed. Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008.
  66. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  67. Although focused on the post-1948 period, the documents in the volume’s first part cover pre-1948, mostly on diplomatic and political history.
  68. Find this resource:
  69. Raider, Mark A., and Miriam B. Raider-Roth, eds. The Plough Woman: Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine: A Critical Edition. Brandeis Series on Jewish Women. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2002.
  70. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  71. Selections from the memoirs and autobiographies of female agricultural workers in the Yishuv.
  72. Find this resource:
  73. Sachar, Howard, ed. The Rise of Israel: A Documentary Record from the Nineteenth Century to 1948; A Facsimile Series Reproducing over 1,900 Documents in 39 Volumes. 39 vols. New York: Garland, 1987.
  74. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  75. The largest single documentary source on the subject, containing more than 1,900 full-length documents, many of them archival, with an emphasis on political and diplomatic history.
  76. Find this resource:
  77. Online Resources
  78.  
  79. There are myriad websites devoted to Zionism, Israel, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Although many of these sites are unreliable political sounding boards, some are excellent sources of documents. The Middle East History and Resources section of MidEastWeb and The Middle East, 1916–2001, part of Yale Law School’s Avalon Project, reproduce scores of documents from the post-1948 period as well as foundational texts on the earlier history of Palestine under Ottoman and British rule and the “Palestine Question” in international diplomacy. Fordham University’s Internet Modern History Sourcebook also contains valuable material on Israel’s origins.
  80.  
  81. The Middle East, 1916–2001: A Documentary Record. Avalon Project. Yale Law School.
  82. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  83. Mostly post-1948, but includes key British governmental documents from the Mandate period.
  84. Find this resource:
  85. Middle East History and Resources. MidEastWeb.
  86. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  87. Primarily a collection of post-1948 diplomatic-historical documents, it also provides full-length versions of classic Zionist texts by Moses Hess, Theodor Herzl, Achad Ha-‘Am, and more plus British diplomatic documents from the Mandate period.
  88. Find this resource:
  89. Middle East since 1944. Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Fordham University.
  90. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  91. Part of a comprehensive collection of world history documents. Includes Herzl’s The Jewish State and documents from the early Mandate period.
  92. Find this resource:
  93. Biographies
  94.  
  95. Most of the major leaders and thinkers in the Zionist movement have been the subject of biographies. These books are often written in the “life and times” mode, illuminating the Zionist movement, and Yishuv as a whole, through their study of a single person’s life. Theodor Herzl is the subject of many biographies; Pawel 1989 is the most comprehensive general biography of the founder of political Zionism. Zipperstein 1993 combines the study of Ahad Ha-‘Am’s life with insightful analyses of his essays. Stanislawski 2001 is a prosopographical study of Herzl, the writer and public intellectual Max Nordau, and Vladimir Jabotinsky, all of whom shared a cosmoplitan artistic and literary aesthetic before turning to Jewish nationalism. Teveth 1987 is the most thorough and insightful of the several biographies of David Ben-Gurion; Katz 1996 offers a richly detailed narrative of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s life but is tainted by the author’s zealous admiration for his subject. Reinharz 1985 and Reinharz 1993 trace the first fifty years of the life of the longtime Zionist Organization president (and the first president of Israel) Chaim Weizmann. Anita Shapira, the most eminent historian of Labor Zionism and the Yishuv, has written biographies of a number of Zionist luminaries, including the Labor Zionist ideologue Berl Katznelson (Shapira 1984).
  96.  
  97. Katz, Shmuel. Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. 2 vols. New York: Barricade, 1996.
  98. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. The most comprehensive biography of Jabotinsky, written by a career activist and politician in the various manifestations of Revisionist Zionism.
  100. Find this resource:
  101. Pawel, Ernst. The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989.
  102. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  103. The finest comprehensive biography of Herzl, which sets him squarely in the context of fin de siècle Central Europe.
  104. Find this resource:
  105. Reinharz, Jehuda. Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Zionist Leader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
  106. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  107. The first scholarly biography of Weizmann, this volume traces Weizmann’s life up to 1914, with an emphasis on his emergence as a Zionist leader and as an accomplished chemist.
  108. Find this resource:
  109. Reinharz, Jehuda. Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman. Studies in Jewish History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
  110. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  111. The second volume of Reinharz’s biography covers the years 1914–1922, when Weizmann became the Zionist movement’s paramount leader and played an important role in steering Britain toward support for the Zionist cause.
  112. Find this resource:
  113. Shapira, Anita. Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, Berl Katznelson, 1887–1944. Translated by Haya Galai. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
  114. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  115. An abridged version of the two-volume Hebrew original, this is a seminal work for the history of Labor Zionism as well as a pioneering biography of one of the Yishuv’s most charismatic and influential leaders.
  116. Find this resource:
  117. Stanislawski, Michael. Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky. S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
  118. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  119. Although a group biographical study linked by the common theme of cosmopolitans turned nationalists, the book’s main contribution is its reappraisal of the intellectual path of Vladimir Jabotinsky.
  120. Find this resource:
  121. Teveth, Shabtai. Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
  122. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  123. Teveth, a veteran journalist and biographer, paints a broad canvas of Yishuv party politics, at whose center Ben-Gurion stood. The best Ben-Gurion biography.
  124. Find this resource:
  125. Zipperstein, Steven J. Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha-‘Am and the Origins of Zionism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
  126. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  127. Ahad Ha-‘Am stood at the crossroads between piety and secularism, politics and culture, continuity with the Jewish past and rebellion against it. Zipperstein’s biography illuminates both the life story of an unlikely Zionist leader and the general relationship among Orthodoxy, Hebraism, and Zionism during the movement’s first years.
  128. Find this resource:
  129. Journals
  130.  
  131. Scholarship on the Zionist movement and origins of the state of Israel is published in many journals, especially those devoted to Jewish and Middle Eastern studies. In the early 21st century, however, the bulk of the scholarship appears in periodicals devoted to the history of Zionism and the Yishuv and published by research institutes in Israel. The Weizmann Institute at Tel Aviv University produces the Journal of Israeli History and the Hebrew-language Yisra’el. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev produces the Hebrew-language Iyunim bitekumat Yisra’el and, with Brandeis University, Israel Studies. Katedra le-toletot Eretz-Yisra’el ve-yishuvah is devoted to the history of the Jewish community of Palestine, including the several decades from the beginning of Zionist settlement to 1948. The Journal of Palestine Studies is a publication of the Institute of Palestine Studies. Ben-Gurion University is also an essential resource, given the inseparability of the histories of Zionism and the Palestinians.
  132.  
  133. Israel Studies. 1996–.
  134. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  135. Sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University, in affiliation with the Association for Israel Studies and the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
  136. Find this resource:
  137. Iyunim bitekumat Yisra’el. 1991–.
  138. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. Sponsored by the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
  140. Find this resource:
  141. Journal of Israeli History. 1980–.
  142. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  143. Formerly Studies in Zionism (1980–1993). Sponsored by the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University.
  144. Find this resource:
  145. Journal of Palestine Studies. 1971–.
  146. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  147. Founded by the Institute of Palestine Studies, Washington, DC.
  148. Find this resource:
  149. Katedra le-toletot Eretz-Yisra’el ve-yishuvah. 1976–.
  150. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. Sponsored and published by Yad Ben-Tsevi, Jerusalem.
  152. Find this resource:
  153. Yisra’el. 2000–.
  154. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  155. Formerly ha-Tsiyonut (1970–2000), issued by the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University.
  156. Find this resource:
  157. Writings of Major Zionist Leaders
  158.  
  159. A vast body of writing by the founders of the Zionist movement and state of Israel is widely available for researchers. The diaries and letters of Theodor Herzl can be found in full in German (Herzl 1983–1996) and in abridged form in English. Herzl’s Zionist manifesto from 1896 (Herzl 2007), lives on several websites. Herzl’s nemesis, the cultural Zionist Ahad Ha-‘Am, has not been as widely translated, but some of his essays that were translated in 1912 have been reprinted and are also on the Internet (Ahad Ha-‘Am 2005). Borochov 1937, the major work of the Socialist Zionist theoretician Ber Borochov, is available in English, as are many writings by the Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion, including Ben-Gurion 1971–1987. Ben-Gurion’s memoirs, an invaluable historical source, exist only in Hebrew, as Ben-Gurion 1971–1987. The Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote extensively, but only one volume of selected writings has appeared in English (Jabotinsky 1999). The writings of the Zionist Organization’s longtime president Chaim Weizmann, in contrast, are voluminous, and his letters and papers have been published in a series of reference works (Weizmann 1968–1980). Several collections of the writings of the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook, are now available in English (e.g., Kook 2006).
  160.  
  161. Ahad Ha-‘Am. Selected Essays. Translated by Leon Simon. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2005.
  162. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  163. An introduction to the work of the leading exponent of cultural Zionism, which, unlike Herzlian Zionism, did not envision a Jewish homeland so much as a center that would create a new Hebrew culture that would inspire and rejuvenate diaspora Jewry.
  164. Find this resource:
  165. Ben-Gurion, David. Zikhronot. 6 vols. Tel Aviv: Am ‘Oved, 1971–1987.
  166. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. Exhaustive memoirs by the single most powerful figure in the Yishuv of the 1930s and 1940s. Written with an eye toward posterity, the memoirs can be self-serving but are nonetheless a valuable historical source.
  168. Find this resource:
  169. Borochov, Ber. Nationalism and the Class Struggle: A Marxian Approach to the Jewish Problem. Edited by Moshe Cohen. New York: Poale Zion-Zeire Zion of America, 1937.
  170. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  171. A powerful blend of Marxist and Zionist analysis. Borochov attempts to prove that Jews were destined to be extruded from the organized working classes throughout the diaspora and that a revolutionary Jewish proletariat could form only in Palestine.
  172. Find this resource:
  173. Herzl, Theodor. Theodor Herzl: Briefe und Tagebücher. 7 vols. Edited by Alex Bein, Hermann Greive, Moshe Schaerf, and Julius H. Schoeps. Berlin: Propyläen, 1983–1996.
  174. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  175. Herzl’s diaries and letters are an excellent source of information on the founding and first years of the Zionist Organization, which Herzl founded in 1897. Available in an abridged English edition, The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, translated and edited by Marvin Lowenthal (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1962).
  176. Find this resource:
  177. Herzl, Theodor. The Jewish State. MidEastWeb, 2007.
  178. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  179. Originally published in 1896, in German. In this pamphlet, an adaptation of the 1946 edition by the American Zionist Emergency Council (a revision of the translation by Sylvia d’Avigdor), Herzl laid out his prognosis that the “Jewish problem” in Europe could be solved only through the mass removal of Jews to a distant land over which they would exercise unfettered rights of colonization.
  180. Find this resource:
  181. Jabotinsky, Vladimir. The Political and Social Philosophy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky: Selected Writings. Edited by Mordechai Sarig. Translated by Shimshom Feder. Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 1999.
  182. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  183. During the 1920s and 1930s, Jabotinsky and the World Zionist Organization president, Chaim Weizmann, were the most prominent Zionist leaders in Europe. Jabotinsky was celebrated for a brilliant writing and speaking style in many languages; this volume does not do him justice, but little else of his political writings is available in English.
  184. Find this resource:
  185. Kook, Abraham Isaac. The Essential Writings of Abraham Isaac Kook. Edited by Ben Zion Bokser. Teaneck, NJ: Yehuda, 2006.
  186. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  187. Kook’s theology was mystical and not easily accessible, but he had tremendous influence on the Religious Zionist movement, particularly regarding accepting a partnership with secular Zionists who, Kook and his followers believed, were unwittingly doing God’s work by laying the foundation for a Jewish commonwealth.
  188. Find this resource:
  189. Weizmann, Chaim. The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann. 23 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1968–1980.
  190. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  191. Edited by multiple hands, these documents provide the most exhaustive published primary sources in English on the history of Zionist diplomacy and international organization during the interwar period.
  192. Find this resource:
  193. Zionist Thought
  194.  
  195. The intellectual history of Zionism is well covered in many of the sources listed in General Overviews, Biographies, and Writings of Major Zionist Leaders. In addition, Hertzberg 1997 combines an invaluable long introductory essay on Zionist ideology with selections from foundational Zionist thinkers. Avineri 1981 offers a series of insightful essays on major Zionist thinkers, whereas Shimoni 1995 is a comprehensive work that includes secondary figures and institutions as well as major thinkers. Although many older works review the writings of Labor Zionist ideologues, Neumann 2011 is a cultural, psychological study of the Yishuv’s pioneer youth. Revisionist Zionist thought has received much less attention than its Labor Zionist counterpart; Kaplan 2005 provides an important corrective. Orthodoxy was capable of both rejecting and embracing Zionism; Luz 1988 examines the historical circumstances behind each of these approaches. Almog, et al. 1998 does the same and also looks at the attitudes toward Zionism of Reform Judaism in the United States as well as Labor Zionism’s tendency to transform religiosity rather than reject it outright. Luz 2003 brings a vast array of Zionist thinkers in the diaspora and Eretz Israel into a study of Zionist concepts of power and debates over its morality.
  196.  
  197. Almog, Shmuel, Jehuda Reinharz, and Anita Shapira, eds. Zionism and Religion. Papers presented at an international conference on Zionism and religion, Brandeis University. Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998.
  198. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  199. A collection of essays on the areas of concord and overlap, as well as discord and rupture, between Zionism and Judaism over the period from the fin de siècle to the 1950s.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York: Basic, 1981.
  202. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. A compact and accessible introduction to Zionist thought, with separate chapters devoted to major thinkers.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997.
  206. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  207. Originally published in 1959. Hertzberg, a rabbi and historian possessed of an original and unorthodox mind, produced this volume when Zionist historiography was in its infancy. His long introductory essay remains essential reading for any student of Zionist thought.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. Kaplan, Eran. The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy. Studies on Israel. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
  210. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  211. An innovative study of the European roots of right-wing Zionism.
  212. Find this resource:
  213. Luz, Ehud. Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement, 1882–1904. Translated by Lenn J. Schramm. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988.
  214. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. A combination of institutional and intellectual history, this book studies the tensions between Orthodoxy, Zionism, and secular Hebraism within the Zionist movement before and during the time of Herzl.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Luz, Ehud. Wrestling with an Angel: Power, Morality, and Jewish Identity. Translated by Michael Swirsky. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
  218. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  219. A rich, sophisticated study of Zionist debates about the meaning and nature of sovereign Jewish power, particularly as translated into coercive force.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Neumann, Boaz. Land and Desire in Early Zionism. Translated by Haim Watzman. Schusterman Series in Israel Studies. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. Although grounded in postmodern psychoanalytic theory, this is a clearly written, highly accessible study of early Zionists’ attachment to the land of Israel and how that attachment affected their social and economic policies as well as their views of Palestinian Arabs.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Shimoni, Gideon. The Zionist Ideology. Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1995.
  226. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  227. A comprehensive, encyclopedic study of Zionist thought in all its forms, including those that are often overlooked, for example, the middle-class varieties of Zionism known as “General Zionism” as well as various forms of Labor Zionism.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Zionism in the Diaspora
  230.  
  231. Information on Zionism within various countries may be found in general or country-specific works on modern Jewish history. Monographs on Zionism in the diaspora tend to focus on issues of collective identity; struggles between nationalist and assimilationist Jewish political organizations; and, for western Europe and North America, relations between immigrant and established Jews. Reinharz 1975 is a classic study of German-Jewish anxieties during the pre–World War I period that Zionism would confirm anti-Semitic views of Jewish foreignness and the German Zionist rebellion against the assimilationist majority. Lavsky 1996 focuses on German Zionism during the interwar years, when, though still a minority movement, it gained a critical mass of support and spoke with a distinctively cosmopolitan and dovish voice within the international Zionist movement. Shumsky 2010 claims that the strongest exponents of a binational answer to the Palestine problem were influenced not by Germany, but by the multinational Hapsburg Empire. Cohen 1982 deals with themes similar to those in Reinharz 1975, except that in the United Kingdom there were considerably more recent immigrants from eastern Europe than in Germany, and many of the Jewish immigrants were attracted to Zionism from the start. Many, but not all: in eastern Europe the Jewish Bund presented a popular alternative to Zionism, as explored in depth in the magisterial work by Jonathan Frankel (Frankel 1984) and the essays in Gitelman 2003. Mendelsohn 1981 examines how and why Zionism reached its greatest popularity in Poland during the 1920s. Berkowitz 1993 makes an important, counterintuitive argument that not only in eastern Europe, where a separate Jewish culture was clearly demarcated by Yiddish and Hebrew, but also in the more assimilated West, Zionists could derive a sense of Jewish cultural unity. Halpern 1987 shows that Zionist politics during the 1910s and 1920s was defined largely in terms of the clash between those who viewed the Zionist Organization as a protogovernment and those who saw it as a philanthropy to be run along businesslike lines.
  232.  
  233. Berkowitz, Michael. Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
  234. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  235. An account of Zionist cultural influence in western Europe, based on not only literature and journalism, but also visual culture, for example, photographs, posters, and objets d’art.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Cohen, Stuart A. English Zionists and British Jews: The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1895–1920. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
  238. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  239. An institutional history of the English Zionist Federation, demonstrating the effects of mass immigration of eastern European Jews on the leadership and political positions of Anglo-Jewry.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Frankel, Jonathan. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
  242. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  243. One of the most important works of modern Jewish historiography, this book sets Zionism in the context of Jewish radical politics in both late imperial Russia and the United States during World War I.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe. Russian and European Studies. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.
  246. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. A valuable collection of essays on the political struggles and ideological tensions between Zionism and Bundism.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Halpern, Ben. A Clash of Heroes: Brandeis, Weizmann, and American Zionism. Studies in Jewish History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  250. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. An important source of information on early American Zionism and its leader, US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Lavsky, Hagit. Before Catastrophe: The Distinctive Path of German Zionism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
  254. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. An account of German interwar Zionism that situates it between western philanthropic Zionism and eastern European Zionism, which was viscerally nationalist and often politically radical. German Zionism was committed to immigration (aliyah) and cultural change but was less inclined toward socialism and more toward dovish solutions to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Mendelsohn, Ezra. Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915–1926. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
  258. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  259. A history of the Zionist movement in Poland, from the Russian occupation of Galicia in World War I to the coup of Józef Pilsudski. Weaves together Zionist cultural and political activity within Jewish communities and Jewish emigration to Palestine.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Reinharz, Jehuda. Fatherland or Promised Land: The Dilemma of the German Jew, 1893–1914. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975.
  262. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. A classic study of the origins of German Zionism and its clash with those who believed German Jewry would achieve acceptance through assimilation. Also useful for its analysis of changes within German Zionism from a purely philanthropic approach to a commitment to cultural and psychological transformation.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Shumsky, Dmitry. Ben Prag li-Yerushalayim. Gesharim, meḥḳarim be-toldot Yehude merkaz Eropah. Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute, 2010.
  266. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  267. An important study that distinguishes German from Bohemian Zionism, the latter being centered in Prague and strongly influenced by the multinational Hapsburg Empire, which in turn made Prague Zionists’ amenable to binational approaches to Palestine.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. International Zionist Politics and Diplomacy
  270.  
  271. General histories of Zionism often have a heavy political and diplomatic focus (see General Overviews). David Vital’s triology (Vital 1975, Vital 1982, Vital 1987) is the most comprehensive work on the history of Zionist diplomacy up to the end of World War I. Many works, more recently Schneer 2010, have covered British policy during World War I and the origins of the Balfour Declaration. Cohen 1978 and Makovsky 2007 focus on the period of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt up to Israel’s creation, as Britain sought to abrogate the Balfour Declaration while maintaining influence in Palestine, and Gal 1991 examines the World War II years, when Zionist diplomacy placed increasing emphasis on the United States rather than England, as Chaim Weizmann’s influence waned and that of David Ben-Gurion waxed ever brighter.
  272.  
  273. Cohen, Michael J. Palestine, Retreat from the Mandate: The Making of British Policy, 1936–45. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978.
  274. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  275. A classic account of the forces leading Britain to distance itself from the Balfour Declaration’s support for a Jewish national home and favoring of a unitary state in Palestine.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Gal, Allon. David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. Demonstrates the significance of the American Zionist movement in David Ben-Gurion’s political calculations and the consolidation during World War II of American Zionist support behind the creation of a Jewish state.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Makovsky, Michael. Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
  282. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. An intriguing study of Winston Churchill’s generally positive yet at times idiosyncratic attitudes toward Zionism.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Schneer, Jonathan. The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. New York: Random House, 2010.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. An account of the declaration’s origin, noting that Zionists and Arabs alike were courted by multiple great powers and that great power support for the Zionists stemmed from exaggerated notions of Jewish political and economic power.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Vital, David. The Origins of Zionism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.
  290. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. The first volume of this trilogy treats the Chovevei Tzion in eastern Europe, Herzl’s Zionist involvement, and the First Zionist Congress (1897).
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Vital, David. Zionism: The Formative Years. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.
  294. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295. Focuses on Herzl’s years as Zionist Organization president; the Uganda affair of 1903; Herzl’s death in 1904; and the Zionist Organization’s movement by 1907 toward a synthesis of diplomacy, settlement, and activity.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Vital, David. Zionism: The Crucial Phase. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. On Zionist-Ottoman relations in the wake of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and attempts by the Zionist Organization to negotiate simultaneously with the combatant powers during World War I.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Palestine under the British Mandate
  302.  
  303. Classic Zionist historiography tends to present Britain as an occupying power and a hindrance to the Zionist project by restricting immigration, but more recent literature stresses the indispensable role played by Britain in building up Palestine’s infrastructure and developing judicial and administrative norms that were inherited by the young Israeli state (Biger 1994, El-Eini 2006, Likhovski 2006). Balancing Jewish and Arab political aspirations was impossible (Wasserstein 1978), but nonetheless there were close contacts through the civil service between British officials and Jews and Arabs, which was open to both nationalities, and social gatherings drawing on the Jewish and Arab elites. Segev 2000 gracefully narrates these encounters as well as flare-ups of violence in 1920, 1921, and 1929, culminating in the 1936–1939 Palestinian Arab Revolt.
  304.  
  305. Biger, Gideon. An Empire in the Holy Land: Historical Geography of the British Administration in Palestine, 1917–1929. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.
  306. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. Examines the role played by the British in establishing the preconditions for a Jewish or Arab state in Palestine through the delimitation of borders; the drawing of administrative and judicial districts; the creation of a body of administrative law; and the construction of infrastructure, such as roads, ports, and railroads.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. El-Eini, Roza. Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine, 1929–1948. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
  310. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. A detailed study of British rural and urban development in Mandate Palestine.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Likhovski, Assaf. Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine. Studies in Legal History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
  314. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. A study of the impact of the mandatory British judicial system on Jewish and Arab legal practice and norms.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Segev, Tom. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. Translated by Haim Watzman. New York: Metropolitan, 2000.
  318. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. The work of one of Israel’s most prominent journalists, and written with an eye for detail, this book relates the story of the human interconnection between British officials, Arab dignitaries, and Zionist activists during the interwar period.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Wasserstein, Bernard. The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 1917–1929. Royal Historical Society Studies in History. London: Royal Historical Society, 1978.
  322. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. A focused monograph on Britain’s Palestine policy up to the October 1929 disturbances. Particularly insightful about the views of Jews and Arabs held by Palestine’s British masters, first under military rule and then, after 1920, civilian administration.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. The Zionist Labor Movement
  326.  
  327. The literature on the Yishuv’s political development has been dominated by the Zionist labor movement, which rose to hegemony during the 1920s (Horowitz and Lissak 1978, Shapiro 1976) and remained in power until 1977. Cohen 1992 and Sternhell 1998 focus on tensions between the universalist (socialist) and particularist (nationalist) aspects of Labor Zionism. A particular object of fascination, the kibbutz, was not only a hallmark of the Labor Zionist economy, but also a major source of its political power (Near 1992–1997).
  328.  
  329. Cohen, Mitchell. Zion and State: Nation, Class, and the Shaping of Modern Israel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
  330. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. Originally published in 1987. This is a fundamental work on the rise and decline of class as a salient concept in the Zionist labor movement, from its beginnings through the 1950s.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Horowitz, Dan, and Moshe Lissak. Origins of the Israeli Polity: Palestine under the Mandate. Translated by Charles Hoffman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
  334. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. Horowitz and Lissak figure among the founders of the social scientific study of Israel, and this work remains a fundamental text on Israeli state formation.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Near, Henry. The Kibbutz Movement: A History. 2 vols. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992–1997.
  338. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. The most comprehensive available source in English on the development of kibbutzim and on the national kibbutz movements.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Shapiro, Yonathan. The Formative Years of the Israeli Labour Party: The Organization of Power, 1919–1930. SAGE Studies in 20th-Century History. London and Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, 1976.
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. Shapiro, a founder of critical Israeli sociology, wrote many important books, including this monograph on Ahdut Ha’avodah, a socialist party that was one of the components of the hegemonic party Mapai, founded in 1930.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Sternhell, Zeev. The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State. Translated by David Maisel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347. A provocative critique of Labor Zionism by a foremost intellectual historian of the European Right. Demonstrates areas of congruity between Labor Zionist thought and that of integral nationalists at the fin de siècle.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Revisionist, Religious, and Middle-Class Zionist Politics
  350.  
  351. Halpern 1998 is one of the few overviews of Zionist history that pays close attention to all sectors of the Yishuv’s political life, including middle-class and Sephardic parties and those that represented Jewish capitalist planters. Shavit 1988 was the first scholarly overview of right-wing Revisionist Zionism. Although there is no good institutional or social history of the Revisionist-oriented militia the Irgun, there is an excellent work on the much smaller and more radical Lehi, formerly the Stern Gang (Heller 1995). Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Mandate Palestine had an anomalous political position, not formally part of the organized Jewish community, and there were constant frictions between them and the Zionist Yishuv and also within the ultra-Orthodox community (Friedman 1977, Friedman 1995).
  352.  
  353. Friedman, Menachem. Ḥevrah ṿa-dat: ha-orṭodoḳsyah ha-lo Tsiyonit be-’EretsYiśra’el, 1918–1936. Sifriyah le-toldot ha-yishuv ha-Yehudi be-Erets-Yiśra’el. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tsevi, 1977.
  354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355. A pioneering work on anti-Zionist Orthodoxy by the foremost scholar on the subject.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Friedman, Menachem. “The Structural Foundation for Religio-Political Accommodation in Israel: Fallacy and Reality.” In Israel: The First Decade of Independence. Edited by S. Ilan Troen and Noah Lucas, 51–81. State University of New York Series in Israeli Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. On the relations before and during the 1948 war between the Israeli protogovernment (the Jerusalem Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine) and the non-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Halpern, Ben, and Jehuda Reinharz. Zionism and the Creation of a New Society. Studies in Jewish History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  362. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. A richly detailed political and institutional history of the Yishuv, with much information not found in other English-language works.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Heller, Joseph. The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940–1949. Portland, OR, and London: Cass, 1995.
  366. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. An abridged version of the two-volume Hebrew original; it is still a substantive volume that illustrates the history of the most radical of the Yishuv’s miltias.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Shavit, Yaacov. Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925–1948. London and Totowa, NJ: Cass, 1988.
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. The first serious scholarly study of Revisionism; illustrates ideological disputes and political rivalries within the movement.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. The “Old” Yishuv
  374.  
  375. Before World War I many Jewish immigrants to Palestine were Orthodox and anti-Zionist, more closely connected with the preexisting Jewish Palestinian community than the new Zionist Yishuv. Cohen 1986 offers a brief history of Zionists later called the “Old” Orthodox Yishuv. Bartal 1994 is the most sophisticated and authoritative work on the subject; it examines various aspects of the Old Yishuv’s society, economy, political organization, and religious life. Morgenstern 2006, one of the few monographs in English on the Old Yishuv, claims that Zionism emerged out of this community even though most of its members would reject secular Zionism. Shilo 2005 presents Jewish Orthodox women in 19th-century Jerusalem as autonomous agents who influenced their families’ decision to emigrate or who came to Palestine alone.
  376.  
  377. Bartal, Israel. Galut ba-arets: Yishuv Erets-Yiśra’el be-ṭerem Tsiyonut: Ḳovets masot u-meḥḥḳarim. Jerusalem: Ha-Sifriyah ha-Tsiyonit, 1994.
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. A collection of essays on the Orthodox Yishuv of the 19th century and its intersection with the history of Jewish settlement in Palestine, written by an eminent scholar of eastern European Jewish history.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Cohen, Richard I. The Return to the Land of Israel. Edited by Judith Carp. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1986.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. A brief but valuable survey of the history of the Old Yishuv, containing information not found in standard textbooks.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Morgenstern, Arie. Hastening Redemption: Messianism and the Resettlement of the Land of Israel. Translated by Joel A. Linsider. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. A provocative depiction of Zionism’s roots in certain 19th-century Orthodox communities in Palestine. One of the few studies of the subject in English.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Shilo, Margalit. Princess or Prisoner? Jewish Women in Jerusalem, 1840–1914. Translated by David Louvish. Brandeis Series on Jewish Women. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005.
  390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. An exception to the male-centered literature on the Orthodox Yishuv, this book depicts women as free agents making choices over immigration and way of life.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Rural Settlement
  394.  
  395. Early literature on Zionist settlement was written from a strongly ideological viewpoint that favored Labor Zionist forms of settlement and economic organization (e.g., the kibbutz, the Histadrut; see Bein 1952). In the 1980s historical geographers interested in all aspects of land development began to credit private philanthropic contributions and capitalist agriculture and industry as being quantitatively more important factors behind the formation of the Yishuv (see Aaronsohn 2000). Some historians adopted this approach as well (see Karlinsky 2005). The process by which Zionists acquired portions of Palestine has been carefully documented by a number of Israeli scholars (see Katz 2005). American-trained scholars writing on this subject have placed Zionist land purchase and rural settlement into a global comparative framework, which raised sensitive issues about Zionism’s relationship with colonialism (see Penslar 1991, Shafir 1996). The daily lives of Jewish farm women in the colonies of the First Aliyah, and the aspirations of women of later waves of immigration to be accepted as equals in agricultural labor on the kibbutz, have received a good deal of attention, as in Bernstein 1992.
  396.  
  397. Aaronsohn, Ran. Rothschild and Early Jewish Colonization in Palestine. Geographic Perspectives on the Human Past. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.
  398. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. A good example of Zionist historical geography and a highly useful history of the colonies supported by Baron Edmond de Rothschild in the late 1800s.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Bein, Alex. The Return to the Soil: A History of Jewish Settlement in Israel. Translated by Israel Schen. Jerusalem: Zionist Organisation, 1952.
  402. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. The classic history of Zionist settlement, authored by the founder of the Central Zionist Archives.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Bernstein, Deborah S., ed. Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel. State University of New York Series in Israeli Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
  406. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  407. A collection of essays on women’s labor and political and cultural activity in late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Karlinsky, Nahum. California Dreaming: Ideology, Society, and Technology in the Citrus Industry of Palestine, 1890–1939. Translated by Naftali Greenwood. State University of New York Series in Israeli Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. An important corrective to a historiography dominated by Labor Zionism, this work studies capitalist citriculture, which was the Yishuv’s hallmark export during the Mandate period.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Katz, Yossi. The Battle for the Land: The History of the Jewish National Fund (KKL) before the Establishment of the State of Israel. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005.
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415. A useful overview of the Zionist movement’s most important mechanism for purchasing land before 1948.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Penslar, Derek J. Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870–1918. Modern Jewish Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. A study of Zionist settlement policy in the late Ottoman period, with an emphasis on comparison with European experiments in social reform as well as colonial development.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914. Updated ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
  422. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423. Chronologically and conceptually, this work of historical sociology is part of the wave of the New History, which focused primarily on 1948. Shafir presents the kibbutz, based on public landownership and wage-free, collective labor, as an attempt to separate from the Palestinian workforce. Originally published in 1989 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Urban Settlement and City Life
  426.  
  427. Although most of the Yishuv lived in cities, the history of the Yishuv’s cities was, up until the late 20th century, neglected. Troen 2003 seeks to redress the imbalance by devoting equal attention to urban and rural settlement in this comprehensive survey of the subject. Traditionally, histories of Zionist immigration focused on committed Zionists, political activists, and pioneer youth. This approach has been challenged by Alroey 2003, which presents the bulk of Jewish immigrants to Palestine as similar to the vastly larger numbers that moved to the New World. Bernstein 1987 analyzes the relationship between class and gender stratification in the Yishuv, demonstrating that class and gender tensions among Jews must not be obscured by the nationality conflict between Jews and Palestinians. Helman 2010 represents another form of historiographical normalization, the introduction of the methods of cultural and urban history into a study of daily life in Mandate Tel Aviv.
  428.  
  429. Alroey, Gur. “Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience.” Jewish Social Studies, n.s., 9.2 (2003): 28–64.
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. Based on material from Alroey’s 2004 Hebrew monograph, this article illustrates a new approach to the study of Zionist immigration that emphasizes its similarities with Jewish immigration from eastern Europe to North America and western Europe. Available online by subscription.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Bernstein, Deborah. The Struggle for Equality: Urban Women Workers in Pre-State Israeli Society. New York: Praeger, 1987.
  434. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. A substantive social-historical study of women’s work, including occupations, wages, and gender relations, in Mandate Palestine.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Helman, Anat. Young Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Cities. Schusterman Series in Israel Studies. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. A richly textured cultural history of daily life in Tel Aviv, in Mandate Palestine.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Troen, S. Ilan. Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
  442. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. A comprehensive and up-to-date history, with intriguing comparisons between Zionist settlement planning and European and American cases.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. The Invention of Zionist Hebrew Culture
  446.  
  447. Although the literary output of the Yishuv has been exhaustively studied, the Yishuv’s cultural history more broadly understood—forms of behavior and social practice, of memory and commemoration, of sensibility and personal expression—came under analysis only in the late 20th century. As in so much Zionist historiography, emphasis is on the hegemonic labor movement and the ideal-typical “new Jew”: tough, strong, direct of speech, and fearless as well as smart and innovative (Almog 2000). Whether the new Jew was to be a continuation of or utter rupture with diaspora Jewry was a subject of extensive debate (Diamond 1986). Much of this debate crystalized around higher education and the purpose of a new, “Hebrew” University in Jerusalem (Myers 1995). Similarly, both rural and urban life were seen as sources of Zionist renewal, though in radically different forms (Mann 2006). Language was key to Zionist cultural renewal, hence the veneration of a revived vernacular Hebrew and the denigration of Yiddish (Harshav 1993). Zionist culture was largely secular, but it adapted traditional religious observances for nation-building ends (Saposnik 2008, Shavit 2004). Like all forms of modern nationalism, Zionism justified itself through history and propagated a highly selective historical consciousness, reinterpreting key events in Jewish history through a narrow conceptual prism (Zerubavel 1995).
  448.  
  449. Almog, Oz. The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew. Translated by Haim Watzman. S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
  450. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520216426.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. An accessible and entertaining introduction to the culture of the Zionist Yishuv, embodied in the Sabra, the straightforward, authentic, and ruggedly masculine ideal-typical new Palestinian Jew.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Diamond, James S. Homeland or Holy Land? The “Canaanite” Critique of Israel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. A study of the small but influential “Canaanite” movement, which originated before 1948, though it reached its height in the 1950s. The Canaanites believed in total separation between the new Hebrew people taking form in Eretz Israel and the diaspora and saw the former as a continuation of an ancient pan-Semitic race.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Harshav, Benjamin. Language in Time of Revolution. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.
  458. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520079588.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. A lucid account of the development of Hebrew from a sacred, to a literary, to a spoken language.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Mann, Barbara E. A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv, and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
  462. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  463. An interdisciplinary study of Tel Aviv as a site of Jewish aesthetic renewal through architectural modernism.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Myers, David N. Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History. Studies in Jewish History. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
  466. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. Both an outstanding intellectual history of the “Jerusalem school” of Jewish historiography and a thorough institutional history of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Jewish Studies and constituent departments.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Saposnik, Arieh Bruce. Becoming Hebrew: The Creation of a Jewish National Culture in Ottoman Palestine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  470. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. A study of tensions between diaspora and Palestinian Jews over authorship, content, and purpose of a new Hebrew culture.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Shavit, Yaacov, and Shoshana Sitton. Staging and Stagers in Modern Jewish Palestine: The Creation of Festive Lore in a New Culture, 1882–1948. Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004.
  474. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. A study of the reconfiguration of traditional Jewish holidays and the invention of new public celebrations in keeping with Zionist aspirations.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Zerubavel, Yael. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. A thoughtful application of the concepts of collective memory and invented tradition to the Zionist project through three iconic cases: Masada, the Bar Kokhba revolt, and the battle of Tel Chai.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Zionist-Palestinian Conflict
  482.  
  483. The Yishuv was mired in conflict with the Palestinians almost from the beginning of Zionist settlement, and there is no firm separation between the history of the Yishuv and that of the Palestinians and the Palestinian national movement. Most histories of the conflict focus on post-1948 Israel but provide useful background on the pre-1948 Yishuv. Books on this subject often feature some political slant; Shlaim 2000 and Smith 2010, for example, are less sympathetic to Zionism than Bickerton and Klausner 2005 and Morris 1999. Tessler 2009 is the most comprehensive account of the subject; it combines in-depth analyses of the two national movements with the conflict between them. Dowty 2008 offers a similar approach but in a more compact format suitable for undergraduate students.
  484.  
  485. Bickerton, Ian J., and Carla L. Klausner. A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005.
  486. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. Includes maps and documents; good for high school and lower-level undergraduates.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Dowty, Alan. Israel/Palestine. Hot Spots in Global Politics. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity, 2008.
  490. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. A slim and accessible yet wide-ranging introduction to the conflict and the comparative history of both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999. New York: Knopf, 1999.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. The most thorough and authoritative history, particularly strong for the 1948 war, which is Morris’s main area of expertise.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: Norton, 2000.
  498. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  499. A distinguished scholar of modern Middle Eastern history, Shlaim argues that even without acknowledging doing so, the Zionist movement acted along the lines of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s call for an aggressive, militaristic response to the Palestinians and the Arab world.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Smith, Charles D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.
  502. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  503. An introductory work by an expert in modern Egyptian history. Includes documents and maps.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Tessler, Mark. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Indiana Series in Middle East Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
  506. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  507. A lengthy work for advanced students by an expert in the modern Arab world. Useful for its exposition of the interactions between political, economic, and military affairs during the decades leading up to Israeli statehood.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Conflict, Control, and Separation
  510.  
  511. Scholarly study, as opposed to polemical literature, on Jewish–Arab relations in Palestine goes beyond a narrative of conflict to explore the underlying factors behind the dispute and countervailing trends of cooperation and conciliation. Gorny 1987 examines the range of Zionist attitudes toward Arabs, from veneration to denigration and from yearnings for integration to vigorous efforts at total separation. Eyal 2006 also deals with Zionist attitudes toward Arabs but employs a sociological approach, considering expertise on Arab affairs to be a vehicle for political control. Stein 1984 studies the socioeconomic position of the Palestinian peasantry during the Mandate period, throwing light on who sold land to Zionists, why, and how Zionist land policy benefited from the economic crises afflicting Palestinian landowners during the 1930s. Kamen 1991 and Metzer 1998 stress the lack of contact and interdependence between the Jewish and Arab economies during the Mandate period, and LeVine 2005 narrates the history of Tel Aviv as a concerted Zionist attempt to separate, physically and culturally, from Jaffa.
  512.  
  513. Eyal, Gil. The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
  514. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  515. A sociological analysis of changing attitudes by the Yishuv’s elites toward Palestinian Arabs, from notions of commonality to security-dominated notions of separation and difference.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Gorny, Yosef. Zionism and the Arabs, 1882–1948: A Study of Ideology. Translated by Chaya Galai. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  518. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  519. An intellectual history of the range of Zionist attitudes toward Arabs.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Kamen, Charles S. Little Common Ground: Arab Agriculture and Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1920–1948. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.
  522. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  523. A study of the influence of British policy and Zionist nation-building efforts on Palestinian Arab agriculture under the Mandate.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. LeVine, Mark. Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
  526. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  527. An innovative and provocative history of Tel Aviv as growing out of and in reference to the bustling port city of Jaffa.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Metzer, Jacob. The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  530. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511583254Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. Metzer, an economic historian who has also written about public finance in the Yishuv, traces here the development of separate Jewish and Arab economies, reflecting and enhancing the lack of substantive positive contact between the two communities.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Stein, Kenneth W. The Land Question in Palestine, 1917–1939. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
  534. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. An important political and social history of the motives behind Arab land sales in Mandate Palestine and British attempts to regulate Zionist land purchases.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Jewish-Arab Rapprochement and Collaboration
  538.  
  539. Despite, or perhaps because of, the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, scholars have devoted considerable attention to areas of contact and interaction between Jews and Arabs in pre-1948 Palestine. Lockman 1996 argues convincingly that in certain key economic sectors, such as the government-owned railway, Jews and Arab worked together, and there were moments of common labor organization. Other forms of connection between the Zionist Yishuv and its broader Middle Eastern environment include what Campos 2011 calls imperial Ottoman citizenship in the wake of the 1908 Young Turk revolt. The efforts of a miniscule but vocal group of Jewish intellectuals to promote a binational solution to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict have received considerable attention (e.g., Heller 2003). More mainstream Zionist leaders also strove for a moderate position regarding the Palestinian Arabs, though they were no more successful than the binationalists in formulating an effective strategy for Jewish-Arab coexistence (Hazan 2009). Hillel Cohen (Cohen 2008) examines grassroots collaboration between Palestinian peasants and village leaders, on the one hand, and members of Jewish settlements and militias, on the other.
  540.  
  541. Campos, Michelle U. Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
  542. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  543. Campos places Jewish–Arab relations in the era of the Young Turk Revolution within a framework of what she calls Ottoman imperial citizenship, a patriotic commitment to a multinational empire that transcended ethnic particularism.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Cohen, Hillel. Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948. Translated by Haim Watzman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
  546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. An intriguing study of Palestinians’ resistance to their own national movement and their generally peaceful stance toward the Yishuv.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Hazan, Meir. Metinut: Ha-gishah ha-metunah beha-Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir uve-Mapai, 1905–1945. Tel Aviv: Am ‘Oved, 2009.
  550. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. A pioneering monograph on Zionist leaders in the Yishuv who strove to combine Zionist commitment to political moderation vis-à-vis Palestine’s Arabs.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Heller, Joseph. Mi-“Berit shalom” le-“Ihud”: Yehudah Leb Magnes ṿeha-ma’avak li-medinah du-le’umit. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003.
  554. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  555. The most comprehensive study of the binational movement, embodied in the charismatic American Jewish leader Judah Magnes.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Lockman, Zachary. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
  558. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559. A detailed analysis of relations between the mainstream Zionist labor movement, the Zionist far-Left, and Palestinian organized workers. A rare example of a full-bodied labor history of the Yishuv and an illustration of what Lockman calls the relational paradigm in which Palestine’s Jews and Arabs continuously influenced one another.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Military Organization and the Founding of the Israel Defence Forces
  562.  
  563. Information about the Zionist military forces, from the pre-1914 Hashomer to the Mandate-era Haganah, Irgun and Lehi may be found in many works in General Overviews and Politics and Society on the Eve of Israel’s Creation. A few key works, however, examine this subject in depth. The most important starting point for a Hebrew reader would be the official history of the Haganah (Avigur, et al. 1954–1972). Dothan 1993 is a general history of the Yihuv during the interwar period but has particularly strong coverage of military affairs. Bauer 1970 looks at the complex relations between the British military and the Yishuv’s forces during World War II. Ben-Eliezer 1998 is a work of critical sociology that goes beyond narrative to consider how and why the Yishuv developed rapidly into a militarily mobilized society. Shapira 1992 is a masterful study of the internal debates within the Zionist political elite about the need for an organized military force and what role it should play in the nascent Jewish state.
  564.  
  565. Avigur, Shaul, Ben Zion Dinur, and Yehuda Slutzky, eds. Toldot ha-Haganah. 3 vols. Sifriyah ha-Tsiyonit. Jerusalem: Ha-sifriya ha-tsiyonit, 1954–1972.
  566. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  567. The official history of the Haganah, written by many hands. Although uncritical and steeped in ideology, an invaluable historical source.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Bauer, Yehuda. From Diplomacy to Resistance: A History of Jewish Palestine, 1930–1945. Translated by Alton M. Winters. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1970.
  570. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571. The only detailed narrative in English on the development of the Yishuv’s militias during World War II.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Ben-Eliezer, Uri. The Making of Israeli Militarism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
  574. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. A pioneering study of the relationship between military and state in the Yishuv and early state of Israel. Ben-Eliezer, a historical sociologist, develops a sophisticated yet accessible concept of militarism as infusing civilian society so that military rule is unnecessary.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Dothan, Shmuel. A Land in the Balance: The Struggle for Palestine, 1918–1948. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1993.
  578. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  579. Although Dothan’s purview exceeds military affairs, this book is particularly strong on the formation of the rightist militias, Irgun and Lehi.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Shapira, Anita. Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948. Translated by William Templer. Studies in Jewish History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  582. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583. An outstanding work, characterized by a blend of cultural and political approaches to the history of Zionist attitudes toward military force.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. World War II, the Holocaust, and Illegal Immigration
  586.  
  587. Writing on the Yishuv during the Holocaust is often polemical and rooted in deep historical trauma. Critics of Labor Zionism claim that David Ben-Gurion and the Yishuv’s political leadership were so fixated on creating a Jewish state that they displayed little compassion for the suffering millions and were contemptuous of them for not having come to Palestine while they still could and for embodying undesirable diaspora traits (Segev 1993, Zertal 1998). Ben-Gurion’s defenders stress the fragility of the Yishuv during the war, its fears of German invasion, and its limited resources and domestic political troubles (Porat 1990, Teveth 1996). Zweig 1986 maintains a neutral stance, placing the story of the Yishuv during World War II against the background of British short- and long-term political interests in Palestine and the Middle East as a whole. Another sensitive issue is that of illegal immigration, to which the Zionists devoted considerable energy, but with very limited results, given British control over the Palestinian seacoast and ports (Halamish 1998, Ofer 1990). The broad question of Zionist immigration policy during the 1930s and 1940s is treated in Halamish 2006.
  588.  
  589. Halamish, Aviva. The Exodus Affair: Holocaust Survivors and the Struggle for Palestine. Translated by Ora Cummings. Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998.
  590. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  591. A thorough study of the most famous attempt to bring Holocaust survivors illegally to postwar Palestine, and a case study of the accomplishments and failures of the illegal immigration enterprise as a whole.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. Halamish, Aviva. Be-meruts kaful neged ha-zeman: Mediniyut ha-ʻaliyah ha-Tsiyonit bi-shenot ha-sheloshim. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tsevi, 2006.
  594. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  595. An important monograph on the transformation over time of Zionist thinking about mass immigration, which during the Ottoman and early Mandate period was considered detrimental to the Yishuv’s well-being but which by the late 1930s was embraced because of the existential dangers facing European Jewry.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. Ofer, Dalia. Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel, 1939–1944. Studies in Jewish History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
  598. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  599. An account of illegal immigration during the war, unlike most studies, which focus on the period after 1945. Ofer pays attention to efforts of both Labor and Revisionist Zionists to rescue Jews trapped in Europe.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Porat, Dina. The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939–1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
  602. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  603. A sympathetic account of Zionist awareness of and responses to the Holocaust.
  604. Find this resource:
  605. Segev, Tom. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. Translated by Haim Watzman. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
  606. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  607. Although its purview reaches into the 1980s, this book contains substantive chapters on pre-1948, including the position of Jewish refugees from Germany during the 1930s, the Yishuv’s own fear of German invasion, and Zionist schemes for revenge in postwar Germany.
  608. Find this resource:
  609. Teveth, Shabtai. Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1996.
  610. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  611. Presents Ben-Gurion as deeply affected by the Holocaust but powerless to engage in more than symbolic rescue operations and focused on the postwar creation of a Jewish state that would welcome the war’s Jewish survivors.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Zertal, Idith. From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
  614. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  615. A critique of the Yishuv leadership for allegedly using illegal immigration as a ploy in order to win international sympathy. Representative of a school of historical writing that sees the Yishuv leadership as preferring the long-term interests of the future Jewish state over the material and psychological needs of Holocaust survivors.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Zweig, Ronald W. Britain and Palestine during the Second World War. Royal Historical Society Studies in History. Woodbridge, UK, and Dover, NH: Boydell, 1986.
  618. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  619. Studies the impact of the White Paper of 1939 on the Yishuv, with a focus on Jewish immigration to Palestine.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. The 1948 War and Israel’s Creation
  622.  
  623. Until the mid-1980s, accounts of Israel’s creation fell into two types. Military histories presented the official perspective of the Israeli government: that Israel was an underdog that pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. Diplomatic histories traced the decline of British power in the Middle East and the growing rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union over which would be Britain’s successor (Cohen 1982). In the late 1980s a new wave of studies, which would be christened anachronistically the New History, combined military with political history and presented Israel’s military prowess as far greater and that of the Arab world as far weaker than Zionist “official” history had portrayed. These works also asserted that the Arab leadership’s intentions regarding Israel’s creation were, at least at first, not entirely malevolent (Pappé 1988, Pappé 1992, Shlaim 1988). The most sensitive issue was the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem, which Benny Morris chalked up to a combination of panic-induced flight and outright expulsion (Morris 2004, Morris 2008). Not all historians of the war accepted this view: Milstein 1996–1998 criticizes individual commanders and tactical errors but does not impugn the Israeli military as a whole; Karsh 2010 attributes blame for the refugee crisis to the Palestinian leadership. A new kind of historical revisionism characterizes Tal 2004, which argues against the New Historians, claiming that Israel fought badly in 1948, lost as many battles as it won, and pulled out victory through a combination of luck and Arab strategic failures.
  624.  
  625. Cohen, Michael J. Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–1948. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
  626. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  627. A classic diplomatic-historical study of Israel’s origins, with an emphasis on British, American, and Soviet foreign policy.
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Karsh, Efraim. Palestine Betrayed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
  630. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631. A provocative account of the 1948 war that points to the mendacity and incompetence of the Arab political leadership, especially that of the Palestinians, rather than Zionist aggression as the chief cause of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Milstein, Uri. History of the War of Independence. 4 vols. Translated and edited by Alan Sacks. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996–1998.
  634. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  635. The only translated portions of Milstein’s massive Hebrew-language account, the most thorough military history of the 1948 war, though idiosyncratic and tendentious.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. 2d ed. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
  638. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  639. Originally published in 1987. This text is the most important of the early products of the New History. Aroused a great deal of controversy for its argument that Israel was directly responsible for the expulsion, or forced flight, of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
  640. Find this resource:
  641. Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
  642. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  643. The most authoritative, up-to-date, and balanced account of the history of the war.
  644. Find this resource:
  645. Pappé, Ilan. Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–51. New York: St. Martin’s, 1988.
  646. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  647. An important monograph documenting British opposition to a Palestinian state and acceptance of a Jewish one so long as the Negev Desert remained in the hands of its Jordanian client. Pappé’s argument ran against conventional views that Britain has been hostile to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Pappé, Ilan. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–51. London and New York: Tauris, 1992.
  650. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  651. A more broadly focused work on the institutionalization of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a result of failed postwar diplomacy and Israeli refusal to repatriate Palestinian refugees.
  652. Find this resource:
  653. Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
  654. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  655. Shlaim, one of the most promiment New Historians of the late 1980s, traces the long history of contacts between Emir (later King) Abdullah of Transjordan and the Zionist movement, with an emphasis on their areas of agreement, particularly regarding the undesirability of a Palestinian state. Abridged version available: The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine, 1921–1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Tal, David. War in Palestine, 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy. Cass Series: Israeli History, Politics, and Society. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
  658. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  659. An example of the generation after the New Historians, concerned less with establishing historical origins of current geopolitical problems and more with the forces that determined the war’s outcome.
  660. Find this resource:
  661. Politics and Society on the Eve of Israel’s Creation
  662.  
  663. Although most scholarship on 1948 focuses on the war, domestic politics on the eve of statehood and during the war have been traced by Heller 2003. Segev 1986 illuminates the society of the Yishuv at the moment of transition to statehood. Bar-On and Hazan 2006 and Bar-On and Hazan 2010 offer pioneering studies of Israeli society, for example, home-front efforts, the fate of destroyed Jewish communities, and internal refugees during the war.
  664.  
  665. Bar-On, Mordechai, and Meir Hazan, eds. ‘Am be-milḥamah: Ḳovets meḥḳarim ‘al ha-ḥevrah he-ezraḥit be-milḥemet ha-‘Atsma’ut. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tsevi, 2006.
  666. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  667. Essays on Israeli society during the 1948 war; many are by scholars from the generation after that of the New Historians.
  668. Find this resource:
  669. Bar-On, Mordechai, and Meir Hazan, eds. Ezraḥim be-milḥamah: Ḳovets meḥḳarim ‘al ha-ḥevrah ha-ezraḥit be-milḥemet ha-‘Atsma’ut. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tsevi, 2010.
  670. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  671. A continuation of Bar-On and Hazan 2006, but with a focus on the Israeli home front and the institution of Israeli civil society during the 1948 war.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Heller, Joseph. The Birth of Israel, 1945–1949: Ben Gurion and His Critics. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.
  674. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  675. Analyzes the internal political conflicts within the Yishuv—not only between Left and Right, but also within the Left—and their effects on the preparations for independence and war in 1948.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. Segev, Tom. 1949: The First Israelis. Edited by Arlen Neal Weinstein. New York: Free Press, 1986.
  678. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  679. A pioneering work of the New History, mostly on domestic politics and social history; particularly strong on the beginnings of mass Jewish immigration immediately after the state’s creation.
  680. Find this resource:
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement
Public Pastes
Advertisement
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!