Jewish State or Israeli Nation? » (1st Edition)

BOAS EVRON, a sabra, has been a columnist and critic for Haaretz and Yediot Aharonot and is founder and director of the Israeli Arts Council Project of Translations of the Classics into Hebrew. His previous publications in Hebrew include The Quality of Freedom and A National Reckoning, from which the present work is adapted.

"... an excellent book... provides valuable insights into a broad range of cutting-edge topics in the social sciences such as ethnic and identity politics, nation building, transnationalism and diasporas." — Choice

"This book will take its place as a classic in the field..." — Journal of Church and State

"... a lucid formulation of post-Zionist ideology for the generation of the 1980s and 1990s." — International Journal of Middle East Studies

"It is... a remarkable experience to read Evron's thoughtful book. He finds much to criticize in the conventional reading of Jewish history and argues that Israel should be thought of not as a state for the Jewish people but as a territorial state much like others, with full rights for all its inhabitants." — Foreign Affairs

"... an extremely erudite, brilliant and powerful book with a novel approach: a sober secular conception of Judaism." — Maariv

"A provocative post-Zionist critique of the fundamental concepts of Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, and Israeli nationalism." — Choice

"This compelling book conveys the reader straight to the frontline of thebattle raging in Israel over the proper boundaries of the nationalidentity. Evron's radical post-Zionist critique of Israel's conceptualfoundations calls in question the core link between Israel and Judaism andbetween Israel and the Jewish diaspora. His penetrating analysischallenges the muddled ideological bearings of Israel's publicself-images and points the way toward what may be a more realisticadaptation to its Middle Eastern environment." — Noah Lucas, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies

"Boas Evron is one of the most important and innovative contemporary Jewish-Israeli thinkers and writers.... For the English-speaking reader, Evron's book is a unique opportunity to understand the new secular Israeli nationalism, written by one of its most critical yet optimistic representatives." — Baruch Kimmerling, The Hebrew University

Boas Evron concludes that Israel should become a territorial state that would accommodate its sizeable non-Jewish minority in a truly democratic way.

Publishers Weekly

This thorough critique of Zionism by a native Israeli challenges basic, widely held assumptions. Evron, founder and director of the Israeli Arts Council's Project of Translations of Classics into Hebrew, defines Zionism as the belief that Jews throughout the world constitute a single nation that has aspired to reassumble itself in Israel, its ancient homeland. But in Evron's analysis, the Jewish people are primarily not a national polity but rather a religious community whose convenant with God has sustained the Jews in the Diaspora. He contends that the Arab nations' siege of Israel is not a continuation of anti-Jewish hatred, as Zionists maintain, but instead a military-political struggle of two peoples fighting for the same land. Part history, part polemic, Evron's erudite study urges Israel to grant full equality to its Muslim, Christian and Druze citizens in a democratic, secular state. He envisions Israel as the prime mover in a regional federation collaborating economically with its Arab neighbors.