This SIIS faculty syllabus provides a comprehensive list of essential readings related to Zionism and the settling of land in Palestine/Israel. The syllabus also includes material on important debates related to this topic, including: settlements, partition, kibbutzim, Indigeneity, and one/two state solutions.
Required Reading
S. Ilan Troen
Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Zionist Settlement
(New Haven 2003), Chs.1, 3, 8 ISBN/ISSN: 0300094833
[Links to ebook for those with Brandeis account]
Gershon Shafir.
“Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach,”
in Ilan Pappe, ed., The Israel/Palestine Question: Rewriting Histories
(London, 1999), pp. 81-96
ISBN/ISSN: 0415169488
Rachel Fish, “Bi-Nationalist Visions for the Construction and Dissolution of the State of Israel,” Israel Studies 19:2 (2014), pp. 15-34.
Seth J. Frantzman, Havatzelet Yahel, Ruth Kark, “Contested Indigeneity: The Development of an Indigenous Discourse on the Bedouin of the Negev, Israel,”Israel Studies, 17:1 (2012), 78-104.
Recommended Viewing
Part I of the documentary Tel Aviv – Jaffa by Anat Zeltser and Modi Bar-On.
Recommended Reading
Boaz Neumann
Land and Desire in Early Zionism
(Waltham: Brandeis, 2011),
Chapter 1; Chapter 6; Chapter 4.
Uri Ram
“The Colonization Perspective in Israeli Sociology,”
in Ilan Pappe, ed., The Israel/Palestine Question: Rewriting Histories
(London, 1999), pp. 55-80.
Berl Locker, The Jews and Palestine: Historical Connection and Historic Right
(London, Palestine Labour Studies Group, 1938).
Gideon Shimoni
The Zionist Ideology
(Hanover, NH, 1995)
Ch. 8: “The Right to the Land“.
ISBN/ISSN: 0874517036
Julius Stone
Israel and Palestine: Assault on the Law of Nations
(Baltimore, 1981)
pp. 1-97
ISBN/ISSN: 0801825350
Gershom Gorenberg
The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements 1967-1977
ISBN: 080507564X
Deborah Dash Moore and S. Ilan Troen, “Introduction,” in Divergent Jewish Cultures Israel and America, edited by Deborah Dash Moore and S. Ilan Troen (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 1-24
Henry Cattan, To Whom Does Palestine Belong? (Beirut, Institute for Palestine Studies)
George Antonius, The Arab Awakening, (Beirut, 1938).
Recommended Reading on Partition
Zionist Dialectics—Partition Debates
Note: The question of colonization or colonialism goes to the issue of legitimacy of a Jewish state and its success in fulfilling its own mandate of creating a democratic society. For this purpose I have made available portions of Israel Studies, Volume 14:2 (2009) that has a section on the ongoing question of “partition” of Israel/Palestine.
- Itzhak Galnoor, “Introduction: The Zionist Debates on Partition (1919–1947)”, Israel Studies, Vol 14:2 (2009), pp. 72
- Colin Shindler, “Opposing Partition: The Zionist Predicaments After the Shoah”, Israel Studies, Vol 14:2 (2009), pp. 88
- Asher Susser, “Partition and the Arab Palestinian Minority in Israel”, Israel Studies, Vol 14:2 (2009), pp. 105
Recommended Reading on Contemporary Debates
- Yossi Klein Halevy, Like Dreamers (New York: Harper Collins, 2014)
- Arye Naor, “The Security Argument in the Territorial Debate in Israel: Rhetoric and Policy,” Israel Studies, 4:2 pp. 150-176.
- Dan Kurtzer, “Behind the Settlements,” The American Interest Online, March-April 2010.
- David Grossman, The Yellow Wind (New York: 1988), selections.
- Dore Gold, “Jerusalem in International Diplomacy,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 2010.
- Dore Gold, “From ‘Occupied Territories’ to ‘Disputed Territories’,” Jerusalem Viewpoints, #470, 16 January 2002
- Newman, David. “From Hitnachalut to Hitnatkut: The Impact of Gush Emunim and the Settlement Movement on Israeli Politics and Society” Israel Studies 10.3 (2005)
- Fischer, Shlomo. “Excursus: Concerning the Rulings of R. Ovadiah Yosef Pertaining to the Thanksgiving Prayer, The Settlement of the Land of Israel, and Middle East Peace”, Cardozo Law Review vol. 28(1) (2006): pp. 229-244
A. Debates over Indigeneity
(also relevant to the session on Parallel Narratives)
- Seth J. Frantzman, Havatzelet Yahel, Ruth Kark, “Contested Indigeneity: The Development of an Indigenous Discourse on the Bedouin of the Negev, Israel,”Israel Studies, 17:1 (2012), 78-104.
- Havatzelet Yahel, Ruth Kark, Seth Frantzman, “Are the Negev Bedouin an Indigenous People?” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2012, 3-14.
- Patricia Golan, “Bedouin in Limbo,” The Jerusalem Report, January 7, 2008
- The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel (2006)
- Ruth Kark versus Oren Yiftachel, [Hebrew] Protocol from the Beer-Sheva District Court, 2010.
- Oren Yiftachel (2003), “Bedouin Arabs and the Israeli Settler State: Land Policies and Indigenous Resistance,” (Eds. Duane Champage and Ismael Abu-Saad) The Future of Indigenous People: Strategies for Survival and Development, UCLA American Indian Studies Center Publications, 2003.
- Jacobson, David C. “Review of Homeland of Holy Land? The “Caananite Critique of Israel,” AJS Review, 12:2 1987, 292-298
- Shavit, Yaakov. “Hebrews and Phoenicians: An Ancient historical image and its Usage,” Studies in Zionism, 5:2 1984, 157-180
- Reiter, Yitzhak. “Narratives of Jerusalem and its Sacred Compound”, Israel Studies, 18:2 (Summer 2013). Special Issue: Shared Narratives – A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue edited by Paul Scham, Benjamin Pogrund, and As’ad Ghanem, pp. 111-132.
- Ateek, Naim. Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, Orbis Books. Maryknoll, NY 1989. (Selections).
- Lassner, J. and S. Ilan Troen. “Jews Arabs and Modern Biblical Scholarship.” in Jews and Muslims in Arab Lands; Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined, pp. 217-246.
- Niezen, Ronald, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley, 2003), chapters 1 and 7.
- Anaya S. James, Indigenous Peoples in International Law (Oxford, 2004), Chapter 1 and appendices
- Wolfe, Patrick, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology; The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London, 1999), pp. 1-42.
B. The Contemporary One-State/Two-State Debate: Partition into Two States for Two Peoples? A Single (Arab or Jewish) State? Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State? Bi-national Alternatives?
- Fish, Rachel “Bi-Nationalist Visions for the Construction and Dissolution of the State of Israel,” Israel Studies 19, no. 2 (2014): 15-34.
- “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” (The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel (2006)
- Smooha, Sammy. “Ethnic Democracy: Israel As An Archetype” Israel Studies, 2:2 198-241
- Ghanem, As’ad, Nadim Rouhana, and Oren Yiftachel. “Questioning ‘Ethnic Democracy’: A Response to Sammy Smooha” Israel Studies 3:2
- Gavison, Ruth. “Jewish and Democratic? A Rejoinder to the ‘Ethnic Democracy’ Debate,” Israel Studies, 4:1
- Dowty, Alan. “Is Israel Democratic? Substance and Semantics in the “Ethnic Democracy” Debate” Israel Studies, 4:2 (1999) pp. 1-13
- Yakobson, Alexander and Amnon Rubinstein. “Democratic Norms, Diasporas and Israel’s Law of Return” (American Jewish Committee, Jan 2009)
- Leon Wieseltier, “Israel, Palestine, and the Return of the Bi-National Fantasy: What is Not to be Done,” The New Republic, October 2003
- Tony Judt, “Israel: The Alternative,” New York Review of Books 50:16 (2003)
Recommended Reading on the Kibbutz
S. Ilan Troen
(New Haven, 2003)
Imagining Zion
Chapter 4 and Chapter 10. [Links to ebook for those with Brandeis account]
ISBN/ISSN: 0300094833
Eliezer Ben-Rafael
Crisis and Transformation: The Kibbutz at Century’s End
(Albany, 1997)
pp. 1-23, 201-228
ISBN/ISSN: 0791432254
Melford E. Spiro
Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia
(New York, 1964)
pp. 3-59
ISBN/ISSN: 0674503317
Henry Near
“The Crisis in the Kibbutz Movement, 1949-1961,”
in S. Ilan Troen and Noah Lucas, eds.
Israel: The First Decade of Independence (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995)
pp. 243-264
ISBN/ISSN: 0791422593
Raymond Russell, Robert Hanneman, Shlomo Getz, The Renewal of the Kibbutz: From Reform to Transformation (Rutgers, 2013)
Raymond Russell, Robert Hanneman, Shlomo Getz, “The Transformation of the Kibbutzim,” Israel Studies 16:2 (Summer 2011) pp. 109-127.