The Tragedy of Zionism: How Its Revolutionary Past Haunts Israeli Democracy - Softcover

Bernard Avishai

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1581152582 ISBN 13: 9781581152586

Publisher: Allworth Press, 2002

Synopsis

This original and acclaimed book explores how the impetus to settle in the "Whole" Land of Israel after 1967 derived from unexamined Zionist commitments which, though perhaps defensible in the 1930s, have become increasingly dangerous for Israeli democracy since the 1980s. It is also a chronicle of the unexpected, tragic ways the heroic Zionist theories and institutions have come to threaten Israeli democracy and to burden relations with Palestinians since the Six Day War.

The subject of intense controversy when it was first published in 1985, The Tragedy of Zionism provides illuminating insight into the history behind the headlines. Now revised, this poignant chronicle addresses timely and compelling questions: could Israel be a democratic state if, in the name of being a Jewish state, it discriminated against non-Jews, including a fifth of its citizens who are of Palestinian Arab origin? Could it be a Jewish state without granting a privileged position to Jewish orthodoxy? The Tragedy of Zionism calls for democracy as an end in itself, not as a political luxury, but as an indispensable means to settle disputes nonviolently.

About this title

About the Author

Bernard Avishai, veteran analyst of Israeli politics and economy, is professor of business and politics at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, where is Dean of the Raphael Recanati International School and Director of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program. Aside from The Tragedy of Zionism, he is the author of A New Israel: Democracy in Crisis, 1973-1988, (Ticknor and Fields), and dozens of articles on Israeli affairs and intellectual history in such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The American Scholar, and many others. His article "Israel's Future: Brainpower, High Tech--and Peace," published in Harvard Business Review in 1991, was among the first to recognize the potential of Israel's knowledge economy and its links to the peace process. He was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1987 for his work on Arthur Koestler.

Avishai is also a well-known analysts of advanced management issues. Before joining IDC, he was International Director of Intellectual Capital at KPMG LLP, and was the founding chairman of the Lunar Society, Boston's premier society of knowledge management entrepreneurs, consultants and academics. From 1992-96, he was head of product development at Monitor Company. He is the author, among many publications on intellectual capital, of a path-breaking study, Motorola in China: The Duties of the Global Economy (Motorola University Press), which traces the course of the company's entry strategy in the PRC. From 1986 to 1991, Avishai was production and technology editor of Harvard Business Review, where he edited over 60 articles on quality management, technology strategy, and corporate learning. He is the author of many essays and op-ed articles on intellectual capital and corporate education in the HBR, Fortune, Fast Company, and other publications. His article, "What is Business's Social Compact," was published in HBR in 1994.

Avishai holds a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Toronto, and a B.A. (Honors) in history from McGill. His has taught the humanities at MIT and was Visiting Professor in the Honors College at Adelphi University. He is married to Hebrew University professor Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, and they divide their time between Jerusalem and Wilmot, New Hampshire.

From the Inside Flap

This original and acclaimed book explores how the impetus to settle in the "Whole" Land of Israel after 1967 derived from unexamined Zionist commitments which, though perhaps defensible in the 1930s, have become increasingly dangerous for Israeli democracy since the 1980s. This volume addresses compelling and timely questions such as:

Could Israel be a democratic state if, in the name of remaining a Jewish state, it discriminated against non-Jewish citizens, including one-fifth of the country of Palestinian Arab origin?
Could it be a Jewish state without granting a privileged position to Jewish orthodoxy?
Can a state that privileges orthodoxy renounce sovereignty over biblically promised land?

Edition details

• Publisher: Allworth Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1581152582
• ISBN 13: 9781581152586
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400