Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel

"Zion and State" presents an analysis of the struggle between left and right within the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. Focusing on the relation of nation, state and class, Mitchell Cohen examines the emergence of, and the fierce struggle to shape, a modern, sovereign Jewish politics. Cohen explains the intellectual origins and ideological differences between Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky, and shows how the transformation of the Labour Party's conception of the Jewish State from its original concept, made it vulnerable to the strident nationalism and stratification of economic classes of the late 1970s, something which played into the Herut's hands.

Asher Cohen is Professor of History at the University of Haifa.