This thought-provoking new history of Zionism and Israel explores the role of ideology in Israel's development, considering the many methods that the state has used to instill unwavering belief in nationhood.
Since Israels foundation in 1948, one guiding idea has been the cornerstone of its identity, its politics and its actions: Zionism. In this groundbreaking new history, Ilan Pappe looks at the role of ideology in Israels development, from its inception to the present day. In doing so, he considers the role of the countrys universities, education system and media, looking at their production of knowledge and information, and the way such knowledge has been used to provide an ideological scaffolding for the state and to shape realities on the ground. He explores how, in the course of one decade, the Oslo years of the 1990s, this idea came under sustained questioning for the first timesince when, former critics have once more rallied round the national consensus. Was this episode, he asks, a one-off, or does it promise a new direction for Israel?
In exploring the links between academic and media institutions, and the state, The Idea of Israel explores a topic that resonates throughout the western world: the fraught interrelationship between the production of knowledge and the exercise of power.
A major new history of Zionism and Israel, by the renowned author of
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
