In this original and wide-ranging study, Gabriel Piterberg examines the ideology and literature behind the colonization of Palestine, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Exploring Zionism’s origins in Central-Eastern European nationalism and settler movements, he shows how its texts can be placed within a wider discourse of western colonization. Revisiting the work of Theodor Herzl and Gershom Scholem, Anita Shapira and David Ben-Gurion, and bringing to light the writings of...
Leading Israeli scholar with a major re-evaluation of Zionism.
Ch. 1 The Sovereign Settler versus the Conscious Pariah: Theodor Herzl and Bernard Lazare 1Ch. 2 The Zionist Colonization of Palestine in the Comparative Context of Settler Colonialism 51Ch. 3 The Foundational Myth of Zionism: Politics, Ideology and Scholarship 93Ch. 4 Myth and History on Mount Scopus 127Ch. 5 Gerhard-Gershom Scholem's Return to History 155Ch. 6 The Bible, the Nakba and Hebrew Literature 192Ch. 7 The Bible of an Autochthonous Settler: Ben-Gurion Reads the Book of Joshua 244Index 289