EXCERPT
Description
In the opening sentence of his foundational book The Zionist Idea, Arthur Hertzberg writes, “Zionism exists, and it has had important consequences, but historical theory does not really know what to do with it.”
This may have been the case in the late 1950s, when The Zionist Idea first appeared, but there is now surplus of scholarship and public writing on the matter of Zionism, in terms of politics, history, and culture. This body of scholarship and knowledge has addressed a wide range of topics, including but not limited to: Zionism as a Jewish national(ist) movement; Zionism as a settler-colonial enterprise in Palestine; Zionism as a civil religion for North American Jews (up until recently); Zionism as the official ideology of the State of Israel as a supposedly “Jewish and democratic” state; Zionism as the principal plank of Israeli-Jewish identity. From this point of departure, there remain many questions to be posed and to be vigorously debated. What is Zionism? What was Zionism? What might Zionism yet become, especially in the aftermath of the ongoing genocide in Gaza?
Source:
https://www.history.utoronto.ca/events/anti-zionist-idea-history-theory-and-politics