The Founding Myths of Israel [Paperback]

Zeev Sternhell (Author), David Maisel (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691009678 | ISBN-13: 978-0691009674 | Publication Date: December 7, 1999

The well-known historian and political scientist Zeev Sternhell here advances a radically new interpretation of the founding of modern Israel. The founders claimed that they intended to create both a landed state for the Jewish people and a socialist society. However, according to Sternhell, socialism served the leaders of the influential labor movement more as a rhetorical resource for the legitimation of the national project of establishing a Jewish state than as a blueprint for a just society. In this thought-provoking book, Sternhell demonstrates how socialist principles were consistently subverted in practice by the nationalist goals to which socialist Zionism was committed.

Sternhell explains how the avowedly socialist leaders of the dominant labor party, Mapai, especially David Ben Gurion and Berl Katznelson, never really believed in the prospects of realizing the "dream" of a new society, even though many of their working-class supporters were self-identified socialists. The founders of the state understood, from the very beginning, that not only socialism but also other universalistic ideologies like liberalism, were incompatible with cultural, historical, and territorial nationalism. Because nationalism took precedence over universal values, argues Sternhell, Israel has not evolved a constitution or a Bill of Rights, has not moved to separate state and religion, has failed to develop a liberal concept of citizenship, and, until the Oslo accords of 1993, did not recognize the rights of the Palestinians to independence.

This is a controversial and timely book, which not only provides useful historical background to Israel's ongoing struggle to mobilize its citizenry to support a shared vision of nationhood, but also raises a question of general significance: is a national movement whose aim is a political and cultural revolution capable of coexisting with the universal values of secularism, individualism, and social justice? This bold critical reevaluation will unsettle long-standing myths as it contributes to a fresh new historiography of Zionism and Israel. At the same time, while it examines the past, The Founding Myths of Israel reflects profoundly on the future of the Jewish State.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This comparative political study takes a revisionist historical approach, reinterpreting what it considers mythical to explain the origins of the state of Israel. Sternhell (Neither Right nor Left, Princeton, 1996) studies the ideological nature of the socialist-labor movement in Jewish Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion and sees the role of Zionism as a key bonding social feature and a politically divisive element. Ben-Gurion's goal, according to the author, was to create a state for Jews, with all organized efforts geared toward that end. This book will undoubtedly create discussion and debate for some time. An excellent companion to Simha Flapan's The Birth of Israel (LJ 8/87) and worthy reading for anyone interested in comparative political development. Recommended.?Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

For decades, Israel's social-democratic Labor Party was the country's predominant political force, consistently holding a plurality of power against the right-wing ``revisionist'' and religious parties. Yet contemporary Israeli society has more social inequity than almost any other developed nation. Asks political scientist Sternhell (Hebrew Univ.): How can this be? Easy, he answers. From at least the 1920s and possibly earlier, the ruling elites of the Jewish settlement in Palestine were far more interested in increasing the Jewish population (about 75 percent of the total population was still Arab in 1947, the year of the UN's partition resolution) and in other forms of state- building than in redistributive socioeconomic policies. Sternhell exhaustively documents his thesis by quoting extensively from the writings and speeches of Labor Zionism's long-time political and ideological leaders, David Ben-Gurion and Berl Katznelson. As the latter put it in 1925, ``It is not the interests of class warfare that must determine the needs and strategy of the movement, but those of building up the land.'' Thus, the national workers' federation, the Histadrut, took on a strongly centrist orientation, in which a certain degree of antidemocratic tactics, as well as some financial corruption, were tolerated. The government was thus also uncompromising in staking Jewish claims to the land against those of Arabs. In general, this account is so focused on political ideology that it doesn't quite provide enough of a demographic, geopolitical, and historical context when it comes to issues of equity in Jewish-Arab relations or another matter he broaches, Zionism's commitment to rescue, rather than to internal issues, during the Holocaust. Still, for those fascinated by Zionist ideology and Israel's early history, this is one of the most provocative of the recent rash of ``post-Zionist'' studies that debunk earlier works on Israel's founding fathers and mothers. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (December 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691009678
• ISBN-13: 978-0691009674
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #904,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent review of early Israeli history, November 25, 2000

By 

Fermina Daza (Bogotoa, Colomba) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Founding Myths of Israel (Paperback)

Sternhell makes a convincing case for the early leaders of Israel not at all being socialists of a universalist nature but merely exclusivist nationalists who created a state based on ethnicity and not on humanitarian values. This is crucial in light of the fact that most Israelis (and Americans) have grown accustomed to the myth of kibbutzim and their supposedly humanist nature being the essence of early Zionist settlers when in fact kibbutzim forbade the cooperation of the native peoples (Palestinians), allowing only Jews to till the soil and encouraging them to acquire Arab land, by force or by purchase, as much as possible.

If you are interested in an eye-opening account of the motives of the early Zionist leaders, particularly those in the Labour party - who are often painted as "doves", as compared to the "hawkish" members of Likud - this book is worth your while.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An important account of how Mapai lost its way., April 26, 2001

By 

[e-mail] (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Founding Myths of Israel (Hardcover)

Zeev Sternhell is best known for writing several volumes on the origins of fascism. His controversial interpretation is that Fascism originated as a "pure doctrine," in France, as opposed to Italy and Germany, and that this idea was a heresy of socialism, a sort of nationalist socialism. Critics have challenged this opinion on the grounds that, among other things, Sternhell concentrates on a handful of intellectuals while the more serious movements like the Croix de Feu are ignored.

Sternhell's new book also concentrates on intellectuals and advocates. Much of it is therefore rather abstract, and relatively little is said about Mapai's relations with Israel. But it is better than has previous books for a number of reasons. First off, it is very clear that Aaron David Gordon, Berl Katznelson and David Ben-Gurion were vital to the development of Zionism, the Labor Party and the State of Israel. Here, the idea of Mapai ideology as a nationalist heresy from the universalist traditions of European Social Democracy is clearly on stronger grounds that with Barres and Deroulede.

What does Sternhell argue in particular? He argues that the ideal of the kibbutz worker and of agricultural labor was a nationalist idealization clothed in socialist rhetoric. It was believed more as an alternative to the urban diaspora Jew rather than as a serious and well thought model for a democratic worker's society. By being strong workers Israelis could overcome their diasporan selves, while actual issues of power and control were evaded. There was much hostility to individualism and many cliches of nationalist discourses were repeated, such as a "socialism of producers," an emphasis on "national spirit," and hostility towards cosmopolitanism. Sternhell is quite clear on the consequences of this ideology of class unity. By 1948 only 5% of Jews lived in kibbutzes. Mapai was an oligarchic institution with infrequent elections (in the thirties perhaps once every six or seven years). Katznelson and Ben-Gurion claimed that they disliked the very concept of leaders, but in fact a narrow elite controlled Labor Zionist institutions. Here we see a firm application of Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchy. Corruption and economic incompetence were tolerated: what was truly unforgiveable was political and organizational dissent. The gap in wages among Jewish construction workers in 1928-31 was the fifth highest in twenty-five countries studied. Similar figures were the same for metalworking and printers. Talk of a "family wage" to equalize matters in Histadrut was mostly talk, while Ben-Gurion lived a rather comfortable lifestyle with Histadrut picking up much of the tab.

Once the new state was established, the nationalist reality continued, leading the Labor Party to make the unforgiveable mistake of occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in complete disregard of the wishes of its inhabitants. Sternhell believes that Israel must now try to recover the pluralism and liberalism that Ben Gurion and his allies have so long neglected. "Today, more than ever, settlement in the territories endangers Israel's ability to develop as a free and open society. But like all previous attempts at colonialism, the one the Israeli Right wishes to impose on the Palestinians is sure to come to an end. The only uncertain factor today is the moral and political price Israeli society will have to pay to overcome the resistance that the hard core of the settler is bound to show to any just and reasonable solution." With the election of Ariel Sharon this message now has greater urgency than ever before.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kingdom not of this world?, April 28, 2002

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Founding Myths of Israel (Paperback)

This work was and is controversial but I found it simply useful and informative, an historical reminder, in the haze of journalistic sloganeering, as the telescoped image of the original labor movement in the history of Zionism fails to resolve the exact species of the socialist founders in the genus of nineteenth century socialisms. This was closer to Proudhon than Marx, and, really, the term socialism is egregious, if one was puzzled at the trickiness of chronic division amidst the claims for Israel as the sole democracy in the Middle East. The portrait of 'nationalist socialism' which has nothing to do with 'national socialism' clarifies at once one aspect of the current confusion and turmoil between Israel and the Palestinians. So Israel's state formation is anomalous 'socialism', now what?