The class explores the history of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel in all its complexity and contradictions. What is Zionism? What are its roots? Is it a liberation movement? A religious cause? A colonial ideology? A set of state policies? And what is the relationship between Zionism and the modern State of Israel? How do Zionism and Israel look different when considered from the standpoint of Jewish, Palestinian, European, or Middle Eastern history? Exploring Zionism and Israel from its roots in the nineteenth century to the present, this class offers in-depth knowledge and discussion on all of these topics and more.

This course will at once offer a long-term historical view and be particularly valuable for placing the events of the present in context. Throughout, we emphasize the importance of two topics that challenged the Zionist project from its early years: the “Arab question” and the issue of the place of religion in a modern Jewish state. Subsequent lessons will trace the Zionists’ complex relationship to the British empire; attitudes of Zionism toward the native Arabs of Palestine; the building of the Yishuv; the creation of modern Hebrew culture in realms from language to the arts; the rise of both Labor and Revisionist Zionism; the impact of antisemitism and the Holocaust in Europe; and the Arab resistance to Zionism that exploded in the 1929 riots, the 1936 Great Arab Revolt, and the 1948 War and refugee crisis. The portion of the class that deals with the years of the state addresses the consequences of Israel’s founding for the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Palestine; the institutionalization of state socialism and the military as the strongest institutions in Israel; the waves of Jewish migration from surrounding Arab and Muslim countries and Israel’s changing ethnic makeup; a series of military conflicts; the way that the Israeli victory of 1967 dramatically transformed the region and unleashed new political and cultural forces within Israeli society; the emergence of the Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and the rise of the settlement movement and the Israeli right; the rise of the Palestinian nationalist movement; the rise and fall of the Peace Process; the “economic miracle” of the early twenty-first century; and the new hegemony of the Israeli religious Right. We will conclude the course by discussing October 7 and the current war in historical context.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills