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The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel
The Returns of Zionism Myths Politics and Scholarship in Israel Author:Gabriel Piterberg Leading Israeli scholar with a major re-evaluation of Zionism. 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 ... more »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 lesser-known scholars and thinkers influential in the formation of the Zionist myth, Piterberg breaks open prevailing views of Zionism, demonstrating that it was in fact unexceptional, expressing a consciousness and imagination typical of colonial settler movements. Shaped by European ideological currents and the realities of colonial life, Zionism constructed its own story as a unique and impregnable one, in the process excluding the voices of an indigenous people ? the Palestinian Arabs. .« less