Overview

Mainstream nationalist narratives and political movements have dominated the Israeli-Palestinian situation for too long. In this much-needed book, Ran Greenstein challenges this hegemony by focusing on four different, but at the same time connected, attempts which stood up to Zionist dominance and the settlement project before and after 1948. Greenstein begins by addressing the role of the Palestinian Communist Party, and then the bi-nationalist movement, before moving on to the period after 1948 when Palestinian attempts to challenge their unjust conditions of marginalisation became more frequent. Finally, he confronts the radical anti-Zionist Matzpen group, which operated from the early 1960s-80s. In addition to analyses of the shifting positions of these movements, Greenstein examines perspectives regarding a set of conceptual issues: colonialism and settlement, race/ethnicity and class, and questions of identity, rights and power, and how, such as in the case of South Africa, these relations should be seen as global.

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9780745334677

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Reviews

Zionism and Its Discontents not only offers coherent historical narratives of four political movements that have opposed Zionism since the 1920s, drawing on elusive sources to retrieve little-known details. Bringing their stories together in a single volume highlights the fact that Palestinian Arabs as well as some Palestinian and Israeli Jews have always opposed the Zionist settlement movement. These histories - while they lead to no firm conclusion about 'What is to be Done' - are a valuable legacy for those working to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of universal norms of justice, equality, and human rights rather than the prevailing balance of power. -- Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University, Stanford University

This book offers coherent historical narratives of four political movements that have opposed Zionism since the 1920s, drawing on elusive sources. Bringing their stories together in a single volume highlights the fact that Palestinian Arabs as well as some Palestinian and Israeli Jews have always opposed the Zionist settlement movement. These histories are a valuable legacy for those working to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of universal norms of justice, equality, and human rights. -- Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University, Stanford University Greenstein's Zionism and its Discontents contains an outstanding illumination of the formative period of Palestinian communism, and a most original treatment of the lives of early Arab and Jewish critics of Zionism. -- Salim Tamari, Professor of Sociology, Birzeit University, and editor of Jerusalem Quarterly A fresh and thorough study... Greenstein's book provides a profound analysis of Zionism from the vantage point of its internal and external critics. ... Greenstein convincingly insists on the need for bi-national formulas in any endeavor to transform future realities from bloody confrontation into a realistic peaceful relationship between the Jewish and Palestinian national movements. -- Amal Jamal, author of The Palestinian National Movement and the Politics of Contention, 1967-2005

Author Information

Ran Greenstein is Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is author of Zionism and its Discontents: A Century of Radical Dissent in Israel/Palestine (Pluto, 2014).

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