Readings and Lecture Slides

Required readings for graduate students are marked with a (G).

SES # TOPICS READINGS LECTURE SLIDES
1 Israel: An introduction Buy at Amazon Horowitz, D., and Moshe Lissak. Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel. State University of New York Press, 1989, pp. 1-31. ISBN: 9780791401149.  
2 Zionism: Sources

Buy at Amazon Shimoni, G. The Zionist Ideology. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 1995, pp. 12-51. ISBN: 9780874518337.

Buy at Amazon Dowty, A. The Jewish State: A Century Later. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, pp. 34-60. ISBN: 9780520229112.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Stanislawski, Michael. Zionism and the Fin de Siecle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, pp. xiii-xxi, and 1-18. (G). ISBN: 9780520227880.

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3 Zionist ideologies and the land of Israel

Buy at Amazon Shimoni, G. The Zionist Ideology. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 1995, pp. 333-388. ISBN: 9780874518337.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Strenhell, Z. The Founding Myths of Israel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 3-46. (G). ISBN: 9780691009674.

Buy at Amazon Laqueur, W. A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel. New York: Schoken Books, 2003, pp. 338-384. ISBN: 9780805211498.

Aran, Gideon. "From Religious Zionism to Zionist Religion: The Roots of Gush Emunim." Doctoral Dissertation, Hebrew University, 1987.

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4 Nation building and immigration

Buy at Amazon Kimmerling, B. The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society and the Military. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 56-89. ISBN: 9780520246720.

Buy at Amazon Arian, A. Politics in Israel: The Second Republic. Washington DC: CQ Press, 2004, pp. 23-34. ISBN: 9781568029320.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Dowty, A. "Israel's First Decade: Building a Civic State." In Israel: The First Decade of Independence. Edited by S. Ilan Troen, and Noah Lucas. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, pp. 31-50. (G). ISBN: 9780791422601.

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5 Settlements and the Zionist project

Buy at Amazon Troen, I. S. Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 3-14, and 62-84. ISBN: 9780300094831.

Buy at Amazon Shafir, G. "Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach." In Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom. Edited by Michael N. Barnet. Albany: SUNY Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780791428320.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Yifatchel, O. Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, pp. 131-158. ISBN: 9780812239270.

Ram, Uri. "The Colonization Perspective in Israeli Sociology: Internal and External Comparisons." Journal of Historical Sociology 6, no. 3 (2006): 327-350. (G)

Aharonson, R. "Settlement in Eretz Israel, A Colonialist Enterprise? 'Critical' Scholarship and Historical Geography." Israel Studies 1, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 214-229. (G)

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6 The Arab-Israeli conflict

Buy at Amazon Smith, C. D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Boston: St. Martin's, 2009, pp. 190-201, 264-282, 311-320, and 437-457. ISBN: 9780312535018.

Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1948.

The Palestinian National Charter, 1968.

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), 1988.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Bickerton, I. J. Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History. London: Reaktion Books, 2009, pp. 66-137. ISBN: 9781861895271.

Buy at Amazon Rabinovich, I. Waging Peace: Israel and Arabs at the End of the Century. New-York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999, pp. 3-40. (G) ISBN: 9780374105761.

Buy at Amazon Khalidi, R. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007, pp. 105-139. (G). ISBN: 9780807003091.

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7 Israeli society: Cleavages

Buy at Amazon Smooha, S. "Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel: A Deeply Divided Society." In Israeli Identity in Transition. Edited by Anita Shapria. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004, pp. 31-69. ISBN: 9780275976606.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Horowitz, Dan, and Moshe Lissak. Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989, pp. 32-99. (G). ISBN: 9780791401149.

Buy at Amazon Grossman, D. Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1993, pp. 80-100. ISBN: 9780312420970.

Buy at Amazon Ghanem, A. The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel, 1948-2000: A Political Study. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001, pp. 11-27, and 36-38. (G). ISBN: 9780791449974.

Cohen, Y., and Yitchak Haberfeld. "Second-Generation Jewish Immigrants in Israel: Have the Ethnic Gaps in Schooling d Earnings Declined?" Ethnic And Racial Studies 21, no. 3 (1998): 507-528.

Gavison, R. "Jewish and Democratic? A Rejoinder to the 'Ethnic Democracy' Debate." Israel Studies 4, no. 1 (1999): 44-72.

 
8 Israel in the West Bank and Gaza

Buy at Amazon Gordon, N. Israel's Occupation. Routledge, 2003, pp. 23-46. ISBN: 9780520255319.

Sharon, A. "Why is Israel's Presence in the Territories Still Called Occupation?" JCPA, 2009. (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Gazit, S. Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories. London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 241-288, and 333-341. (G). ISBN: 9780714683904.

Troen, I. S. "Spearheads of the Zionist Frontier; Historical Perspectives on Post-1967 Settlement Planning in Judea and Samaria." Planning Perspectives 7 (January 1992): 81-100. (G)

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9 Israel identity revisited: the post Zionist challenge

Silberstein, L. J. The Postzionism Debate: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture. New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 89-126.

Recommended Reading

Judt, T. "Israel: The Alternative." New York Review of Books 50, no. 16 (October 23): 2003. (G)

Wurmser, M. "Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism?" The Middle East Quarterly 6, no 1. (1999): 3-13.

Buy at Amazon Morris, B. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. xii-xxii, and 473-492. ISBN: 9780521009676.

Buy at Amazon Gelber, Y. Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001, pp. 1-15, and 298-302. (G). ISBN: 9781845190750.

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10 Foreign and security policy

Inbar, E. "Israeli National Security 1973-1996." Annals of the American Academy of Political Science 555 (1998): 62-81.

Buy at Amazon Neuman, D. "The Geographical and Territorial Imprint on the Security Discourse." In Security Concerns: Insights from the Israeli Experience. Edited by Daniel Bar-Tal, and D. Jacobson. Stanford: JAI Press, pp. 73-94. ISBN: 9780762304684.

Freilich, C. D. "National Security Decision Making in Israel: Processes, Strengths and Pathologies." Middle East Journal 60, no. 4 (Autumn 2006): 635-663.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Bar Joseph, U. "Introduction. "In Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century." London: Frank Cass, 2001, pp. 1-13. (G). ISBN: 9780714651699.

Buy at Amazon Levite, E. Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Defense Doctrine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989. (G). ISBN: 9780813307206.

Buy at Amazon Maoz, Z. Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006, pp. 3-46. ISBN: 9780472033416.

 
11 Israeli economy

Zilberfarb. B. "From Socialism to Free Market — The Israeli Economy, 1948-2003." Israel Affairs 11, no. 1 (January 2005): 12–22.

Buy at Amazon Shalev, Michael. "Have Globalization and Liberalization 'Normalized' Israel's Political Economy?" In Israel: Dynamics of Change and Continuity. Edited by David Levi-Faur, Gabriel Sheffer, and David Vogel. London: Frank Cass: 1999, pp. 121-155. ISBN: 9780714680620.

Recommended Reading

Arian, A. Politics in Israel: The Second Republic. Washington DC: CQ, 2005, pp. 48-82. (G)

 
12 Israeli culture

Buy at Amazon Almog, Oz. The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew. Berkeley: California University Press, 2000, pp. 1-22. ISBN: 9780520216426.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Regev, M., and Edwin Seroussi. Popular Music and National Culture in Israel. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 1-45. (G). ISBN: 9780520236547.

Buy at Amazon Smooha, S. "Is Israel Western?" In Comparing Modernities: Pluralism Versus Homogeneity; Essays in Homage to Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. Edited by Eliezer Ben-Rafael, and Yitzak Sternberng. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005. (G). ISBN: 9789004144071.

 
13 Israel: A comparative perspective

Buy at Amazon Barnett, M. "The Politics of Uniqueness: The Status of the Israeli Case." In Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom. Edited by Michael Barnett. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996, pp. 3-28. ISBN: 9780791428320.

Troen, I. "Frontier Myths and Their Applications in America and Israel; A Trans-National Perspective." Journal of American History Perspective 86, no. 3 (1999): 1209-1230.

Recommended Reading

Buy at Amazon Lustick, I. Unsettled States: Disputed Land: Britain in Ireland, France in Algeria, and Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 385-438. (G). ISBN: 9780801480881.

Merom G. "Israel's National Security and the Myth of Exceptionalism." Political Science Quarterly 114, no. 3 (1999): 409-434. (PDF)