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Chronicles the history of Zionism, Israel, and the United States.
Fleeing from History offers an understanding of Zionism not as ideology or movement but rather as a multidimensional cosmopolitan arena for Jewish political debate and argument. Drawing on conversations in currently developing literature on colonialism and decolonization, exile and diaspora studies, as well as comparative history, Ylana N. Miller argues that Zionism must be seen through a multinational lens that illuminates the historical process by which it was reduced from a broad, diverse, generative arena of Jewish political creativity to an exclusionary nationalism. Central to the history of this process is the gradual transformation of the American political environment within which Zionism came to be identified with the state of Israel. A key and abiding insight that this history advances is that Jewish history cannot be told without recognition of parallel developments among other groups; for this study, Palestinian Arabs and Algerians. The shift in the diaspora/Zionist center of gravity from European dominance to that of the United States should be understood as representing a break and change rather than continuity. The US–Israel relationship that appears unquestionable today was not inevitable. It was the result of the gradual winnowing of dissenting voices and the embrace of a specific version of state identity.
"Written in a lucid and straightforward language, and painting a more nuanced, neutral, and complex picture than most other studies, Fleeing from History is a particularly insightful, even brilliant understanding of how Zionism developed and changed throughout the twentieth century."—Yaakov Ariel, author of An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews
Acknowledgments
Cast of Characters
Introduction
Part I. Creating a State
1. Foundational Currents, 1917–1948
2. Making the State the Source of Security, 1948–1967
3. Shifting Perspectives: European and American Jewish Constructions, 1948–1962
Part II. Europe, America, and Israel
4. Transnational Challenges, 1948–1966
5. Re-creating the Jewish People, 1960–1966
6. Ruptures and Meaning, 1962–1967
Part III. Making Meaning After Violence
7. The War to End All Wars, 1965–1967
8. Timing and Defining: Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth, 1967–1975
Conclusion
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index