The book presents a liberal political theory for the Jewish people by distinguishing among several interpretations of the Zionist political idea and several postnationalist alternatives currently proposed for it by Israeli and American post-Zionist thinkers. It explicates the historiographical, philosophical, and moral foundations of all these approaches and their implications for the relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel/Palestine and between Jews in Israel and world Jews. It discusses world Jews’ desirable political status both in their countries and in Israel. The book distinguishe ... More

The book presents a liberal political theory for the Jewish people by distinguishing among several interpretations of the Zionist political idea and several postnationalist alternatives currently proposed for it by Israeli and American post-Zionist thinkers. It explicates the historiographical, philosophical, and moral foundations of all these approaches and their implications for the relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel/Palestine and between Jews in Israel and world Jews. It discusses world Jews’ desirable political status both in their countries and in Israel. The book distinguishes between two current mainstream Zionisms: (a) Proprietary-essentialist Zionism, which conceives of Israel/Palestine as the property of the Jewish people, and of the entire Jewish people as essentially belonging to Greater Israel and its land; and (b) hierarchical Zionism, which interprets the Jewish right to self-determination as a right to Jewish hegemony within Israel. It then proposes a third interpretation, egalitarian-constructivist, which is derived from the historical justifications of Zionism in its formative years. This approach is superior not only to the aforementioned Zionisms but also to contemporary post-Zionist rejections of Zionism: the Israeli ones whose visions for Israeli Jews, Israeli non-Jews, and non-Israeli Jews are civic or postcolonial, and the mainly American post-Zionism whose vision is neodiasporic for Jews both outside and inside Israel. The book argues that egalitarian Zionism has philosophical and moral foundations and implications superior to those of its rivals, and also that it draws on a more authentic historiography of Judaism and Zionism.