Israel's Moment

International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949

Israel's Moment
Jeffrey Herf
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NZ$ 61.95
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Hardback
h235 x 160mm - 450pg
3 Feb 2022 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781316517963
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Israel' s Moment is a major new account of how a Jewish state came to be forged in the shadow of World War Two and the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War. Drawing on new research in government, public and private archives, Jeffrey Herf exposes the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In an unprecedented international account, he explores the role of the United States, the Arab States, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and key European governments from Britain and France to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. His findings reveal a spectrum of support and opposition that stood in sharp contrast to the political coordinates that emerged during the Cold War, shedding new light on how and why the state of Israel was established in 1948 and challenging conventional associations of left and right, imperialism and anti-imperialism, and racism and anti-racism.
' Through extensive archival research and close analysis of the early Cold-War debates over the future of Palestine, Jeffrey Herf has produced a vivid and important account of the political and international environment in which the State of Israel was born in May 1948. ' Carole Fink, author of Cold War: An International History ' Jeffrey Herf provides a very fresh look at the foundations of modern Israel in the international arena. Using previously unexamined sources, he situates Israel' s oft-misunderstood beginnings squarely within the context of contemporary understandings of the Holocaust and the Cold War, while also showing that for much of the world, Zionism was a worthy national liberation movement deserving of fulfilment. There are also numerous surprises concerning the thinking of American officials and intellectuals, the reasoning and discourse of the Communist world, and the baleful efforts of Palestine' s Arab leaders. A necessary book and a terrific read. ' Norman JW Goda, lead editor of Envoy to the Promised Land: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1948-1951 ' One of the prominent themes of this engaging and tightly argued book is the contrast between the later romanticized version of support for the founding of the State of Israel and the reality of opposition from the State Department' s Arabists as well as leading military and other officials in the Pentagon and CIA. No other work connects so persuasively the beginning of the Cold War and the Zionist and anti-Zionist ideological currents of thought in the Middle East as well as Europe and especially Britain. Israel' s Moment is based on wide-ranging research. It reveals in an original way how the intensity of the opposition to the plans for the new state came close to preventing its creation. ' Wm. Roger Louis, author of The British Empire in the Middle East ' Israel' s Moment is a fine and highly persuasive history of how the anti-Communist mandarins of the US State and Defense Departments and the imperialist bureaucracies of the British and French foreign ministries - unintelligibly ignoring the Holocaust that had just ended - tried and failed to prevent the creation of Israel and its victory over the Arab states in 1948. ' Benny Morris, author of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited ' Politics makes strange bedfellows. A pro-Zionist but anti-communist American president, a Soviet Bloc intent on rolling back British imperialism, and a mix of liberals and leftists still fired up by the anti-fascist elan born of the war: such was the international coalition that helped shepherd the State of Israel into existence. Jeffrey Herf ' s lucid and well-researched new book provides a vivid account of how this coalition came to be. It is a story full of ironies and surprises. ' Philip Nord, author of After the Deportation: Memory Battles in Postwar France
Jeffrey Herf is a Distinguished University Professor of Modern European history at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989 (2016). He is a member of the American Historical Association and the German Studies Association.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781316517963
Published: 3 Feb 2022
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Format: Hardback
Height: 235mm
Width: 160mm
Spine: 32mm
Weight: 870g
Pages: 450

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