Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948

by Anita Shapira

This book traces the history of attitudes toward power and the use of armed force within the Zionist movement—from an early period in which most leaders espoused an ideal of peaceful settlement in Palestine, to the acceptance of force as a legitimate tool for achieving a sovereign Jewish state.

Genres: Israel, History, Middle East, Nonfiction

458 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Anita Shapira (Hebrew: אניטה שפירא‎‎, born 1940) is an Israeli historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, Emerita Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and former head of the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University. She received the Israel Prize for History in 2008.

אניטה שפירא (נולדה ב-1940) היא פרופסור אמריטה להיסטוריה של עם ישראל באוניברסיטת תל אביב, עמדה בראש המכון לחקר הציונות וישראל שם וכלת פרס ישראל לשנת תשס"ח 2008 בחקר ההיסטוריה של עם ישראל.

Reviews

[Justin Michael James Dell · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first took a look at the somewhat tendentious title of this text, I expected it to be an anti-Israel polemic. I was wrong. This monograph is neither a condemnation nor a exoneration of Zionism; it is an explication, pure and simple. With deft even-handedness, Anita Shapira looks at how the tenets, goals and implementation of Zionism evolved in a dialectical relationship to the exigencies it faced 'on the ground' in the crucible of 1881-1948 Palestine. The density of this book is commensurate to the nature of the beast it describes; the Arab-Zionist conflict is irreducibly complex. However, if there is any objective truth or axiomatic observation that can be drawn from a panoramic sweep of the history of the late struggle for Palestine, Shapira comes close to imparting it: that the Jews and the Arabs are both victims of circumstance. Only a confluence of unforeseeable developments, unfortunate experiences and just bad luck could lead both sides to where they are today. Although there is a tendency by some - especially those of dubious political persuasions - to conceive of Zionism as a kind of 'pre-packaged' corpus of beliefs or blueprints drafted by a shadowy cabal, Shapira incontrovertibly demonstrates that it is, in fact, an ad hoc response to the wretched plight of the Jewish people, who by all objective accounts have been subject to unspeakable persecution. The Arabs in Palestine have unfortunately been caught up in the whirlwind of one people's primeval struggle for existence. But it is so by accident, not design. There is a sense in which the Arabs-cum-"Palestinians" are the subject of the inexorable diktat of History, merciless and cruel as she so often is. But if so, they are not without good company. If one asks, in the spirit of Job's indignation, "for what reason hath the Arabs been made to suffer so?", one cannot evade the equally, if not more pressing question, "why, for two thousand years, the Jews?".

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review of Land and Power is available on my website at http://petergpollak.com/2014/07/24/re....