The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy

by Eran Kaplan

The Jewish Radical Right is the first comprehensive analysis of Zionist Revisionist thought in the 1920s and 1930s, and of its ideological legacy in modern-day Israel. The Revisionists, under the leadership of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, offered a radical view of Jewish history and a revolutionary vision for its future. Using new archival material, Eran Kaplan examines the intellectual and cultural origins of the Zionist and Israeli Right, when Revisionism evolved into one of the most important movements in the Zionist camp. He presents revisionism as a form of integral nationalism, rooted in an ontological monism and intellectually related to the radical right-wing ideologies that flourished in the early twentieth century. Kaplan provocatively suggests that revisionism's legacies can be found both in the right-wing policies of Likud and in the heart of Post Zionism and its critique of mainstream (Labor) Zionism.

Published with support from the Koret Jewish Studies Program

234 pages, Hardcover

First published February 2, 2005

Reviews

[Joshua Pechthalt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads a bit like a college paper. Good background on the ideology of the hard right in Israel but I was hoping to read something that shed some insight into the rise of the right in Israel.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book mentions spengler, nietzche, adi ophir (my professor), and ariella azoulay, and it's awesome.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book on the Israeli Right I have ever read, can't recommend highly enough.