America And The Founding Of Israel

Includes bibliographical references and index.

How did a Jewish state come to resonate profoundly with Americans in the twentieth century? Since WWII, Israel’s identity has been entangled with America’s belief in its own exceptionalism. Turning a critical eye on the two nations’ turbulent history together, Amy Kaplan unearths the roots of controversies that may well divide them in the future.

Zionists began calling for a national Jewish home in Palestine in the nineteenth century, but the birth of Israel did not take place until 1948. This anthology presents the debates between Arab inhabitants and Jewish settlers--both of whom claim historic rights to the territory that is now Israel.

For the first time, the author presents a detailed and revelatory account of the U.S. role in the establishment of the new Israeli state during the years following World War II and the Holocaust. Drawing on three newly opened official archives, plus interviews with surviving participants and other fresh material, Grose is able to cast light on several abiding mysteries and to clarify at last exactly what happened - the arguments in corridors and hotel rooms, the memoranda and diplomatic infighting, the plays for public backing, the heroes and the villains. The drama is real and compelling, and it is startling to see how much of it was played out here, in Washington and New York. "Even as they go their own ways, in pursuit of their own national interests," Grose writes, "Americans and Israelis are bonded together like no two other sovereign peoples." Why this should be so is the theme of his engrossing and comprehensive narrative. Israel in the Mind of America helps us understand Israel - and ourselves. --from inside jacket.

Examines the image of Israel in American culture before 1960.

This book is a chapter-by-chapter analysis and documentation of the power of Israel via the Israeli, Jewish or Pro-Zionist Lobby on US Middle East policy. It raises serious questions as to the primary beneficiary of US policy, and its destructive results for the United States. The extraordinary extent of US political, economic, military and diplomatic support for the state of Israel is explored, along with the means whereby such support is generated and consolidated. Contending that Zionist power in America ensured unconditional US backing for Israeli colonization of Palestine and its massive uprooting of Palestinians, it views the interests of Israel rather than those of Big Oil as the primary cause of the disastrous US wars against Iraq and threats of war against Iran and Syria. It demonstrates and condemns US imitation of Israeli practice as it relates to conduct of the war on terrorism and torture. It sheds light on the AIPAC spying scandal and other Israeli espionage against America; the fraudulent and complicit role of America’s academic “terrorist experts” in furthering criminal government policies, and the orchestration of the Danish cartoons to foment antipathy between Muslims and the West. It questions the inability in America to sustain or even formulate a discourse related to the subject of Israeli influence on the United States. It calls for a review of American Mid East policy with a view to reclaiming US independence of action based upon enlightened self-interest and progressive principles.

Spanning 350 years of Jewish experience in this country, A History of the Jews in America is an essential chronicle by the author of The Course of Modern Jewish History. With impressive scholarship and a riveting sense of detail, Howard M. Sachar tells the stories of Spanish marranos and Russian refugees, of aristocrats and threadbare social revolutionaries, of philanthropists and Hollywood moguls. At the same time, he elucidates the grand themes of the Jewish encounter with America, from the bigotry of a Christian majority to the tensions among Jews of different origins and beliefs, and from the struggle for acceptance to the ambivalence of assimilation.