Israeli exceptionalism : the destabilizing logic of Zionism / M. Shahid Alam.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [251]-264) and index.

I: Israeli exceptionalism -- Varieties of exceptionalism -- Sources of exceptionalism -- II: The destabilizing logic of Zionism -- A violent history -- Zionism in nuce -- The Arabs hate us -- A secular messianism -- A people without a land -- A land without a people -- Jewish factors in Zionist success -- A surfeit of mother countries -- British interests and Zionism -- Anti-semitism and Zionism -- Christian Zionism -- A summing up -- III: Growing a special relationship -- Before the special relationship -- From liability to asset -- Provoking Arab hostility -- June war: aftermath -- The lobby gains clout -- A summing up.

A small band of European Zionists enters the world stage in late 19th century, determined to create a Jewish state in Palestine. This is their solution to the {u2018}abnormal{u2019} condition of European Jews, who are without a land and are not a nation. To achieve this, they must seize Palestine; induce Western Jews to become colonists; and, above all, recruit Western powers to adopt their colonial project. Zionists can only succeed by creating Islamicate enemies; they need resurgent anti-Semitism to send Jewish colonies to Palestine; and they must persuade/coerce the West to stand behind their colonial project. In succeeding, the Zionists merely transplant Jewish abnormality from Europe to the Middle East {u2013} and make it worse. In Europe, Jewish-Gentile frictions were local problems; in Israel, ominously, they have come to form the pivot of a global conflict that pits the West against the Islamicate.