We Are Not One
A History of America's Fight Over Israel
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3.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A bestselling historian uncovers the surprising roots of America’s long alliance with Israel and its troubling consequences
Fights about the fate of the state of Israel, and the Zionist movement that gave birth to it, have long been a staple of both Jewish and American political culture. But despite these arguments’ significance to American politics, American Jewish life, and to Israel itself, no one has ever systematically examined their history and explained why they matter.
In We Are Not One, historian Eric Alterman traces this debate from its nineteenth-century origins. Following Israel’s 1948–1949 War of Independence (called the “nakba” or “catastrophe” by Palestinians), few Americans, including few Jews, paid much attention to Israel or the challenges it faced. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, however, almost overnight support for Israel became the primary component of American Jews’ collective identity. Over time, Jewish organizations joined forces with conservative Christians and neoconservative pundits and politicos to wage a tenacious fight to define Israel’s image in the US media, popular culture, Congress, and college campuses. Deeply researched, We Are Not One reveals how our consensus on Israel and Palestine emerged and why, today, it is fracturing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Alterman (Lying in State) delivers a thought-provoking and thorough study of America's political relationship with the modern state of Israel. Contending that since the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence, U.S. presidential administrations have deferred to the wishes of Israel's leaders, Alterman explores the reasons for that consistent support, including guilt over America's failure to save a significant number of Jews from the Holocaust, the rising political influence of Christian evangelicals who believe that saving Israel is a divine mandate, determined efforts by pro-Israel lobbyists and Jewish organizations, and cultural touchstones including the novel and movie Exodus, which popularized a mythic narrative about Israeli independence. He also highlights Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "relentless propaganda campaign" against President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran and the growing generational divide within the American Jewish community over support for Israel as "stateless and oppressed" Palestinians increasingly "occupy the underdog role that history had previously assigned to the Jews." Evenhanded yet incisive, this is an accessible history of a complex geopolitical matter and a persuasive call for more open-minded debate on an issue tearing at the fabric of the American Jewish community.
