Zealotry and Vengeance

On November 4, 1995 the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin left Israeli society shocked and bewildered by the reemergence of religiously motivated political violence in an age of secularism. In Zealotry and Vengeance Samuel Peleg analyzes the social, political, and structural motivations and conditions that have encouraged this resurgence of religious violence. It profiles the rise of the Zionist messianic movement from protest and activism to assassination, and asks whether the killing of Rabin was a fluke or a harbinger of things to come--based on Israeli society's extensive support for the proclivity to violence. The book provides students of political behavior and participation with both a scientific study of the extremist state of mind and an acute analysis of the cycle of violence and tolerance threatening to once again engulf the Middle East.