{"id":3556,"date":"2020-04-08T21:48:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T18:48:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-02-26T15:18:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:18:55","slug":"epalestine-book-review-god-does-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/2020\/04\/epalestine-book-review-god-does-not\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cGod does not exist, and he promised us this land\u201d [Book Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Review of What is Modern Israel?<\/em> by Yakov M. Rabkin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As someone who gives political talks from a Palestinian vantage point to groups traveling through Palestine, I have spoken to thousands of Jews, among others, from around the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked away from reading Professor Yakov M. Rabkin\u2019s What is Modern Israel?<\/em> with the burning desire to call back every one of those Jewish travelers and sit down with them, one on one over a hot cup of mint tea \u2014 so that I could read them each of his chapters aloud, looking up and into their eyes at the end of every chapter to ask somberly, Do you get it now? You\u2019ve been had, collectively. You\u2019ve been lied to, collectively. You\u2019re being used, collectively. Your religion, a rich one, has been hijacked, purposely.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviews<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Read Sam’s full review <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

On Medium<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cShows that Zionism was conceived as a sharp break with Judaism and Jewish continuity.\u201d<\/p>Publisher review from Pluto Press<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Few countries provoke as much passion and controversy as Israel. What is Modern Israel?<\/em> convincingly demonstrates that its founding ideology – Zionism – is anything but a simple reaction to antisemitism. Dispelling the notion that every Jew is a Zionist and therefore a natural advocate for the state of Israel, Yakov Rabkin points to the Protestant roots of Zionism, in order to explain the particular support Israel musters in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on many overlooked pages of history, including English, French, Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian sources, Yakov Rabkin shows that Zionism was conceived as a sharp break with Judaism and Jewish continuity. Israel\u2019s past and present must be seen in the context of European ethnic nationalism, colonial expansion and geopolitical interests, rather than as an incarnation of Biblical prophecies or a culmination of Jewish history. (Pluto Press<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few countries provoke as much passion and controversy as Israel. What is Modern Israel?<\/em> convincingly demonstrates that its founding ideology – Zionism – is anything but a simple reaction to antisemitism. Dispelling the notion that every Jew is a Zionist and therefore a natural advocate for the state of Israel, Yakov Rabkin points to the Protestant roots of Zionism, in order to explain the particular support Israel musters in the United States. (Publisher’s Review)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","iawp_total_views":10,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[948,942],"tags":[1330,96,1332,925,1331,642,1306,71,1314,220,1328,1315,1367,1329,1326,1200,1320,319,188,478,531,117,1319,1316,1324,1211,1387,1311,1322,1317,1256,1307,1313,1309,1327,533,1308,1325,1278,1280,1310,1275],"ppma_author":[936],"class_list":["post-3556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-sams-writings","tag-1947-1949-war","tag-96","tag-albert-woodfox","tag-american-jews","tag-amnon-raz-krakozkin","tag-anti-semitism","tag-benjamin-harshav","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-bet-morasha-centre-for-advanced-jewish-studies-in-jerusalem","tag-bible-study","tag-british-jews","tag-centre-rachi-in-paris","tag-christian-evangelicals-and-evangelical-christianity","tag-enzo-traverso","tag-euro-asian-jewish-congress-eajc","tag-george-orwell","tag-haganah","tag-hasbara","tag-history","tag-holocaust","tag-ilan-pappe","tag-israeli-settlements-settlers-and-settler-colonialism","tag-jacob-israel-de-haan","tag-jerusalem-center-for-public-affairs","tag-jewish-agency-ja","tag-jewish-national-fund-jnf","tag-jews-and-judaism","tag-pardes-institute-of-jewish-studies-in-jerusalem","tag-protestant-zionism","tag-rabbi-adin-steinsaltz","tag-russian-jews","tag-saint-petersburg","tag-shalom-hartman-institute-in-jerusalem","tag-soviet-union","tag-swedish-jews","tag-the-idea-of-israel-a-history-of-power-and-knowledge","tag-university-of-montreal","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-what-is-modern-israel-book","tag-yakov-m-rabkin","tag-yeshivat-dvar-yerushalayim","tag-zionism-zionists"],"authors":[{"term_id":936,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sambahour","display_name":"Sam Bahour","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bca109c333bf6d8ae807746dd512adde46265d37c923f6cd0fc4aab437f8e9aa?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3556"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7037,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions\/7037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3556"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}