The Rise of the Israeli Right
From Odessa to Hebron

This book traces the history of the Israeli Right since its inception and its struggle to gain power.

Colin Shindler (Author)

9780521151665, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 July 2015

440 pages, 20 b/w illus. 6 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.59 kg

'Shindler's book is the most comprehensive analysis of Israel's political Right to date, better than all its predecessors.' Joseph Heller, Studies in Contemporary Jewry

The Israeli Right first came to power nearly four decades ago. Its election was described then as 'an earthquake', and its reverberations are still with us. How then did the Right rise to power? What are its origins? Colin Shindler traces this development from the birth of Zionism in cosmopolitan Odessa in the nineteenth century to today's Hebron, a centre of radical Jewish nationalism. He looks at central figures such as Vladimir Jabotinsky, an intellectual and founder of the Revisionist movement and Menahem Begin, the single-minded politician who brought the Right to power in 1977. Both accessible and comprehensive, this book explains the political ideas and philosophies that were the Right's ideological bedrock and the compromises that were made in its journey to government.

Introduction
1. Birth and rebirth
2. Fully fledged Zionism
3. An army of Jews
4. The making of the Revisionists
5. The maximalists
6. The legacy of Abba Ahimeir
7. The Arabs of Palestine
8. The road of active resistance
9. Retaliation, violence and turmoil
10. The Irgun and the Lehi
11. The fight for independence
12. From military underground to political party
13. The survival of the fittest
14. Expanding the political circle
15. The road to power
16. A coming of age
17. The permanent revolution
18. The resurrection of Sharon.

Subject Areas: Regional government policies [JPRB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]