Synopsis

This book discerns in the history of Zionism the plot of a Shakespearean tragedy.

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 ‘abnormal’ 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 – 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.

Biography

M. Shahid Alam is an economist, historian, and poet. In his wide-ranging work, he has demonstrated a capacity to cut across disciplinary boundaries, engage the real world, and look at issues spatially, historically and globally. As a social scientist, he believes that his primary task is to stand outside the dominant structures of thought and examine how they falsify reality in the service of power.

Alam has published three previous books, Governments and Markets in Economic Development Strategies (1979), Poverty from the Wealth of Nations (1990), and Challenging the New Orientalism (2006). His articles have appeared in American Economic Review, Kyklos, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Science and Society, and Review of Radical Political Economics. His translations of Ghalib have appeared in Chicago Review, Beloit Poetry Journal and Marlboro Review. His political essays have appeared in Dawn, The Daily Star, Al-Ahram Weekly, CounterPunch, Outlook India and Tehelka.

Currently, Alam is a professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston.