New Books in Israel Studies

Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli state.Zionism: An Emotional State (Rutgers UP, 2023) expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement’s history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world. Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. He previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was in inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies. Penslar has published a dozen books, most recently Zionism: An Emotional State (2023). He is currently writing a book titled The War for Palestine, 1947-1949: A Global History. Penslar is a past president of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Contemporary issues like the refugee crisis, climate refugees, and global restrictions on movement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have brought into stark relief the extent to which our movements, lives, and worldviews are governed by national borders and boundary-making. But these borders and their associated militarization and security infrastructures are a recent phenomenon, the legacy of 20th-century wars and colonialism. Modern borders are also often the result of complex, disputed negotiation processes between governments and other authorities, which rarely take into consideration the local populations living in border zones. What happens when these modern border-making processes interact with nomadic peoples? How is pastoralism affected and circumscribed by nation-state borders and boundary regimes? This episode discusses histories of border formation in the modern Middle East in relation to nomadic pastoralists - the Bedouin - specifically in Iraq and Israel. I talked to a range of scholars working on these topics, and you'll hear from them throughout the episode. We also talk about the effects of these borders on the Bedouin today, as well as evidence for Bedouin alternatives to borders and maps.  Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Dr. Daniel Hummel is a scholar, writer, researcher, and teacher of religion, politics, and foreign policy in the United States and the modern Middle East. He is currently a Robert M. Kingdon Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hummel is also a specialist in the concept of Christian Zionism and has a forthcoming book from the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, A Covenant of the Mind: Evangelicals, Israel, and the Construction of a Special Relationship. Dr. Hummel’s unique take on the Israel-Palestine situation is tinted with his own expertise in Christian Zionism, and we discuss that issue in a lot of depth in this conversation as well. Dr. Hummel is also a contributor to the Washington Post in middle east current events. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While on sabbatical, in 2025-2026 he is the Mosse Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of the recently published monograph Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025) , as well as Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); and Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010). He edited volumes and published articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including Jewish youth movements in Germany; the German interwar anti-war movement; Cold War memory culture; Jewish migration from and to Germany; and German-Jewish visual culture. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is a Professor of History and the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History at the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States. His research focuses on the linguistic, visual, and cultural history of Nazi Germany, modern German-Jewish history, historiography and historical theory, transnational history, and global protest movements in the twentieth century. His recent publications include Taking the Transnational Turn: The German Jewish Press and Journalism Beyond Borders, 1933-1943 [in Hebrew] (Yad Vashem Publications, 2023) and Holocaust Testimonies: Reassessing Survivors’ Voices and their Future in Challenging Times (with Wolf Gruner, Miriam Offer, and Boaz Cohen (Bloomsbury, 2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor, and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He has written numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of essays in major national and global publications. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio and appears regularly on cable TV news programs.  Beyond Proportionality examines the relevant legal standards, as embodied in the U.N. Charter, international humanitarian law, and, most especially, the principle of proportionality, as codified in the Geneva Conventions, and concludes that Israel’s war in Gaza is lawful and just. And, yet, as in any war, there is collateral damage, but it is proportionate to necessary military objectives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies in facilitating Mossad's Operation Wrath of God; a campaign of assassination against Black September terrorists. She reveals how, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre, Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorism were hunted and killed by Mossad with active European cooperation. Through unique access to unredacted documents in the Club de Berne archive, she shows how a secret coalition of intelligence agencies supplied Mossad with information about Palestinians on a colossal scale and tacitly supported Israeli covert actions on European soil.  Agencies shared information via - Kilowatt - an encrypted channel. Through this channel agencies helped to anticipate and thwart a number of Palestinian terrorist plots, including some revealed here for the first time. At the same time, the Mossad was also able to exploit this information to carry out its covert assassinations, staying one step ahead of the investigations. Many European agencies also used the same channel to bolster their reputation in the context of counterterrorism. This extraordinary book reconstructs the hidden world of international intelligence, showing how this parallel order enabled state relations to be pursued independently of official foreign policy constraints or public scrutiny. It shows how intelligence agencies play be different rules and how covert diplomacy continues - and prospers - even in the aftermath of scandals and in those occasions in which open diplomacy is problematic.  Dr Luca Trenta, Associate Professor in International Relations, Swansea University, UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Israeli Documentary Poetry: Coming of Age with the State introduces and explores documentary poetry written by Israeli poets who came of age during the first two decades of the state and who, since the 1970s and 1980s, have recorded their experiences of that period. This study offers a literary-cultural analysis of forty-two poems by thirty Israeli poets of various backgrounds, divided into themes such as: memories of the Holocaust and portraits of survivors and their offspring; transit locations and situations both en route to and within Israel; displacement as a shared fate of Jews and Arabs; school and classroom experiences; Mizraḥi women between Levantine patriarchy and Western liberalism; and languages of the diaspora versus Hebrew. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

In this interview, Yardena Schwartz discusses her book Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, offering a nuanced exploration of the 1929 Hebron massacre and its enduring impact on the region’s history and present-day realities. Through a conversation that weaves personal narrative, historical analysis, and contemporary reflection, Schwartz illuminates how the events of 1929—when nearly 70 Jewish residents of Hebron were killed by their Arab neighbors—became a pivotal moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict. When the Shainberg family in Memphis, Tennessee, discovers a box of century-old letters from their deceased uncle David in their attic, a journey begins: not only to learn about the young man who wrote the letters from the holy city of Hebron in British Mandate Palestine, but about the massacre that took his life in 1929. Award-winning journalist Yardena Schwartz draws from these letters, along with extensive research and wide-ranging interviews of Israelis and Palestinians now living in Hebron, to tell a timely, captivating narrative.  In David’s last letter home, on August 20, 1929 he wrote about a visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and said, “as we walked along Jerusalem’s streets, we could almost imagine the streams of Jewish blood flowing at our feet, the horrible scenes of slaughter. Jewish sages, budding youth, tender babes in their mother’s arms, all killed by the barbaric sword of the enemy". He was describing the slaughter from the Roman invasion of Jerusalem - yet just a few days later those same words could have been used to describe the scene in Hebron where David lost his life. The interview delves into the complexities of Hebron’s past, once a city marked by coexistence, and the forces—propaganda, incitement, and shifting political landscapes—that transformed it into a symbol of division. Schwartz draws connections between the incitement and misinformation that fueled the violence in 1929 and the echoes of these dynamics in more recent events, such as the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. She emphasizes the importance of challenging false narratives and understanding the human stories behind historical tragedies. Throughout the conversation, Schwartz reflects on the challenges of researching and recounting such a fraught history, the erasure and distortion of memory in both Jewish and Arab communities, and the enduring hope for peace despite a century of conflict. The interview provides listeners with a compelling entry point into the tangled roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict, highlighting why the lessons of 1929 remain urgently relevant today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Andrew Tobolowsky's Israel and Its Heirs in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores constructions of Israelite identity among Jewish, Samaritan Israelites, and Christian authors in Late Antiquity, especially early Late Antiquity. It identifies three major strategies for claiming an Israelite identity between these three groups: a 'biological' strategy, a 'biology plus' strategy, and an 'abiological' strategy, referring to the difference between Jewish claims to Israel premised on exclusive biological descent, Samaritan Israelite acknowledgments of shared descent, and the 'Verus Israel' tradition in Christianity, which disavows the importance of descent. Using this framework, it makes various general conclusions about the construction of ethnic identity itself, including the inadequacy of treating descent claims as the sine qua non of ethnicity and role played in any given vision of ethnic identity by the individual creativity of a given author. New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Andrew Tobolowsky is Robert and Sarah Boyd Associate Professor of Religious Studies at William and Mary. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Elana Gomel is a former senior lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, where she also served as department chair for two years. This book investigates the Russian community in Israel, analyzing the narratives through which Russian Jewry defines itself and linking them to the legacy of Soviet history. Gomel is also an award-winning fiction writer and the author of eight novels. The story of post-Soviet Jews in Israel illustrates a broader phenomenon of cultural divergence, in which history shapes distinct identities from a shared origin. In addition to marking a turning point in Israel’s development, this story forms part of the larger global landscape shaped by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gomel’s book explores Russian immigration to Israel from a cultural rather than purely sociological perspective. It should be noted that the book was originally published in 2009 and serves as a snapshot of the situation 15 years after the massive wave of Russian immigration in the early 1990s. In our discussion, we will try to address some of the changes that have transpired in the country as well as in Elana's views. Elana Gomel, born in Ukraine and currently residing in California, is an academic with a long list of books and articles, an award-winning writer, and a professional nomad. She has taught in Israel, Italy, and the United States, and is known in academia for her (purely theoretical) interest in serial killers, alien invasions, and rebellious AIs. She is the author of more than a hundred stories, several novellas, and five novels of dark fantasy and dark science fiction. Several of her stories have appeared in Best of the Year anthologies. She is a member of the HWA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

At the turn of the common era, the Jewish communities of Roman Palestine saw the organization of a small group of literate Jewish men who devoted their lives to the interpretation and teaching of their sacred ancestral texts. In How Rabbis Became Experts: Social Circles and Donor Networks in Jewish Late Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2025), Krista Dalton shows that these early rabbis were not an insular specialist group but embedded in a landscape of Jewish piety. Drawing on the writings of rabbis in Roman Palestine from the second through fifth centuries CE, Dalton illuminates the significance of social relationships in the production of rabbinic expertise. She traces the social interactions—everyday instances of mutual exchange, from dinner parties to tithes and patronages—that fostered the perception of rabbis as experts. Dalton shows how the knowledge derived from the rabbis’ technical skills was validated and recognized by others. Rabbis socialized and noshed with neighbors and offered advice and legal favors to friends. In exchange for their expert judgments, they received invitations, donations, appointments, and recognition. She argues that their status as Torah experts did not arise by virtue of being scholars but from their ability to persuade others that their mobilization of Jewish cultural resources was beneficial. Dalton describes the relational processes that made rabbinic expertise possible as well as the accompanying tensions; social interactions shaped the rabbis’ domain of knowledge while also imposing expectations of reciprocity that had to be managed. Dalton’s authoritative analysis demonstrates that a focus on friendship and exchange provides a fuller understanding of how rabbis claimed and defended their distinct expertise. New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Krista Dalton is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon College and an editor-in-chief at Ancient Jew Review Michael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir (Wipf and Stock, 2024) is a narrative of a Christian family in Bethlehem in the West Bank. Based on diary entries and interviews from 2000 to 2023, the Dutch author--an anthropologist and peace activist--chronicles the spontaneous reactions of his Palestinian children and wife navigating the challenges posed by curfews and checkpoints. Problems of Palestinian school life are shown from the perspective of teachers and students. Against the background of Israeli occupation and settlement building, the intricacies of Palestinian culture in its daily rhythms and domestic spaces come to life. Throughout the pages, the key Palestinian concept of sumud, or steadfastness, is explored. The memoir details acts of creative nonviolent resistance, individual protests, affirmations of cultural identity, and inspiring examples of Muslim-Christian community. The book also reveals unexpected connections between Palestinian culture in the Bethlehem area and broader Christian values and traditions. An afterword reflects upon implications of Israel's war in Gaza. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

What many people don’t realize is that Zionism is not a monolithic term. From its inception there were rigorous debates about the nature and direction of the movement? Thinkers had argued about some of the fundamental questions around Israel. Where would a future Jewish state be located? What language would they speak? Should Israel come about through a slow evolution or a radical revolution? In his book, Zionism and Jewish Culture: A Study in the Origins of a National Movement (Academic Studies Press, 2024), Yithak Conforti situates us in these debates, zeroing in on the leaders of what has become known as “cultural Zionism.” These group of thinkers stood across the aisle from more politically minded voices like Theodor Herzl. As Prof Yizhak Conforti explains, their approach was quite different, highlighting a more Jewish, more ethnic, more culturally centered Zionist vision. Zionism and Jewish Culture examines the history of Zionism from a new perspective, arguing that Zionism was not only a political project, but also a major cultural force in modern Jewish life. In exploring these topics, this book enables a deeper understanding of the forces that continue to shape Zionism and Israel today. Prof. Yitzhak Conforti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, specializing in modern Jewish history, Jewish nationalism, and Zionist historiography. In addition to Zionism and Jewish Culture, se is the author of several influential works, including Past Tense: Zionist Historiography and the Shaping of the Zionist Memory and Shaping a Nation: The Cultural Origins of Zionism, 1882–1948. Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is most recently the author of Yochanan’s Gamble: Judaism’s Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2025) analyzes biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, studies of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions for a comprehensive history of Jewish responses to and justifications of their diasporas. It shows that Diaspora Jews through the ages insisted that God joined them in their exiles, that "Zion" was found in Babylon and Eastern Europe, and that, as citizens of the world, Jews could only live throughout the world. The result is a convincing assertion that lament has not been the most common Jewish response to diaspora and that Zionism is not the natural outcome of either Jewish ideology or history. David Kraemer is Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he has also served as Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics for many years. As Librarian, he is at the helm of the most extensive collection of Judaica-rare and contemporary-in the Western hemisphere. He is the author of several books on Rabbinic Judaism and its texts, the social and religious history of Jews in antiquity, and Jewish rituals and their development. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Israel’s citizens have had to cope with the emotional challenges of the threats their country has faced during its first two decades. Emotions of Conflict, Israel 1949-1967 (Oxford UP, 2024) unpacks the history of citizens’ emotions—an analysis of the reports about how they felt and of the emotional regime—the emotional repertoire designed by political leaders and cultural agents wishing to mold the feelings of Israeli citizens. The perspective of the history of emotions leads to hitherto untapped and nuanced insights about the weaknesses and strengths of Israelis, and reveals new connections between identity, morality, state-sanctioned violence, politics, and law, along with a new understanding of the motivations behind policy makers’ decisions. Orit Rozin is Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. Eva Gurevich, PhD, is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Brandeis University. Her dissertation was titled, “Reconstituting Israel: The Impact of the Six-Day War on Political Thought in the Land of Israel Movement (Hatenuah Lemaan Eretz Yisrael Hashlemah)." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Homeland security is rarely just a matter of the homeland; it involves the circulation and multiplication of policing practices across borders. Though the term "homeland security" is closely associated with the United States, Israel is credited with first developing this all-encompassing approach to domestic surveillance and territorial control. Today, it is a central node in the sprawling global homeland security industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, India emerged as a major growth market. Known as "India's 9/11" or simply "26/11," the attacks sparked significant public pressure to adopt "modern" homeland security approaches. Since 2008, India has become not only the single largest buyer of Israeli conventional weapons, but also a range of other surveillance technology, police training, and security expertise. Pairing insights from science and technology studies with those from decolonial and postcolonial theory, Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements Across India and Palestine/Israel (Stanford UP, 2024) traces 26/11's political and policy fallout, concentrating on the efforts of Israel's homeland security industry to advise and equip Indian city and state governments. Through a focus on the often unseen and overlooked political struggles at work in the making of homeland security, Rhys Machold details how homeland security is a universalizing project, which seeks to remake the world in its image, and tells the story of how claims to global authority are fabricated and put to work. Rhys Machold is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His work focuses on imperialism, colonialism, and empire, working from a transnational approach. He is an editor at Critical Studies on Security and an editorial board member at International Studies Review. He held research and teaching appointments at York University (Canada), the Danish Institute for International Studies, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Wilfrid Laurier University. Deniz Yonucu is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University. Her work focuses on policing and security, surveillance, left-wing and anti-colonial resistance, memory, and racism. Her monograph Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul is the winner of the 2023 Anthony Leeds Prize for the best book in urban anthropology, awarded by the Critical Urban Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

In The People of the Book and the Camera: Photography in the Hebrew Novel (Syracuse UP, 2022), Amihay offers a pioneering study of the unique nexus between literature and photography in the works of Hebrew authors. Exploring the use of photography--both as a textual element and through the inclusion of actual images-- Amihay shows how the presence of visual elements in a textual work of fiction has a powerful subversive function. Contemporary Hebrew authors have turned to photography as a tool to disrupt narratives and give voice to marginalized sectors in Israel, including women, immigrants, Mizrahi Israelis, LGBTQ+ individuals, second-generation Holocaust survivors, and traumatized army veterans. Amihay discusses standard novels alongside graphic novels, challenging the dominance of the written word in literature. In addition to providing a poetic analysis of imagetext pages, Amihay addresses the social and political issues authors are responding to, including gender roles, Zionism, the ethnic divide in Israel, and its Palestinian minority. In exploring these avant-garde novels and their authors, Amihay elevates their significance and calls for a more expansive definition of canonical Hebrew literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army in the Sinai, had hobbled their British and US allies, and were liberating Palestine. It was a lie. For the rest of his life, populations in the Middle East vilified Said for his duplicity. However, the truth was that, by 1967, all the world's major broadcasters to the Middle East were dissimulating on the air. For two decades, British, Soviet, American, and Egyptian radio voices created an audio world characterized by deceit and betrayal. In Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East (University of California Press, 2025), Dr. Margaret Peacock traces the history of deception and propaganda in Middle Eastern international radio. Dr. Peacock makes the compelling argument that this betrayal contributed to the loss of faith in Western and secular state-led political solutions for many in the Arab world, laying the groundwork for the rise of political Islam.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

The Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Romans, Crusaders and Mamluks. Today it has become a tourist hotspot, but its drying basin is increasingly under threat. In this panoramic account, Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. Moving through the ages, Arielli reveals the religious, economic, military, and scientific importance of the lake, which has been both a source of great wealth and a site of war. The Dead Sea weaves together a tapestry of the lake’s human stories—and amidst environmental degradation and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

John joins Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian for the roundup episode of the second series of Violent Majorities, focusing on long-distance ethnonationalism. Looking back at their conversations with Peter Beinart on Zionism and Subir Sinha on Hindutva, Lori begins by asking whether Peter underestimates the material entanglements keeping Jewish American support for Israel in place. Ajantha wonders if a space has been opened up by Zionism’s more naked dependence on coercion and brute force. When John expresses puzzlement about the fervent ethnonationalism of minorities within a pluralistic society Lori and Ajantha point out that a sense of minority vulnerability may heighten the allures of long-distance ethnonationalism. The three explore various questions. Does the successful rise of Hindu ethnonationalism in the UK stem from a perceived contrast between benign Hinduism and dangerous Islam? Does the need for popular ratification through electoral democracy limit the scope of long-distance ethnonationalism? Is there a limit to how effectively Zionists and Hindutvites in the US and UK can wield claims to wounded religious minority sentiment while benefiting from from the hollowing out of democratic institutions? And finally, the three ask if the ominously successful assimilation of Zionism into American right-wing politics may also start working for Hindutva. Mentioned in the episode: Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands Recall This Book with Shaul Magid on Meir Kahane Ben Lorber on masculinist “Bronze-Age” Zionism Recallable Books: Lori singles out The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, (1979) by Rosemary Sayigh, anthropologist and oral historian. It explores the ways Palestinian nationalism and organized resistance to their dispossession and oppression took hold in the refugee camps of Lebanon. Ajantha’s choice is Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies, published in 2020, a readable, poignant, and edgy account of US empire, Islam, and race and the challenges of being an South Asian American Muslim. She also recalls the film Mississippi Masala from 1991, a compelling take on race and class dynamics in the US Indian diaspora. John proposes Paul Breines’ Tough Jews and Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola–to which Ajantha adds Hanif Kureshi’s Buddha of Suburbia. Listen and Read Here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies