The myths and reality behind the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from “the most eloquent writer on Palestinian history” (New Statesman) The outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. The “ten myths”—repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, and accepted without question by the world’s governments—reinforce the regional status quo and include: • Palestine was an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration. • The Jews were a people without a land. • There is no difference between Zionism and Judaism. • Zionism is not a colonial project of occupation. • The Palestinians left their Homeland voluntarily in 1948. • The June 1967 War was a war of ‘No Choice’. • Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East. • The Oslo Mythologies • The Gaza Mythologies • The Two-State Solution For students, activists, and anyone interested in better understanding the news, Ten Myths About Israel is another groundbreaking study of the Israel-Palestine conflict from the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

This book tells the fascinating, millennia-long story of peoples around the world who have claimed an Israelite identity and history.

It is claimed that Zionism as a meta-narrative has been formed through contradiction to two alternative models, the Canaanite and crusader narratives. These narratives are the most daring and heretical assaults on Israeli-Jewish identity. The Israelis, according to the Canaanite narrative, are from this place and belong only here; according to the crusader narrative, they are from another place and belong there. The mythological construction of Zionism as a modern crusade describes Israel as a Western colonial enterprise planted in the heart of the East and alien to the area, its logic and its peoples. The nativist construction of Israel as neo-Canaanism demands breaking away from the chain of historical continuity. These are the greatest anxieties that Zionism and Israel needed to encounter and answer forcefully. The Origins of Israeli Mythology seeks to examine the intellectual archaeology of Israeli mythology, as it reveals itself through the Canaanite and crusader narratives.

In this carefully researched analysis, Raphael and Jennifer Patai begin by defining race. They then develop the idea of the existence of "races" through history. In rich and fascinating detail, the authors consider the effects of intermarriage, interbreeding, proselytism, slavery, and concubinage on the Jewish population from Biblical times to the present. New material explores the psychological aspects of the Jewish race issue, the Jewish psyche, and the consequences of the 1975 United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism. A revised and updated scientific section on the measurable genetic, morphological, and behavioral differences between Jews and non-Jews supports the conclusion that the idea of a "Jewish race" is, indeed, a myth.

'One of the greatest, most radical public thinkers of our time. When the sun sets on the American empire, as it will, as it must, Noam Chomsky's work will survive' Arundhati Roy From one of the world’s most prominent thinkers comes an urgent warning of the threat that US power poses to humanity’s future The land of the free. The home of the brave. But what has America achieved in the aim of ‘spreading democracy’ — except wreak havoc across the globe and establish a reckless foreign policy that serves the interest of few and has endangered all too many? In this timely book, Noam Chomsky writing with Nathan J. Robinson, vividly traces America’s pursuit of global domination, offering an incisive critique of the self-serving myths that dominant elites in the United States continue to push. Offering penetrating accounts of Washington’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they examine how interventions such as these have been justified with noble stories about humanitarian missions and benevolent intentions but are now driving us closer to wars with Russia and China. At once thorough and devastating, urgent and provocative, The Myth of American Idealism offers a highly readable entry to the conclusions Noam Chomsky has come to after a lifetime of thought and activism. 'The west's most prominent critic of US imperialism . . . the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar' Guardian

This essential introduction to American studies examines the core foundational myths upon which the nation is based and which still determine discussions of US-American identities today. These myths include the myth of »discovery,« the Pocahontas myth, the myth of the Promised Land, the myth of the Founding Fathers, the melting pot myth, the myth of the West, and the myth of the self-made man. The chapters provide extended analyses of each of these myths, using examples from popular culture, literature, memorial culture, school books, and every-day life. Including visual material as well as study questions, this book will be of interest to any student of American studies and will foster an understanding of the United States of America as an imagined community by analyzing the foundational role of myths in the process of nation building.

Long ago the ancestors of the Greeks, Romans, and Hindus were one people living on the Eurasian steppes. At the core of their religion was the "shamanic trance," a natural state but one in which consciousness achieves a profound level of inner awareness. Over the course of millennia, the Indo-Europeans divided and migrated into Europe and the Indian subcontinent. The knowledge of shamanic trance retreated from everyday awareness and was carried on in the form of myths and distilled into spiritual practices--most notably in the Indian tradition of yoga. J. Nigro Sansonese compares the myths of Greece as well as those of the Judeo-Christian tradition with the yogic practices of India and concludes that myths are esoteric descriptions of what occurs within the human body, especially the human nervous system, during trance. In this light, the myths provide a detailed map of the shamanic state of consciousness that is our natural heritage. This book carries on from the works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell to show how the portrayal of consciousness embodied in myth can be extended to a reappraisal of the laws of physics; before they are descriptions of the world, these laws--like myths--are descriptions of the human nervous system.

There has never been a more important time for a study of the social, economic, and political origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three important world religions that share a common root. This book adopts a Marxist, that is a materialist, view of human development, so it takes as its starting point the idea that gods, angels, miracles, and other supernatural phenomena do not exist in the real world and therefore cannot be taken as explanations for the origin and rise of these faiths. It looks instead at the material conditions at appropriate periods in antiquity and the social and economic forces that were at work, to outline the real foundations of these three doctrines. In doing so, it challenges the historicity of key figures like Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. This is a unique book that draws on the research, knowledge, and expertise of hundreds of historians, archaeologists, and scholars to create a new synthesis that is both coherent and completely based on a materialist world outlook. It is a book written by an unbeliever for other unbelievers as a contribution to a discussion among atheists and secularists as to the real origins of the so-called Abramic faiths. It will be a revelatory read, even to those already firmly of an atheist or secularist persuasion, underpinning their nonreligious views, and it will provide a valuable resource for all those who might be coming to question the hold that organized religion has had on human society.