Prophets Outcast

Adam Shatz
April 2004     ISBN: 1560255099

Contrary to the claims of the American Jewish establishment and the Israel lobby, Jews do not speak with one voice about the Middle East. Since the late nineteenth century some of the fiercest and most eloquent critics of Israel and Zionism have been Jewish thinkers. Unconditional supporters of the state of Israel have denounced them as heretics or "self-hating Jews." Yet as Palestine and Israel are once again engulfed by violence, their warnings about the Zionist project, with its vision of an ethnically pure Jewish State, have never seemed more prescient. Theirs is a tradition which is ever more urgent to reclaim.

"In their search for truth and their thirst for knowledge, Spinoza and Freud were the pioneers who broke with rabbinical orthodoxy. The team of distinguished and courageous thinkers assembled by Adam Shatz breached the Zionist wall. In these dark times their work is needed more that ever before and not just in Israel and the United States, but also in the world of Islam where people need to know the intellectual influences on the refusenik Israeli soldiers and pilots who refuse to participate in Sharon's dirty war."

--Tariq Ali

"This book is a timely and important reminder...that it is anything but un-Jewish to criticize the State of Israel."

--Tom Segev, author of The Seventh Million

"It would be a mistake to assume that these essays are of interest only to those with a special concern for the history of Zionism or the Middle East conflict. In fact, these brilliant, incisive, troubling investigations should be a treasure for anyone who has struggled to weigh the competing claims of justice and human rights."

--Roane Carey, editor of The New Intifada

"[Prophets Outcast] offers compelling evidence that both in the past and today, both inside Israel and abroad, both within and outside of the Zionist movement, there have always been those who, whatever their differences, warned against the lure of expansionism and that only by seeking a solution 'grounded,' as the editor of this volume puts it, 'in a commitment to human equality and solidarity' can the Jewish and Palestinian peoples ever hope to coexist in peace and security."

--Abraham Brumberg

Adam Shatz is the literary editor of The Nation.