The sixth war between Israel and the Arab world, like so many other cases in history, has a complex background: the long term history of the Zionist presence in Palestine is one way of explaining what occurred on Lebanon’s soil in July and August this year. A closer look at the specific Israeli policies in the last six years, is another. This long term history is discussed in the first part of this article and it is connected, in the second part to the more immediate background leading to the destruction of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2006.

A fascinating examination of Jewish opposition to Zionism within the Holy Land and a vision of a “post-Israel” Middle East.

Welcome to Volume 2 of the Palestinian Internationalist. It’s already been a year since we first went online. The response has been encouraging. Although there are many websites with Palestine as their main topic of discussion, we hoped our journal would be able to provide

The role of Torah Jewish opposition to Zionism is an often overlooked aspect of the struggle. It’s importance is manifold: in readdressing wring conceptions of the conflict as religious; as challenging Zionist claims to represent Judaism and all Jews; and in Rabkin’s terms re-establishing a normative connection between religious culture and political action. Rabkin’s history recalls in great depth not just those who opposed Zionism from this perspective, but how and why.

Far from being a self-sustaining organism, Zionism finds strength from across the monotheistic divide in a fertile and powerful network of Christian organisations, mainly in the United States. Christian Zionists are among the most fervent supporters of Zionism because they see the state of Israel as part of a divinely ordained scheme that culminates in the second coming of Christ. They number in the tens of millions and have sought to influence generations of American politicians. However, their outlook rests on a fundamentalist misinterpretation of religious scripture that runs counter to the real message of Christianity.

Zionism is not a mere catchphrase. It is an organised and international political movement, with continuing influence on the daily situation in Palestine. Any successful strategy for the liberation of Palestine must confront the reality, not the myth, of Zionism. An end to the conflict in Palestine requires the return of the Palestinian refugees and the dismantlement of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel.

No study of the Middle East conflict would be complete without an analysis of the ideology that underpins the state of Israel . While the idea of a return to Zion (the Promised Land) has been a central part of the Judaic weltanschauung ever since the banishment