Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism
By M. Shahid Alam
Hardback: 288 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (November 10, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0230614841
ISBN-13: 978-0230614840
RRP: £55.00
Review by Kathleen Christison
Zionism Laid Bare
The essential point of M. Shahid Alam’s book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, comes clear upon opening the book to the inscription in the frontispiece. From the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi, the quote reads, “You have the light, but you have no humanity. Seek humanity, for that is the goal.” Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston and a CounterPunch contributor, follows this with an explicit statement of his aims in the first paragraph of the preface. Asking and answering the obvious question, “Why is an economist writing a book on the geopolitics of Zionism?” he says that he “could have written a book about the economics of Zionism, the Israeli economy, or the economy of the West Bank and Gaza, but how would any of that have helped me to understand the cold logic and the deep passions that have driven Zionism?”
