After centuries of persecution and contempt, European Jews were slowly emancipated in the nineteenth century. This gave them a chance to become what they were never allowed to be before; loyal citizens of the countries where they lived. As the nineteenth century wore on, however, this emancipation proved to be an illusion. The hatred once based on religion made way for a new and more insidious form of anti-Semitism based on race and culture.

The Jew was still a stranger, his position the more false and humiliating for his attempt to assimilate. This was the Jewish Question, to which, at the end of the nineteenth century, a drastic solution was proposed. In 1896, Viennese journalist Theodore Herzl first coined the term "Zionism," for a movement to found a homeland where Jews could live free from his persecution.

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In The Controversy of Zion, Wheatcroft shows how Zionism, proposed as an answer, has instead raised many questions.

He examines in detail the debates over Jewish nationalism, from the time of Herzl through Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995, introducing a host of extraordinary characters: Disraeli and Marx; the early Zionists Hess and Herzl; Jewish writers such as Karl Kraus; anti-Semites such as Belloc; military Zionists such as Jabotinsky; and noble-spirited teachers such as Judah Magnes.

Today there is a Jewish state which is a source of healing pride for millions of Jews, but also a source of anxiety. Should they defend the religious zealots and right-wing settlers who play an ever larger part in Israeli life? Or is Israel increasingly irrelevant to the fabulous success story of the Jews of America? This engaging and original book illuminates the current conflicts in the Middle East, and the continuing Jewish dilemma.