Barry Rubin

#2

Over the past fifty years, a silent revolution has allowed the radical left to seize power to an extent unthinkable only a decade ago. Stranger still, no one has noticed. Throughout the twentieth century, leftists worked tirelessly toward their goal of a proletarian revolution. But they continually fell short. American workers rejected socialism in the 1920s and declined to join the international communist movement in the 1930s. The New Left flowered briefly in the 1960s but petered out with the end of the Vietnam War. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991, radical Marxism seemed to have been defeated and discredited for good. Not so fast, says the political scientist Barry Rubin in this sharply pointed history of the modern American left. Far from disappearing, the radical left has undergone an ideological revolution and has rebranded itself as liberalism. Rubin traces the roots of this new ideology to the ideas of domestic radicals like Saul Alinsky, cultural Marxists like Antonio Gramsci, and Third World revolutionary thinkers like Frantz Fanon. This new brand of leftism constitutes a Third Left that now dominates the liberal movement in the United States. The Third Left's main ideological innovation is the abandonment of the working class as a revolutionary vehicle. Instead it targets the education system, and it has now trained several generations of Americans to think in leftist terms of fairness and social justice.

#3

Israel is not the only 'new' state around, but it is one of the few states whose legitimacy is still questioned, and its future affects the future of the Middle East as a whole and probably the stability of the international system all together. The reasons for this unique reality lies in its past and the particular historical circumstances of its birth. This book seeks to update analysis of the political history, contemporary politics, economics and foreign policy of this unique state. The first part of the book provides a general history of Israel since its inception until 2000. This general history evolves around the political development of the state, beginning with its origins in the early Zionist history (1882-1948) and ending with the turn of the century. The second part focuses on three contemporary aspects of present day Israel: its political economy, its culture and its international relations. An epilogue describes Israel's complex international image today and its impact on the state and its future. Providing a solid infrastructure from which readers can form their own opinions, this book offers a fresh perspective on developments both on the ground and in recent scholarship, and is essential reading for students, journalists and policy-makers with an interest in Middle Eastern History, Jewish Studies and Israel Studies.