Why did social democrats in the 1940s and 50s idealize Zionism and Israel? And why did ‘the New Left’ of the 1960s denounce Israel as an apartheid state and a ‘bridgehead of imperialism’? The Meaning of Israel: Anti-Zionism and Philo-Zionism in the Postwar Left, a case study of Norway, offers new and intriguing answers to both questions. Previous national case studies of left ideas about Israel have tended to explain with reference to national peculiarities of the country in question (E.g. guilt over the Holocaust in the case of Germany). This book, by contrast, considers its findings about Norway in the context of what we know from other national case studies and uses this approach to suggest explanations that may be valid across national boundaries.

The Meaning of Israel argues that left ideas about Zionism and Israel have been inextricably intertwined with ideas about civilization. Post-war social democrats used ideas about Zionism and Israel to assuage their anxiety about the future of civilization, and to reaffirm the viability of this very concept. The anti-Zionism of the New Left, on the other hand, grew out of a broader rejection of ‘civilization’. The book will appeal to academics and general readers interested in the history of the Left, Israel, and antisemitism.