As the recent assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reveals the extent of splits within the Israeli Jewish community over the constitutional-legal, territorial and ideological dimensions of Israel, this collection of critical perspectives by Jewish writers on Israel and Zionism is more pertinent than ever, for it renews a question to which many had thought there was only one answer: what do the Jewish people want?

For decades, Zionism has represented itself as the sole effective voice of Jewish national liberation. As such, and for want of an alternative, it has demanded and in varying degrees received, the loyalty of Jews in North America and throughout the Diaspora. Since the global power shifts subsequent to the Gulf War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, Zionism has received the unwavering support of major western governments and of the dominant majorities in their countries, as well as new legitimacy among Third World nations. Now, at the apparent apogee of Zionist success, is it possible that the ordeals that glued Jews together under the Zionist banner may come unstuck? Might the increased hostilities suffered by Jews world-wide as a result of Zionist injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians and of questions as to Jewish loyalties to the states where they reside, lead to the view that Zionism is aggravating the very problems it purports to resolve?

Weizfeld sifts through the gamut of Jewish anti-Zionist opinion, seeking to sever the ideological noose that has bound Jews and Zionism together, while promoting the legitimate aspiration of Jews -- the majority of whom live outside of the state of Israel -- to live and be recognized as a people, to practice their religion and enjoy their culture free from persecution.

Included in the anthology:
Reb Moshe Schonfeld (from The Holocaust Victims Accuse) on Holocaust crimes against Jews foreknown and unprotested by Zionists in order to create a blood-debt argument for western commitment to Israel;
Youri Andreev (from Zionism: Myth and Reality) on Zionist crimes against the Palestinians; Lenni Brenner (from The Iron Wall) on other historical options;
Noam Chomsky (from Peace in the Middle East?) on the international socialist position; and
eibie Weizfeld, on the fallacy of Zionist adoption and imitation of the western myth of the uninational state. A listing of dissident Jewish organizations is contained in the appendix.

EIBIE WEIZFELD was born into a Yiddish-speaking culture from the ghettoes of Warsaw and Lublin, Poland, and retains his material language. He is also author of the exposé, Sabra & Shatila.  He has completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Quebec at Montreal, (UQAM), Canada, on the reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish nationhood.