PAPPE, Ilan
The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge

Ilan Pappe’s pioneering work, first published in 2014, is a devastating critique of the conceptual foundations of the Israeli state. Divorced from material and political realities, blind to the violent occupation of Palestine, Israel as an idea has been commodified and marketed across the Western world. Now published with a new preface, The Idea of Israel remains a powerful intervention in the struggle to reclaim the past and shape the future in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. [publishers’ note]

“Ilan Pappe is a scholar and a pro-Palestinian political activist. He is one of the most prominent Israeli political dissidents living in exile, having moved from the University of Haifa to the University of Exeter. He is also one of the few Israeli students of the conflict who write about the Palestinian side with real knowledge and empathy. Pappe places Zionism under an uncompromising lens… The Idea of Israel is not a history book but a close study of the role of Zionist ideology in the making of modern Israel and of the continuing relevance of this ideology today in politics, the education system, the media, the cinema and Ashkenazi-Sephardi relations.”
—Avi Shlaim, The Guardian

“An excellent overview of the Israeli field of knowledge production and its relationship to the making of (the idea of) Israel.”
—Gil Hochberg, Journal of Palestine Studies

“Israel’s bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.”
—John Pilger

Published by Verso, 2025
Essays / Politics