Zionism and The Left

From its inception, the Zionist movement has been both the bête noire of, and a great inspiration for, the political left. Yet today, opposition to Zionism has become a bedrock principle for many leftists in the United States and Europe. Join Susie Linfield, cultural critic and author of the just-published book The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (Yale University Press), and SFSU’s Eran Kaplan for a timely and sorely needed discussion. How have ideas about Zionism changed, and why has it become so despised by a left that once engaged and even embraced it?

Susie Linfield teaches cultural journalism at New York University. A former editor at the Washington Post and the Village Voice, she has written for a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Nation, Dissent, the New York Review of Books Daily and the New Republic. Her previous book, The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Eran Kaplan is the Rhoda and Richard Goldman Chair in Israel Studies at SFSU where he teaches courses on Modern Israel, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israeli Cinema, Modern Hebrew Culture and on the History of Jerusalem. His books include The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy and Beyond Post-Zionism.