Overview
Chronicles the history of Zionism, Israel, and the United States. Fleeing from History offers an understanding of Zionism not as ideology or movement but rather as a multidimensional cosmopolitan arena for Jewish political debate and argument. Drawing on conversations in currently developing literature on colonialism and decolonization, exile and diaspora studies, as well as comparative history, Ylana N. Miller argues that Zionism must be seen through a multinational lens that illuminates the historical process by which it was reduced from a broad, diverse, generative arena of Jewish political creativity to an exclusionary nationalism. Central to the history of this process is the gradual transformation of the American political environment within which Zionism came to be identified with the state of Israel. A key and abiding insight that this history advances is that Jewish history cannot be told without recognition of parallel developments among other groups; for this study, Palestinian Arabs and Algerians. The shift in the diaspora/Zionist center of gravity from European dominance to that of the United States should be understood as representing a break and change rather than continuity. The US–Israel relationship that appears unquestionable today was not inevitable. It was the result of the gradual winnowing of dissenting voices and the embrace of a specific version of state identity.
Full Product Details
Author: Ylana N. Miller (Research Scholar, Duke University)
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Imprint: State University of New York Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.422kg
ISBN: 9798855804034
Pages: 298
Publication Date: 02 April 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Availability: Not yet available 
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Cast of Characters Introduction Part I. Creating a State 1. Foundational Currents, 1917–1948 2. Making the State the Source of Security, 1948–1967 3. Shifting Perspectives: European and American Jewish Constructions, 1948–1962 Part II. Europe, America, and Israel 4. Transnational Challenges, 1948–1966 5. Re-creating the Jewish People, 1960–1966 6. Ruptures and Meaning, 1962–1967 Part III. Making Meaning After Violence 7. The War to End All Wars, 1965–1967 8. Timing and Defining: Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth, 1967–1975 Conclusion Coda Notes Bibliography Index
Reviews
""Written in a lucid and straightforward language, and painting a more nuanced, neutral, and complex picture than most other studies, Fleeing from History is a particularly insightful, even brilliant understanding of how Zionism developed and changed throughout the twentieth century.""—Yaakov Ariel, author of An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews
Author Information
Ylana N. Miller is a Research Scholar in the Department of History at Duke University. She is the author of Government and Society in Rural Palestine, 1920–1948.
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