ABSTRACT
Israeli intellectuals who were willing to express, especially in dramatic hyperbole, criticism of their own country's alleged racism, imperialism, and religious fanaticism quickly became celebrities in the American press. This chapter analyzes the causes of the maladies of Israeli intellectuals is Yoram Hazony's book The Jewish State, which appeared early in the year 2000. The Jewish State is a broadside aimed at those Israelis who, in what its author calls "a carnival of self-loathing", are busily eating away at the Jewish foundations of that state. Hazony argues that since the fall of Ben-Gurion, Israel has had no prime minister—not Golda Meir, not Menachem Begin—who was an "idea-maker". Although Hazony's argument for the large role played by Israel's professo-riat in dismantling Labor Zionism is convincing, it cannot be a sufficient cause of current post-Zionism and post-Judaism. Among the American liberal supporters of Israel's intellectual elite, only the New Republic appeared somewhat chastened by the election result.
