March 2025
CIE has compiled the following list of books and articles to guide understanding of the historiography of Israel.
Books
ʻAdwan, Sami ʻAbd Ar-Razzaq, Dan Bar-On and Eyal J. Naveh. Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine. New York: The New Press, 2012.
Banks, Diane. Writing the History of Israel. New York: T&T Clark, 2006.
Bard, Mitchell Geoffrey. Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Chevy Chase, MD: American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2017.
Bickerton, Ian J., and Carla L. Klausner. A History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Boda, Mark J., and Lissa M. Wray Beal, eds. Prophets, Prophecy, and Ancient Israelite Historiography. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013.
Brog, David. Reclaiming Israel’s History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace. Washington: Regency, 2017.
Butt, Gerald. The Arabs: Myths and Reality. London: I.B. Tauris, 1997.
Caplan, Neil. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2020.
Dinur, Ben Zion. Israel and the Diaspora. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969.
Farsoun, Samih K. Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1988.
Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. London: Verso, 2003.
Gelber, Yoav. Nation and History: Israeli Historiography Between Zionism and Post-Zionism. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011.
Gerber, Haim. Remembering and Imagining Palestine: Identity and Nationalism From the Crusades to the Present. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Gershoni, I., Amy Singer and Y. Hakan Erdem. Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.
Grabbe, Lester L. Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? revised edition.London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017.
Greenspahn, Frederick E., ed. Contemporary Israel: New Insights and Scholarship. New York: New York University Press, 2016.
Habib, Jasmin. Israel, Diaspora, and the Routes of National Belonging, second edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.
Helled, Alon. Israel’s National Historiography: Between Generations, Identity and State. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
Hever, Hannan. Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism: Chapters in Literary Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023.
Kaiser, Walter C. Jr., and Paul D Wegner. A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age Through the Jewish Wars. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016.
Ḳalai, Zekharyah. Studies in Biblical Historiography and Geography: Collection of Studies. Frankfurt Am Main: Peter Lang, 2010.
Karsh, Ephraim. Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians,” second revised edition. London: Frank Cass, 1997.
Khalaf, Issa. Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939-1948. Albany: State University of New York, 1991.
Knoppers, Gary N., and Kenneth A. Ristau. Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009.
Kramer, Martin S. The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction, 2016.
Lewis, Bernard. History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Long, V. Philips. Israel’s Past in Present Research: Essays on Ancient Israelite Historiography. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999.
Maciejko, Paweł, and Scott Ury, eds. Making History Jewish: The Dialectics of Jewish History in Eastern Europe and the Middle East; Studies in Honor of Professor Israel Bartal. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
Milstein, Uri, and Yonatan Silverman. The Birth of a Palestinian Nation: The Myth of the Deir Yassin Massacre. Springfield, NJ: Gefen, 2012.
Moore, Megan Bishop, and Brad E. Kelle. Biblical History and Israel’s Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011.
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. New York: Vintage, 2001.
Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Morris, Benny, ed. Making Israel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.
Naʼaman, Nadav. Ancient Israel’s History and Historiography: The First Temple Period: Collected Essays. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
Pury, Albert De., Thomas Romer and Jean-Daniel Macchi. Israel Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research. Sheffield, England: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 2000.
Rabinovich, Itamar. The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Rogan, Eugene L., and Avi Shlaim. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, second edition.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Rotberg, Robert I. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double Helix. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
Rubin, Rehav. Portraying the Land: Hebrew Maps of the Land of Israel From Rashi to the Early 20th Century. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2018.
Sasson, Jack M. Hebrew Origins: Historiography, History, Faith of Ancient Israel. Hong Kong: Theology Division, Chung Chi College, CUHK, 2002.
Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Scham, Paul, et al. Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue. London: Routledge, 2016.
Sela, Avraham, and Alon Kadish, eds. The War of 1948: Representations of Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.
Shahak, Israël. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. London: Pluto, 1994.
Shapira, Anita, and Derek J. Penslar, eds. Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left to Right. London: Routledge, 2002.
Shlaim, Avi. Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations. London: Verso, 2009.
Silberstein, Lawrence J. New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State. New York: New York University Press, 1991.
Smith, Simon C., ed. Reassessing Suez 1956: New Perspectives on the Crisis and Its Aftermath. London: Ashgate, 2008.
Ṭauber, Eliezer. The Massacre That Never Was: The Myth of Deir Yassin and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Danbury, CT: The Toby Press, 2021.
Teveth, Shabtai. Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Troen, S.I., and M. Shemesh, eds. The Suez-Sinai Crisis 1956: Retrospective and Reappraisal. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Vogt, Stefan, Derek Jonathan Penslar and Arieh Bruce Saposnik, eds. Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Studies and the Historiography of Zionism. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2023.
Wermenbol, Grace. A Tale of Two Narratives: The Holocaust, the Nakba, and the Israeli-Palestinian Battle of Memories. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2021.
Wilson, Mary C. King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Articles
Abdel-Nour, Farid, “Responsibility and National Memory: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 17, 3 (Spring 2004): 339-363.
Aronson, Shlomo, “The Post-Zionist Discourse and Critique of Israel: A Traditional Zionist Perspective,” Israel Studies 8, 1 (2003): 105-129.
Beck, Peter J., “The Less Said About Suez the Better: British Governments and the Politics of Suez’s History, 1956-67,” English Historical Review 124 (2009): 605-640.
Bialer, Uri, “Top Hat, Tuxedo and Cannons: Israeli Foreign Policy From 1948 to 1956 as a Field of Study,” Israel Studies 7, 1 (2002): 1-80.
Caplan, Neil, “The ‘New Historians,’” Journal of Palestine Studies 24, 4 (1995): 96-103.
Caplan, Neil, “Zionism and the Arabs: Another Look at the ‘New Historiography,’” Journal of Contemporary History 36, 2 (2001): 345-360.
Elman, Miriam Fendius, “Jerusalem Studies: The State of the Field,” Israel Studies 21, 3 (2016): 221-241.
Esber, Rosemarie M., “Rewriting the History of 1948: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Question Revisited,” Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal 4, 1 (2005): 55-72.
Feige, Michael, “Passion and Territory in Israeli Historiography,” Israel Studies 16, 1 (2011): 179-197.
Finkelstein, Norman, “Myths, Old and New,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, 1 (1991): 66-89.
Finkelstein, Norman, “Rejoinder to Benny Morris,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, 2 (1992): 61-71.
Friling, Tuvia, “The New Historians and the Failure of Rescue Operations During the Holocaust,” Israel Studies 8, 3 (2003): 25-64.
Gaujac, Paul, “France and the Crisis of Suez: An Appraisal, Forty Years On,” in David Tal (ed.), The 1956 War: Collusion and Rivalry in the Middle East, London, Frank Cass (2001).
Golan, Galia, “The History of the Two-State Solution,” Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture 24 (2019): 129-137.
Greilsammer, Ilan, “The Appropriation of the Israeli ‘New Historians’ Work by Anti-Zionists,” in Alvin Rosenfeld (ed.), Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Dynamics of Delegitimization, Bloomington, Indiana University Press (2019): 281-301.
Huneidi, Sahar, “Was the Balfour Declaration Reversible? The Colonial Office and Palestine, 1921-23,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, 2 (1998): 23-41.
Jacobson, David C., “Writing and Rewriting the Zionist National Narrative: Responses to the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 in Kibbutz Passover Haggadot,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 6: 1 (2007): 1-20.
Joffie, Alexander H., and Asaf Romirowsky, “A Tale of Two Galloways: Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography,” Middle Eastern Studies 46, 5 (2010): 655-675.
Kadish, Alon, and Avraham Sela, “Historiography of the 1948 Palestine War Revisited: The Case of Lydda,” Middle East Journal 59, 4 (2005): 617-634.
Kallai, Zecharia, “The Patriarchal Boundaries, Canaan and the Land of Israel: Patterns and Application in Biblical Historiography,” Israel Exploration Journal 47, 1-2 (1997): 69-82.
Karsh, Ephraim, “Benny Morris’ Reign of Error, Revisited,” The Middle East Quarterly 12, 2 (Spring 2005): 31-42.
Karsh, Ephraim, “The Collusion That Never Was: King Abdallah, the Jewish Agency and the Partition of Palestine,” Journal of Contemporary History 34, 4 (1999): 569-585.
Karsh, Ephraim, “Rewriting Israel’s History,” Middle East Quarterly 3, 2 (1996): 19-29.
Keren-Kratz, Menachem, “Post-Truth Politics and Invented Traditions: The Case of the Haredi Society in Israel,” Jewish Political Studies Review 31, No. 3/4 (2021): 44-69.
Khalidi, Rashid, “The Palestinians and 1948: The Underlying Causes of Failure,” in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, Cambridge University Press (2001): 12-36.
Khoury, Hind, “Between Now and Then: A More Realistic View of Palestinian History and Identity,” Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture 22, 2-3 (July 2017): 59-63.
Kimmerling, Baruch, “History Caught in the Cross-Fire: The Case of Israeli-Jewish Historiography,” History and Memory 7, 1 (1995): 41-65.
Kramer, Martin, “What Happened at Lydda?” Mosaic, July 2014.
Likhovski, Assaf, “Post-Post-Zionist Historiography,” Israel Studies 15, 2 (2010): 1-23.
Litvak, Meir, “A Palestinian Past: National Construction and Reconstruction,” History and Memory 6, 2 (Fall/Winter 1994): 24-56.
Maissy-Noy, Rachel, “Palestinian Historiography in Relation to the Territory of Palestine,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, 6 (2006): 889-905.
Mann, Barbara E., “Tel Aviv After 100: Notes Toward a New Cultural History,” Jewish Social Studies 16, 2 (2010): 93-110.
Masalha, Nur, “A Critique of Benny Morris,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, 1 (1991): 90-97.
Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther, “Turning Points in the Historiography of Jewish Immigration From Arab Countries to Israel,” Israel Studies 23, 3 (2018): 114-122.
Morris, Benny, “The Eel and History: A Reply to Shabtai Teveth,” Tikkun 5, 1 (1990): 19-22, 79-86.
Morris, Benny, “The Liar as Hero,” The New Republic, March 17, 2011.
Morris, Benny, “The New Historiography: Israel Confronts Its Past,” Tikkun 3, 6 (1988): 19-23, 98-101.
Morris, Benny, “Response to Finkelstein and Masalha,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, 1 (1991): 98-114.
Morris, Benny, “Revisiting the Palestinian Exodus of 1948,” in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, Cambridge University Press (2001): 37-59.
Myers, David, “History as Ideology: The case of Ben Zion Dinur, Zionist Historian ‘par excellence,’” Modern Judaism 8, 2 (1988): 167-193.
Myers, David N., “Was there a ‘Jerusalem School’: An Inquiry Into the First Generation of Historical Research at the Hebrew University,” in Jonathan Frankel (ed.), Studies in Contemporary Jewry, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press (1994).
Nets-Zehngut, Rafi, “Israeli Approved Textbooks and the 1948 Palestinian Exodus,” Israel Studies 18, 3 (Fall 2013): 41-68.
Nets-Zehngut, Rafi, “Origins of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: Changes in the Historical Memory of Israelis/Jews 1949-2004,” Journal of Peace Research 48, 2 (2011): 235-248.
Pappé, Ilan, “Humanizing the Text: Israeli ‘New History’ and the Trajectory of the 1948 Historiography,” Radical History Review 86 (2003): 102-121.
Pappé, Ilan, “The New History of Zionism: The Academic and Public Confrontation,” Kivunim: A Journal of Zionism and Judaism 8, 45 (1995): 39-48.
Pappé, Ilan, “The Vicissitudes of the 1948 Historiography of Israel,” Journal of Palestine Studies 39, 1 (2009): 6-23.
Pappé, Ilan, “Zionist Historiography, Old and New: Review Article,” Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal 4, 2 (2005): 91-95.
Penslar, Derek Jonathan. “Innovation and Revisionism in Israeli Historiography,” History and Memory 7, 1 (1995): 125-146.
Ram, Uri, “Historiosophical Foundations of the Historic Strife in Israel,” Journal of Israeli History 20, 2-3 (2001): 43-61.
Ram, Uri, “Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian Nakba,” Journal of Historical Sociology 22, 3 (2009): 366-395.
Ram, Uri, “Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The Case of Ben Zion Dinur,” History & Memory 7, 1 (Spring/Summer 1995): 91-124.
Renton, James, “The Historiography of the Balfour Declaration: Toward a Multi-Causal Framework,” Journal of Israeli History 19 (1998): 108-128.
Rudnitzky, Arik, “The Contemporary Historiographical Debate in Israel on Government Policies on Arabs in Israel During the Military Administration Period (1948-1966),” Israel Studies 19, 1 (2014): 24-47.
Sela, Avraham, “Arab Historiography of the 1948 War: The Quest for Legitimacy,” in Laurence J. Silberstein (ed.), New Perspectives on Israeli History, New York University Press (1991): Chapter 7, 124-154.
Sela, Avraham, “Transjordan, Israel, and the 1948 War: Myth, Historiography and Reality,” Middle Eastern Studies 28, 4 (1992): 623-658.
Shapira, Anita, “The Bible and Israeli Identity,” American Jewish Society Review 28, 1 (2004): 11-42.
Shapira, Anita, “History, Memory and Identity,” in Stuart A. Cohen and Milton Shain (eds.), Israel Culture, Religion and Society 1948-1998, Jewish Publications South Africa (2000), 6-22.
Shapira, Anita, “The Past Is Not a Foreign Country,” The New Republic 221, 22 (1999): 26-36.
Shapira, Anita, and Ora Wiskind-Elper, “Politics and Collective Memory: The Debate Over the ‘New Historians’ in Israel,” History and Memory 7, 1 (1995): 9-40.
Shlaim, Avi, “The Debate About 1948,” The International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, 3, (1995): 287-304.
Silberstein, Laurence J., “Post Zionism: A Critique of Israel’s Zionist Discourse,” Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture 9, 2 (2002).
Stein, Kenneth W., “A Historiographic Review of Literature on the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” The American Historical Review 96, 5 (December 1991): 1450-1465.
Stein, Kenneth W., “The Study of Middle Eastern History in the United States,” Jerusalem Quarterly 46 (Spring 1988): 49-64.
Stein, Leslie, “Rewriting Israel’s History,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 30, 1 (2011): 129-140.
Strombom, Lisa, “Identity Shifts and Conflict Transformation — Probing the Israeli History Debates,” Mediterranean Politics 18, 1 (2013): 78-96.
Teveth, Shabtai, “Charging Israel With Original Sin,” Commentary 88 (September 1989): 24-33.
Teveth, Shabtai, “The Palestinian Arab Refugee Problem and Its Origins,” review article, Middle Eastern Studies 26, 2 (April 1990): 214-249.
Troen, S. Ilan, “De-Judaizing the Homeland: Academic Politics in Rewriting the History of Palestine,” Israel Affairs 13, 4 (2007): 872-884.
Wurmser, Meyrav, “Post-Zionism and the Sephardi Question,” The Middle East Quarterly 12, 2 (Spring 2005): 21-30.
Zerubavel, Yael, “Numerical Commemoration and the Challenges of Collective Remembrance in Israel,” History and Memory 26, 1 (Spring/Summer 2014): 5-38.
