Baruch Kimmerling (1939-2007) was one of Israel's outstanding critical sociologists. In this volume, Israeli and Palestinian scholars of several disciplines and generations offer a series of studies on Israel and Palestine, past and present, in dialogue with the research agenda Kimmerling has advanced. Essays discuss Zionism and militarism, frontier and colonization, social protest and the limits of democracy, the sociology of fear and the politics of home -- and Kimmerling's own trajectory.

Israeli Religious Zionism underwent dramatic changes following the Six-Day War. The authors of this title argue that the war generated a trend of maturity that destabilized the fundamental ethe and myths of the traditional Religious Zionism ideas.

Dr. Yosef Govrin joined Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1953 and during his 42 years of diplomatic service he served in many functions in Israel and abroad, inter alia: Ambassador to Romania, Deputy Director General of the Foreign Ministry, and Ambassador to Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia and to the UNO in Vienna. These Reflections are based on the author's activities in developing relations with these three states in substance and in quantity, his discussions with the heads of these states and their discussions with their Israeli counterparts, surveying their internal and external policies, describing the local Jewish communities and the activities to foster relations with them and to strengthen their national s tatus. These reflections have a documentary nature and constitute a unique and important source for research regarding the history of Israel's relations with Austria, Slovenia and Slovakia from the beginning of the 1990s, characterized by the end of the Cold War, following such historic events as the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the end of the presidency of Austria's Kurt Waldheim, when he was "persona non grata" in many parts of the world, including Israel, as well as the signing of the Oslo Agreements, known as the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO.

China and Israel: From Discord to Concord provides the Hebrew reader, for the first time, with eyewitness testimony and historical and economic analysis of the step-by-step evolution of Sino-Israeli ties, from the frozen relationship of the early 1950s to the extensive economic, diplomatic and cultural ties of the twenty-first century. Included in the anthology are the recollections of diplomats who were central to the creation of Sino-Israeli ties ( Isai Magid, Zev Suffott, Moshe Yegar, and Reuven Merhav) and the perspectives of prominent American, Chinese, Indian, and Israeli scholars. The footnotes attached to these chapters cite up-to-date bibliographical sources, in Hebrew and other languages, for further research on Sino-Israeli relations .

The Caves Atlas portrays some of the most famous caves in the world, including the hiding sites of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also includes most of the largest caves in Israel, and some of the most exiting arid zone caves in the world. The maps and the text are based on tens of years of studies by the Israel Cave Research Center of the Hebrew University, and other scholars. Research results on the geology, archaeology and biology of the caves are discussed with references to additional information. The atlas text is written in Hebrew, but its detailed maps, color illustrations and English references appeal to everybody, including scientists, hikers and speleologists alike.

The four volume series of the History of the Hebrew University Project is devoted to the development of the idea and of its implementation during the pre-state period. The previous three volumes expanded in a great number of scholarly articles on the complex stories which made up this history from a great variety of aspects – scientific and academic, political and organizational, economic and social. The present volume, the last part of the project, seeks to focus on the individuals, the personalities of the people who made the university become a reality; those who struggled for its foundation, and the pioneering scholars and scientists who laid the basis and shaped the Hebrew University. It opens a window for the wider public to become familiar with the story of the Hebrew University without the need to penetrate into the complexity of scientific and other issues dealt with in previous volumes. The story of the university is the story of the enormous efforts involved in bringing prominent scholars and scientists to Eretz Israel, then a remote and marginal corner in the Middle East. These efforts were accompanied with debates of principle and personal controversies within and outside of the university about academic and national considerations. Despite all difficulties, criticisms and doubts, the founders of the university succeeded in building an institution of intellectual excellence that would become a pillar in the project of Jewish national renaissance and prepared the basis for the Hebrew University academic leadership in Israel and in the Jewish world for many years to come.

It is rarely noticed, Joan Robinson wrote half a century ago, that "the very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism." This book seeks to examine the relationship between economics and nationalism in the Israeli political economy in its formative years. The book focuses on two aspects of this relationship: the link between national interest and economic ideas and between the state and the markets Two questions are at the core of the book. The first, what was the role of economic ideas in shaping the national interests? A common argument holds that the realization of national interest contradicts behavior in accordance to economic rationales. The book rejects this view and it shows that as early as the 1930s the Zionist organizations shaped national interest on the basis of imported and translated economic ideas. The second question deals with the relationship between the state and the market: how state actors mediated between, on the one hand, the goal of constructing of a market economy in Israeli, and on the other hand the strategy of mobilizing market-actor to state-building project? The book rejects the common argument that state intervention prevented the consolidation of a market economy in Israeli. Rather, it argues that the state intervened, among other things, to create a market economy as a national project of the state. A significant contribution of the book is the analysis of the financial aspects of the Israeli developmental strategy, a topic that so far has not been studied thoroughly. The book traces that the effect of the establishment of the Bank of Israel on the structure of the banking system and the development strategy. It argues that the establishment of the Bank of Israel was a significant milestone in the economic history of Israel, as it provided an effective tool to control the allocation of credit.