Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement

"With his sensitive reporter's eyes, Mr. Friedman takes us inside the settlement movement, to the synagogies, kitchen tables and television rooms where ordinary people talk of extraordinary things . . . . This is a chilling book. The contrast drawn between charming suburban lawns of settlement communities and the political threat they represent is sobering. The current Labor government in Israel, and American diplomats pursing the peace process, minimize the movement as an irritant that can be managed when the time comes. Anyone who knows about the tenacity of the settlers, as described by Mr. Friedman, dares not be so confident."--Peter Grose, The New York Times Book Review

"[Zealots for Zion] is among a new genre of works on Israel that . . . appears to be setting a higher standard of objectivity for studies of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. . . . It is not only a penetrating look at the violence-prone Israeli zealots who are behind the aggressive establishment of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied territories, but also at the Jewish Americans who encourage, justify and help fund them."--Donald Neff, The Washington Post Book World

"Above all else, Friedman documents the extent to which Israeli political figures have used the settler movement for their own purposes. He also argues convincingly that the general unwillingness of many Israelis to thwart the zealots poses a grave threat to the future of Palestinian-Israel relations and the tenuous chance of negotiating a peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors."--Rita E. Hauser, Tikkun

"The mystical mythology, yuppie yearnings, willful naivete and raw prejudices of those staking a claim to what they consider to be 'Greater Israel' have rarely been this revealingly and comprehensively documented."--Nisid Hajari, Newsday

The peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization gives us hope for the future of the West Bank, but no one expects the transition to be easy. Who are the zealots who care so deeply about retaining that land for their own? Robert Friedman, a prize-winning writer, takes a hard, close look at the legacy of the controversial policy of building settlements in the Occupied Territories. Zealots for Zion is a shocking investigation of the movement by militant right-wing Zionists to reinstitute the ancient civilization of Eretz Yisrael (Greater Israel) on lands seized in the 1967 Six-Day War.