For decades, ideological discourses have dominated the Arab world. Inevitably, this has had a profound impact on the mind-set of many Arab scholars. In Israelism: Arab Scholarship on Israel, a Critical Assessment - now available in paperback - author Hassan A. Barari critically assesses the status of Israeli Studies in the Arab World. Scholars' incompetence and their lack of significant area studies skills have contributed to the underdevelopment of Israeli Studies in most Arab counties. However, the persistence of the Arab-Israel conflict, the injustice that has befallen the Palestinians, and the hegemonic ideological discourses have also greatly informed the epistemology and ontology of Arab scholarship on Israel. The author argues that, with a few rare exceptions - and despite the existence of a multitude of books, articles, and studies that have tackled Israel - Israeli Studies in the Arab world remains, by and large, weighed down by one-sided projections, ideological spin, prejudice, and a necessity to expose rather than to understand the other.

"Illuminating. . . . The entire field of modern Middle Eastern Studies still has remarkably little closely researched social history of this sort. Beinin's study adds to the work recently published by revisionist Israeli historians, debunking the dominant view of the origin and early history of the Palestine conflict and extending the revision into the 1950s and early 1960s. His explanation of the different political paths that were taken, turned back from, and lost sight of is an important—indeed vital—contribution to contemporary scholarly and political understanding."—Timothy Mitchell, New York University