The Lions' Den

The Lions' Den offers a lively intellectual history that explores how prominent midcentury public intellectuals approached Zionism and then the State of Israel itself, including its conflicts with the Arab world.

In this vibrant narrative of the political Left, cultural critic Susie Linfield investigates how eight prominent twentieth-century intellectuals struggled with the philosophy of Zionism and subsequently with Israel and its regional conflicts. Structured as a series of interrelated portraits, the book combines the personal and the political, featuring philosophers, historians, journalists, and activists such as Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, I. F. Stone, and Noam Chomsky.

Through their engagement with Zionism, these influential thinkers also grappled with the twentieth century’s most crucial political dilemmas: socialism, nationalism, democracy, colonialism, terrorism, and anti-Semitism. In other words, by probing Zionism, they confronted the very nature of modernity and the often catastrophic histories of our time.

By examining these leftist intellectuals, Linfield seeks to understand how the contemporary Left has become focused on anti-Zionism and how Israel itself has shifted toward rightward political stances.