About the Author

Shlomo Avineri is a renowned Israeli political theorist and public intellectual. He is the Herbert Samuel Professor Emeritus of Political Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, headed the Israeli delegation to the UNESCO General Assembly, and is a recipient of the Israel Prize, the country's highest civilian decoration. Avineri has had a number of visiting academic appointments including Yale University, Cornell University, Wesleyan University, the University of California, Northwestern University, and Oxford University. Avineri's many publications include Israel and the Palestinians, The Making of Modern Zionism, and Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism, as well as the historical introduction to the Hebrew edition of Theodor Herzl's Diaries.

Haim Watzman has translated and edited many important Israeli books by some of the country's leading journalists, scholars, and writers--including David Grossman, Tom Segev, and Amos Oz. He also served as Israel correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education and the British science journal Nature, and has written two books. Watzman grew up in America and now lives in Jerusalem.