The purpose of this study was to describe, analyze and evaluate the rhetorical strategies within Golda Meir's address to the Council of Jewish Federations on January 21, 1948. Using a critical construct that combined Kenneth Burke's concepts of rhetorical strategy and identification, the study provided insight into how Meir created bonds with her audience that heightened her rhetorical effectiveness. Three rhetorical strategies and two intrinsic factors which promoted identification were evident. Based on the success of these strategies to overcome the many obstacles presented by the rhetorical situation, and the response of her audience, it seemed that Meir's rhetoric motivated the Council to move from apathy to advocacy.

This research explores the role of the Christian Zionist Lobby in shaping U.S. policy towards Israel. It is posited that the Christian Zionist Lobby, due to their eschatological goals, diverge from the interests of the larger Israel Lobby described by Mearsheimer and Walt. To test this hypothesis an exploratory case study is implemented to explain why the U.S. shifted its policy from supporting the Road Map to backing Israeli unilateralism. As the results of this study show, the Christian Zionists did actively oppose the Road Map and may have influenced American policy making. However, it would be a mistake to characterize the Gaza pullout as the most desirable policy alternative for the Christian Zionist Lobby. This study concludes that when comparing the lobbying efforts against the Road Map and Israeli unilateralism, the Christian Zionists actively opposed the former policy while the evidence in support of the latter policy remained inconclusive.

Life for nineteenth century American women was full of restrictions and limitations. Frowned upon or simply not permitted to enter "male" spheres of activity such as professions, business and politics, many middle class women turned to philanthropy and reform work as the sole acceptable outlet for their energy, talents, and time. American Jews of German descent adopted the "Victorian ideal of womanhood" popular in the United States at this time, propelling many German-Jewish women to engage in charitable Zionist activity despite the general lack of support for Zionism in America earlier in this century. Among this group of bourgeois German-Jewish women involved in American Zionism was a poet, Jessie Ethel Sampter, whose contributions to the movement far exceeded those of the norm. Despite her limited Jewish education and upbringing, and extreme physical limitations, Sampter emerged as a pioneer feminist and Zionist, both in America and in her adopted country, Palestine.

My thesis focuses on the ideological development of the Maximalist Revisionist Zionist leader Abba Ahimeir, and positions him more accurately within the contexts of the Zionist Right, the period of his political activity, and the Zionist movement in general. Through an examination of his doctoral thesis on Oswald Spengler and first publications, I conclude that Spenglerian theory exerted a fundamental influence upon Ahimeir throughout his entire life, and that his embrace of Fascist ideology began six years earlier than is generally accepted. I thus contend that Ahimeir's ideological path was already set in 1924, far earlier than is generally believed. A survey of his journalistic output, while a member of the moderately socialist party HaPoel HaTzair, shows that Ahimeir's apparent shift from Left to Right was not the radical defection that it is currently considered to be. A study of primary source archival material allows me to demonstrate that as a leader of the Revisionist Youth Group Betar and instructor in its Leadership Training School, Ahimeir's ideological influence upon Revisionist youth was far greater than is commonly accepted. A discussion of more general intellectual-historical concepts - Spenglerian-, Fascist-, and Revolutionary- theory, Jewish Völkisch-nationalism, secular Messianism - allows me to re-weight certain ideological outlooks in the current body of research regarding Ahimeir, the Revisionist Party, and the Zionist Left. Notably, I suggest we view Ahimeir as a 'Revolutionary' who used Fascism merely as a modus operandi in the service of his revolution. This particularistic ideological outlook was exemplified in his semi-clandestine, anti-British resistance group Brit HaBiryonim, as a thorough examination of court documents from the group's trial demonstrates. The study provides the first intellectual biography of one of the most influential figures on the Zionist Right, and rights some historical wrongs that exist within Revisionist- and Labour-Zionist myths, and indeed, Israeli collective memory.

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In the beginning the thesis describes development of antisemitism in the Czech lands from the end of 19th century till the end of the Second republic. It puts emphasizes on the topic of antisemitism in the czech foreign army in France, Middle East and Great Britain during the WWII. It follows the particular cases and attacks against the Jews in the army. It deals with situation of the Jewish soldiers and with the crisis of the Czechoslovak army after the arrival to Great Britain. It looks into the problem of disagreement of the Zionist organisations in Palestine with entering of the Jewish soldiers to the Czechoslovak foreign army.