26 Facts About Zeev Sternhell

Zeev Sternhell was one of the world's leading theorists of the phenomenon of fascism.

Zeev Sternhell was born in Przemysl in south-eastern Poland on 10 April 1935 to an affluent secular Jewish family with Zionist tendencies.

Zeev Sternhell's father fought with the Polish army during the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and died shortly after returning home.

Zeev Sternhell became an altar boy in the Cathedral of Krakow.

In 1946, at the age of 11, Zeev Sternhell was taken to France on a Red Cross children's train, where he lived with an aunt.

Zeev Sternhell learned French and was accepted to a school in Avignon despite stiff competition.

Zeev Sternhell fought as a reservist in the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War and the 1982 Lebanon War.

Zeev Sternhell lived in Jerusalem with his wife Ziva, an art historian, with whom he had two daughters.

Zeev Sternhell died on 21 June 2020, due to complications from a medical surgery.

In 1976, Zeev Sternhell became co-editor of The Jerusalem Quarterly, remaining an active contributor until 1990.

Zeev Sternhell started teaching political science at the Hebrew University in 1966, becoming a full professor in 1982.

In 2008, Zeev Sternhell was awarded the Israel Prize, for Political Science.

Zeev Sternhell considered fascism, in its ideological form, to be a synthesis of anti-materialist socialism and nationalism.

Zeev Sternhell traced its roots to ideas that emerged in the Counter-Enlightenment in reaction to the historical turning point of 1789, when the French Revolution destroyed the Ancien Regime.

Zeev Sternhell's research has sparked criticism, in particular from French scholars who argue that the Vichy regime was of a more traditional conservative persuasion, although belonging to the far-right, than it was counter-revolutionary, counter-revolutionary ideas being a main characteristic of fascism.

Stanley G Payne, for example, remarks in A History of Fascism that "Zeev Sternhell has conclusively demonstrated that nearly all the ideas found in fascism first appeared in France," though it first developed as a political movement in Italy.

Zeev Sternhell has argued that Mounier's "revolt against individualism and materialism" would have led him to share the ideology of fascism.

Zeev Sternhell is widely viewed as assuming the mantle worn by predecessors such as Jacob Talmon, Yehoshua Arieli and Yeshayahu Leibowitz as an academic 'keeper at the gate' always prepared to tell the establishment what they are unwilling to see.

Zeev Sternhell was a long-time supporter of the Israeli peace camp and had written critically in the Israeli press about the Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Zeev Sternhell argued that after the Six-Day War in 1967, the threat to the Jews had disappeared, which changed the moral basis for retaining conquests:.

Zeev Sternhell saw Jewish settlement on the West Bank as a wish of religious Zionism and part of labour Zionism, that the more moderate part of labour Zionism was unable to withstand because this wish was in line with deep Zionist convictions.

Zeev Sternhell saw settlements on the West Bank as a danger to "Israel's ability to develop as a free and open society", because they put nationalistic aims over social and liberal aims.

Zeev Sternhell was taken to court by Bertrand de Jouvenel, in 1983, after Zeev Sternhell in his work Neither Right nor Left described him as having been a fascist in the 1930s.

The judge, finding Zeev Sternhell liable on two counts, made him make amends with a fine that was more symbolic than punitive, and took care to allow Zeev Sternhell to retain the offending passages in future editions of his book, which Robert Wohl states was a 'major defeat' for the plaintiff.

Zeev Sternhell was threatened on several occasions for his anti-settlement views, including an attempted bombing foiled by police.

On 25 September 2008, Zeev Sternhell was the victim of a pipe bomb attack at his home, and was injured in the leg and hospitalized.