Kees van der Pijl ~ Israel and 9/11 (english edition)
The rise of Atlantic zionism (Available at the beginning of September) This book has its origins in an academic controversy. When Kees van der Pijl, professor emeritus at the University of Sussex, claimed on social media in 2018 that “it was not the Saudis, but the Israelis who brought down the Twin Towers,” it led to fierce condemnation in the media and calls to strip him of his academic status. Instead of retracting his words, he chose to resign from his position as professor emeritus and systematically develop his arguments. The result is a book that takes the reader from the rise of Zionism and the founding of the State of Israel to the global “war on terror.” With incisive analyses of key moments—from the Cold War to 9/11 and its aftermath—the author poses fundamental questions about the role of states, the workings of power, and the limits of academic freedom. This book challenges readers to question established narratives and rethink Israel’s role in recent world history. Kees van der Pijl (1947) taught International Relations at the University of Amsterdam and, until 2012, served as a professor and director of the Center for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex in England. He made his name with The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984, reissued in 2012) and received the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2008 for his book Nomads, Empires, States, the first volume of a trilogy on Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy (2007–2014). Van der Pijl previously published Pandemic of Fear: A Step Toward a Totalitarian Society?, which has been reprinted several times and translated into Dutch, German, French, and Italian. In 2023, The Tragedy of Ukraine was published, building on Flight mh17, Ukraine, and the New Cold War (2017), which has also been published in several translations. In the meantime, in 2025, Nomade published When Marx Was Still Fashionable, about the academic world in the 1960s and 1970s.