Zeev Sternhell

He 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 Régime.

He identified various strains in this reactionary movement, linking them to the three traditional right-wing families cited by René Rémond – legitimism, Orleanism, and Bonapartism together with anarchic/leftist labour movements.

The main cultural influences, according to Sternhell were:

The First World War provided the key circumstances that would prove favourable for transforming these French ideological trends - fascist ideology essentially had been incubated in France, he argued, in the milieu of the 1880s - into a political force in Italy in the aftermath of war.

Historians challenge his view that the key ingredients of fascism were formed in that early period, in France.

The essential synthesis was a consequence of World War I, and not specifically French.

Zeev Sternhell (זאב שטרנהל; 10 April 1935 – 21 June 2020) was a Polish-born Israeli historian, political scientist, commentator on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and writer.

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

Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote for Haaretz newspaper.

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

His grandfather and father were textile merchants.

At 5, this highly protected world around him suddenly collapsed.

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

When Poland was defeated, the family home was partially requisitioned by Soviet forces.

After the German declaration of war on the Soviet Union, the family were sent to a ghetto.

His mother and older sister, Ada, were killed by the Nazis when he was about seven years old.

An uncle who had a permit to work outside the ghetto smuggled him to Lwów.

The uncle found a Polish officer and a working-class family, rare examples in his experience of Poland at that time of people not only not anti-Semitic but ready to provide assistance to Jews, who were willing to help them.

Supplied with false Aryan papers, Sternhell lived with his aunt, uncle and cousin as a Polish Catholic.

After the war, he was baptized, taking the Polish name Zbigniew Orolski.

He became an altar boy in the Cathedral of Kraków.

His research has sparked criticism, in particular from French scholars who argue that the Vichy regime (1940–1944) 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.

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

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

In the 1950s, he served as a platoon commander in the Golani infantry brigade, including the Sinai War.

In the winter of 1951, at the age of 16, Sternhell immigrated to Israel under the auspices of Youth Aliyah, and was sent to Magdiel boarding school.

In 1957–1960, he studied history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, graduating with a BA cum laude.

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

In 1969, he was awarded a Ph.D. from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris for his thesis on "The Social and Political Ideas of Maurice Barrès".

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

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

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

In 1989, he was elected to the Léon Blum Chair of Political Science at the Hebrew University and became a member of the editorial board of History and Memory.

In 1991, the French government awarded him the title of "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" for his outstanding contribution to French culture.

In 1996, he was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Political Ideologies.

and defined himself in 2008 as still a 'super-Zionist'.

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

Although the Supreme Court of Israel was petitioned to have him denied the award (see "Controversies" below), the court determined not to intervene in a matter beyond its jurisdiction.

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

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