This article re-examines the concept of Normative Power. It is viewed here not merely as an abstract concept, but also as part of a complex historical, socio-political and economic context, examined through the prism of non-Europeans, in our case Israelis. By analysing the dominant Israeli approaches towards the EU and its normative apparatus, this article aspires to depict the multifarious and concrete perceptions of Normative Power Europe and to contrast these perceptions with the EU self-perceived and self-portrayed normative view. Copyright (c) 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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Ludwig Feuerbach was a German philosopher and theologian. Although Feuerbach started out as an ardent follower of Hegel, in the early 1840s his criticism of German Idealism and religion turned him into the leading voice of the Young Hegelians, who harnessed Hegelian dialectics to advocate for the expansion of political freedom and religious tolerance with a view to undermining Prussian political and religious orthodoxy.

The article seeks to identify A. D. Gordon’s thought as a distinctive type of ‘green’ Zionism. As opposed to the common tendency in Gordon scholarship to focus on symbolic aspects of his conception of ‘nature’, the analysis here focuses on its concrete values. Refocusing the analysis on biophysical ‘nature’, suggests that very much like contemporary environmental thinkers, Gordon sought to shift the ontological and ethical weight from the human realm to the interrelationship between the human and the non-human environment. Yet, unlike present-day environmentalists, Gordon anchored this shift in a comprehensive theory of nationalism. The Jewish nation he believed must transform its characteristic alienation from nature into an avant-garde force that will leads the human effort to rehabilitate the relationship with the natural world. In broader terms, my analysis calls for a reassessment of Gordon’s relationship to Zionism and indicates that while he shared the Zionist desire to return the Jewish people to Eretz Israel, he was highly critical of the widespread Zionist view of the land as a readily available resource for use by the Jewish nation. The analysis thus identifies an eco-nationalist approach underpinning Gordon’s critique of the utilitarian, statist and militaristic bent of the Zionist movement. It suggests that Gordon saw these trends as indicative of an ill-intentioned drive to subjugate and exploit the natural environment. To rectify this, Gordon developed an eco-Zionist ideology which held that the primary means for Jewish national revival is the protection and conservation of nature in Eretz Israel.