New Book: Normand, Demonization in International Politics

Normand, Linn. Demonization in International Politics: A Barrier to Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

 

 

This book investigates demonization in international politics, particularly in the Middle East. It argues that while demonization’s origins are religious, its continued presence is fundamentally political. Drawing upon examples from historical and modern conflicts, this work addresses two key questions: Why do leaders demonize enemies when waging war? And what are the lasting impacts on peacemaking? In providing answers to these inquiries, the author applies historical insight to twenty-first century conflict. Specific attention is given to Israel and Palestine as the author argues that war-time demonization in policy, media, and art is a psychological and relational barrier during peace talks.

 

Table of Contents

• Introduction 1
• Demonization in Historical Context 25
• Demonization in War and Peace 57
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An Introduction 79
• Documenting Demonization in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 101
• Demonization Deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 137
• Conclusion 183

LINN NORMAND obtained her BA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK, and her PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford, UK. She was a Herchel Smith Scholar at Harvard University, USA, and a Research Fellow at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, USA. She is currently affiliated with the University of California, Davis, USA.

 

New Book: Herf, Undeclared Wars with Israel

Herf, Jeffrey. Undeclared Wars with Israel. East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

 

 

Undeclared Wars with Israel examines a spectrum of antagonism by the East German government and West German radical leftist organizations – ranging from hostile propaganda and diplomacy to military support for Israel’s Arab armed adversaries – from 1967 to the end of the Cold War in 1989. This period encompasses the Six-Day War (1967), the Yom Kippur War (1973), Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and an ongoing campaign of terrorism waged by the Palestine Liberation Organization against Israeli civilians. This book provides new insights into the West German radicals who collaborated in ‘actions’ with Palestinian terrorist groups, and confirms that East Germany, along with others in the Soviet Bloc, had a much greater impact on the conflict in the Middle East than has been generally known. A historian who has written extensively on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Jeffrey Herf now offers a new chapter in this long, sad history.

 

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. East Germany and the Six-Day War of June 1967
3. An anti-Israel left emerges in West Germany: the conjuncture of June 1967
4. Diplomatic breakthrough to military alliance: East Germany, the Arab states, and the PLO 1969–73
5. Palestinian terrorism in 1972: Lod airport, the Munich Olympics, and responses
6. Formalizing the East German alliance with the PLO and the Arab states: 1973
7. Political warfare at the United Nations during the Yom Kippur War of 1973
8. 1974: Palestinian terrorist attacks on Kiryat Shmona and Maalot and responses in East Germany, West Germany, Israel, the United States, and the United Nations
9. The UN ‘Zionism is racism’ revolution of November 10, 1975
10. The Entebbe hijacking and ‘selection’ and the West German ‘revolutionary cells’
11. An alliance deepens: East Germany, the Arab states, and the PLO: 1978–82
12. Terrorism from Lebanon to Israel’s ‘operation peace for Galilee’: 1977–82
13. Loyal friends in defeat: 1983–9 and after
14. Conclusion.

 

JEFFREY HERFis a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications on modern German history include Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1984); Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (1997), winner of the American Historical Association’s George Lewis Beer Prize; The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (2006), winner of the National Jewish Book Award; Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (2009), winner of the bi-annual Sybil Halpern Milton Prize of the German Studies Association in 2011 for work on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He has also published essays and reviews on history and politics in Partisan Review, The New Republic, The Times of Israel, and The American Interest.

 

 

 

New Article: Koren et al, Jewish Life on Campus

Koren, Annette, Leonard Saxe, and Eric Fleisch. “Jewish Life on Campus: From Backwater to Battleground.” American Jewish Year Book 115 (2015):45-88.

 

URL: dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24505-8_2

 

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic shift in the extent and focus of concerns about Jewish life on campus. The Jewish community is increasingly occupied with the education of the next generation and the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campus. Outreach to Jewish students—from the expansion of Hillel and Chabad to the flourishing of Birthright Israel, as well as the growth of Jewish and Israel Studies—have engaged formerly uninvolved students with Jewish education and Jewish life. This article describes the situation on campus: the proportion of Jewish students, Israel-related activity, and perceptions of anti-Semitism. It discusses academic programs such as Jewish and Israel Studies and informal programs, such as Hillel and Chabad, that engage students in Jewish life. It also describes organizations and programs, both experiential and advocacy-oriented, that help students identify and combat attempts to delegitimize Israel and intimidate Jewish expression.

 

 

New Article: Bourdon & Boudana, Controversial Cartoons in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Bourdon, Jerome, and Sandrine Boudana. “Controversial Cartoons in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Cries of Outrage and Dialogue of the Deaf.” The International Journal of Press/Politics (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1940161215626565
 
Abstract

This article analyzes the controversies triggered by sixteen cartoons about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, published in nine western countries between 2001 and 2014. For this, we use E.D. Hirsch’s distinction between the meaning of a text—which refers to the author’s intentions—and its significance—which emphasizes the contexts of production and reception. Critics focused mostly on significance, defenders on meaning. Using this distinction, we first examine the rhetoric of cartoons: stereotypes linked to antisemitism (accusations of deicide and blood libel), use of the Star of David as metonym of Israel, disputed historical analogies (between Israeli policy and Nazism or Apartheid). Second, we analyze four levels of contextual interpretations that have framed the debates: the cartoon as genre, the ethotic arguments about the cartoonist and/or newspaper’s track record, the cartoons’ historical and transnational intertextuality (especially with the Arab press), and the issue of audiences’ sensitivities. We analyze the complex exchanges of arguments that led mostly to a dialogue of the deaf, but also, in some cases, to partial agreement on the offensive character of the cartoons. We conclude that this methodology can be applied to other controversies around popular political texts, which offer similar characteristics.

 

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 22.1 (2016)

Israel Affairs, Volume 22, Issue 1, January 2016 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Articles Sixty-two years of national insurance in Israel Abraham Doron Pages: 1-19 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111632 Rethinking reverence for Stalinism in the kibbutz movement Reuven Shapira Pages: 20-44 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111640 Making war, thinking history: David Ben-Gurion, analogical reasoning and the Suez Crisis Ilai Z. Saltzman Pages: 45-68 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111638   Military power and foreign policy inaction: Israel, 1967‒1973 Moshe Gat Pages: 69-95 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111636 Arab army vs. a Jewish kibbutz: the battle for Mishmar Ha’emek, April 1948 Amiram Ezov Pages: 96-125 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111633 Lip-service to service: the Knesset debates over civic national service in Israel, 1977–2007 Etta Bick Pages: 126-149 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111630 State‒diaspora relations and bureaucratic politics: the Lavon and Pollard affairs Yitzhak Mualem Pages: 150-171 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111637 Developing Jaffa’s port, 1920‒1936 Tamir Goren Pages: 172-188 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111634 University, community, identity: Ben-Gurion University and the city of Beersheba – a political cultural analysis Yitzhak Dahan Pages: 189-210 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111631 The Palestinian/Arab Strategy to Take Over Campuses in the West – Preliminary Findings Ron Schleifer Pages: 211-235 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111639 Identity of immigrants – between majority perceptions and self-definition Sibylle Heilbrunn, Anastasia Gorodzeisky & Anya Glikman Pages: 236-247 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111635 Book Reviews Jabotinsky: a life David Rodman Pages: 248-249 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.112095 Ethos clash in Israeli society David Rodman Pages: 250-251 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120967 Nazis, Islamists and the making of the modern Middle East David Rodman Pages: 252-254 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120968 The new American Zionism David Rodman Pages: 255-257 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120969 Rise and decline of civilizations: lessons for the Jewish people David Rodman Pages: 258-259 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120970

New Article: McCarthy, Academic Freedom and the Boycott of Israeli Universities

McCarthy, Conor. “Academic Freedom and the Boycott of Israeli Universities: On the Necessity of Angry Knowledge.” College Literature 43.1 (2016): 264-74.

ְְ

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college_literature/v043/43.1.mccarthy.html

 

Extract

I should begin this essay by declaring my own background in the discussion. I am a long-time activist in Palestine solidarity, having been a founding member of both the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign in 2001 and of Academics for Palestine, an Irish group working for the academic boycott, in 2014. I have moved from a position of doubt and unease in regard to the academic boycott to one of commitment to it.

What is the history or background of the boycott movement? It is a subset of the wider campaign for “BDS” or “boycott, divestment and sanctions”—that is, in favor of boycotting Israeli institutions, divesting from Israeli companies, and sanctioning the state until it ceases the Occupation, accepts its obligations to the Palestinian people, and acknowledges its responsibilities vis-à-vis the refugees of 1948 and 1967.

Various ineffective and controversial attempts were made in the United Kingdom as far back as 2002 to instigate boycott of Israeli scholars or institutions. However, the modern BDS campaign has its origin in the call issued in 2005 by a wide array of organizations in Palestinian civil society. The broader context of the call was the collapse of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s and the second intifada, which began in September 2000. The recognition of Oslo’s flaws, and the awareness that these flaws stemmed in part from the corruption and failure of the Palestinian leadership (embodied in such senior figures in Fatah as Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas), was matched by the realization that violent action by guerrilla groups, secular or Islamist, was neither militarily effective nor politically sustainable in the face of Israeli civilian casualties. More specifically, the BDS call was deliberately issued exactly a year after the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on the West Bank Wall, or “separation barrier.” The Advisory Opinion placed obligations on the governments of third countries, but as soon as it became apparent that these governments were not going to take any action regarding the wall, the necessity of civil society action was clear.

In other words, the BDS campaign derives from the realization that politics traditionally conceived had failed Palestinian society and indeed— insofar as the Oslo process installed security apparatuses while not adding to the security of the Palestinian population, and insofar as it did not prevent the expansion of settlement activity and other iniquitous elements of the Occupation—that the “peace process” was actually functioning (as it does to this day) as a fig leaf for further Israeli conquest.

 

 

 

New Article: Kallius et al, Politics of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary

Kallius, Annastiina, Daniel Monterescu, and Prem Kumar Rajaram. “Immobilizing Mobility: Border Ethnography, Illiberal Democracy, and the Politics of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary.” American Ethnologist (early view; online first).

ְְ 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12260

 

Abstract

In the summer of 2015, more than 350,000 migrants moved through Hungarian territory. Almost immediately there emerged in response a dialectic between, on the one hand, depoliticizing narratives of crisis that sought to immobilize the migrants and, on the other, concrete political mobilization that sought to facilitate their mobility. While state institutions and humanitarian volunteer groups framed mobility in terms that emphasized a vertical form of politics, a horizontal counterpolitics arose by the summer’s end, one that challenged hegemonic territorial politics. The state’s efforts to immobilize resulted only in more radical forms of mobility. Outlining an ethnography of mobility, immobilization, and cross-border activism, we follow the dramatic yet momentary presence, and subsequent absence, of migrants in an evanescent rebel city marked by novel political solidarities.

 

 

 

New Book: Rosenfeld, Deciphering the New Antisemitism

Rosenfeld, Alvin H., ed. Deciphering the New Antisemitism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.

Deciphering the New Antisemitism addresses the increasing prevalence of antisemitism on a global scale. Antisemitism takes on various forms in all parts of the world, and the essays in this wide-ranging volume deal with many of them: European antisemitism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and efforts to demonize and delegitimize Israel. Contributors are an international group of scholars who clarify the cultural, intellectual, political, and religious conditions that give rise to antisemitic words and deeds. These landmark essays are noteworthy for their timeliness and ability to grapple effectively with the serious issues at hand.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Part I. Defining and Assessing Antisemitism
1. Antisemitism and Islamophobia: The Inversion of the Debt – Pascal Bruckner
2. The Ideology of the New Antisemitism – Kenneth L. Marcus
3. A Framework for Assessing Antisemitism: Three Case Studies (Dieudonné, Erdoğan, and Hamas) – Günther Jikeli
4. Virtuous Antisemitism – Elhanan Yakira

Part II. Intellectual and Ideological Contexts
5. Historicizing the Transhistorical: Apostasy and the Dialectic of Jew-Hatred – Doron Ben-Atar
6. Literary Theory and the Delegitimization of Israel – Jean Axelrad Cahan
7. Good News from France: There Is No New Antisemitism – Bruno Chaouat
8. Anti-Zionism and the Anarchist Tradition – Eirik Eiglad
9. Antisemitism and the Radical Catholic Traditionalist Movement – Mark Weitzman

Part III. Holocaust Denial, Evasion, Minimization
10. The Uniqueness Debate Revisited – Bernard Harrison
11. Denial, Evasion, and Anti-Historical Antisemitism: The Continuing Assault on Memory – David Patterson
12. Generational Changes in the Holocaust Denial Movement in the United States – Aryeh Tuchman

Part IV. Regional Manifestations
13. From Occupation to Occupy: Antisemitism and the Contemporary Left in the United States – Sina Arnold
14. The EU’s Responses to Contemporary Antisemitism: A Shell Game – R. Amy Elman
15. Anti-Israeli Boycotts: European and International Human Rights Law Perspectives – Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias
16. Delegitimizing Israel in Germany and Austria: Past Politics, the Iranian Threat, and Post-national Anti-Zionism – Stephan Grigat
17. Antisemitism and Antiurbanism, Past and Present: Empirical and Theoretical Approaches – Bodo Kahmann
18. Tehran’s Efforts to Mobilize Antisemitism: The Global Impact – Matthias Küntzel

List of Contributors
Index

ALVIN H. ROSENFELD holds the Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University Bloomington. He is editor of Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives (IUP, 2013) and author of The End of the Holocaust (IUP, 2011), among other books.

 

New Article: Eksner, Germany, Israel, and German Muslim Youth

Eksner, H. Julia. “Thrice Told Tales: Germany, Israel, and German Muslim Youth.” In Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany (ed. Olaf Glöckner and Haim Fireberg; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015): 208-28.

 

Abstract

Julia Eksner analyses the complicated attitudes of Muslim youth in Germany with Jews and with Israel and vis-à-vis their German ‘homeland.’ “The argument made here is that German Muslim youth’s positioning against Israel is by no means a ‘natural’ or ‘cultural’ given; rather, Muslim youth’s responses are structured by preexisting discursive relations in Germany.” Her conclusions back that of other authors in this book that antisemitism is well rooted in the German culture and in contemporary German society, especially in its anti-Israel form. “In effect,” Eksner concludes, “German social and discursive context legitimizes and encourages both the critique of Israel and Muslim youths’ anti-Israeli attitudes as ‘normal and acceptable’, thus channels expression of anger at their disenfranchisement from the object much closer to home (both literally and figuratively) to a ‘legitimized’ transnational object – the State of Israel, and, by implication, its (Jewish) citizens.”

 

 

ToC: Contemporary Jewry 35.3 (2015)

Contemporary Jewry

Volume 35, Issue 3, October 2015

ISSN: 0147-1694 (Print) 1876-5165 (Online)

In this issue (11 articles)

1. Editor’s Introduction

   Harriet Hartman Pages 189-190

     

2. Russian Jewish Immigrants in the United States

   Barry R. Chiswick, Nicholas Larsen Pages 191-209

3. Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Iran: The Effects of Identity, Threat, and Political Trust

   Rusi Jaspal Pages 211-235

    

4. Parochial or Transnational Endeavor? The Attitude to Israel of Adolescents in Australian Jewish Day Schools

   Zehavit Gross, Suzanne D. Rutland Pages 237-261

    

5. Karaite Stories: Narrating Subjectivity in a Marginal Moshav

   Inbal Ester Cicurel Pages 263-284

    

6. Deep Blue: Notes on the Jewish Snail Fight

   Gadi Sagiv Pages 285-313

    

7. Research Updates

    Helen Kim Pages 315-318

    

8. Book Review: Fran Markowitz, Stephen Sharot, and Moshe Shokeid (eds): Toward an Anthropology of Nation Building and Unbuilding in Israel

   Myron J. Aronoff Pages 319-322 

9. Book review: Calvin Goldscheider: Israeli Society in the 21st Century: Immigration, Inequality, and Religious Conflict

   Bruce A. Phillips Pages 323-325

10. Book Review: Adam Ferziger: Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism

    Moshe Krakowski Pages 327-329

11. Book Review: Roberta Rosenthal Kwall: The Myth of the Cultural Jew: Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition

    Barry A. Kosmin Pages 331-332

     

New in Hebrew: Webman and Litvak, From Empathy to Denial

Webman, Esther, and Meir Litvak. From Empathy to Denial. Responses to the Holocaust in the Arab World. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2015 (in Hebrew).

 

 

This book is a comprehensive and rigorous study, the first of its kind, presenting a wide range of responses to the Holocaust in the Arab world. The authors examine the evolution of representations of the Holocaust in Arabic through newspapers, literature, cinema, television and the internet. By analyzing case studies and trends over a period spanning seventy years – from the end of World War II and the founding of the State of Israel down to present day – the authors show how attitudes toward the Holocaust were formed in the shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict and thus integrated into broad systems of anti-Zionist and antisemitic discourse.
The English edition (2009) of the book won the Washington Institute Book Prize in 2010

 

 

New Article: Jander, German Leftist Terrorism and Israel

Jander, Martin. “German Leftist Terrorism and Israel: Ethno-Nationalist, Religious-Fundamentalist, or Social-Revolutionary?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38.6 (2015): 456-77.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2015.1006451

 

Abstract

The relationship of the three leftist terrorist organizations in the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel can be summarized, in somewhat abbreviated fashion, as follows: All three groups, the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion; RAF), June 2 Movement (Bewegung 2. Juni), and Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionäre Zellen), and the milieu from which they emerged in West Berlin, Munich, Heidelberg, Hamburg, and Frankfurt, hated America, Americans, Israel, and Jews. They participated in the international terror war against Israel and did not shy away from attacks on Jews and Jewish facilities in the Federal Republic of Germany. The three organizations mentioned, for all their differences, are, to be reckoned among the organizations coming out of leftist traditions that, like the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), after the end of the Shoah and the Second World War, and in the name of a supposed struggle against fascism, conducted antisemitic propaganda, supported the war of terror against Israel, and publicly justified and supported those groups and institutions working in the same direction.

ToC: Israel Affairs 19,2 (2013)

Israel Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 2, 01 Apr 2013 is now available on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Original Articles Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Iran Rusi Jaspal Pages: 231-258 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778085   In defence of the idea of a Jewish state Mordechai Nisan Pages: 259-272 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778088 : 273-289 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778089   The status of Arabic in the discourse of Israeli policymakers Dafna Yitzhaki Pages: 290-305 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778091   Oversight by the State Control Committee in the Israeli parliament: form of accountability under stress Chen Friedberg Pages: 306-320 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778083   Israeli stamps 1948–2010: between nationalism and cosmopolitanism Einat Lachover & Dalia Gavriely Nuri Pages: 321-337 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778086   Advertising as a semiotic system of space: image of the desert in Israeli advertising, 1967–2004 Avivit Agam Dali Pages: 338-352 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778082   The transformation of the Israeli Civil Guard into a police force Yaffa Moskovich Pages: 353-363 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778087   Between self-interest and international norms: legitimizing the PLO Ogen S. Goldman Pages: 364-378 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778084     Book Reviews   Sharon: the life of a leader David Rodman Pages: 379-380 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778092   A lasting reward: memoirs of an Israeli diplomat David Rodman Pages: 380-381 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778093 The horsemen of Israel: horses and chariotry in monarchic Israel (ninth-eighth centuries BCE) David Rodman Pages: 381-382 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778095   In the sands of the Sinai: a physician’s account of the Yom Kippur war David Rodman Pages: 382-383 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778096   Israel’s silent defender: an inside look at sixty years of Israeli intelligence David Rodman Pages: 383-384 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778097   Brothers at war: Israel and the tragedy of the Altalena David Rodman Pages: 385-386 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778098   Israel: an introduction David Rodman Pages: 386-387 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778099   Only Israel west of the river: the Jewish state and the Palestinian question David Rodman Pages: 387-388 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778100   Israel and the United States: six decades of US–Israeli relations David Rodman Pages: 388-389 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778101   Nine lives of Israel: a nation’s history through the lives of its foremost leaders David Rodman Pages: 390-391 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778102   Israel’s Palestinians Raphael Cohen-Almagor Pages: 391-392 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.751734 Enjoy FREE ONLINE ACCESS to all Routledge articles published on the Arab Spring in the last year. Start reading now.

 

New Publication: Litvak and Webman, From Empathy to Denial

Meir Litvak and Esther Webman. From Empathy to Denial. Arab Responses to the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

 

Keywords: Israeli-Arab Conflict, Propoganda, Holocaust: Denial, Zionism: and World Powers, Zionism: Relation to Arabs, Nakbah, Holocaust: Eichmann Trial, Equation of Zionism to Nazism