ToC: Israel Affairs, 23.2 (2017)

Israel Affairs 23.2 (2017)

Table of Contents

Articles

Book Reviews

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.

 

9781137567499

 

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

 

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.

 

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 22.2 (2016)

Israel Affairs, Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2016 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online.

This new issue contains the following articles:

Articles
Writing Jewish history
David Vital
Pages: 257-269 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140346
How do states die: lessons for Israel
Steven R. David
Pages: 270-290 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140358Towards a biblical psychology for modern Israel: 10 guides for healthy living
Kalman J. Kaplan
Pages: 291-317 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140349

The past as a yardstick: Europeans, Muslim migrants and the onus of European-Jewish histories
Amikam Nachmani
Pages: 318-354 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140355

The mental cleavage of Israeli politics
Eyal Lewin
Pages: 355-378 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140352

Framing policy paradigms: population dispersal and the Gaza withdrawal
Matt Evans
Pages: 379-400 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140353

National party strategies in local elections: a theory and some evidence from the Israeli case
David Nachmias, Maoz Rosenthal & Hani Zubida
Pages: 401-422 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140356

‘I have two homelands’: constructing and managing Iranian Jewish and Persian Israeli identities
Rusi Jaspal
Pages: 423-443 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140348

Avoiding longing: the case of ‘hidden children’ in the Holocaust
Galiya Rabinovitch & Efrat Kass
Pages: 444-458 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140350

‘Are you being served?’ The Jewish Agency and the absorption of Ethiopian immigration |
Adi Binhas
Pages: 459-478 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140345

The danger of Israel according to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi
Shaul Bartal
Pages: 479-491 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140343

Leisure in the twenty-first century: the case of Israel
Nitza Davidovitch & Dan Soen
Pages: 492-511 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140347

Limits to cooperation: why Israel does not want to become a member of the International Energy Agency
Elai Rettig
Pages: 512-527 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140357

The attitude of the local press to marginal groups: between solidarity and alienation
Smadar Ben-Asher & Ella Ben-Atar
Pages: 528-548 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140344

The construction of Israeli ‘masculinity’ in the sports arena
Moshe Levy, Einat Hollander & Smadar Noy-Canyon
Pages: 549-567 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140351
Book Reviews
From empathy to denial: Arab responses to the Holocaust
Alice A. Butler-Smith
Pages: 568-570 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140354

Holocaust images and picturing catastrophe: the cultural politics of seeing
Alice A. Butler-Smith
Pages: 570-572 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140342s

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

Workshop: ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute For Curriculum Development In Critical Antisemitism Studies (Apply by March 1, 2016)

ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute
For Curriculum Development In Critical Antisemitism Studies
to be held at St Antony’s College, Oxford
starting July 31, 2016

Application Deadline: March 1, 2016

The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a New York-based interdisciplinary research center, is seeking scholars-in-residence for an intensive two-week workshop-based curriculum development program aimed at establishing critical antisemitism studies as a recognized academic discipline.

ISGAP

The program is intended primarily for professors with full-time college or university positions, though exceptional doctoral and post-doctoral students may also be considered.

The workshops will take place at St Antony’s College, Oxford, beginning July 31. Under the guidance of leading international academics, scholars-in-residence will be asked to develop new syllabi and curricula for critical interdisciplinary antisemitism courses that the scholars-in-residence will teach in their home institutions after completing the program.

Full and partial scholarships are available.

 

New Book: Rosenfeld, Deciphering the New Antisemitism

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

new antisemitism

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.

 

9783110350159

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)

New Book: Baron, Obligation in Exile

Baron, Ilan Zvi. Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2015.

 

Obligation-in-exile

Combining political theory and sociological interviews spanning four countries, Israel, the USA, Canada and the UK, Ilan Zvi Baron explores the Jewish Diaspora/Israel relationship and suggests that instead of looking at Diaspora Jews’ relationship with Israel as a matter of loyalty, it is one of obligation.

Baron develops an outline for a theory of transnational political obligation and, in the process, provides an alternative way to understand and explore the Diaspora/Israel relationship than one mired in partisan debates about whether or not being a good Jew means supporting Israel. He concludes by arguing that critique of Israel is not just about Israeli policy, but about what it means to be a Diaspora Jew.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface

  • Introduction
  • 1. the Limits of Political Obligation
  • 2. Power and Obligation
  • 3.Between Zion and Diaspora: Internationalisms, Transnationalisms, Obligation and Security
  • 4. From Eating Hummus to the Sublime
  • 5. Obligation and Critique
  • Conclusion: Obligation in Exile, Critique and the Future of the Jewish Diaspora

Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

 

 

Conference Paper: Iganski and Sweiry, Antisemitism and Social Media

Iganski, Paul, and Abe Sweiry. “Antisemitism and Social Media”.

 

URL: http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/75744/

 
Abstract

It is now well-known that each time there is an upsurge in the Israel-Palestine conflict there is a rise in violent and other abusive incidents against Jews around the world. So it was in 2014 with Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ military action in July and August. Numerous backlash incidents against Jews in the UK and elsewhere in the world were reported by news media. The news reporting mainly focused on physical acts: violence and the daubing of insults and slogans on synagogues and other communal buildings. This time around, however, there were also numerous instances of anti-Jewish abuse on social media, to the extent that by the end of July 2014, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz reported “an explosion of anti-Semitic abuse on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter”. There has, however, been little sustained or in-depth analysis of the problem of antisemitism on social media. Using the methodology of corpus linguistics, we carried out a rapid response analysis of the phenomenon on Twitter to inform the recent report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry against Antisemitism. In our paper, we discuss our methods of analysis, the key findings, and the potential we see for the future in using corpus approaches for the analysis of antisemitism and other manifestations of discriminatory discourse.

 

 

 

New Article: Turgeman & Hadaria, The Birth of New Anti-Semitism in Public and Academic Discourse in Israel

Turgeman, Asaf, and Gal Hadaria. “‘Arab Anti-Semitism Debate’: The Birth of New Anti-Semitism in Public and Academic Discourse in Israel.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 14.3 (2015): 501-19.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2015.1032018

 

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the emergence of the concept “new anti-Semitism” in both public discourse and academic research in Israel. Our main argument is that the new anti-Semitism has emerged in tandem with changing values within Israeli society, primarily the adoption of a mythic-traditional perspective. This historical review focuses on description of a key event: United Nations Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism. We argue that increasing adherence to Jewish tradition goes hand in hand with the assimilation of Jewish myths regarding anti-Semitism. Scholarly discourse about new anti-Semitism is presented through critical study of Shmuel Almog’s anthology Sin’at Yisrael ledoroteiha (A History of Hatred of Israel). This study is the first to be published that discusses an updated view of anti-Semitism in Israeli public discourse and academic research, emphasizing how the State of Israel has become its object.

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 21.4 (2015)

This new issue contains the following articles:

Articles
The journalist as a messiah: journalism, mass-circulation, and Theodor Herzl’s Zionist vision
Asaf Shamis
Pages: 483-499
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076188

The debate between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine (1920–48) over the re-interment of Zionist leaders
Doron Bar
Pages: 500-515
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076180

Development of information technology industries in Israel and Ireland, 2000–2010
Erez Cohen
Pages: 516-540
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076183

Israel’s nuclear amimut policy and its consequences
Ofer Israeli
Pages: 541-558
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076185

She got game?! Women, sport and society from an Israeli perspective
Yair Galily, Haim Kaufman & Ilan Tamir
Pages: 559-584
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076184

The origin of globalized anti-Zionism: A conjuncture of hatreds since the Cold War
Ernest Sternberg
Pages: 585-601
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984419

The Diaspora and the homeland: political goals in the construction of Israeli narratives to the Diaspora
Shahar Burla
Pages: 602-619
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076181

India–Israel relations: the evolving partnership
Ashok Sharma & Dov Bing
Pages: 620-632
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076189

The design of the ‘new Hebrew’ between image and reality: a portrait of the student in Eretz Yisrael at the beginning of ‘Hebrew education’ (1882–1948)
Nirit Raichel
Pages: 633-647
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076187

The evolution of Arab psychological warfare: towards ‘nonviolence’ as a political strategy
Irwin J. Mansdorf
Pages: 648-667
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076186

Militancy and religiosity in the service of national aspiration: Fatah’s formative years
Ido Zelkovitz
Pages: 668-690
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076191

Book Reviews
The historical David: the real life of an invented hero/David, king of Israel, and Caleb in biblical memory
David Rodman
Pages: 691-693
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083700

Britain’s moment in Palestine: retrospect and perspectives, 1917–48/Palestine in the Second World War: strategic plans and political dilemmas
David Rodman
Pages: 693-696
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083701

Israeli culture on the road to the Yom Kippur War
David Rodman
Pages: 696-698
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083702

The one-state condition
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Pages: 698-701
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083699

Globalising hatred: the new Antisemitism
Rusi Jaspal
Pages: 701-704
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083703

Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Rusi Jaspal
Pages: 704-707
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083704

Editorial Board
Editorial Board

Pages: ebi-ebi
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1109819

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).

 

from empathy to denial

 

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: Shroufi, The Gates of Jerusalem: European Revisionism and the Populist Radical Right

Shroufi, Omran. “The Gates of Jerusalem: European Revisionism and the Populist Radical Right.” Race & Class 57.2 (2015): 24-42.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306396815595799

 

Abstract

In late 2010, the ‘European Freedom Alliance’, a group of four European politicians from populist radical right parties: Heinz-Christian Strache, Chairman of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ); Filip Dewinter, a senior leader in Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (VB); René Stadtkewitz, founder of Germany’s Die Freiheit; and Kent Ekeroth, the International Secretary for the Sweden Democrats (SD), travelled to Israel and the West Bank. Their trip culminated in the signing of the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’, a document conveying their staunch support for Israel and its right to defend itself against ‘Islamic aggression’. The author analyses key interviews and the Declaration to demonstrate how the event is indicative of a reformed and realigned populist radical Right. Open anti-Semitism, he argues, has been replaced by calls to prevent Islam’s supposed contamination of the nation’s cultural heritage and new positions are being adopted on post-national cooperation and European identity. Also, wider transformations in Western European politics have resulted in the populist radical Right increasingly framing the electorate’s insecurities as evidence of the cultural erosion of the nation state. Through comparing the experiences of Israelis with those of non-Muslims living in Europe, the Alliance argues for the need to toughen Europe’s defence against a common enemy.

 

 

New Article: Jahn, Israeli, Jewish and German Sensitivities

Jahn, Egbert. “‘With What Ink Remains’: Stabbing a Pen into the Hornet’s Nest of Israeli, Jewish and German Sensitivities.” In his World Political Challenges (trans. Anna Güttel-Bellert; Heidelberg and Berlin: Springer, 2015): 187-203.

 

world political challenges

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47912-4_11

 

Abstract

Once again, a prominent member of public life in Germany has been the brunt of serious accusations of anti-Semitism, and is now likely to be ostracised both in Germany and abroad. This time, it is Günter Grass who with his brief political declaration on the foreign and military policy of Israel has been greeted with fury and condemnation from almost all sides and rejection elsewhere, while attracting support only from the margins of the political establishment. However, there are some sharp critics of the declaration by Grass who defend the author against the accusation of being anti-Semitic in general. And as always in such cases there are mumblings in the hidden corners of society that it is not permitted in Germany to say anything critics about Jews or Israel without immediately being battered by the political and moral bludgeon of the ruling German political class and being branded a social pariah. And so the most prudent reaction was to say nothing on the subject of Israel and the Jews, since unlike Günter Grass, not everyone can afford to break their silence on this subject and present their political declaration in the form of a poem, with the special protection of artistic expression. However, the German chattering classes are once more in full agreement with Grass; only the outsiders of the Easter March movement had the courage to say so in public.
As in the cases of Jenninger, Möllemann, Walser, Hohmann and Sarrazin, the Grass affair has its own particular features. What is common to all of them, however, is bare, overarching condemnation and labelling as “anti-Semitic”, guaranteed to ruin any reputation, instead of dealing with the opinions set out in the text itself and to disagree with them individually on a factual basis, something that would also be entirely possible in the case of Grass. Above all, nobody in Israel and in the world would claim that Israel has a “right to a first (nuclear) strike” that “could eliminate the Iranian people”, a ridiculous conjecture that in the context of the public threat by Israel, however, to potentially make a conventional air strike on Iranian nuclear power facilities adopts a highly explosive tone. The downplaying of the repeated official Iranian threat to destroy the state of Israel, referring to it as “loudmouthery”, fails to recognise the dangerous potential power wielded by ideologues who currently (as yet) have no potential for gaining real political power, not least due to the military strength of Israel and its de-facto alliance partners, the USA. Grass is right only in stating that in Germany (unlike in Israel and the USA) there is no political discussion regarding the attitude of Germany to the Israeli threat of an offensive war against the Iranian nuclear power stations. There is much evidence to support the fact that rather than triggering it, the Grass affair will probably make such a debate less likely since it merely mobilises traditional, indiscriminate thought patterns rather than challenging them.
Since this lecture was given on 16 April 2012, relations between Iran and the west have improved enormously at a fundamental level following the election of Hassan Rohani as President on 14 June 2013. He initiated a far more cooperative foreign and atomic policy in Iran. As a result, the risk of war has been considerably reduced.

 

 

New Article: Silverman, Free Speech Implications of US Anti-Boycott Regulations

Silverman, Matthew E. “The Free Speech Implications of US Anti-Boycott Regulations.” International Trade and Business Law Review 18 (2015): 1-30.

 
URL: http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/itbla18&div=4

 
Abstract

This article provides an analysis of s 2407(a)(1)(D) of the Export Administration Act and its implications on Americans’ free speech rights. Section 2407(a)(1)(D) is a significant US anti-boycott regulation that prohibits American persons and companies from complying with unsanctioned foreign boycotts. This article analyses s 2407(a)(1)(D) within the context of the development and application of US anti-boycott legislation which grew out of a response to the Arab League Boycott of Israel. As well, this article examines the relevant First Amendment jurisprudence involving both commercial and political speech and argues that s 2407(a)(1)(D) should be subject to a strict-scrutiny analysis in order to account for the social and political interests often inherent within economic-boycott activity. This article concludes that the government interest in enforcing s 2407(a)(1)(D) is outweighed by the significant restrictions imposed on Americans’free speech rights, and thus, there is no justification for this regulation to be constitutionally upheld and enforced.

 

 

New Article: Shindler, Disagreeing with Israel: A British and American History

Shindler, Colin. “Family Politics. Disagreeing with Israel: A British and American History.” Jewish Quarterly 62.2 (2015): 48-51.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0449010X.2015.1051707

 

Excerpt

The BDS mantra appeals to those who vehemently oppose the occupation. Yet what is the meaning of their doctrine of anti-normalisation? Some will see this as a necessary pressure to force Israel to the negotiating table and relinquish territory. Others understand anti-normalisation in terms of delegitimisation—rooting out a poisonous Zionist weed growing on Arab land. Netanyahu’s policies and the acquiescence of many British Jews therefore suit the latter. If a new Rabin were to arise, and sign a fair agreement with the Palestinians, this would produce such political fissures that the BDS movement would be consigned to an irrelevant limbo once more. Like many a Jewish leader in the UK, the advocates of BDS fear a different narrative that draws confused Jews away from their orbit.
The ripples of this situation will continue to be felt in the UK, the US, and the wider Diaspora for the foreseeable future. Jewish organisations will continue to be seen as merely appendages to the official view, despite the inner turmoil of many a Jewish leader. Public relations in Britain will be a welcome diversion from public reality in Israel. Howard Jacobson’s “ashamed Jews” and the US equivalent will continue to verbally flagellate themselves in public. The traditional approach of debate, discussion and dissension will not disappear. But it will take a period of calm, and a disappearance of provocative acts in the Middle East, to allow the peace camps in both Israel and Palestine to once more gain the upper hand from the reactionaries in progressive clothing. Only then will British Jews, American Jews, and all Diaspora Jews, have a genuine role to play in securing a just peace.