Bulletin: Peacemaking, Peace Building and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

Books

• Ilan Alon and Daniel Bar-Tal, eds. The Role of Trust in Conflict Resolution
• Carmel Borg and Michael Grech, eds. Pedagogy, Politics and Philosophy of Peace
• Herbert C. Kelman and Ronald J. Fisher, eds. Herbert C. Kelman: A Pioneer in the Social Psychology of Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Articles

• Bashir Bashir, The Strengths and Weaknesses of Integrative Solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Susan S. Lanser & Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Israeli–Palestinian Narratives and the Politics of Form: Reading Side by Side
• Rotem Nagar and Ifat Maoz, Predicting Jewish-Israeli Recognition of Palestinian Pain and Suffering
• Padraig O’Malley, Israel and Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution
• Tina Kempin Reuter, Simulating Peace Negotiations: A Case Study of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Karen Ross, Untangling the Intervention-Context Dyad through Horizontal Comparison: Examples from Israeli Peacebuilding Organizations
• Mohammed Samhouri, Israeli-Palestinian Economic Relations, 1994–2014
• Mandy Turner, The Peacebuilding–Counterinsurgency Nexus in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
  

Reviews

• Michael Shulz, on Jacob Eriksson’s Small-State Mediation in International Conflicts: Diplomacy and Negotiations in Israel-Palestine

Theses

• Rebecca Katherine Buchanan, Analysis of Strides for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with the Application of Theories by Butler and Buber (BA, Wofford)
• Andrew Rizzo Naudi, Track-Two Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution: A Case Study of Israel-Palestine Negotiations in the Run-Up to the Oslo Accord (MA, Malta)

New Article: Lynch & McGoldrick, Psychophysiological Audience Responses to War Journalism and Peace Journalism

Lynch, Jack, and Annabel McGoldrick. “Psychophysiological Audience Responses to War Journalism and Peace Journalism.” Global Media and Communication (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1742766515606295

 

Abstract

This article presents and discusses the results of an experiment in which television viewers were exposed to either a war journalism (WJ) or a peace journalism (PJ) version of two news stories, on Australian government policies towards asylum seekers and US-sponsored ‘peace talks’ between Israel and the Palestinians, respectively. Before and after viewing, they completed a cognitive questionnaire and two tests designed to disclose changes in their emotional state. During the viewing, they also underwent measurement of blood volume pulse, from which their heart rate variability (HRV) was calculated. HRV measures effects on the autonomic nervous system caused by changes in breathing patterns as subjects respond to stimuli with empathic concern. Since these patterns are regulated by the vagal nerve, HRV readings can therefore be interpreted as an indicator of vagal tone, which Porges et al. propose as an ‘autonomic correlate of emotion’. In this study, vagal tone decreased from baseline through both WJ stories, but showed a slightly smaller decrease during the PJ asylum story and then a significant increase during the PJ Israel–Palestine story. These readings correlated with questionnaire results showing greater hope and empathy among PJ viewers and increased anger and distress among WJ viewers, of the Israel–Palestine story.

 

 

New Article: Shalhoub-Kevorkian & Roer-Strier, Counter-Hegemonic Qualitative Research: Insights from an Israeli/Palestinian Research Team

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera and Dorit Roer-Strier. “Context-Informed, Counter-Hegemonic Qualitative Research: Insights from an Israeli/Palestinian Research Team Studying Loss.” Qualitative Social Work (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1473325015595545

 

Abstract

Theorizing social work qualitative methodologies have always been closely related to the context of the studied subjects. This paper offers the framework of context-informed, counter-hegemonic qualitative research for theorizing research in conflict zones. Based on a case study of a group of Jewish and Palestinian social work researchers who examined together the effect of the loss of home on families during an ongoing political conflict, this paper explores the impact of participating in a research team on the researcher’s perceptions and study of otherness and otherization in the context of asymmetries of power. Analysis of the group dynamics discovered: (1) a growing ability to see and acknowledge the other, accompanied by a growing willingness to be attentive; (2) a growing ability to empathically listen to and hear the experiences of suffering of the other; (3) overcoming silencing by allowing voices of dissent, pain and resilience; and (4) creating a liminal space of “safe haven” for the researchers. The paper explores the development of context-informed group reflexivity leading to emancipatory consciousness and academic activism.

 

 

New Article: Weiss, Humanitarian Sentiment and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Weiss, Erica. “Provincializing Empathy: Humanitarian Sentiment and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.” Anthropological Theory 15.3 (2015): 275-92.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1463499614568571

 

Abstract

This article considers the role of the humanitarian sentiment empathy in peace initiatives in the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Recently, a sustained critique of humanitarianism has emerged. While many of these accounts focus on the ethical effects of specific manifestations of humanitarian governance, there is a significant strain criticizing the inherent logical structure of humanitarian empathy, and questioning the innate ability of the humanitarian tradition to understand ethical questions politically. This critique does not resonate with my fieldwork experiences with Jewish Israeli conscientious objectors, who are explicitly inspired by empathetic experiences with Palestinians, and interpret these experiences politically. Thus, following Dipesh Chakrabarty’s example, I suggest that provincializing the humanitarian tradition is a more productive anthropological stance than critique, because it similarly allows us to criticize universal claims and abuses of power, while not subscribing to determinism, and not repudiating our interlocutors’ core ethical beliefs.

 

 

New Article: Shalev, Medical Neutrality and the Visibility of Palestinian Grievances in Jewish-Israeli Publics

Shalev, Guy. “A Doctor’s Testimony: Medical Neutrality and the Visibility of Palestinian Grievances in Jewish-Israeli Publics.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-015-9470-7

 

Abstract

This paper follows the testimony of Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian physician who bears witness to his experiences working, living, and suffering under Israeli rule. He presents his story as a doctor’s story, drawing on his identity as a medical professional to gain credibility and visibility and to challenge the limited legitimacy of Palestinian grievances. In this paper, I explore his testimony as a medical voice that at once recounts the suffering and loss endured by the Palestinian people and also struggles to negotiate the values associated with being a “reliable” witness. Consequently, I ethnographically examine the social life and reception of his story in Jewish-Israeli publics. In comparison with most Palestinian narratives, Abuelaish’s testimony achieved an extremely rare degree of visibility and sympathy, a phenomenon that calls out for analysis. I identify the boundaries that typically render Palestinian grievances invisible to Israeli publics and suggest how medicine’s self-proclaimed ethos of neutrality served as a channel for crossing them. Finally, I reflect on the political possibilities and limitations of medical witnessing to render suffering visible and arouse compassion toward those construed as a dangerous/enemy Other.

 

 

New Article: Lazar et al, Positive Weighing of the Other’s Collective Narrative among Jewish and Bedouin-Palestinian Teachers

Lazar, Alon, Orna Braun-Lewensohn, and Tal Litvak Hirsch. “Positive Weighing of the Other’s Collective Narrative among Jewish and Bedouin-Palestinian Teachers in Israel and Its Correlates.” International Journal of Psychology (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12152

 

Abstract

Teachers play a pivotal role in the educational discourse around collective narratives, and especially the other’s narrative. The study assumed that members of groups entangled in a conflict approach the different modules of the other’s narrative distinctively. Jewish and Palestinian teachers, Israeli citizens, answered questionnaires dealing with the narrative of the other, readiness for interethnic contact, negative between-group emotions and preferences for resolutions of the Israeli–Palestinian (I–P) conflict. Positive weighing of the other’s narrative among Jewish teachers correlated with high levels of readiness for interethnic contact and low levels of negative between-group emotions, across the various modules of the Palestinian narrative. Preferences for a peaceful resolution of the I–P conflict and rejection of a violent one were noted in two of the modules. Among Palestinian teachers, positive weighing of the other’s collective narrative was exclusively noted for the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust, and this stance negatively related to negative between-group emotions and preference for a violent solution of the I–P conflict, and positively related to readiness for interethnic contact and preference of a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Practical implications of these findings for peace education are discussed.

ToC: Tikkun 30.3 (2015)

Table of Contents for Tikkun 30.3 (2015):

 

Letters

• Readers Respond

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 3

Editorials

• RABBI MICHAEL LERNER

Repenting for What Israel Did to Gaza—Without Condoning the Wrongs Committed by Hamas

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 5-7

• A Spiritual Practice of Forgiveness and Repentance: You Don’t Have to be Jewish to Benefit from the Spiritual Wisdom of Jewish High Holidays!

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 8-9

• War with Iran: The Disastrous Aim of Israel and the Republicans

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 10-12

Politics & Society

SAM ROSS-BROWN

• Net Neutrality and the Fight for Social Justice

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 13-14

• JESSICA BENJAMIN

Acknowledging the Other’s Suffering: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Trauma in Israel/Palestine

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 15-16

• PETER GABEL

The Spiritual Dimension of Social Justice: Transforming the Legal Arena

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 17-23

 

VANDANA SHIVA

• Rethinking Agriculture: Protecting Biodiversity Amid Climate Chaos

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 24-26

Special Section: Nonviolence in Foreign Policy

• NONVIOLENCE IN FOREIGN POLICY

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 27

  MICHAEL N. NAGLER

• Nonviolence Writ Large

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 28

  STEPHEN ZUNES

• Alternatives to War from the Bottom Up

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 29-30

  MATT MEYER

• Revolutionary Nonviolence: Statecraft Lessons from the Global South

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 31-33

  HELENA NORBERG-HODGE

Strengthening Local Economies: The Path to Peace?

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 34-38

Rethinking Religion

JOY LADIN

• The Genesis of Gender

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 39-43

  ANA LEVY-LYONS

• Lessons from the Shadow Side of Football: Building the Religious Counterculture

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 44-45

  JOSEPH LUMBARD

• Love for the Prophet Muhammad: A Key to Countering Islamism and Islamophobia

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 46-48

Culture

Books

RAMI SHAPIRO

• A Scientific View of God

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 49-51

  A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet, by Nancy Abrams, Beacon Press, 2015

  AL HUNTER

• What Can Replace Prison?

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 51-53

  MARTHA SONNENBERG

• Jacob Chose Hospice: A Critique of Invasive End-of-Life Care

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 54-55; doi:10.1215/08879982-3140224

PHILIP TERMAN

The Poetry of a Jewish Humanist

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 56-58; doi:10.1215/08879982-3140236

Poetry

Chana Bloch

• Babel

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 58-58

• Do You See Me

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 72

Tikkun Recommends

• Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence / Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence / Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence / Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 2

New Article: Nagar & Maoz, Jewish-Israeli Recognition of Palestinian Suffering

Nagar, Rotem and Ifat Maoz. “Predicting Jewish-Israeli Recognition of Palestinian Pain and Suffering.” Journal of Conflict Resolution (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022002715590875

 

Abstract

Recognition is vital for conflict resolution. This study was designed to learn more about the factors underlying the willingness to recognize the pain and suffering of the opponent in the asymmetrical protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Data were collected through a public opinion survey conducted with a representative sample of Israeli-Jewish adults (N = 511). Perceptions of threat/distrust toward Palestinians and dehumanization of Palestinians each made a significant contribution to explaining Jewish-Israeli (un)willingness to recognize Palestinian pain and suffering (R² = .36). Hawkishness made an added significant contribution to the overall explanatory power of the model (R² = .38). Higher scores on the threat/distrust scale and the dehumanization scale, as well as higher hawkishness predicted decreased willingness to recognize Palestinian pain and suffering. The implications of our findings for understanding the role of recognition and of moral concern in conflict resolution are discussed.

ToC: Israel Affairs 21.1 (2015)

Israel Affairs, Volume 21, Issue 1, January 2015

 

This new issue contains the following articles:

Articles
Ethnic Income Disparities in Israel
Pnina O. Plaut & Steven E. Plaut
Pages: 1-26
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984418

‘Mayhew’s outcasts’: anti-Zionism and the Arab lobby in Harold Wilson’s Labour Party
James R. Vaughan
Pages: 27-47
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984420

Israel Negev Bedouin during the 1948 War: Departure and Return
Havatzelet Yahel & Ruth Kark
Pages: 48-97
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984421

Good news: the Carmel Newsreels and their place in the emerging Israeli language media
Oren Soffer & Tamar Liebes
Pages: 98-111
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984422

From ‘Rambo’ to ‘sitting ducks’ and back again: the Israeli soldier in the media
Elisheva Rosman & Zipi Israeli
Pages: 112-130
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984423

Israel and the Arab Gulf states: from tacit cooperation to reconciliation?
Yoel Guzansky
Pages: 131-147
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984424

Building partnerships between Israeli and Palestinian youth: an integrative approach
Debbie Nathan, David Trimble & Shai Fuxman
Pages: 148-164
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984436

Book Reviews
Flexigidity: the secret of Jewish adaptability
David Rodman
Pages: 165-166
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937913

Russia and Israel in the changing Middle East
David Rodman
Pages: 166-167
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937914

Social mobilization in the Arab–Israeli war of 1948: on the Israeli home front
David Rodman
Pages: 167-169
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937915

These are my brothers: a dramatic story of heroism during the Yom Kippur War
David Rodman
Pages: 169-171
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937916

Jews and the military: a history
David Rodman
Pages: 171-173
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937917

The Jewish revolt: ad 66–74
David Rodman
Pages: 173-173
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937918

The city besieged: siege and its manifestations in the ancient Near East
David Rodman
Pages: 173-175
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937919

The forgotten kingdom: the archaeology and history of northern Israel
David Rodman
Pages: 175-176
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937920

New Article: Fierke, Memories of the Holocaust/al Nakba and a Global Ethic of Care

Fierke, K. M. “Who is My Neighbour? Memories of the Holocaust/al Nakba and a Global Ethic of Care.” European Journal of International Relations 20.3 (2014): 787-809.

 

URL: http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/20/3/787.abstract

 

Abstract

The main question raised by the notion of a global ethic of care is one of how care is to be extended into ever larger spaces. Is it possible to go beyond conventions that attempt to limit harm to extending care, even to those who pose a potential threat of harm? The article begins with an analysis of one prominent, but potentially problematic, argument by Avishai Margalit about why the notion of a specifically global ethic of care is difficult in practice. Like the feminist arguments for a global ethic of care, Margait highlights the importance of the particular or specific other, but also highlights the problem that care for the specific other – and identification of that other – is exclusionary. While his discussion of the potential for a global memory, based on the Holocaust, should provide a way out of the problem, the case of Israel/Palestine reveals a paradox in so far as the memory of the Holocaust has tended to block out the memory of Al Nakba (the catastrophe), the more particularized memory of Palestinians. The second section moves to an exploration of memory, identity and care as they relate to Israel/Palestine. Having revealed the paradox, the third section explores the feminist argument about an ethic of care in more depth, asking to what extent it provides a way out of the paradox.

New Publication: Matar and Harb, Narrating Conflict in the Middle East

Dina Matar (author), Zahera Harb (author), eds. Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine. London: Tauris, 2013.

The term conflict has often been used broadly and uncritically to talk
about diverse situations ranging from street protests to war, though the
many factors that give rise to any conflict and its continuation over a
period of time vary greatly. The starting point of this innovative book
is that it is unsatisfactory either to consider conflict within a
singular concept or alternatively to consider each conflict as entirely
distinct and unique; Narrating Conflict in the Middle East explores
another path to addressing long-term conflict. The contributors set out
to examine the ways in which such conflicts in Palestine and Lebanon
have been and are narrated, imagined and remembered in diverse spaces,
including that of the media. They examine discourses and representations
of the conflicts as well as practices of memory and performance in
narratives of suffering and conflict, all of which suggest an embodied
investment in narrating or communicating conflict. In so doing, they
engage with local, global, and regional realities in Lebanon and in
Palestine and they respond dynamically to these realities.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Approaches to Narrating Conflict in Palestine and Lebanon: Practices, Discourses and Memories Dina Matar and Zahera Harb

      Practices

Just a Few Small Changes: The Limits of Televisual Palestinian Representation of Conflicts within the Transnational ‘Censorscape’ Matt Sienkiewicz

Mediating Internal Conflict in Lebanon and its Ethical Boundaries Zahera Harb

Negotiating Representation, Re-making War: Transnationalism, Counter-hegemony and Contemporary Art from Post-Taif Beirut Hanan Toukan

Narratives in Conflict: Emile Habibi’s al-Waqa’i al-Ghariba and Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention Refqa Abu-Remaileh

      Discourses

Islam in the Narrative of Fatah and Hamas Atef Alshaer

Al Manar: Cultural Discourse and Representation of Resistance Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso

The Battle over Victimhood: Roles and Implications of Narratives of Suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Kirkland Newman Smulders

The ‘I Love…’ Phenomenon in Lebanon: The Transmutations of Discourse, its Impact on Civil Society, the Media and Democratization Carole Helou

      Memories and Narration

Making Sense of War News among Adolescents in Lebanon: The Politics of Solidarity and Partisanship Helena Nassif

Narrating the Nakba: Palestinian Filmmakers Revisit 1948 Nadia Yaqub

Bearing Witness to Al Nakba in a Time of Denial Teodora Todorova

 

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