New Book: Cohen, Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1929

Cohen, Hillel. Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1929, Schusterman Series in Israel Studies. Translated by Haim Watzman. Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2015.

A new and provocative reassessment of the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In late summer 1929, a countrywide outbreak of Arab-Jewish-British violence transformed the political landscape of Palestine forever. In contrast with those who point to the wars of 1948 and 1967, historian Hillel Cohen marks these bloody events as year zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict that persists today.

The murderous violence inflicted on Jews caused a fractious—and now traumatized—community of Zionists, non-Zionists, Ashkenazim, and Mizrachim to coalesce around a unified national consciousness arrayed against an implacable Arab enemy. While the Jews unified, Arabs came to grasp the national essence of the conflict, realizing that Jews of all stripes viewed the land as belonging to the Jewish people.

 

Through memory and historiography, in a manner both associative and highly calculated, Cohen traces the horrific events of August 23 to September 1 in painstaking detail. He extends his geographic and chronological reach and uses a non-linear reconstruction of events to call for a thorough reconsideration of cause and effect. Sifting through Arab and Hebrew sources—many rarely, if ever, examined before—Cohen reflects on the attitudes and perceptions of Jews and Arabs who experienced the events and, most significantly, on the memories they bequeathed to later generations. The result is a multifaceted and revealing examination of a formative series of episodes that will intrigue historians, political scientists, and others interested in understanding the essence—and the very beginning—of what has been an intractable conflict.

 

HILLEL COHEN is a senior lecturer in the Department of Islam and Middle East Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

 

Table of Contents

 
Introduction
Chronological Overview of the Events
Casualties in the 1929 Riots

• 1 Jaffa and Tel Aviv
  Sunday, August 25, 1929
• 2 Jerusalem
  Friday, August 23, 1929
• 3 Hebron
  Saturday, August 24, 1929
• 4 Motza
  Saturday, August 24, 1929
• 5 Safed
  Thursday, August 29, 1929
• 6 After the Storm
  A Postmortem

Afterword
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index

 

 

 

Lecture: Alexandrowicz, 47 Years of Documentation (Taub NYU, April 8 2015)

 

4/8/2015 @ 5pm

19 University Place, Room 102

 Ra’anan Alexandrowicz presents 47 Years of Documentation

The documentation of the city of Hebron over the past five decades serves as a case study for examining broader questions regarding documentation, history, and politics. From the newsreels of the late 1960s, through TV coverage from the 1970s and 1980s, all the way to ubiquitous YouTube clips in the last decade, the process sheds light on the dramatic changes that have occurred in Hebron, and mainly on the transformations that have taken place in the act of documentation during that period of time.

Over the last two decades, Ra’anan Alexandrowicz has examined the social and political reality in Israel and in Palestine through a series of acclaimed cinematic works, including Martin (1999), The Inner Tour (2001), James’s Journey to Jerusalem (2003), and The Law in These Parts (2011), which won Best International Documentary at Sundance, a Peabody award, as well as best documentary at Jerusalem Film Festival and several other prizes.

RSVP here.

Reviews: Pedahzur and Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel

Pedahzur, Ami and Arie Perliger. Jewish Terrorism in Israel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

Reviews

• Brown, L. Carl. “Review.” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2010.
• Rubner, Michael. “Book Review.” Middle East Policy 17.2 (2010).
• Rubenberg, Cheryl A. “Review.” Middle East Book Reads, September 15, 2010.
• Torstrick, Rebecca L. “Violence in the Name of God.” H-Net Reviews, March 2011.
• Cohen-Almagor, Raphael. “Review.” Terrorism and Political Violence 25.3 (2013): 501-503.

New Publication: Feige, Settling in the Hearts

Michael Feige. Settling in the Hearts. Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories. Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009.

 

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Keywords: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Settlements and Settlers, Israel: Religion, Israel: Fundamentalism, Gush Emunim, Space / Spatial Theory, Memory, Ideology, Terrorism, Hebron, Gush Etzion, Peace: with Egypt, Settlements Evacuation, Gender, Feminism, History, Israel: Society