Tag Archives: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Bulletin: Water in Israel

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Bulletin: Military Occupation and Conflict, the West Bank, and Gaza

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Bulletin: Higher Education and Student Life

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Bulletin: Israel and International Relations

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Bulletin: Media coverage of/in Israel

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Book Reviews

 

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Bulletin: Cyberworlds – Cybersecurity and Social Media

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Bulletin: Israeli Music

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Journal ToC: Pe’imot 3 (2016):

peimot3כתב העת פעימות מהווה צוהר אל עולם המוזיקה והמחקר המוזיקולוגי בתוך הקשריו לשיח התרבותי העכשווי בארץ. המשתתפים בכתב העת קשורים בתחום המוזיקולוגיה – חוקרים וסטודנטים מתקדמים, מלחינים ומבצעים. המאמרים מכוונים לקהל מגוון: למוזיקאים, למוזיקולוגים ולכל שוחר מוזיקה, לאנשי ספרות, אמנות וקולנוע ולחוקרי חברה ותרבות.

  • ראובן סרוסי: כמה דברים על אריק שפירא
  • אסף שלג: לחשוב מחדש על דברי הימים של המוזיקה האמנותית הישראלית (וגם על יוסף טל)
  • יוסף גולדנברג: שתי רביעיות כלי קשת ישראליות מודרניות מוקדמות: “קשתות קיץ” מאת צבי אבני ו”תהלים” מאת עדן פרטוש
  • ענת רוזנשיין-ויקס: השאלות, שילובים ו”הלחנה מחדש” בשלוש יצירות מאת בטי אוליברו
  • הילה טמיר-אוסטרובר: התגלמות הטראומה באופרה “פנימה” מאת חיה צ׳רנובין
  • שושנה זאבי: הפואטיקה של חוויית הסף בשירה ובמוזיקה (“השער האפל” – דוד פוגל ואייל אדלר; “הכרמל האי-נראה” – זלדה וינעם ליף; “ציפור כלואה” – יאיר הורוביץ ומנחם ויזנברג)
  • אור שמש: שיחה עם ראובן סרוסי
  • אופיר אילזצקי: בקצה המדבר: שיחה עם אריק שפירא
  • מירה זכאי: שיחה עם עודד זהבי
  • ג’ונתן גולדמן: חיפוש אחר אינטראקציות: שיחה עם עופר פלץ

 

Articles

Events

Ilana Webster-Kogen (SOAS), “Ethiopian Music in Tel Aviv: Performing Otherness along Levinski Street,” Feb 9, 2017, 4pm. Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester

Bulletin: Identity and Nationalism

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Shofar 34.4 (2016): Special issue on Exile, Center, and Diaspora in Modern Jewish Culture

Articles:

Hochman, Oshrat, and Sibylle Heilbrunn. “‘I am not a German Jew. I am a Jew with a German passport’: German-Jewish identification among Jewish Germans and Jewish German Israelis.” Identities (online first).

Reviews:

Kheir, Zaha. “Review of: Fran Markowitz, Stephen Sharot, Moshe Shokeid (eds.), Toward an Anthropology of Nation Building and Unbuilding in Israel (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015).” Nations and Nationalism 22.4 (2016): 850-852.

Theses:

Gelotte, Sara. National Identities among Israelis and Palestinians: Discourse Analysis of NGOs, MA Thesis. University of Gothenburg, 2016. (PDF)

Events:

Sammy Smooha, “Is Israel Really Western? Does it Have Viable Alternative Options?” October 26, 2016, 5:30pm, Brunei Gallery Room, SOAS, London.

Abstract: Israel is known as a Western state, culture and society. Applying various standards of Western civilisation, Smooha scrutinises and problematizes this international and self-image, questioning whether Israel is indeed Western. He discusses the barriers in Israel’s drive to the West and the alternative options it has (Middle-Eastern, Mediterranean, global).

 

New Book: Starr and Dubinsky, The Israeli Conflict System

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Starr, Harvey, and Stanley Dubinsky, eds. The Israeli Conflict System. Analytic Approaches, Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016.

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Table of Contents

Introduction : crossing disciplinary and methodological boundaries in conflict systems analysis / Harvey Starr and Stanley Dubinsky — Event Type, sub-state Actor and Temporal Dimensions of the Dissent-Repression Relationship : Evidence from the Middle East / Philip A. Schrodt and Ömür Yilmaz — Turbulence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict System : Predicting Change / G. Dale Thomas — Causes and Consequences of Unbalanced Relations in the International Politics of the Middle East, 1946-2010 / Zeev Maoz and Belgin San-Akca — Trade Networks and Conflict Processes in the Israeli Conflict System / Nadia Jilani, Ashley Murph-Schwarzer, Dona Roy, Matthew Shaffer, and Brian Warby — Trade in Conflict Zones : The Israeli Conflict System / Katherine Barbieri and Adrian R. Lewis — The Geography of Conflict : Using GIS to Analyze Israel’s External and Internal Conflict Systems / Harvey Starr, Roger Liu and G. Dale Thomas — Language, Conflict, and Conflicting Languages in Israel/Palestine / Stanley Dubinsky and William D. Davies — The Role of Holocaust Memory in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict / Andreas Musolff — An Experimental Procedure Comparing How Students in Middle Eastern and Western Democracies Cope with International Conflicts / Ranan D. Kuperman — Subjectivity in the Application of the Just War Doctrine to Collateral Damage : An Experimental Test in Israel and the US / Nehemia Geva and Belinda Bragg — Predicting Revolution and Regime Instability in the Middle East : The Uncertain Future of Arab-Israeli Relations / Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.

New Article: Violi, A Peace-Building Experience in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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Violi, Patrizia. “Just Words under the Wall: A Peace-Building Experience in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” In Gender and Conflict: Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices (ed. Georg Frerks, Annelou Ypeij, and Reinhilde Sotiria König; London and New York: Routledge, 2016): 217ff.

 

9781409464853

 

Extract

This experience, in which I was personally involved, was a three-year EU-financed project initiated in late 2005 entitled ‘Building Constituencies for Women’s Alternative Ways for Peace’. Its primary objective was to promote encounters between Palestinian and Israeli women and support peacemaking efforts by The Jerusalem Link, an organisation involving two Women’s Centres: Bat Shalom and Jerusalem Center for Women.’ The Jerusalem Link involving these two women’s organisations was established in 1994 to bring about a just, comprehensive and lasting peace between the two peoples of Palestine and Israel, and its feminist grounding is explicitly emphasised in the declaration of intent.

 

 

Panel: Confession and Testimony As Repertoires of Contention in Conflict Zones (Vienna, July 12, 2016)

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futureswewant
Confession and Testimony As Repertoires of Contention in Conflict Zones
Tuesday, 12 July 2016: 10:45-12:15
Room: Hörsaal 21

RC48 Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change (host committee)

Language: English

Confession and testimony are central repertoires of contention in the disclosure of “ugly pasts.” Solidarity movements mobilize testimony to diffuse human rights violations condoned and supported by their own societies. Less attention has been paid to the deployment of testimony and confession by anti-denial movements, movements that demand that the members of their own societies acknowledge the “problematic present” in situations of ongoing ethno-national conflict, and take responsibility for it and action against it.
This session invites research that engage in the analysis of confession and testimony in contemporary conflicts by members of the perpetrator nation amongst them:

  • Are these repertoires gendered and how?
  • What are the groups that engage in testimony and confession?
  • How states and civil societies in perpetrator nations react to anti-denial movements?
  • Anti-denial movements and national identity.
Session Organizer:
Sara HELMAN, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Oral Presentations:

Challenging the Israeli Occupation through Testimony and Confession: The Case of Anti-Denial Movements Machsom Watch and Breaking the Silence
Sara HELMAN, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Dis/Acknowledging Military Violence: Women Soldiers Testify Against the Occupation
Edna LOMSKY-FEDER, Department of Sociology and Anthropology and School of Education, Israel; Orna SASSON-LEVY, Department of Sociology and Anthroplogy Bar Ilan University, Israel

New Article: Kaufman, Peace as Opportunity for Social Justice

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Kaufman, Roni. “Peace as Opportunity for Social Justice: Establishment of New Social Change Organizations in Israel in the Wake of the Oslo Peace Accords.” International Social Work (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020872816639369

 
Abstract

The social work profession is committed to the promotion of peace and social justice. It is often assumed that peacetime enables diverting resources and attention to the promotion of disadvantaged groups. However, little is known about the mechanisms. This study of the Israeli experience following the Oslo Peace Accords suggests that one potential mechanism is the development of social change organizations (SCOs) in the wake of peace. Findings indicate growth in SCO establishment in the periphery and small towns, in vulnerable groups, and in the Israeli Palestinian (Arab) citizen minority group. Implications for social work are suggested.

 

 

New Article: Callan, Thinking through Duration

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Callan, Brian. “Thinking through Duration.” Anthropology Today 32.3 (2016): 20-23.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12256

 

Abstract

This narrative offers an alternative Jewish Israeli ‘duration’ of the abduction described by Dalsheim. It agrees that the weight of past experience shapes both present perception and future imagination, reproducing the sense of ‘intractable’ conflict but argues that subjective and collective experience is mediated by what C. Wright Mills called the ‘cultural apparatus’. Taking the case of Israeli Jews who work in solidarity with Palestinian activists, some of whom were raised in extremely right-wing Zionist backgrounds, it shows how subjectivity is shaped by the ‘received interpretations’ of others. More significantly, it shows how this acculturated sense of self can be transcended by the human faculties described by Hannah Arendt as thinking and judging. Drawing upon his own experiences with these activists in the summer of 2014, the author argues as a sign of hope, that thinking and judging enable a divestment of received interpretations of the cultural apparatus, which define and reproduce the conflict as intractable. Sadly, this duration also describes a period when thinking outside the collective became taboo and Jewish compassion for the deaths of Palestinian women and children was vilified and violently opposed by fellow Jewish countrymen and women. With Israel’s cultural apparatus unable to accommodate compassion, there may indeed always be a Gaza War.

 

 

 

New Article: Shikhmanter, Contemporary Israeli Children’s and Young Adults’ Historical Fiction

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Shikhmanter, Rima. “History as Politics: Contemporary Israeli Children’s and Young Adults’ Historical Fiction and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.” nternational Research in Children’s Literature 9.1 (2016): 83-97.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/ircl.2016.0184

 

Abstract

Historical fiction serves as a powerful source for the dissemination of historical images and the determination of collective memory. These roles are of particular significance in the context of severe political conflicts. In these cases historical fiction shapes the narrative of the conflict, explains its source and central events, and therefore forms the readers’ political stances towards the conflict and its consequences.

This article examines the role contemporary Jewish Israeli historical fiction for young adults plays in presenting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to young readers. It discusses two of the political perspectives this fiction addresses: the traditional hegemonic narrative and the left-wing narrative. Associated with the right-wing sector of Israeli politics, the former promotes the Zionist myth and seeks to justify the necessity and morality of its premises while ignoring and/or dismissing the legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative. The lack of a consensual Jewish historical narrative that does not negate the Palestinian narrative on the one hand, and the ongoing public delegitimisation of the left-wing on the other, forces historical-fiction authors to place their plots at a historical remove, locating them in other places and times.

New Article: Wiseman, Dahlia Ravikovitch’s ‘Egla ‘Arufa

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Wiseman, Laura. “Voice of Responsibility: Dahlia Ravikovitch’s ‘Egla ‘Arufa (Felled Heifer).” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15.2 (2016): 301-17.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2015.1133178

 

Abstract

In a cycle of poems, Sugeyot beyahadut bat zemanenu, “Issues in Contemporary Judaism,” Dahlia Ravikovitch protests against human suffering and fatalities that occur during war and conflicts of attrition involving Israel’s indigenous peoples and contiguous populations. Among the poetry, ‘Egla ‘arufa, with its cryptic title and densely encoded contents, requires textual “demystification” for its central message to be heard. First, this article identifies the most crucial pair of Hebrew sources underlying this poem and discusses their intertextual influence and the transition between them for an enriched reading. Second, through textual analysis this study applies a postmodern literary poetic – a “hermeneutic lag” – to a unique dynamic in the dimensions of the writing. In general, I relate to selected poems by Dahlia Ravikovitch as self-portraits, and regard “Felled Heifer” as an abstract figuration of the voice of the speaker: the voice of responsibility.

 

 

 

New Book: Normand, Demonization in International Politics

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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 Article: Asseburg & Busse, The End of a Two-State Settlement?

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Asseburg, Muriel, and Jan Busse. “The End of a Two-State Settlement? Alternatives and Priorities for Settling the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” SWP Comments 24 (2016).

 

URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-46893-9

 

Abstract

On the occasion of their joint government consultations in February 2016, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that this was not the time for making major progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, given the instability in the Middle East. However, merely adhering to a two-state settlement as a mantra without taking any concrete steps to implement it effectively reinforces the one-state reality under Israeli dominance. Ultimately, this will make settling the conflict impossible. Popular support for a two-state solution is waning on both sides. While at present alternative one-state or confederate models have even slimmer chances of being realized, Germany and the EU should nevertheless explore the creative and constructive aspects of these models, which would enable the two sides to maintain their national identities as well as realize their individual and collective rights. Their priority, however, should be to alter the cost-benefit calculation of the parties to the conflict, so as to generate the political will for bringing about a settlement at all.

 

 

 

New Article: Arar & Oplatka, Making Sense of Social Justice in Education

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Arar, Khalid Husny, and Izhar Oplatka. “Making Sense of Social Justice in Education: Jewish and Arab Leaders’ Perspectives in Israel.” Management in Education (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0892020616631409

 
Abstract

The research aimed to understand the way in which high school principals’ perceptions of social justice (SJ) are implemented in their daily educational work. A qualitative study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect the narratives of two high school principals in Israel – one Arab-Muslim and one Jewish. The interview transcripts underwent comparative holistic analysis to identify their perceptions and daily practice of SJ in their schools. Findings indicated that the principals’ perceptions of SJ were coloured by their national and cultural context, yet they needed strong conviction to integrate these perceptions in their schools, and their efforts to do so were often beset by resistance.

 

 

New Article: Renshon et al, Paired Experiments on the Israeli Knesset and Public

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Renshon, Jonathan, Keren Yarhi-Milo, and Joshua D. Kertzer. “Democratic Leaders, Crises and War. Paired Experiments on the Israeli Knesset and Public.” (online paper).

 

URL: http://jonathanrenshon.com/Site/CurrentResearch_files/DemocraciesWarCrises030216.pdf (PDF)

 

Abstract

IR theorists have focused in recent years on how and whether regime type affects conflict, and in particular on whether democracies have advantages over other types of states in either “contests of will” or war-fighting. Despite the remarkable amount of attention paid, the inherent limits of observational data – even with improved methods and newly-developed datasets – have prevented the formation of any consensus. We contend that one missing piece of the puzzle is direct evidence on a key aspect of theories of democratic credibility and success: the beliefs of leaders. To address this, we present evidence from a survey experiment fielded on a unique elite sample: current and former members of the Israeli Knesset. From them, we learn that Israeli leaders’ patterns of beliefs accord with some interpretations of bargaining theory: they see democracies as both more likely to back down in a crisis, but also more likely to emerge victorious should a dispute escalate to war. We also field our study on two representative samples of the Israeli Jewish public, giving us leverage to address the question of how similar leaders are to the public they represent, and the mechanisms through which democracy shapes beliefs about crisis behavior and war outcomes. Here, we find support for the notion that (at least in some cases), experiments on \the average citizen” generalize nicely to elites.

 

 

 

New Article: Natanel, Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine

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Natanel, Katherine. “Border Collapse and Boundary Maintenance: Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine.” Gender, Place & Culture 23.6 (2016): 897-911.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2015.1136807

 

Abstract

Drawing upon subaltern geopolitics and feminist geography, this article explores how militarisation shapes micro-geographies of violence and occupation in Israel–Palestine. While accounts of spectacular and large-scale political violence dominate popular imaginaries and academic analyses in/of the region, a shift to the micro-scale foregrounds the relationship between power, politics and space at the level of everyday life. In the context of Israel–Palestine, micro-geographies have revealed dynamic strategies for ‘getting by’ or ‘dealing with’ the occupation, as practiced by Palestinian populations in the face of spatialised violence. However, this article considers how Jewish Israelis actively shape the spatial micro-politics of power within and along the borders of the Israeli state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem during 2010–2011, an analysis of everyday narratives illustrates how relations of violence, occupation and domination rely upon gendered dynamics of border collapse and boundary maintenance. Here, the borders between home front and battlefield break down at the same time as communal boundaries are reproduced, generating conditions of ‘total militarism’ wherein military interests and agendas are both actively and passively diffused. Through gendering the militarised micro-geographies of violence among Jewish Israelis, this article reveals how individuals construct, navigate and regulate the everyday spaces of occupation, detailing more precisely how macro political power endures.