Bulletin: Zionism and Political History

Articles

• Menashe Anzi and Anja Siegemund, German Jews in the Middle East: New Perspectives
• Matan Boord, Labor Zionism Urban Men and the ‘New Jew’ in Mandate Palestine (in Hebrew)
• Tamir Goren, The Jewish Neighbourhoods of Jaffa and the Question of Annexation to Tel Aviv at the End of the British Mandate
• Daniel Kessler, The Jewish Community in Nineteenth Century Palestine: Evidence from the Montefiore Censuses

Events

Pnina Lahav, “Golda Meir: A Biographical Sketch,” Bildner Center, Rutgers, March 27, 2017

 

New Article: Suwaed, The Image of the Bedouin in Travel Literature of the 19th Century

Suwaed, Muhammad. “The Image of the Bedouin in Travel Literature and Western Researchers Who Visited Palestine in the Nineteenth Century.” Digest of Middle East Studies (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/dome.12075
 
Abstract

With the weakening of the Ottoman government from the end of the sixteenth century onwards, the Bedouin took over the control of the entire Country of Palestine. As the Bedouin were present across the country, western travelers and researches visiting the Holy Land as tourists, visitors, and investigators often met the Bedouin, especially during the robbery and plunder executed by the Bedouin upon travelers, and when hiring them as tour guides, renting their camels, or employing them as guards. On their return to their countries, these travelers reported on their experiences in the East in the form of books. These western travelers and researchers, in their writings, dealt with the Bedouin. They described them as providers of services to caravans, transporters of luggage, tour guides, and robbers. The writers and researchers explicitly described the traits, characters, food habits, clothing, residences, and occupations of the Bedouin.

 

 

 

ToC: Israel Studies 20.3 (2015) | Special Issue: Moshe Sharett: A Retrospective

Israel Studies 20.3 (2015)

Special Issue—Moshe Sharett: A Retrospective

 

 

• Front Matter (pp. i-iv)

1. Introduction (pp. v-vii)

   Natan Aridan and Gabriel (Gabi) Sheffer
2. The Sharett Legacy (pp. 1-17)

   Gabriel Sheffer
3. “Perhaps We’ll Meet Again”—Moshe Sharett’s Military Service (pp. 18-38)

   Glenda Abramson
4. Moshe Shertok and the Arab Problem: First Steps, 1931–1933 (pp. 39-62)

   Yaron Ran
5. “Between Two Mountains”: On Moshe Sharett and His Relations With David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann (pp. 63-76)

   Yosef Gorny
6. Love/Hate Story: Moshe Sharett and AMAN (Military Intelligence), 1954–1956 (pp. 77-101)

   Ohad Leslau
7. Striking When the Iron is Cold: Moshe Sharett and Sino-Israeli Relations (pp. 102-130)

   Yitzhak Shichor
8. Why Was Moshe Sharett Deposed? A Historical Question and a Historiographical Issue (pp. 131-157)

   Yechiam Weitz
9. Moshe Sharett—Right or Wrong? (pp. 158-175)

   Yaakov Sharett

New Article: Beck, From West Africa to Mecca and Jerusalem: The Tijāniyya on the Hajj Routes

Beck, Irit. “From West Africa to Mecca and Jerusalem: The Tijāniyya on the Hajj Routes.” Journal of the Middle East and Africa 6.1 (2015): 1-15.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2015.1026243

 

Abstract

Pilgrimage routes from West Africa provided channels for cultural and spiritual exchange between West African and Middle Eastern Muslims, and facilitated religious exchanges. Some of these exchanges were orthodox in nature; others, such as Sufi beliefs and practices, were more popular in their appeal. This article examines the ways that Tijāniyya tāriqa leaders and disciples spread their beliefs and practices along the hajj routes during the colonial period. Since this period saw the transformation of boundaries and borders, the hajj could be perceived more as a “state affair,” as its routes moved within the boundaries of the new empires or fluctuated between the new colonial empires. The article focuses on the Tijāniyya tāriqa, mainly because this tāriqa was relatively new (established around the beginning of the nineteenth century) and as such serves as a good case study for the spread of tāriqa affiliations through the hajj routes from West Africa during the colonial period. This article also examines the role of the hajj for Tijāni West African Muslims who settled in Jerusalem in the same period.

New Article: Fantauzzo, British Soldiers, Liberal Imperialism, and the First World War in Palestine

Fantauzzo, Justin. “Ending Ottoman Misrule: British Soldiers, Liberal Imperialism, and the First World War in Palestine.” Journal of the Middle East and Africa 6.1 (2015): 17-32.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2015.1026244

 

Abstract

Historians have debated whether or not the First World War in Palestine and the battle between the British-led Egyptian Expeditionary Force and the Ottoman army was considered by contemporaries as a modern, twentieth-century crusade. But did British soldiers who fought in the First World War in Palestine actually view the war as a religious crusade against the Muslim Ottoman Empire? Or did they consider it a war of liberation, conducted to free Palestine’s oppressed population from the clutches of Ottoman misrule? This article argues that British soldiers, at least retrospectively, believed that they had fought in Palestine to liberate its population and to bring forth the righteous rule of the British Empire. Wartime propaganda that painted the Turk as an enemy of civilization had a far greater effect on shaping the memory of the campaign than did any language of religious conflict. With British rule, argued ex-servicemen, came all the benefits of liberal imperialism: democracy, religious freedom, and a free-market economy.

 

 

 

New Article: Dolbee and Hazkani, Imperial Citizenship in Palestine

Dolbee, Samuel and Shay Hazkani. “‘Impossible is not Ottoman’: Menashe Meirovitch, ‘Isa al-‘Isa, and Imperial Citizenship in Palestine.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.2 (2015): 241-62.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743815000033

 

Abstract

This article explores a covert partnership between a prominent Zionist agronomist, Menashe Meirovitch, and the Christian Arab editor of the newspaper Filastin, ʿIsa al-ʿIsa, a founding father of Palestinian nationalism. Under the literary guise of an Arab Muslim peasant called Abu Ibrahim, the two men produced a series of Arabic-language columns in 1911–12 that exhibited imperial citizenship par excellence, demanding political and agrarian reforms in Palestine in the name of strengthening the Ottoman Empire. The article explores their short-lived political alliance to interrogate historiographical uses of the press as a source for social history. Moreover, it challenges the portrayal of cooperation between Jews and Arabs as “collaboration” in its pejorative sense. Far from a simple story of betrayal or corruption, the partnership between the two men demonstrates how a shared commitment to Ottoman modernism brought them together more than nationalism, language, or religion pulled them apart.

 

New Article: Nasasra, Ottoman and British Policies towards the Bedouin of the Naqab

Nasasra, Mansour. “Ruling the Desert: Ottoman and British Policies towards the Bedouin of the Naqab and Transjordan Region, 1900–1948.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42.3 (2015): 261-83.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13530194.2015.1011452

 

Abstract

The various policies developed by the Ottomans and British for governing the indigenous Bedouin tribes of the Negev/Naqab and Beersheba (southern Palestine) region between 1900 and 1948 are examined using primary sources. Whereas Ottoman attempts to pacify the tribes in southern Palestine and Transjordan were somewhat ineffective, the British Mandate achieved a degree of control and stability by incorporating tribesmen into the Palestine Police, strengthening the frontier areas and enhancing inter-territorial tribunal arrangements between Beersheba, Sinai and Transjordan.

 

New Article: Foster, The 1915 Locust Attack in Syria and Palestine

Foster, Zachary J. “The 1915 Locust Attack in Syria and Palestine and its Role in the Famine During the First World War.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.3 (2015): 370-94.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263206.2014.976624

 

Abstract

The famine that befell Syria during the First World War was among the most tragic events in the region’s modern history. The article argues that the 1915 locust attack, which is often neglected altogether or given terse treatment as one among a laundry list of causes of the famine, was a critical factor which drove many across the region, especially in Lebanon and Palestine, to starvation beginning in late 1915. Given that the scale of the attack was far worse than anything Syria had witnessed in many decades, if not centuries; and that a huge percentage of the region’s major foodstuffs and sources of livelihood, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, fodder and a small but not insignificant amount of cereals, were devoured by the locusts, it is suggested that many of the 100,00–200,000 people that died from starvation or starvation-related diseases in the year immediately following the attack – that is, from November 1915 to November 1916 – can be attributed to the locust invasion.

New Article: Safran, Haifa al-Jadida

Safran, Yair. “Haifa al-Jadida: The Surrounding Walls and the City Quarters.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.3 (2015): 452-61.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263206.2014.976623

 

Abstract

`Haifa al-Jadida` (New Haifa) was erected in 1761 by order of the Bedouin ruler Daher el-Omar, governor of the Galilee. As part of the process of building the city, a wall was constructed to encircle it, with a tower overlooking it from above. After its establishment the ‘New Haifa’ became the urban core for the emergence of modern Haifa while the new city was gradually solidified and its characteristic outlines were moulded. From the end of the Ottoman period in 1918 until 1948, the urban expanse remained practically unchanged. In 1948 ‘New Haifa’ was almost destroyed except for the few ruins that were left. In spite of the centrality of the new city in the history of Haifa, very little is known about this area. This article reconstructs the image of ‘New Haifa’ by portraying the location of the city walls and the urban expanse. For the purpose of reconstruction, an 1841 sketch of the city is superimposed on an aerial photographmap of the area taken in 2008, and a map of the old city dated to 1937.

Reviews: Cohen, Becoming Ottomans

Cohen, Julia Philips. Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

 

 

Reviews:

• Rubin, Avi. “Review.” AJS Review 38.2 (2014): 484-487.
• Kern, Karen M. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.1 (2015): 196-198.

 

New Book: Reifler, Days of Ticho

Reifler, David M. Days of Ticho. Empire, Mandate, Medicine, and Art in the Holy Land. Jerusalem and Springfield, NJ: Gefen, 2014.

 

 

URL: http://www.amazon.com/Days-Ticho-Empire-Mandate-Medicine/dp/9652296651

 

Abstract

Dr. Avraham Albert Ticho was a Viennese-trained ophthalmologist who immigrated to Ottoman-ruled Jerusalem in 1912. There he married his cousin, the artist Anna Ticho, and together they made their mark on the history of the Land of Israel. In Days of Ticho, the Tichos’ story is told in all its fascinating detail. Their personal history is presented against the backdrop of a variety of historical perspectives histories of medicine, art, civilian institutions, governments, and war; the struggles and growth of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine; and the conflicts that arose between Jews and their Arab neighbors. Among the stories in this book are Dr. Ticho’s supervision of the first Hadassah nurses in Palestine and the early years of Hadassah Hospital, as well as the near-fatal stabbing of Dr. Ticho by an Arab would-be assassin in November 1929, during the murderous riots that took place throughout Palestine. Those riots were an important turning point in Jewish-Arab relations, the harbinger of problems that remain the focus of world attention until today. The Ticho House in Jerusalem was dedicated in May 1984 as a downtown annex of the Israel Museum, and it welcomes thousands of visitors every year. This book further contributes to the Tichos’ legacy while advancing an understanding of their times and ours.

New Article: Caquet, Guizot’s Absence of a Plan for Jerusalem

Caquet, P. E. “Guizot’s Absence of a Plan for Jerusalem.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.2 (2015): 224-37.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2014.972950

 

Abstract

Historians have speculated over the existence of an 1841 plan by the French foreign minister François Guizot to internationalize Jerusalem as a Christian city, a plan holding major implications for the eventual emergence of a Jewish state and for European–Ottoman relations. This article aims, based on fresh archival and other sources, to provide a definitive evaluation of Guizot’s plan, its scope, and its motivations. It broadens the field to encompass other great power plans mooted in 1841, including plans of a Protestant yet Zionist flavour, and it reassesses the political weight of early nineteenth-century European religious impulses with regard to Palestine.

Conference program: MESA, Washington, DC (22-25 Nov, 2014)

Israel Studies events at the annual conference of MESA, Washington, DC, November 22-25. For full program click here (PDF).

 

AIS–Association for Israel Studies Reception

Saturday, 11/22

Reception, 8:30-10:30pm, McKinley (M)

 

(3681) Settler-Colonialism and the Study of Zionism: Erasure, Transfer and Assimilation

Sunday, November 23, 11am-1pm

Organized by Arnon Degani

Sponsored by Palestinian American Research Center (PARC)

Chair: Gabriel Piterberg, UCLA

 

Discussant: Lorenzo Veracini, Swinburne Inst for Social Research

Susan Slyomovics, UCLA–“The Object of Memory” and Settler Colonialism Studies 16 Years Later

Honaida Ghanim, Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies–Judaization and De-Indigenization: Settler-Colonialism in East Jerusalem

Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Mada Al-Carmel–The Zionist Left and Settler-Colonialism in Marj Ibn ‘Amer: Land, Population and Property

Arnon Degani, UCLA–Non-Statist and Bi-Nationalist Zionism as Settler-Colonial Agendas

 

(3756) Rule of Experts?: Revolutions, Doctrines, and Interventions in the Middle East

Sunday, November 23, 2m-4pm

Organized by Osamah Khalil

 

Seth Anziska, Columbia University–Israel, the United States and the 1982 War in Lebanon

 

(3925) World War One and Its Aftermath

Sunday, November 23, 2m-4pm

Chair: Weston F Cook, Jr, UNC Pembroke

 

Roberto Mazza, Western Illinois U–Cemal Pasha, Zionism and the Alleged Expulsion of the Jews from Jaffa in April 1917

 

(3792) Israel Studies in the Arab World

Sunday, November 23, 4:30m-6:30pm

Organized by Johannes Becke

Discussant: Elie Podeh, Hebrew U of Jersusalem

 

Hassan A. Barari, U Jordan–Israelism: Arab Scholarship on Israel, a Critical Assessment

Mostafa Hussein, Brandeis U–Israel Studies in the Arab World Between Two Dictums: ‘Whosoever Learns People’s Language Avoids Their Plot’ and ‘Know Your Enemy’

Johannes Becke, U Oxford–Hebrew in Beirut: Studying Israel in the Last Arab Frontline State

Hebatalla Taha, U Oxford–The Politics of ‘Normalisation’: The Israeli Academic Centre in Cairo

Amr Yossef, American U Cairo–Egyptian Israelists: The View from Israel

 

(3886) Social Media, the Digital Archive, and Scholarly Futures

Sunday, November 23, 4:30m-6:30pm

Organized by Ted Swedenburg

Chair/Discussant: Elliott Colla, Georgetown U

 

Rebecca L. Stein, Duke U–The Perpetrator’s Archive: Israel’s Occupation on YouTube

 

 

(4006) Special Session

Abandoned Yet Central: Gaza and the Resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Sunday, November 23, 4:30m-6:30pm

Organized by Sara Roy

Chair: Sara Roy, Harvard University

 

Chris Gunness, UNRWA, Office of the Commissioner General, Jerusalem

Paul Aaron, Political Analyst and Consultant, Gaza Community Mental Health Program

Bill Corcoran, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA)

Ilana Feldman, George Washington University

Brian Barber, University of Tennessee

Susan Akram, Boston University School of Law

 

This session will present an overview of the past summer’s violent clashes between Israeli and Hamas forces and the ensuing destruction in Gaza. Representatives from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) will provide an “on-the-ground” analysis of the destruction and human toll of the 50-day war. Scholars will further place the recent violence in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and examine the prerequisites for a sustainable resolution of the conflict.

 

 

 

(3737) Religious Inclusivity and Civilizational Identity: Expanding Iranian Identities Along Religious, Ethnic, and Gender Lines

Monday, November 24, 8:30am-10:30am

Organized by Lior Sternfeld

Chair/Discussant: Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, U Toronto

 

Lior Sternfeld, U Texas Austin–Iran is My Homeland, Jerusalem is My Qiblah: Iranian Jews Between Zionist and Iranian Identities

 

(3643) Israel, the United States and a Changing Middle East

Monday, November 24, 11am-1pm

Organized by Robert O. Freedman

Sponsored by Association for Israel Studies

Chair/Discussant: Robert O. Freedman, Johns Hopkins U

 

Eyal Zisser, Tel Aviv U–Israel and the Arab World – Who’s First – Syria, Egypt or Lebanon?

Ilan Peleg, Lafayette Col–Israel, Netanyahu & the Palestinians: Is the Third Term the Charm?!

Rami Ginat, Bar Ilan U–The Israeli-Egyptian-American Strategic Triangle: A Reassessment in Light of the Arab Uprising

Joshua Teitelbaum, Bar-Ilan U–Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council: New Opportunities for Cooperation?

Uzi Rabi, Tel Aviv U–Iran and Israel: Post 2013 Elections

 

 

(3697) Bridging the Rupture of 1948: The “Decolonization” and Erasure of Mandate Palestine

Monday, November 24, 2:30pm-4:30pm

Organized by Jeffrey D. Reger and Leena Dallasheh

Sponsored by Palestinian American Research Center (PARC)

Chair: Zachary Lockman, New York U

Discussant: Shira Robinson, George Washington U

 

Jeffrey D. Reger, Georgetown U–Uprooting Palestine: Olive Groves, Mass Dispossession, and Peasant Resistance, 1945-1955

Hilary Falb Kalisman, UC Berkeley–Learning Exile: Palestinian Students and Educators Abroad, 1940-1958

Leena Dallasheh, Rice U–Defying the Rupture, Affirming Presence: Palestinians in Nazareth Surviving 1948

Rephael Stern, Princeton U–Israel’s Postcolonial Predicament and Its Contradicting Jurisdictional Claims in 1948

 

 

(3917) Perilous Peacemaking: Israeli-Palestinian Relations Since Oslo

Monday, November 24, 5pm-7pm

Chair: Timothy Schorn, U South Dakota

 

Elie Podeh, Hebrew U Jerusalem–Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Case of the Arab Peace Initiative (2002-2014)

Maia Carter Hallward, Kennesaw State U–Choosing to Negotiate Under Sub-Optimal Conditions: The 2013 Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations

Gabriele Mombelli, U Florence–The Palestinian National Authority Security Sector: An Operational Overview

Karam Dana, U Washington–Twenty Years after Oslo: What Do Palestinians Think?

Andrew Barwig, Department of State–“New Blood” in Israel’s Knesset: Elite Circulation and Parliamentary Resilience

 

 

 

(3867) Urbanism and the Politics of the Mandate Period, Local versus Imperial Interests

Tuesday, November 25, 11am-1pm

Organized by Harrison Guthorn

Chair: Elizabeth F. Thompson, U Virginia

 

Noah Hysler Rubin, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design–Planning Palestine: British and Zionist Plans for Tiberius and Nathanya

 

(3893) Public Opinion in the Middle East

Tuesday, November 25, 11am-1pm

Organized by Yael Zeira

 

Devorah Manekin, Arizona State U–Carrots and Sticks: Policy Instruments and Public Opinion in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

 

(3919) Palestinian Resistance: Spaces and Standpoints

Tuesday, November 25, 11am-1pm

Chair: Timothy Schorn, U South Dakota

 

Timothy Seidel, American U–Narrating Nonviolence: Postcolonial Interrogations of Resistance in Palestine

Maya Rosenfeld, Hebrew U Jerusalem–The Movement of Palestinian Political Prisoners and the Struggle Against the Israeli Occupation: A Historical Perspective

Sharri Plonski, SOAS U London–Transcending Bounded Space: The Struggle for Land and Space by the Palestinian Citizens of Israel

Julie Norman, McGill U–Prisoners Dilemma?: Prison-Based Resistance and the Diffusion of Activism in Palestine

Maryam Griffin, UC Santa Barbara–Movement as/and Non-Movement in Palestine

 

(3949) Transnational Cultural Production

Tuesday, November 25, 1:30pm-3:30pm

Chair: Zeynep Seviner, U Washington

 

Isra Ali, Rutgers, State U of New Jersey–Adaptation: Cultural Alliances and Television Production in Israel and the United States

Robert Lang, U Hartford–Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir: Whose Trauma?

New Article: Mazza, A Comment on Seth J. Frantzman and Ruth Kark’s ‘The Catholic Church in Palestine/Israel’

Mazza, Roberto. “A Comment on Seth J. Frantzman and Ruth Kark’s ‘The Catholic Church in Palestine/Israel: Real Estate in Terra Sancta’ in Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.50, No.3 (2014), pp. 370–96.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.1 (2015): 167-168.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2015.961728

 

Excerpt

In their article, Seth Frantzman and Ruth Kark aim at the reconstruction and analysis of Catholic properties in Palestine/Israel, focusing on the modern era, in order to examine the motivations for the Cahtolic church to expand its land ownership in the region. The purpose of the article is commendable and indeed such research would shed light on the ling-term Catholic Church’s action in Palestine/Israel; however the article falls short of its purpose due to the fact that the authors failed to use relevant primary and secondary sources.

 

New Book: Gribetz, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter

Gribetz, Jonathan Marc. Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

To read the entire book description or the introduction, please visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10398.html

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists, aspiring peacemakers continue to search for the precise territorial dividing line that will satisfy both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist demands. The prevailing view assumes that this struggle is nothing more than a dispute over real estate. Defining Neighbors boldly challenges this view, shedding new light on how Zionists and Arabs understood each other in the earliest years of Zionist settlement in Palestine and suggesting that the current singular focus on boundaries misses key elements of the conflict.

 

Hardcover | 2014 | $35. 00 / £24.95 | ISBN: 9780691159508 eBook edition | ISBN: 9781400852659

 

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments ix
Note on Transliterations xiii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Locating the Zionist-Arab Encounter: Local, Regional, Imperial, and Global Spheres 15
Chapter 2 Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi’s “as-Sayūnīzm”: An Islamic Theory of Jewish History in Late Ottoman Palestine 39
Chapter 3 “Concerning Our Arab Question”? Competing Zionist Conceptions of Palestine’s Natives 93
Chapter 4 Imagining the “Israelites”: Fin de Siècle Arab Intellectuals and the Jews 131
Chapter 5 Translation and Conquest: Transforming Perceptions through the Press and Apologetics 185
Conclusion 235
Bibliography 249
Index 269

New Article: Halperin, The Battle over Jewish Students in the Christian Missionary Schools of Mandate Palestine

Halperin, Liora R. “The Battle over Jewish Students in the Christian Missionary Schools of Mandate Palestine.” Middle Eastern Studies 50.5 (2014): 737-54.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263206.2014.886574

 

 

Abstract

Studies of Jewish students in Palestine’s Christian missionary schools largely end at the close of the Ottoman period. But although a tiny and diminishing fraction of Jewish students studied in such schools after the First World War, the mandate period was marked by anxious and often zealous Zionist anti-missionary campaigns. The article considers this space of Jewish-Christian interaction, arguing that even as a Hebrew-dominant society took root, missionary schools provided education in European languages, particularly English, tools that offered advantages to Jewish students with an interest in clerical work or foreign study. The continuing appeal and importance of foreign language skills cast doubt on the Zionist pretence of a self-sufficient Hebrew society.

New Article: Kaplan, Jewish-Arab Relations in Israeli Freemasonry

Kaplan, Danny. “Jewish-Arab Relations in Israeli Freemasonry: Between Civil Society and Nationalism.” Middle East Journal 68.3 (2014): 385-401.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_middle_east_journal/v068/68.3.kaplan.html

 

Abstract

This article applies ethnographic methods and historical analysis to explore Jewish-Arab relations within Israeli Freemasonry. The article tracks local Masonic history as the fraternity developed from individual lodges under colonial-like obediences in late Ottoman and Mandate-era Palestine into a national-level organization, under the Grand Lodge of the State of Israel. In light of an official position of political noninvolvement, Jewish and Arab-Palestinian members conveyed shared values of universal fraternity, but variable interpretations of citizenship and nationalism.

New Article: Frantzman and Kark, The Catholic Church in Palestine/Israel: Real Estate in Terra Sancta

Frantzman, Seth J. and Ruth Kark. “The Catholic Church in Palestine/Israel: Real Estate in Terra Sancta.” Middle Eastern Studies 50.3 (2014): 370-96.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2013.871266

 

Abstract

This paper traces the history and development of Catholic real estate ownership in Palestine/Israel, uses of the properties, and the impact on the physical and cultural landscapes and on identity formation of the local population. It takes a long-term perspective, beginning with the return, after a short absence, of the Franciscans to the Holy Land in the fourteenth century and ending with the present position of the Catholic Church and the properties of its various sects and orders. It examines the history of the Catholic Church in Palestine/Israel under the Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Egyptian and Israeli regimes. In contrast to the large body of existing scholarship on the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, this examination of the local history of the Catholic Church views it through the prism of land ownership and properties. The landholdings of the Catholics are compared and contrasted with findings of previous studies by authors on those of the Greek-Orthodox and Anglican churches. Special attention is paid to the differences in frameworks, functions and geographic dispersal of the church organs, such as monasteries and educational institutions as well as the property of the local Arab Greek-Catholics. The article also examines the effect of Arabization of the Catholic clergy in relation to the lands owned by the Catholic Church and finds that, unlike other churches in the Holy Land, the Catholic Church has not generally experienced ethnic-related dissent over property.

ToC: Journal of Israeli History 33.1 (2014)

Articles

Towards a de-Occidentalist perspective on Israel: The case of the occupation

Johannes Becke
pages 1-23

DOI:10.1080/13531042.2014.886831
A Zionist torn between two worlds: Aharon Eisenberg’s correspondence after the Young Turk Revolution

Yuval Ben-Bassat
pages 25-39

DOI:10.1080/13531042.2014.886824
Oral testimonies, archival sources, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War: A close look at the occupation of a Galilean village

Kobi Peled
pages 41-61

DOI:10.1080/13531042.2014.886833

Meir Har-Zion’s act of reprisal: Reality and memory

Efrat Seckbach
pages 63-84

DOI:10.1080/13531042.2014.886834
The failure to formulate a national science policy: Israel’s Scientific Council, 1948–1959

Ari Barell
pages 85-107

DOI:10.1080/13531042.2014.886835
Book Reviews

Place, Memory and Myth in Contemporary Israeli Cinema

Yaron Peleg
pages 109-111

DOI:10.1080/13531042.2014.886836

Zionist Arabesques: Modern Landscapes, Non-Modern Texts

Arieh Saposnik
pages 111-113

DOI:10.1080/13531042.2014.886845

 

New Book: Shamir, The Electrification of Palestine

Shamir, Ronen. Current Flow. The Electrification of Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013.

 

Whether buried underfoot or strung overhead, electrical lines are omnipresent. Not only are most societies dependent on electrical infrastructure, but this infrastructure actively shapes electrified society. From the wires, poles, and generators themselves to the entrepreneurs, engineers, politicians, and advisors who determine the process of electrification, our electrical grids can create power—and politics—just as they transmit it.

Current Flow examines the history of electrification of British-ruled Palestine in the 1920s, as it marked, affirmed, and produced social, political, and economic difference between Arabs and Jews. Considering the interplay of British colonial interests, the Jewish-Zionist leanings of a commissioned electric company, and Arab opposition within the case of the Jaffa Power House, Ronen Shamir reveals how electrification was central in assembling a material infrastructure of ethno-national separation in Palestine long before “political partition plans” had ever been envisioned. Ultimately, Current Flow sheds new light on the history of Jewish-Arab relations and offers broader sociological insights into what happens when people are transformed from users into elements of networks.

Ronen Shamir is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University and author of The Colonies of Law: Colonialism, Zionism and Law in Early Mandate Palestine (2000) and Managing Legal Uncertainty: Elite Lawyers in the New Deal (1996).