New Book: Baron, Obligation in Exile

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

 

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

 

 

New Book: Kotef, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom

Kotef, Hagar. Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

 

We live within political systems that increasingly seek to control movement, organized around both the desire and ability to determine who is permitted to enter what sorts of spaces, from gated communities to nation-states. In Movement and the Ordering of Freedom, Hagar Kotef examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces. Ranging from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, this book shows how concepts of freedom, security, and violence take form and find justification via “regimes of movement.” Kotef traces contemporary structures of global (im)mobility and resistance to the schism in liberal political theory, which embodied the idea of “liberty” in movement while simultaneously regulating mobility according to a racial, classed, and gendered matrix of exclusions.

 

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

• Introduction
• 1. Between Imaginary Lines: Violence and Its Justifications at the Military Checkpoints in Occupied Palestine / Hagar Kotef and Merav Amir
• 2. An Interlude: A Tale of Two Roads—On Freedom and Movement
• 3. The Fence That “Ill Deserves the Name of Confinement”: Locomotion and the Liberal Body
• 4. The Problem of “Excessive” Movement
• 5. The “Substance and Meaning of All Things Political”: On Other Bodies
• Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

 

HAGAR KOTEF is based at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University.

 

 

New Book: Novak, Zionism and Judaism

Novak, David. Zionism and Judaism. A New Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

 

Why should anyone be a Zionist, a supporter of a Jewish state in the land of Israel? Why should there be a Jewish state in the land of Israel? This book seeks to provide a philosophical answer to these questions. Although a Zionist need not be Jewish, nonetheless this book argues that Zionism is only a coherent political stance when it is intelligently rooted in Judaism, especially in the classical Jewish doctrine of God’s election of the people of Israel and the commandment to them to settle the land of Israel. The religious Zionism advocated here is contrasted with secular versions of Zionism that take Zionism to be a replacement of Judaism. It is also contrasted with versions of religious Zionism that ascribe messianic significance to the State of Israel, or which see the main task of religious Zionism to be the establishment of an Israeli theocracy.

 

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Why Zionism?
• 2. Was Spinoza the first Zionist?
• 3. Secular Zionism: political or cultural?
• 4. Should Israel be a theocracy?
• 5. Why the Jews and why the land of Israel?
• 6. Can the state of Israel be both Jewish and democratic?
• 7. What could be the status of non-Jews in a Jewish state?
• 8. What is the connection between the Holocaust and the state of Israel?

 

DAVID NOVAK holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair in Jewish Studies as Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He is President of the Union for Traditional Judaism, and Vice President of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Novak also serves as a Consulting Scholar for the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and as a Project Scholar for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.

 

New Article: Magen, Israel’s Foreign Policy Response to the Arab Spring

Magen, Amichai. “Comparative Assessment of Israel’s Foreign Policy Response to the ‘Arab Spring’.” Journal of European Integration 37.1 (2015): 113-33.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2014.975992

 

Abstract

This article analyses Israel’s foreign policy response to the ‘Arab Spring’ in comparative perspective. Following the analytical framework shared by all contributions to this Special Issue, the article addresses four main dimensions in as many parts. Part I examines Israel’s initial reactions to the advent of the popular upheavals and regime changes in the Arab world in 2011–2014 and explores how those reactions have evolved over time. Part II identifies Israel’s main policy objectives in relation to events in the region and particularly its immediate neighbours: Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Part III examines the instruments which Israel has used, and eschewed, in pursuit of its policy objectives. Finally, part IV undertakes a theoretically informed analysis with the aim of explaining Israel’s distinctive strategic posture and policy responses to the events of the ‘Arab Spring’ thus far.

New Article: Abdel-Nour, The Jewish State and the Palestinian Right of Return

Abdel-Nour, Farid. “Irreconcilable Narratives and Overlapping Consensus. The Jewish State and the Palestinian Right of Return.” Political Research Quarterly 68.1 (2015): 117-27.

 

URL: http://prq.sagepub.com/content/68/1/117.abstract

 

Abstract

The Israeli demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian demand that Israelis recognize the Palestinian refugees’ moral right to return express the two peoples’ need to have their respective causes affirmed by the “other side.” Yet, the two causes are irreconcilable as are the core political narratives that give them meaning. The question then arises as to whether an end to the conflict can even be conceptualized, let alone implemented, with the two peoples adhering to their core narratives and expecting affirmation of their respective causes. This paper’s argument is that John Rawls’ later work contains resources that allow for such a conceptualization. An overlapping consensus over a list of common acknowledgments is possible between adherents to the two peoples’ core narratives. In that list, which is proposed in the paper, each of the two peoples can see its cause implicitly affirmed and its need for recognition met, without having to abandon its core narrative or to explicitly grant the demand for recognition made on it by the other side. Thus, the irreconcilability of narratives does not present an insurmountable obstacle to conceptualizing potentially just and stable relations between the two peoples.

New Article: Beckerman-Boys, Third Parties and the Arab-Israeli Conflict:

Beckerman-Boys, Carly. “Third Parties and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Poliheuristic Decision Theory and British Mandate Palestine Policy.” Foreign Policy Analysis 10.3 (2014): 225-42.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fpa.12017/abstract

 

 

Abstract

What role do third parties play in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and to what extent do domestic political constraints shape this role? Answering these questions has important ramifications for understanding the interplay between domestic and international politics. One useful tool to conduct this research is the two-stage decision-making framework, Poliheuristic (Ph) Decision Theory, which eliminates options from the choice set that do not meet domestic political requirements. This paper applies Ph theory to a case study from the conflict’s infancy, the British decision in 1922 to affirm the policy of a Jewish national home (based on the Balfour Declaration 1917) despite violent Arab opposition. It argues that the decision was based solely on domestic political needs and did not attempt to address tensions in Palestine. It concludes that Ph theory provides a highly effective theory of decision-making for assessing motivations and policy decisions of third parties in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

New Book: LeVine and Mossberg, eds. One Land, Two States

LeVine, Mark and Mathias Mossberg, eds. One Land, Two States. Israel and Palestine as Parallel States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

 

 

Abstract

One Land, Two States imagines a new vision for Israel and Palestine in a situation where the peace process has failed to deliver an end of conflict. “If the land cannot be shared by geographical division, and if a one-state solution remains unacceptable,” the book asks, “can the land be shared in some other way?”

Leading Palestinian and Israeli experts along with international diplomats and scholars answer this timely question by examining a scenario with two parallel state structures, both covering the whole territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, allowing for shared rather than competing claims of sovereignty. Such a political architecture would radically transform the nature and stakes of the Israel-Palestine conflict, open up for Israelis to remain in the West Bank and maintain their security position, enable Palestinians to settle in all of historic Palestine, and transform Jerusalem into a capital for both of full equality and independence—all without disturbing the demographic balance of each state. Exploring themes of security, resistance, diaspora, globalism, and religion, as well as forms of political and economic power that are not dependent on claims of exclusive territorial sovereignty, this pioneering book offers new ideas for the resolution of conflicts worldwide.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword: Two States on One Land—Parallel States as an Option for Israel and Palestine
Álvaro de Soto

Preface
Mathias Mossberg and Mark LeVine

1. One Land—Two States? An Introduction to the Parallel States Concept
Mathias Mossberg

2. Can Sovereignty Be Divided?
Jens Bartelson

3. Parallel Sovereignty: Dividing and Sharing Core State Functions
Peter Wallensteen

4. Security Strategy for the Parallel States Project: An Israeli Perspective
Nimrod Hurvitz and Dror Zeevi

5. Palestinian National Security
Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi

6. An Israel-Palestine Parallel States Economy by 235
Raja Khalidi

7. Economic Considerations in Implementing a Parallel States Structure
Raphael Bar-El

8. Parallel Sovereignty in Practice: Judicial Dimensions of a Parallel States Structure
Various authors, compiled by Mathias Mossberg

9. Religion in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: From Obstacle to Peace to Force for Reconciliation?
Mark LeVine and Liam O’Mara IV

10. The Necessity for Thinking outside the Box
Hiba Husseini

11. Parallel Lives, Parallel States: Imagining a Different Future
Eyal Megged

Contributors
Index

 

ToC: Israel Studies Review 28,1 (2013)

This title was previously known as Israel Studies Forum.

Publisher: Berghahn Journals

• Editors’ Note pp. v-vi(2)

Forum

•  The Fragile Boundary between the Political and the Academic pp. 1-7(7)
  Author: Feldhay, Rivka

Articles

• Party Membership in Israel: An Overview pp. 8-32(25)
  Authors: Kenig, Ofer; Philippov, Michael; Rahat, Gideon
• Multiculturalism, Conversion, and the Future of Israel as a Modern State pp. 33-53(21)
  Author: Waxman, Chaim I.
• The Cultural Divide: Book Reading as a Signifier of Boundaries among Co-Cultures in Israeli Society pp. 54-77(24)
  Authors: Adoni, Hanna; Nossek, Hillel
• Public Silence and Latent Memories: Yitzhak Rabin and the Arab-Palestinian Citizens of Israel pp. 78-97(20)
  Author: Sorek, Tamir
• The Bourgeois Construction of the Rural: An Israeli Case pp. 98-119(22)
  Author: Shavit, Ze’ev
• The Hebrew Teachers as Creators of the Zionist Community in (the Land of) Israel pp. 120-141(22)
  Authors: Tadmor-Shimony, Tali; Raichel, Nirit

Review Essay

• Post-Post-Zionism: A Paradigm Shift in Israel Studies? pp. 142-155(14)
  Author: Kaplan, Eran

Book Reviews

• Book Reviews pp. 156-175(20)

Cite: Gamson, Arab Spring, Israeli Summer, and Cognitive Liberation

Gamson, William A. “Arab Spring, Israeli Summer, and the Process of Cognitive Liberation.” Swiss Political Science Review 17.4 (2011): 463-468.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1662-6370.2011.02039.x/abstract

 

Abstract

To understand the spread of the Arab spring among different Arab countries and to the movement for social justice in Israel in the following summer, the concept of collective action frames is much more useful than the flawed concept of cognitive liberation. Unlike the latter which conflates analytically distinct processes and ignores the crucial process of negotiating a collective identity, the concept of collective action frames distinguishes the components and problematizes the connection among them. The injustice component is crucial for integrating all three into a coherent collective action frame.

Cite: Davidson and Schejter, Discourses of Israeli DTT Policy

Davidson, Roei and Amit M. Schejter. "’Their Deeds are the Deeds of Zimri; but They Expect a Reward Like Phineas’: Neoliberal and Multicultural Discourses in the Development of Israeli DTT Policy." Communication, Culture & Critique 4,1 (2011): 1-22.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-9137.2010.01089.x/abstract

Abstract

We examine how neoliberal and multicultural discourses were employed in the development of digital terrestrial television (DTT) policy in Israel as a case study of the deployment of media technology in a society that is characterized by deep social cleavages and rapid neoliberalization. We conduct a detailed analysis of official documents published over 6 years, including preparatory work, draft bills, parliamentary committee minutes, parliamentary plenary discussions, and the wording of the law enacted in February 2008. This study highlights how neoliberal multiculturalism operates as rhetoric that champions the cultural and economic rights of minorities, while masking policy stances that negate these rights. We demonstrate how this is linked to the composition of the channels eventually included on the DTT platform.

New Publication: Pianko, Zionism and the Roads Not Taken

Pianko, Noam. Zionism and the Roads Not Taken. Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010.

 

 

URL: http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-22184-1

 

Keywords: Zionism, Philosophy, Simon Rawidowicz, Mordecai Kaplan, Hans Kohn, Zionism: Criticism, Political Theory