New Article: Greene, Israel’s Two States Debate

Greene, Toby. “Israel’s Two States Debate.” International Affairs 91.5 (2015): 1009-1026.
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12395
 
Abstract

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is of enormous interest to scholars and policy-makers, yet the internal Israeli policy debate on this issue is often overlooked or oversimplified. It is impossible to understand Israeli actions, the constraints on Israeli decision-makers and the trajectory of the conflict itself without a deeper understanding of this debate. This article presents a framework for categorizing the leading policy prescriptions currently advocated in Israel with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drawing on public statements by politicians and leading think-tanks, and surveys of public opinion. The most discussed Israeli policy options are presented as follows: maintain the status quo; proactively move towards two states through either a negotiated agreement (Plan A) or unilateral separation (Plan B); or entrench Israeli presence in the West Bank through settlement expansion and annexation. Various public opinion surveys show the extent to which the Israeli public is divided on the issues, and an analysis of Israel’s 2013–14 coalition demonstrates how all these approaches were being promoted simultaneously within the same cabinet, contributing to policy incoherence. The article concludes by outlining how Palestinian and international actions are influencing the Israeli debate, and argues that a move away from the status quo will require decisive Israeli leadership. It also suggests that third party attempts to impose terms for resolving the conflict that do not respond to concerns held widely in Israel are likely to fuel the argument of the status quo camp in the Israeli debate.

 

 

 

Dissertation: Harel, “The eternal nation does not fear a long road”: An Ethnography of Jewish Settlers in Israel/Palestine

Harel, Assaf. “The eternal nation does not fear a long road”: An Ethnography of Jewish Settlers in Israel/Palestine, PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 2015.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3VD71FW

 

Abstract

This is an ethnography of Jewish settlers in Israel/Palestine. Studies of religiously motivated settlers in the occupied territories indicate the intricate ties between settlement practices and a Jewish theology about the advent of redemption. This messianic theology binds future redemption with the maintenance of a physical union between Jews and the “Land of Israel.” However, among settlers themselves, the dominance of this messianic theology has been undermined by postmodernity and most notably by a series of Israeli territorial withdrawals that have contradicted the promise of redemption. These days, the religiously motivated settler population is divided among theological and ideological lines that pertain, among others issues, to the meaning of redemption and its relation to the state of Israel. This dissertation begins with an investigation of the impact of the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip upon settlers and proceeds to compare three groups of religiously motivated settlers in the West Bank: an elite Religious Zionist settlement, settlers who engage in peacemaking activities with Palestinians, and settlers who act violently against Palestinians. Through a comparison of these different groups, this dissertation demonstrates that while messianism remains a central force in the realities of Jewish settlements and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it exists these days in more diversified forms than before. In addition, this ethnography illustrates how religion both underlies and undermines differences between Israelis and Palestinians and argues that local communities and religious leaders should be included in peace processes. Finally, by examining how messianic conceptions of time among different groups of Jewish settlers connect to their settlement practices, this study reveals the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be as much about time as it is about space. Accordingly, this dissertation has broader implications for understanding the contemporary role of religion and time within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the political struggles of the Middle East.

 

 

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: Selengut, Our Promised Land: Faith and Militant Zionism in Israeli Settlements

Selengut, Charles. Our Promised Land: Faith and Militant Zionism in Israeli Settlements Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

 

 

Our Promised Land takes readers inside radical Israeli settlements to explore how they were formed, what the people in them believe, and their role in the Middle East today. Charles Selengut analyzes the emergence of the radical Israeli Messianic Zionist movement, which advocates Jewish settlement and sovereignty over the whole of biblical Israel as a religious obligation and as the means of world transformation. The movement has established scores of controversial settlements throughout the contested West Bank, bringing more than 300,000 Jews to the area. Messianic Zionism is a fundamentalist movement but wields considerable political power.

Our Promised Land, which draws on years of research and interviews in these settlements, offers an intimate and nuanced look at Messianic Zionism, life in the settlements, connections with the worldwide Christian community, and the impact on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Selengut offers an in-depth exploration of a topic that is often mentioned in the headlines but little understood.

 

 

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Rise of the Settlements
2. From Zionism to Messianic Nationalism
3. Faith, Culture, and Community Life
4. Inside The Settlements: Portraits, Conversations, and Experiences
5. Judaism, Religious Nationalism, and the Middle East Conflict
A Note on Research Methods
Notes
Glossary
Key Figures
About the Author
Charles Selengut is professor of sociology at Morris College and a former professor of religion at Drew University. He is the author of several books, including Sacred Fury: Understanding Religious Violence.

 

 

New Article: Haklai, Israeli Settlers in the West Bank in Comparative Perspective

Haklai, Oded. “The Decisive Path of State Indecisiveness: Israeli Settlers in the West Bank in Comparative Perspective.” In Settlers in Contested Lands. Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts (ed. Oded Haklai & Neophytos Loizides; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014): 17-39.

 

 

Excerpt

Many analysts identify Israeli settlements in the territories Israel conquered in the 1967 war as one of the key issues that needs to be resolved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The significance of settlers in the context of this conflict derives from the conventional perception that partition of the territory into two sovereign states is the preferred and most feasible conflict resolution mechanism. More generally, partition solutions to ethnonational conflict rely on the assumption that the intensity of hostilities between the warring ethnic groups makes it impossible for them to live peacefully together in a single state. The underpinning, usually implicit, premise is that ethnic sorting is required for such conflict management; Israeli settlements in the territories designated for a Palestinian stat are seen as an impediment in this quest.

 

 

New Article: Zemach, International Law and the Future of Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories

Zemach, Ariel. “Frog in the Milk Vat: International Law and the Future of Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” American University International Law Review 30.1 (2015): 53-100.

 
URL: http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/amuilr30&div=7

 
Excerpt

State Responsibility Rules provide illegally implanted settlers with protection that is weaker but broader than that they enjoy under international human rights law. International human rights law may prohibit the repatriation of certain settlers. Such protection is not available under State Responsibility Rules. Yet, the interests of individual settlers may support an occupant being exempt from its obligation to dismantle illegally established settlements even if international human rights law allows this measure. Such exemption neither depends on the contours of human rights contained in international human rights treaties of which the occupant is a signatory, nor does it have to be justified under a strict balancing-ofinterest analysis. Rather, State Responsibility Rules exempt an occupant from eliminating the consequences of its illegal conduct whenever such measure would entail the forceful eviction of a large number of individuals from their homes. Israel is therefore allowed, but is not required, to repatriate the settlers it has transferred into the Arab territories it occupies. The absence of a duty to repatriate the settlers allows for a strong argument in favor of including nonrepatriation within the sphere of interests that Israel may legitimately promote in negotiating the end of occupation.

 

 

New Article: Canetti et al, Exposure to Violence and Support for Compromise

Canetti, Daphna, Julia Elad-Strenger, Iris Lavi, Dana Guy, and Daniel Bar-Tal. “Exposure to Violence, Ethos of Conflict, and Support for Compromise. Surveys in Israel, East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza.” Journal of Conflict Resolution (early view; online first).

 
 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022002715569771

 

Abstract

Does ongoing exposure to political violence prompt subject groups to support or oppose compromise in situations of intractable conflict? If so, what is the mechanism underlying these processes? Political scholarship neither offers conclusive arguments nor sufficiently addresses individual-level forms of exposure to violence in the context of political conflict, particularly the factors mediating political outcomes. We address this by looking at the impact of exposure to political violence, psychological distress, perceived threat, and ethos of conflict on support for political compromise. A mediated model is hypothesized whereby exposure to political violence provokes support for the ethos of conflict and hinders support for compromise through perceived psychological distress and perceived national threat. We examined representative samples of two parties to the same conflict: Israelis (N = 781) and Palestinians from Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank (N = 1,196). The study’s main conclusion is that ethos of conflict serves as a mediating variable in the relationship between exposure to violence and attitudes toward peaceful settlement of the conflict.

 
 
 

New Article: Livio, Constructions of Space in the Discourse of Israeli Military Refuseniks

Livio, Oren. “The Path of Least Resistance: Constructions of Space in the Discourse of Israeli Military Refuseniks.” Discourse, Context and Media (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2015.02.002

 

Abstract

In this article I examine the ways in which Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories use spatial representations and metaphors in discourse explaining their decision to refuse. Using Lefebvre’s (1995) framework regarding spaces of representation as sites of political struggle, I analyze how selective refuseniks construct the Territories as a space of pollution, irrationality, disorder and death, expressing fear that these qualities might contaminate Israeli space, and thus implicitly promoting a separatist logic of exclusion. Refuseniks employ metaphors of movement to portray the transition from ‘here’ to ‘there’ as a shift into an alternate universe, and attempt to appropriate hegemonic discursive conceptualizations associated with three culturally loaded spaces: the prison, the Jewish settlements, and Nazi Germany. The ambivalent dialectics of dominant and resistant ideologies in refuseniks’ discourse and their cultural implications are discussed.

 

New Article: Gazit, Jewish Settlers’ Violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Gazit, Nir. “State-sponsored Vigilantism: Jewish Settlers’ Violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Sociology 49.3 (2015): 438-54.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038514526648

 

Abstract

This article examines the patterns and political implications of Jewish settler violence and vigilantism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Rather than viewing these attacks as deviant social behaviour and a by-product of the political chaos in the West Bank, this article sees settler violence as an informal political mechanism that structures and reproduces political control in the service of the state. The analysis presents the structural and agential dimensions of this mechanism, and evaluates its political significance in the overall Israeli control system in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It concludes that the informal cooperation between the settlers and the Israeli soldiers represents a unique instance of state collusion and vigilantism, wherein the very same structural forces that undermine state authority also generate casual mechanisms that compensate it.

New Article: Beinin, Regrouping in the Absence of a Two-State Solution

Beinin, Joel. “Coexistence, Equality, and Universal Principles in Israel/Palestine: Regrouping in the Absence of a Two-State Solution.” Tikkun 30.2 (2015): 9-15.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tikkun/v030/30.2.beinin.html

 

Excerpt

The inordinate focus on a Palestinian state has diverted attention from the fate of the Palestinian people. The conditions of many Palestinians — citizens of Israel, inhabitants of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq — have deteriorated dramatically since 2000. Evictions of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan by messianic religious-nationalist settlers, the expansion of settlements to surround East Jerusalem and prevent its return to Palestinian rule, home demolitions and disruption of normal economic and academic life throughout the West Bank, the siege (tighter or looser as Israel chooses) imposed on the population of the Gaza Strip, attacks on refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, insecure and dysfunctional conditions throughout Iraq — all these have taken a toll on Palestinians. The most urgent task is to focus on the present and future conditions of actual Palestinians, not to speculate on the nature of a state or states that have little chance of coming into existence anytime soon.

This means exposing and resisting Israeli efforts to diminish the Palestinian presence through various mechanisms of expulsion. It means dismantling the separation barrier and other infrastructures that separate Palestinian communities, including the massive checkpoints at Qalandiya and Bethlehem in the West Bank that are effectively international frontier posts, and opposing the continuing confiscation of lands for new settlements and the violent campaign of settler fanatics like the “Hilltop Youth” to terrorize Palestinian farmers and shepherds. It means demanding an end to Israeli occupation of all the lands conquered in 1967. It means advocating the full equality, including individual and collective rights, of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Perhaps most painfully for some, but nonetheless absolutely necessary, it means educating ourselves about and recognizing the full extent of the Palestinian Nakba, whose effects continue today. Resolution of the conflict necessitates that we confront our moral obligations as Jews, as Americans, and as global citizens to acknowledge responsibility, make restitution, and pay compensation.

 

ToC: Biography 37.2 (2014); special issue: Life in Occupied Palestine

Volume 37, Number 2, Spring 2014

Table of Contents

Life in Occupied Palestine

Guest Editors: Cynthia G. Franklin Morgan Cooper& Ibrahim G. Aoudé

Dedication

p. v

Editor’s Introduction

Life in Occupied Palestine: Three Cafés and a Special Issue

pp. vii-xlviii

Cynthia G. Franklin, Morgan Cooper, Ibrahim G. Aoudé

Articles

Section One: Borders, Journeys, Home

Exiled at Home: Writing Return and the Palestinian Home

pp. 377-397

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Sarah Ihmoud

After the Nakba in Nuba: A Palestinian Villager’s Diary, 1949

pp. 398-450

Alex Winder

Not Just a Picnic: Settler Colonialism, Mobility, and Identity among Palestinians in Israel

pp. 451-473

Magid Shihade

Locked Out

pp. 474-475

Lina Hesham AlSharif

Once Upon a Border: The Secret Lives of Resistance—the Case of the Palestinian Village of al-Marja, 1949–1967

pp. 476-504

Honaida Ghanim

Section Two: Invasions, Incarcerations, and Insurgent Imagination

Incidental Insurgents: An Interview with Ruanne Abou Rahme

pp. 507-515

Morgan Cooper

Towards a New Language of Liberation: An Interview with Raja Shehadeh

pp. 516-523

Cynthia G. Franklin

Gaza Writes Back: Narrating Palestine

pp. 524-537

Refaat R. Alareer

Write What You Know

pp. 538-539

Lina Hesham Alsharif

Dreaming of Never Land

pp. 540-555

Sonia Nimr

“Food is not our issue”: Reflections on Hunger Striking

pp. 556-559

Sa’ed Omar

Section Three: Reciprocal Solidarities and Other Revolutionary Relations

From the West Bank: Letters and Acts of Resistance

pp. 563-605

Yassmine Saleh Hamayel, Islah Jad

Life in Abu Dis Continues Quietly

pp. 606-663

Rima Najjar

Traveling as a Palestinian

pp. 664-679

Yousef M. Aljamal

Reciprocal Solidarity: Where the Black and Palestinian Queer Struggles Meet

pp. 680-705

Sa’ed Atshan, Darnell L. Moore

Section Four: Forging a Just Future

The “I” in BDS: Individual Creativity and Responsibility in the Context of Collective Praxis — an Interview With Omar Barghouti and Falastine Dwikat

pp. 709-719

Ibrahim G. Aoudé, Morgan Cooper, Cynthia G. Franklin

---

Contributors

pp. 720-723

New Article: Hirschhorn, The Jewish-American Makings of the West Bank Settlement of Efrat

Hirschhorn, Sara Yael. “The Origins of the Redemption in Occupied Suburbia? The Jewish-American Makings of the West Bank Settlement of Efrat, 1973–87.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.2 (2015): 269-84.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2014.941821

 

Abstract

Founded primarily by Jewish-American immigrants after the 1973 Arab–Israeli war, Efrat has emerged as one of the most highly recognizable settlements in the occupied territories. Drawing on archival materials, the periodical press, and interviews never before brought to light, this article both explores the untold history of this ‘city on a hilltop’ as the product of a quadrilateral relationship between American–Israelis, the Israeli government, the native Israeli settler movement, and local Palestinian communities, as well as reconstructing the discourses in the making of Efrat, which combine religio-political imperatives alongside a deeply Americanized vision of building new, utopian, suburbanized communities in the occupied territories, during its formative years between 1973 and 1987.

Lecture: Hirschhorn, Rabbi Riskin and the Jewish-American Makings of the West Bank Settlement of Efrat

SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies  

EVENING LECTURE PROGRAMME

The Origin of the Redemption in Occupied Suburbia?: Rabbi Shlomo Riskin  and the Jewish-American Makings of the West Bank Settlement of Efrat since 1973

Dr. Sara Hirschhorn 

(Oxford University)

Wednesday 28 January 2015 – 5:30-7:00pm

Room B104, Brunei Gallery SOAS

 

This paper explores the role of Jewish-American immigrants in establishing the prominent West Bank settlement of Efrat (1973-).  It is a case-study from my forthcoming book City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement since 1967 (Harvard University Press) that examines the participation and discourses of the over 50,000 American-Israelis who live in the occupied territories today. Drawing on archival materials, the periodical press, and interviews never before brought to light, this article both explores the untold history of this settlement as the product of a dynamic and shifting quadrilateral relationship between American-Israelis, the Israeli government, the native Israeli settler movement, and local Palestinian communities.  This cultural-intellectual history of U.S.-Israel relations highlights how and why Jewish-American immigrants imported liberal values and rhetoric drawn from their activism in social movements of the 1960s in the United States into the illiberal settlement project since the 1967 war.

All Welcome 

This event is free and there is no need to book

 

New Article: Sasson et al, Does Taglit-Birthright Israel Foster Long-Distance Nationalism?

Sasson, Theodore, Michelle Shain, Shahar Hecht, Graham Wright, and Leonard Saxe. “Does Taglit-Birthright Israel Foster Long-Distance Nationalism?” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 20.4 (2014): 438-54.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537113.2014.969149

 

Abstract

Taglit-Birthright Israel has brought hundreds of thousands of diaspora Jewish young adults on tours of Israel. Drawing on data from a large-scale program evaluation, we ask how the program affects participants’ feelings of homeland attachment and political views on contentious homeland issues. North Americans who traveled to Israel with Taglit between 2010 and 2012 were surveyed together with a comparison group of applicants to the program who did not participate. In multivariate analysis, Taglit sharply increases feelings of connection to Israel but has no effect on attitudes concerning the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The program modestly increases scores on a “favorability” scale and modestly increases opposition to a possible division of Jerusalem in a future peace deal. In contrast to Benedict Anderson’s theory of long-distance nationalism, the findings suggest that feelings of homeland connection can be fostered without triggering ethnonationalist attitudes associated with the political right.

Reminder: How Jewish is the Jewish State? Conference at American University, Oct 28, 2014

See more here: https://israbib.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/conference-program-how-jewish-is-the-jewish-state-religion-and-society-in-israel-american-university-oct-28-2014/

“How Jewish Is the Jewish State?  Religion and Society in Israel” – Academic Conference at American University 

Tuesday, October 28, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Free with RSVP: http://www.american.edu/cas/israelstudies/rsvp  

This all day conference examines the separation of state and religion in Israel, looks into the treatment and the internal structure of non-Jews in the Jewish state, and asks about Jewish religious pluralism and Orthodox dominance. Leading experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States will speak on these questions, drawing upon their own scholarship, teaching, and variant experiences at several different institutions.   A complete conference program is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lc_F_g00uhs58ZayyBfJudXkF2rhiWUVoLuanaIa7Mg/edit?usp=sharing  Location: SIS Building Abramson Family Founders Room. Pre-paid parking is available in the School for International Service garage and Katzen Arts Center garage (campus map here).

“Israel at the Crossroads of Democracy, Nationalism and Religion”- Free lecture at American University

Tuesday, October 28, 7:30 PM 

Free with RSVP: http://www.american.edu/cas/israelstudies/rsvp  

Lecture by Moshe Halbertal, Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University, and a faculty member at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem, Israel.  Location: Mary Graydon Center (MGC) Rooms 4-5.  Free parking is available in the Katzen Arts Center garage and the Sports Center garage (campus map here).

New Book: Peters and Newman, eds. The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Peters, Joel and David Newman, eds. The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

 

URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415778626/

Abstract

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most prominent issues in world politics today. Few other issues have dominated the world’s headlines and have attracted such attention from policy makers, the academic community, political analysts, and the world’s media.

The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict offers a comprehensive and accessible overview of the most contentious and protracted political issue in the Middle East. Bringing together a range of top experts from Israel, Palestine, Europe and North America the Handbook tackles a range of topics including:

• The historical background to the conflict
• peace efforts
• domestic politics
• critical issues such as displacement, Jerusalem and settler movements
• the role of outside players such as the Arab states, the US and the EU

This Handbook provides the reader with an understanding of the complexity of the issues that need to be addressed in order to resolve the conflict, and a detailed examination of the varied interests of the actors involved. In-depth analysis of the conflict is supplemented by a chronology of the conflict, key documents and a range of maps.

The contributors are all leading authorities in their field and have published extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/peace process. Many have played a leading role in various Track II initiatives accompanying the peace process.

 

Table of Contents

Part 1: Competing Nationalisms

1. The Origins of Zionism Colin Schindler

2. The Palestinian National Movement: from self-rule to statehood Ahmad Samih Khalidi

Part 2:Narratives and Key Moments

3. Competing Israeli and Palestinan Narratives Paul Scham

4. The 1948 War: The Battle over History Kirsten E. Schulze

5. The First and Second Palestinian Intifadas Rami Nasrallah

6. The Camp David Summit: a Tale of Two Narratives Joel Peters

 

Part 3: Seeking Peace

7.The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: 1967-1993 Laura Zittrain Eisenberg

8. Peace Plans: 1993-2012 Galia Golan

Part 4: Issues

9.Palestinian Refugees Rex Brynen

10. Jerusalem Michael Dumper

11. Territory and Borders David Newman

12. Water Julie Trottier

13. Terrorism Magnus Norell

14. Religion Yehezkel Landau

15. Economics Arie Arnon

16. Unilaterlaism and Separation Gerald M. Steinberg

17. Gaza Joel Peters

Part 5: Domestic Actors

18.The Palestine Liberation Organization Nigel Parsons

19. The Palestinian Authority Nigel Parsons

20. Hamas Khaled Hroub

21. Palestinian Civil Society Michael Schulz

22. Gush Emunim and the Israeli Settler Movement David Newman

23. The Israeli Peace Movements Naomi Chazan

Part 6: International Engagement

24. Palestinian Citizens of Israel Amal Jamal

25. The United States: 1948- 1993 Steven L. Spiegel

26. The United States: 1993-2010 Steven L. Spiegel

27. Russia Robert O. Freedman

28. Europe Rosemary Hollis

29. The Arab World P. R. Kumaraswamy

30. The Jewish Diaspora and the Pro-Israel Lobby Dov Waxman

Chronology Steve Lutes

ToC: Israel Studies 19.3 (2014)

Israel Studies 19.3 (2014): Table of Contents

Special Section: Israel and the United States

From Bipartisanship to Dysergia: Trends in Congressional Actions Toward Israel

pp. 1-28

Amnon Cavari, Elan Nyer

A Tested Alliance: The American Airlift to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War

pp. 29-54

David Tal

Turning Point on the Road to Peace: The Government of Yitzhak Rabin and the Interim Agreement with Egypt (Sinai II)

pp. 55-80

Louise Fischer

Operation 1000 for the Settlement of Jewish-American Immigrants in the Occupied Territories

pp. 81-107

Sara Yael Hirschhorn

Articles

Golda Meir’s Reluctant Feminism: The Pre–State Years

pp. 108-133

Zvi Triger

Arab Jew in Palestine

pp. 134-153

Menachem Klein

“About 1000 Haredim, Members of Ha’eda Haharedit”: Linguistic Patterns and Rhetorical Functions of Generalizations in the Israeli News

pp. 154-186

Pnina Shukrun-Nagar

Reviews

---

Israel’s Security Networks: A Theoretical and Comparative Perspective by Gabriel Sheffer and Oren Barak (review)

pp. 187-188

Ami Pedahzur

---

Contributors

pp. 189-190

Conference Program: How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel, American University, Oct 28, 2014

“How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel”

October 28, 2014

American University, Washington, DC

Scholars are invited to attend “How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel,” a day-long academic conference on October 28, 2014 at American University in Washington, DC.  The conference is sponsored by American University’s Center for Israel Studies and Jewish Studies Program.  A limited number of travel subsidies are available for junior faculty and advanced graduate students.  Applications for travel subsidies are due September 15, 2014.  Notification will be made by October 1, 2014.

This conference examines the separation of state and religion in Israel, looks into the treatment and the internal structure of non-Jews in the Jewish state, and asks about Jewish religious pluralism and Orthodox dominance. Leading experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States will speak on these questions, drawing upon their own scholarship, teaching, and variant experiences at several different institutions.

Conference Chairs:
Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University and Chair of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich
Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, American University

Location: The conference will take place at American University in the School of International Service Abramson Family Founder’s Room.  The address of the university is 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.

Preliminary Program:

8:00-9:00 AM        Registration, Networking, and Coffee/Continental Breakfast

9:00-10:30 AM      Separation between State and Religion
Yedidia Stern ( Bar Ilan University/Israel Democracy Institute)  New Frontiers in the Struggle Between Religion and State
Eli Salzberger (Haifa University): Religion and State: Law in the Books versus Law in Action
Kimmy Caplan (Bar Ilan University): Orthodox Monopolies: A Trojan Horse?
Chair: Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, American University (AU)

10:30 AM        Coffee Break

11:00-1:00 PM     Non-Jews in the Jewish State
Ahmad Natour (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Islam and Muslims in the State of the Jews
Amal el-Sana Alh’jooj (McGill University, Montreal): Between Sharia Law, Israeli Law and Traditions: The Case of Bedouin Women in Israel
Ya’akov Ariel (University of North Carolina): Evangelical Christians in Israel
Nurit Novis Deutsch (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Attitudes among Religious Jews in Israel Towards Non-Jews
Moderator: Calvin Goldscheider, Scholar in Residence (AU)

1:00-2:30 PM     Lunch

2:30-4:30 PM         Jewish Pluralism
Michael A. Meyer (Hebrew Union College Cincinnati): Progressive Judaism, Israeli Style
Fania Oz-Salzberger (Haifa University): Secular Israel: Where from and where to?
Sara Hirschhorn (Oxford University): Religion among American Settlers
Gershon Greenberg (AU): Haredi Attitudes Towards Israeli Statehood
Chair: Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University and Chair of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich

4:30-5:30 PM        Reception

7:30 PM    Keynote: “Israel at the Crossroads of Democracy, Nationalism and Religion” Moshe Halbertal (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

This conference is generously supported by the Knapp Family Foundation.

 

A limited number of travel subsidies are available for junior faculty and advanced graduate students to attend the conference. Click here for details.

New Article: Ellis, Discursive Dilemmas for Israeli Religious Settlers

Ellis, Donald. “Three Discursive Dilemmas for Israeli Religious Settlers.” Discourse Studies 16.4 (2014): 473-87.

 

URL: http://dis.sagepub.com/content/16/4/473

 

Abstract

Israeli religious settlers live in contested territory that they claim is promised to them by God. The settlers are at the center of the Israeli–Palestinian dispute and are the recipients of international condemnation for their illegal behavior. Because the territories are neither sovereign nor legally recognized by Israel, their definition is open to construction. Religious settlers make arguments to satisfy three discursive dilemmas that must be solved in order to normalize their lives. They must 1) construct their own authenticity, 2) marginalize the native others, and 3) establish cultural authority. These dilemmas are explicated in this essay.

New Book: Enav, Israeliness in No Man’s Land

Enav, Yarden. Israeliness in No Man’s Land. Citizenship in the West Bank of Israel/Palestine. European University Studies. Series 19: Anthropology / Ethnology. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, and New York: Peter Lang, 2014.

This book is the result of ethnographic research carried out in the Academic College of Judea & Samaria (ACJS), located in the West Bank of Israel/Palestine. The book deals with Israeli citizenship and identity, and examines the ways in which it is being understood and imagined by ACJS students and teachers. The book also analyzes the Orange Zionist organizational culture of the ACJS. In the end, a new socio-political model of Israel/Palestine is offered: Israel as a Zionist Democracy.

Yarden Enav earned his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh(United Kingdom). Today he teaches in the department of Sociology & Anthropology at Ariel University (Israel) and the Open University of Israel.