New Book: Burla and Lawrence, eds. Australia and Israel

Burla, Shahar, and Dashiel Lawrence. Australia and Israel. A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2015.

 

 

Australia and the State of Israel have maintained a cordial if at times ambiguous relationship. The two countries are geographically isolated: strategic, economic and cultural interests lie increasingly with Asia for one, and with the US and the EU for the other. But for all that divides the two states, there is also much they share. Australia played an important role in the Jewish state’s establishment in 1948, and is home to the most Zionist centered Jewish diaspora globally. Jewishness for most Australian Jews has been shaped and defined by engagement with and support for Israel. At the heart of this engagement is a small but thriving Israeli community within the larger multicultural Australia.

Australia and Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship draws attention to the important historical and contemporary nexus between this diaspora and its imagined homeland. The collection also considers the ways in which these two states mobilise national myths and share environmental challenges. In recent time relations between the two states have been tested by the illegal use of Australian passports in 2010, the mysterious death of dual national Ben Zygier, and growing disquiet within the ranks of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens over Israel’s handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. One prominent world-wide issue is the Palestinian BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) movement, which has attracted sympathy and support that has brought about substantive differences of opinion regarding its legitimacy within the Jewish Australian community. These issues demonstrate the multifaceted and complex picture of two very different nations, that nevertheless share an abiding connection.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why the Book?
Shahar Burla and Dashiel Lawrence

Part One Australia and Israel – Diasporic Relationship

1 Rewriting the Rules of Engagement: New Australian Jewish
Connections with Israel
Dashiel Lawrence

2 The Personal, the Political and the Religious: Bnei Akiva
Australia and its Relationship with Israel
Ari Lander

3 Israeli Government and Diaspora Mobilisation: The Flotilla
to Gaza and the Australian Jewry as a Case Study
Shahar Burla

4 The Place of Hebrew and Israel Education in Australian
Jewish Schools
Suzanne Rutland and Zehavit Gross

5 The Ausraeli Approach: the Diasporic Identity of Israelis
in Australia
Ran Porat

Part Two Australia and Israel – Political and Cultural Relationship

6 Overcoming Water Scarcity and Inequity in Arid Lands:
Comparing Water Management in Australia and Israel
Dominic Skinner and Stephanie Galaitsi

7 Ben Zygier’s Story and Australia–Israel Relations
Ingrid Matthews

8 A Fight Worth Having: Rudd, Gillard, Israel and the
Australian Labor Party
Alex Benjamin Burston-Chorowicz

9 An Alliance of Forgetting: National Narratives of Legitimacy
on the Occasion of Israel–Australia’s Joint Stamp Issue
Commemorating the Battle of Beersheba
Micaela Sahhar

Part Three Australia, Israel and the Boycott Divestment and
Sanction Scheme

10 The Australian Greens and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Philip Mendes

11 Academic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Implications
for Australian–Israeli Relations
Ingrid Matthews and James Arvanitakis

Conclusion: First Cousinhood, Political Unease, and the Limits
of Comparison
Fania Oz-Salzberger

The Editors and Contributors
Index

 

Shahar Burla is a research Associate at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He is the author of Political Imagination in the Diaspora: The Construction of a Pro-Israeli Narrative (2013). He has received several awards, including a President’s Fellowship for outstanding PhD student, Bar-Ilan University and the Menahem Begin Foundation academic award.

Dashiel Lawrence is a doctoral candidate at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. His research interests include Jewish diaspora–Israel contemporary relations, and Jewish critics of Israel.

 

 

New Book: Patrick, America’s Forgotten Middle East Initiative

Patrick, Andrew. America’s Forgotten Middle East Initiative: The King-Crane Commission of 1919. London: Tauris, 2015.

 

Sent to the Middle East by Woodrow Wilson to ascertain the viability of self-determination in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, the King-Crane Commission of 1919 was America’s first foray into the region. The commission’s controversial recommendations included the rejection of the idea of a Jewish state in Syria, US intervention in the Middle East and the end of French colonial aspirations. The Commission’s recommendations proved inflammatory, even though its counsel on the question of the Palestinian mandate was eventually disregarded by Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau in favour of their own national interests. In the ensuing years, the Commission’s dismissal of claims by Zionist representatives like David Ben-Gurion on their ‘right to Palestine’ proved particularly divisive, with some historians labeling it prophetic and accurate, and others arguing that Commission members were biased and ill-informed. Here, in the first book-length analysis of the King-Crane report in nearly 50 years, Andrew Patrick chronicles the history of early US involvement in the region, and challenges extant interpretations of the turbulent relationship between the United States and the Middle East.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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: Lichtenstein, Prague Zionists and the Paris Peace Conference

Lichtenstein, Tatjana. “Jewish Power and Powerlessness: Prague Zionists and the Paris Peace Conference.” East European Jewish Affairs 44.1 (2014): 2-20.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501674.2014.904583

 

Abstract

This article explores how perceptions of Jewish power shaped the negotiations between Czechoslovak leaders and Jewish minority representatives at the time of the Paris Peace Conference. In the aftermath of the First World War, Prague-based Zionists embarked on a mission to convince Czechoslovak elites that attacks on Jews were detrimental to the internal stability of the new state and to Czechoslovak interests abroad. As Edvard Beneš, the head of the Czechoslovak delegation in Paris, worked to cultivate an image of the new state as more “Western” and “civilised” than other successor states – a strategy meant to garner international support for Czechoslovak territorial demands and its projected absorption of large minority populations – Jewish activists encouraged his uncertainty with regard to Jews’ influence on Western audiences and statesmen. They did so in order to convince him to accept their demands for special protection clauses for the new country’s Jews. The paper thus shows that the unprecedented victimisation of Jews and the upsurge in antisemitism during and after the war coexisted with a new bold and public Jewish activism. Yet, Jewish leaders did not in the end have the ability to convince Beneš and his colleagues to give in to international Jewish demands for special protection. Instead, they sought to cultivate a strategic alliance between the state’s Czech elite and the Jewish minority which centred on the claim that Czechoslovakia was a particularly welcoming and tolerant place for Jews, an image that would evolve into a significant component of the myth of Czechoslovakia as an island of democracy in Eastern Europe.

ToC: Israel Studies 18.1 (2013)

Israel Studies 18.1 (2013), Table of Contents:

 

1.  

   The De-politicization of Israeli Political Cartoons (pp. 1-30)

   Maya Balakirsky Katz

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.1

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.1

2.  

   From “Great History” to “Small History”: The Genesis of the Zionist Periodization (pp. 31-55)

   Hizky Shoham

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.31

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.31

3.  

    American “Welfare Politics”: American Involvement in Jerusalem During World War I (pp. 56-76)

   Abigail Jacobson

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.56

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.56

4.  

   All Quiet on the Eastern Front; Israel and the Issue of Reparations from East-Germany, 1951–1956 (pp. 77-100)

   Jacob Tovy

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.77

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.77

5.  

   Palestinian Armed Struggle, Israel’s Peace Camp, and the Unique Case of Fatah-Jerusalem (pp. 101-123)

   Hillel Cohen

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.101

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.101

6.  

   The Arab Minority in Israel; Challenges and Limits in Recent Disciplinary Approaches (pp. 124-145)

   Oded Haklai

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.124

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.124

7.  

   Shaping Israeli-Arab Identity in Hebrew Words—The Case of Sayed Kashua (pp. 146-169)

   Batya Shimony

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.146

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.146

8.  

    “The Hand of Esau in the Midst Here Too”—Uri Zvi Grinberg’s Poem “A Great Fear and the Moon” in Its Historical and Political Contexts (pp. 170-193)

   Tamar Wolf-Monzon

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.170

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.170

9. Notes on Contributors (pp. 194-195)

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.194

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.194

10. Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 196-198)

    DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.196

    Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.196

Cite: Schaffer, The Jewish Soldier in British War Service, 1899–1945

Schaffer, Gavin. “Unmasking the ‘Muscle Jew’: the Jewish Soldier in British War Service, 1899–1945.” Patterns of Prejudice 46.3-4 (2012): 375-396.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322X.2012.701809

 

Abstract

Constructions of Jews in twentieth-century Europe have been riddled throughout with inconsistencies and contradictions. However, some themes have been surprisingly persistent, none more so than constructions of Jews as weak, effeminate and cowardly. Schaffer looks at one significant set of responses to such characterizations, specifically at the rise of the ‘muscle Jew’ in Jewish and non-Jewish thinking. After the term was coined by Max Nordau at the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of the ‘muscle Jew’ came to represent a dominant current of Jewish identity reformulation. More recently, a series of scholars have come to understand the idea as a manifestation of Zionist ideology, a statement of a nationalist desire for Jewish reinvention in the face of endemic European antisemitism. By using the example of British Jewish service in the Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War, Schaffer argues rather that the idea of the ‘muscle Jew’ can be better understood as a reflection of Jewish desire for European integration, an attempt to present Jewish soldiers as equal to their non-Jewish equivalents. Moreover, he contends that the ‘muscle Jew’ needs to be understood as an idea rooted in the longue durée of Jewish history, one that represents only one strand of Jewish self-imagining.

Cite: Penkower, Jabotinsky, Bergson, and the Campaign for a Jewish Army

Penkower, Monty Noam. "Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, Hillel Kook-Peter Bergson, and the Campaign for a Jewish Army.” Modern Judaism 31.3 (2011): 332-374.

URL: http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/3/272.short

Abstract

On the morning of September 20, 1923, the Jewish Day of Atonement, a small ship was approaching the port town of Jaffa on the shore of Palestine. The ship, which had sailed from Alexandria, carried on its deck two young German-Jewish scholars who were to become—each in his own field—renowned personalities in the history of Jewish Studies in the 20th century. The first, the orientalist Shlomo Dov Goitein, continued sailing with the ship until its next station—the port of Haifa. The second, Gershom Scholem, who was welcomed on shore by his fiancé Escha Burchhardt, disembarked from the ship and arrived for the first time, as a Zionist, at his destination, where he stayed for the rest of his life. In his memoir Scholem describes the process of adaptation and integration in the new land as an easy one from the personal, social, and ideological point of view.¹ Nonetheless, on many occasions, he expressed discontentment with the local Jewish life, complaining about the cultural and political situation in Jerusalem.² The reasons for this discontent varied but they were mainly connected to the political developments in Palestine, to the direction that the Yishuv took, and to the dramatic events in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. This article concentrates on three important moments in the history of Zionism as well as in Scholem’s private life: first, the riots of 1929 and their aftermath; second, the realization of the destruction of European Jewry by the Yishuv in Palestine in 1943; and third, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Each of these events represents a turning point for the Jewish collective, as well as a turning point for Scholem as a private person on the way in the process of fulfilling his Zionist utopia.

Cite: Owen, Military Intelligence in Syria and Palestine, 1914-1918

Owen, Roger. “British and French Military Intelligence in Syria and Palestine, 1914-1918: Myths and Reality.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 38.1 (2011): 1-6.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cbjm/2011/00000038/00000001/art00001

Reviews: Glenda Abramson, Hebrew Writing of the First World War

Abramson, Glenda. Hebrew Writing of the First World War. London and Portland, Ore.: Vallentine Mitchell, 2008.

———-

Reviews: Tsila Ratner. Journal of Israeli History 28,2 (2009): 239-242.

 

Keywords: World War 1, Zionism, Literature, Poetry, Hameiri, Avigdor, Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, Tchernichowsky, Greenberg, Uri Zvi, Shofman, Gershon, Vogel, David, Reuveni, Aharon, Burla, Yehuda, Brenner, Yosef Haim

Reviews: James Renton, The Zionist Masquerade

Renton, James. The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914–1918. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Reviews: Daniel Gutwein. Journal of Israeli History, 28,2 (2009): 231-234 (link).