Lenny Ben David on The Arab Lobby by Mitchell Bard
Jewish Political Studies Review 23:1-2 (Spring 2011) In January 2011, a group of distinguished ex-legislators and diplomats sent a letter to President Obama[1] advocating a new American policy in the Middle East. In effect, they called on Obama to impose a solution on the Israelis and the Palestinians. The writers objected to “Israel’s occupation, the […]
Why Is Israel’s Presence in the Territories Still Called “Occupation”?
When an armed force holds territory beyond its own national borders, the term “occupation” readily comes to mind. However, not all the factual situations that we commonly think of as “occupation” fall within the limited scope of the term “occupation” as defined in international law.
Asaf Romirowsky on Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America by Kenneth L. Marcus
Jewish Political Studies Review 23:1-2 (Spring 2011) Why has the position of Jews at American universities deteriorated in the past decade and what can be done about it? Understanding the history of this dilemma requires going back a number of years. In 2003 the social commentator Stanley Kurtz testified before the House Subcommittee on Select […]
Nidra Poller on Un Enfant Est Mort (A Child is Dead): Netzarim, 30 Septembre 2000, by Charles Enderlin
30 September 2000, Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. State-owned France 2 TV airs footage of the allegedly fatal shooting, in real time, of a Palestinian youth and the critical wounding of his father, “targeted by gunfire from the Israeli position.” The news report, distributed free of charge to international media, created the icon of the Second Intifada, Muhammad al-Dura.
Rivkah Fishman-Duker on A Murder among Friends: Uri Avnery – A Story of Political Warfare by Amnon Lord
Jewish Political Studies Review 23:1-2 (Spring 2011) Who Is Uri Avnery? Uri Avnery, octogenarian icon of Israel’s cultural and political left, is indeed a worthy subject of a serious study. Better known in Europe than in the United States, Avnery has been active in Israel’s political scene since the late 1930s, when today’s state of […]
The Jerusalem Jewish Community, Ottoman Authorities, and Arab Population in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century: A Chapter of Local History
This paper investigates the relations in the second half of that century between one minority group in the city (the Jewish community) and the Ottoman authorities in Jerusalem and in Damascus, the capital of the Sancak, as well as the Jewish community’s relations with the Arab population of Jerusalem.
From the Editors
Jewish Political Studies Review 23:1-2 (Spring 2011) This issue begins with an essay by Dexter Van Zile in which he analyzes one of the major sources of anti-Zionist aggression in mainstream Protestant churches – the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center headquartered in Jerusalem. This center’s modus operandi is to investigate and scrutinize Israel, Jews, and Judaism. At the […]
Sarah Schmidt on Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s Founding Story by M.M. Silver
By showing how the representation of historical events in Exodus reflected Uris’s need to define for himself a stronger identity as a Jew, one that would also bolster the morale of American Jews in post-Holocaust America, Silver frames his central argument: though in Exodus Uris simplified some facts and distorted others, he provided a vast amount of information about Jewish history and popularized the Zionist narrative, providing examples of Jewish heroism that erased more conventional, “lachrymose” accounts of Jewish history.[1] ThusExodus played a vital role in the recovery of Jewish self-confidence after the devastation of the Holocaust and inspired American Jews to display openly their ethnic pride in a Jewish state.
“Shaking the Dust Off” The Story of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Forgotten Chronicler, Ruben Feldschu (Ben Shem)
Ruben Feldschu (Ben Shem) (1900-1980) was one of the best known and most prolific figures of the Zionist Right in interwar Poland. A proficient Hebraist, he kept a detailed journal of events in German-occupied Warsaw. That diary is a meticulous and excruciating chronicle of daily life and death and a poignant work of literature. Miraculously, Feldschu managed to preserve more than eight hundred pages of notes through his escape from the ghetto, more than a year in hiding, and during a difficult
Holocaust Remembrance in the Council of Europe: Deplorable Victims and Evil Ideologies without Perpetrators
The current European politics of Holocaust remembrance, with its interplay of multiple perspectives of Holocaust history, is marked by the hijacking of the Jewish perspective by including numerous other real and self-claiming victim groups under the Holocaust definition, very general and superficial feelings of shame, and the ascription of a role-model character to the righteous among nations for present-day good citizenship behavior.
The “Sajmište” (Exhibition Grounds) in Semlin, Serbia: The Changing of Memory
In 1937 a national exhibition site opened in Belgrade. Originally intended to represent indigenous advancements, in 1941 it became a Nazi concentration camp called Sajmište and its main use became the extermination of Jewish women, children, and elderly. This was not recognized until the 1980s; until then the climate was one of socialism. During the nationalist era, history was propagandized by the state to suit its own purposes, and truth was concealed.
Watching the Pro-Israeli Academic Watchers
Although anti-Israeli activity on campus was evident in the 1980s and 1990s, the resolutions at the notorious World Conference against Racism in Durban in August 2001 led to an upsurge in such efforts and also to the founding of three academic watch organizations in 2002. The largest of these organizations is the U.S.-based Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which is run by the academic community itself. Campus Watch, also U.S.-based, is part of the well-established Middle East Forum and foc
Anti-Zionist Expression on the UK Campus: Free Speech or Hate Speech?
The last few years have witnessed an explosion of anti-Zionist rhetoric on university campuses across the United Kingdom. Encouraged by the University and College Union’s annual calls for discriminatory measures against Israeli institutions and academics, the rhetoric has become even more strident since Operation Cast Lead. A recent boycott-divestment-sanctions campus tour explicitly invoked anti-Semitic tropes. The consequently hostile environment for Jewish students has jeopardized their educ
Wolfgang Schwanitz on The Jewish Factor in the Relations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union 1933-1941, by Yosef Govrin
Nazis, Jews, and Soviets
The Jewish Factor in the Relations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union 1933-1941, by Yosef Govrin, Vallentine Mitchell, 2009. Reviewed by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz
Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz on The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses, by Manfred Gerstenfeld
The Holocaust and Its Denial
The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses, by Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Institute for Global Jewish Affairs, Anti-Defamation League, 2009. Reviewed by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
