By Barry Rubin
Golda Meir once said that a bad press was better than a good epitaph. In other words, pragmatic considerations must take precedence over public relations.
Sometimes it seems as if contemporary Israeli governments have forgotten that concept. Yet in general, especially where it counts, this principle continues to prevail in Israel.
By Curtis R. Ryan
While democracy has proven to be a fragile and elusive form of politics in the modern Arab world, Islamist movements have flourished–ranging from grass-roots pro-democracy activism to militant jihadism and terrorism. Whether Arab politics witnesses more political liberalization in the near future will depend in large part on the nature of Islamist movements, as well as ruling regimes’ reactions to them. This article examines the broad range of Islamist alternatives within one of the more liberalizing Arab states–the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan–with a view to understanding the depth and breadth of Islamist forms of political mobilization.
Parade and Concert Highlight Birthday Bash
By Fern Sidman
New York City’s fashionable Fifth Avenue was transformed in to a sea of blue and white as crystal clear blue skies, a searing sun, Israeli music and thousands of marchers and spectators were the order of the day on Sunday, June 1st at the 44th annual Salute to Israel parade. As Israel celebrated the 60th anniversary since its creation as a modern state, Jews and non-Jews spanning the globe made sure this party was held in grand style. As thousands of marchers representing a vast array of Yeshivos, Jewish Day Schools, synagogues, temples, service organizations, community centers, Jewish businesses and Israeli government agencies gathered on side streets awaiting their turn to join the parade, tens of thousands of spectators, holding Israeli flags lined both sides of Fifth Avenue all the way up to 86th Street to pay homage to the Jewish State.
By Barry Rubin
Engagement doesn’t always produce marriage. In the U.S.-Iran case, diplomatic engagements have been repeatedly disastrous. Yet many think the idea of engagement was just invented and never tried.[1]
By Wolfgang G. Schwanitz
Amin al-Husaini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, remains a controversial figure. The Palestinian leader, who was born in 1895 and died in 1974, first sparked controversy during his lifetime. As an officer in the Ottoman army during the First World War, he implemented the German idea of organizing jihad and terror behind enemy lines. (See my discussion here.) Later, he led the resistance against the British mandate authority in Palestine during uprisings in 1929 and in 1936. He fiercely opposed Jewish settlement.
By Phyllis Chesler (Written with the help of Fern Sidman)
As a child, my mother took me to the Radio City Music Hall to see the dazzling, long-limbed Rockettes dance. For decades, the Music Hall symbolized glitzy entertainment, New York style. Radio City was also where I went when I was interviewed on NBC and when I dined at the Big Band-era Rainbow Room, a 65th floor precursor to and survivor of the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. The Rainbow Room also has windows that look out onto the immediate world.
On Wednesday evening, May 7th, Jews around the world celebrated the miraculous 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel as a modern state. In New York City, an historic extravaganza took place at Radio City Music Hall. An attempt to Palestinianize this Art Deco palace also took place. It failed, it did not interrupt the considerable joy within but still, the Haters are everywhere, there is no event they do not picket.
By Fern Sidman
As Jews around the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel as a modern state, the annual Yom Ha’Atzmaout (Israeli Independence Day) festivities in New York took place amidst a backdrop of controversy and protest outside of Radio City Music Hall on Wednesday evening May 7th.
At a gala, star studded musical event sponsored by the UJA-Federation, thousands of supporters of Israel filed into the landmark edifice to hear a historic mix of all star talent including Israeli stars David Broza, Idan Raichel, Rami Kleinstein, Habanot Nechama and Yael Naim. Also appearing on the bill were top American performer and Hasidic reggae phenomenon Matisyahu, recent MacArthur Genius Award winner John Zorn and “Late Show With David Letterman” band-leader Paul Shaffer. The event also included a moving tribute to Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terror as part of Israel’s Memorial Day.
by Daniel Pipes*
Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course, was one; the other was Pakistan.
They make an interesting, if infrequently-compared pair. Pakistan’s experience with widespread poverty, near-constant internal turmoil, and external tensions, culminating in its current status as near-rogue state, suggests the perils that Israel avoided, with its stable, liberal political culture, dynamic economy, cutting-edge high-tech sector, lively culture, and impressive social cohesion.
By Phyllis Chesler
I can’t remember a time when Israel was not central to my imagination both as a model for heroism and as a transcendent, miraculous, reality. From childhood on, Zionism was an ever-evolving example of political, theological, historical, and personal liberation.
I was born in 1940 and grew up in an Orthodox family in Borough Park. In 1946, I started learning Hebrew. And, in 1948, I “rebelled.” I joined Hashomer Ha’Tzair, a left-wing socialist Zionist youth group. Within a few years, I joined Ain Harod, a group to the left of Hashomer. In the early 1950s, I packed machine gun parts for Israel. Both Hashomer and Ain Harod shared a vision of Jews and Arabs living together in the Holy Land. This utopian, agrarian vision, this defiant form of idealism, got me embroiled in dangerous adventures in the Islamic world but in Israel too.
by Ilan Pappé
Oneworld Publications, 2006. 256 pp. $27.50
Book review by Seth J. Frantzman*
Among many Israeli academics and Western revisionists, it has become fashionable to examine Israel’s war of independence from an Arab perspective in which Jews were the aggressors and Arabs the victims.[1] This trend began in 1989 with works by Ben-Gurion University professor Benny Morris[2] and Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim,[3] and developed further with the writings of the late Hebrew University anthropologist Baruch Kimmerling,[4] Neve Gordon[5] at Ben-Gurion University, and Meron Benvenisti,[6] a political scientist who served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem between 1971 and 1978.
by Steven Shamrak
There are many lands around the world that have been occupied not so long ago by other countries. Many of them are still subjugated to the rule of an occupying power. They were conquered during offensive or defensive wars, throughout the process of establishment of statehood or as a part of colonial and imperial policy. The following is a far from complete list of the currently occupied lands:
by Diana Muir*
“A land without a people for a people without a land” is one of the most oft-cited phrases in the literature of Zionism—and perhaps also the most problematic. Anti-Zionists cite the phrase as a perfect encapsulation of the fundamental injustice of Zionism: that early Zionists believed Palestine was uninhabited,[1] that they denied—and continue to reject—the existence of a distinct Palestinian culture,[2] and even as evidence that Zionists always planned on an ethnic cleansing of the Arab population.[3] Such assertions are without basis in fact: They both deny awareness on the part of early Zionists of the presence of Arabs in Palestine and exaggerate the coalescence of a Palestinian national identity, which in reality only developed in reaction to Zionist immigration.[4] Nor is it true, as many anti-Zionists still assert, that early Zionists widely employed the phrase.
by Asaf Romirowsky*
The Palestinian narrative sees Israel’s 1948 War of Independence as the al Naqba — “the catastrophe.” The birth of a sovereign Jewish state is perceived to be the root of all evil because this supposedly solidified how the small Jewish community robbed the Palestinians of their land.
That is the recurring mantra found in Arab historiography — a hypersensitive focus on discrimination and inequality. In general, Arab scholars tend to ignore the huge corpus of materials found in the archives on the war and zoom in on what are legitimate or illegitimate claims, using U.N. resolutions as the be all and end all.
By Fern Sidman
Several renowned academics and researchers participated in a most revealing and highly informative event on Sunday, March 30th entitled, “Columbia and the Nazis: New Research, New Concerns”. The event, designated as a special session of the Organization of American Historians annual conference was held at The Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and was sponsored by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
The session was chaired by esteemed historian and prolific author, Dr. Rafael Medoff. Dr. Medoff is the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and has recently co-authored a book with former New York City Mayor Ed Koch titled, “The Koch Papers: My Fight Against Anti-Semitism” (Palgrave MacMillan).
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