Reconstructed vs. Poststructural Palestine

The authors of this 2011 essay, "The Ethnographic Arriving of Palestine", Khaled Furani1 and Dan Rabinowitz, offer a thesis that

ethnographic engagement with Palestine since the nineteenth century [is]: biblical, Oriental, absent, and poststructural.

 They further claim that

the new admissibility of Palestine [as subjects of anthropological inquiry] is embedded in two interrelated epistemological-political conditions. First is the demystification of nations and the ethnic groups that formed them, and a corresponding surge in the legitimacy afforded to groups with counterclaims.

and they seek to propose 

an ethnography that draws upon postcolonial critique but goes beyond its common concerns..a future ethnography of Palestine could examine the theological underpinnings of the secular state, as a particular embodiment of sovereignty. To what extent does such a state enable cohabitation of people with different religions or with none at all? What are the regimes of tolerance that national sovereignty requires and how are they produced? How might the Palestinian notion of summud (persistence) address the prevalent devaluation of patience in classical and contemporary analyses of power?...How might Palestinian narratives of return (‘awdah) challenge the selfevident linearity of the secular sense of time?...Can the predicament of modern Palestinians help rehabilitate a forgotten vocabulary of social theory that includes idioms such as silence; invisibility, finitude; revelation, fate; exile, and absence? 

One definition of ethnography is "the recording and analysis of a culture or society, usually based on participant-observation and resulting in a written account of a people, place or institution" and another has it that ethnography is "a sociological method that explores how people live and make sense of their lives with one another in particular places. The focus might be on people and the meaning they produce through everyday interactions, or places, and the organizational logics that guide our activities."

The article does not mention identification as Southern Syria, or actions and practices that would continue to seek that ethnic identification.

An example I recently noticed is in the words of Hadash Party President, and former MK, an Mohammad Barakeh when he condemned the U.S. attack in Syria. As Haaretz reported, on his Facebook page he wrote: 

“the solution in Syria must be a diplomatic one, getting rid of ISIS terror and whoever supports it, maintaining the unity of Syria as a country and nation with all its constituent components.”

As a political scientist as well as a logical and rational person, I would suggest that the underlined phrase above contains an implicit recognition of the demand for the reconstruction, not a poststructural, of Greater Syria wherein the region of "Palestine", which never was a defined country in Arab/Islamic history, is considered but Southern Syria.

I would hope those who wrote this essay and those who have read it, take my suggestion into consideration.

^

Academic Boycott of Ariel in Action

First, a Call for Papers was issued to academics on a university-sponsored forum in Israel for a conference at Ariel University on May 6 on "The Nation-State Dealing with Inter-Cultural Conflicts".  One professor immediately wrote back asking that if persons from "an institute for the Israeli conquest called by a general's edict a university" are permitted to make announcements, this would be a step towards "dark apartheid".

Another responded that it is the second's democratic right not to attend and that his own feeling, after reading what he wrote, is to attend.

An American professor then reacted by writing in agreement with the second:

I am concerned.  I do not want and cannot allow my presence on this list to imply any acceptance or endorsement of an Israeli university illegally established in occupied lands.  If there is a decision to allow these invitations to be issued on this list I will ask to be removed from the list.

but was then informed by the third

I am only speaking for myself, but though it will be hard for me to lose such a great friend of the Jewish state, I truly feel that if I had to chose between the freedom of this forum and your presence in it, I would regretfully have to choose the former.

A fourth then noted

Professor ________, I don't understand how your presence on this list can imply acceptance or endorsement of Ariel when you have clearly stated otherwise. If failing to leave a collective (and especially a loose collective like this list) implicitly means taking personal moral responsibility for whatever is happening in this collective, you will get some pretty strange implications: 1) If the NY times publishes an article by a settler (as it sometimes does) you will have to cancel your subscription. 2)  If the US congress moves to support Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel you have to give up your US citizenship.  3)  If Turkey, Egypt, Russia and China continue to talk with Iran, all those nations who decided to impose sanctions on Iran should, by your logic, stop talking with them.

Your threat to leave the list is in fact a statement that not only do you want to excommunicate Ariel, but you also want to excommunicate people who don't necessarily agree with you that Ariel should be excommunicated. What is the next step? Excommunicating those who don't excommunicate those who don't excommunicate Ariel?  Please enlighten me,

The answer was

Dear ______, There is no question that any line one draws is arbitrary.  When does involvement in an institution that shares in the occupation implicate one in the occupation?  If the Israeli Council on Higher Education treats the school in Ariel as a University like any other in Israel, then if one does promotional reviews for one member of the CHE does that implicate one in a set of standard operating procedures that  includes treating Ariel and TAU as parallel institutions?  If the US government funds activities in central America I find repulsive, does that mean I don't pay my taxes at all, or simply refuse to work with any US government branches that are involved in Central America?  The point is not to find the line that is not arbitrary, but to make sure one finds a line and stands on it.  Otherwise, all slopes can be made so slippery that the conscience never has a chance to speak clearly.  Perhaps this is not the line I should stand on, but for those who find the idea of establishing an Israeli university on occupied land ethically repulsive, where do you think the line should be drawn?  My fear is that unless we can draw clear lines to isolate this phenomenon then dozens, then scores, then hundreds, then thousands of scholars all over the world will draw the line around Israel itself.

I couldn't restrain myself and asked:

"Illegally"?  Didn't the High Court of Justice permit its establishment?  Is the court only to be respected in certain cases?

This is the level of "higher education" (and yes, there still is another appeal,, I think, pending but the okay was given).

I checked backed, and the conversation had continued:

A fifth reaction:

I am not sure how I feel about ______'s position, but we should face the bigger issue: since the declaration of Ariel as a university we all find ourselves having to make a decision whether to draw a line and where that line should be. Should we accept Ariel as any other Israeli academic institution; should we treat individual members of Ariel University different than academics in other institutions; should we make a stand only about Ariel as an institution thus maintaining the same level of contact with faculty members there as we would with others elsewhere. Of course there are other options. This way or the other we must also acknowledge that the pressure around the world for boycotting the Israeli academia will only increase because of Ariel. The questions raised by ____ and ______ are just a precursor for an issue we will have to eventually address. 

Yet another professor:

The legal system strives to impose equal injunctions on all of us. This is why the modern iconography of Justitia portrays the goddess with a blindfold. Moral imperatives, on the other hand, are in the eyes of the beholder. Some of us do not discern anything blameworthy in the settlement movement in general and in the establishment of a university in Ariel in particular, nor do they find any fault in the rather unusual procedure of that institute's accreditation.  For such persons there seems to be no reason to stay away from, let alone, boycott,  Ariel's academic events. Another subset of this list's participants either take issue with anything having to do with the settlement movement, or insist on accreditation procedures which were, in their opinion, brushed aside in the case of Ariel. For individual members of this subset, the undersigned included, there seems to be a strong moral reason to keep away from all activities associated with the "university" of Ariel. My point is that since the issue is a moral, rather than a legal one, there seems to be no objectively "correct" response to this issue. It is a case of facing one's conscience and in matters such as these we are all lone riders.

A word about the role of the Supreme Court in this matter. In making a decision in this case, the Court will not be called upon to opine on the morality of the issue. This is not a part of its business. The petition to set aside the accreditation of Ariel, is based on much narrower grounds, to wit whether the administrative agency in charge of accreditation violated some key rules of our public law, e.g. the imperative of equality under the law, of not being led by corrupt motives etc. Even if eventually it will not detect some forms of illegality which must trigger its intervention, the question of morality will still remain the individual problem of each one of us, not the problem of the Court.

That drew this response

I think you’re missing the point.  This isn’t about the moral imperative “to keep away from all activities associated with the "university" of Ariel.”  No one is denying you or _______ the right to do that. I’m reading this string as a proposal to ban the rest of us from SEEING an invitation about activities at the University of Ariel (or ‘“university” of Ariel’ if you prefer). Seeing!!  As if an invitation is the worst type of political porn. I can’t help but wonder what comes next? When do we start refusing to eat in the same restaurant, go to the same wedding, beach, school as someone who is on an open listserv where, once in a while, they might see these invitations?  Or when do we refuse to sponsor a student or hire a colleague who doesn’t sign some promise never to look at invitations from the dreaded University? Or publish in a newspaper or journal that has deigned to publish something by someone in Ariel. It’s time to stop this nonsense. If you don’t like the invitation, hit delete or decline it. But don’t stop the rest of us from SEEING it. Not on the main Israeli social science listserv!!

P.S.  The names were removed to protect, er, whatever.

___________________________

The discussion goes on:

...    On the grounds that every server list belongs to its members, it seems to me reasonable that the members can decide who they will invite to join them in becoming members and using the list. On those grounds, I would support a move to ban from our lists people associated with the school that now flatters itself with the title of "university" in Ariel. Where I come from, such titles are earned very differently from the way this one was awarded.

    Unfortunately, I don't know how such a ban could enacted. Could we somehow electronically vote on it, for or against? And I don't know how, if enacted, such a ban could be enforced since, if I understand computers correctly, anyone with a computer keyboard can send messages to any list. Maybe, though, if a ban were announced, the people banned would be embarrassed to violate it. I wouldn't count on that though. Embarrassment doesn't seem to be a very powerful force in modern society.  

    At any rate,  I would not view such a ban as violating any principle of free speech or anyone's "right to know." Ariel employees can send their messages out via newspaper announcements, Arutz Sheva, or web sites associated with their school. No one stops them from doing that, and if they would do only that, I would be pleased not to have to delete their mail from my computer. By the way, for me it is not a simple matter of deletion, because I have to look at each message I receive to see where it comes from and why it deserves deletion.

     By the way, I am sure that, as time passes, the school in Ariel will attract some moderate teachers who are desperate for academic employment in these hard times, just as some settlements have absorbed similar people who are desperate for relatively cheap housing. That is the long-term strategy of right-wing ministers, and if it works out as they hope, we inside the Green Line will more and more confront the difficulty of deciding how to relate, professionally and personally, to those teachers in Ariel.

^

Someone Notice Anti-Semitism?

Caught this on an academic list:



Seminar series on "Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective" at McGill University

Seminar series on "Antisemitism, Discrimination, Human Rights and International Law" at Harvard University

Seminar series on "Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective" at Fordham University


Do you think academia have realized that something is afoot?

Something evil and dangerous.

^

Post-modern Interpretation of Violence

No wonder so many liberals/progressives support the Pals.:-

...Political violence in particular is, by design and by default, a set of signifying practices involving elaborate cultural codes, serving as illustrations of what David Apter (1996:14) refers to as ‘a discourse theory of political violence’. Apter (1996:17) writes that political violence ‘is an extreme form of interpretative action. The discourse establishes its own communicative fields within which political movements are defined and around which boundaries are established’. He makes a compelling case that it is essential that we at least begin to give greater emphasis to the relationship between violence and ommunication...Accepting the idea that states are perpetrators of political violence, and that particular kinds of violence are used to ‘send a message’, full-scale warfare can easilybe understood as a means of political communication.

Andrew Calabrese, University of Colorado, "Sending a Message: Violence as political communication"


So, the Arabs are - just talking to us?

^

From Hartford to Samaria

Academic notice sent out for Ariel University Center:

הנכם מוזמנים להרצאתו של פרופ' דון אליס "תקשורת דליברטיבית וסכסוך אתנו-פוליטי" במסגרת הסמינר המחלקתי בבית הספר לתקשורת במרכז האוניברסיטאי אריאל.הרצאה תיערך ביום שני הקרוב, 2.4.12, בשעה 11:00 עד 12:30 בחדר 21.1.41 בבניין בית הספר לתקשורתפרופ' אליס הוא מרצה אורח בבית הספר לתקשורת

Prof. Don Ellis

"Deliberative Communication and Ethnopolitical Conflict"

Processes of deliberation are underappreciated for their applicability to ethnopolitical conflicts. In the talk I argue that processes of deliberation based on theories of democratic communication can help conflicting groups make decisions that are moral, engaged, legitimate, and open to change.

 

 

Go, Ariel!

 

P.S.  He's taught there.

 

^

The Immorality of "Moral Journalism"

Academia and extreme left-wing politics create a collusion:

‘Moral journalists’: The emergence of new intermediaries of news in an age of digital media


Carmit Wiesslitz, Ben-Gurion University, Israel and Tamar Ashuri, Ben-Gurion University and Sapir College, Israel

Abstract

The article examines how online journalism fosters new models of journalism that challenge journalistic values associated with modern era journalism. It focuses on the shift from ‘objective’ journalism to an ethical journalistic practice that aims to publicize a reality of suffering that is marginalized or even denied. We argue that the digital platforms facilitate the emergence of a new journalistic model – the model of the ‘moral journalist’. Unlike the ‘objective’ journalist who (supposedly) remains outside of events and reports only ‘facts’, and unlike the ‘advocate’ journalist who aims to bring about change by reporting on events in which they take part, the ‘moral journalist’ witnesses events that involve the suffering of others with the aim of changing the witnessed reality. The claims will be grounded in an analysis of one case study: the online journalistic activities of the members of ‘Machsom Watch’ – an all female organization whose members act to monitor the human rights of Palestinians at checkpoints set up by the Israeli army and post their reports on their website.

What's the problem, you ask?  Is the subject not a legitimate theme for research?

For sure.  No problem there.

But a "one-case study"?  Of that I've never heard.

Moreover, attaching the label "moral journalism" to a blatantly ideological left-wing advocacy group with extreme political aims that discriminates against the right-wing is pure academic immorality.

Who supervised the project?


UPDATE

Thanks to ChallahHuAkbar for this:

From the article:

Arguably, the women of Machsom Watch are not engaged in a journalist activity and by implication do not ascribe themselves as ‘journalists’; they are peace activists who are not employed by media institutions, nor do they obtain formal journalist training. Yet, we perceive them here as journalists, because in our conceptualization of this social role – a conception which is manifested in recent writings on civil journalism (e.g. Allen, 2009; Allen and Thorsen, 2009; Atton, 2003; Platon and Deuze, 2003; Wall, 2005) – the journalist in the postmodern digital era can be defined as the individual who gathers information with the aim of distributing it to the public. What counts as journalistic activity, therefore, is a function of the content of that activity, and not of the journalist’s training or the media organization in which the journalist operates.

Now do you understand?

^

The Return of Yael Sternhell

Yael Sternhell, 35, was a news anchor on Channel One TV in Israel from 1999-2002, previously at Galei Tzahal and Kol Yisrael.  Prejudiced, biased and far-left leaning, it was impossible for her to disguise it.  She eventually undertook an academic career in the US, and is back in Israel.

Well, she's back, claiming that in Israel of 2011, empathy toward the Palestinian side invokes hatred and distrust.  Her op-ed in Haaretz suggests that

The anger at Israelis who support Palestinian independence resembles the treatment of whites who supported the black civil rights movement.

No wonder for she completed her Ph.D. at Princeton University and her dissertation was 'Revolution in Motion: Human Mobility and the Transformation of the South, 1861-1865', on the political, social and cultural impact of human mobility in shaping the history of the American South during the Civil War.  She's pro-Democratic Party.


And she explains in this op-ed (her previous one was pro-Obama):

We, the Jews who live in Israel, participate each day, each hour, in the denial of basic rights to Palestinian citizens, in the perpetuation of the settlements and the occupation. We're in a similar position to that of many whites in the United States in the 1960s...The march supporting the Palestinian declaration of independence is a golden opportunity for change. It's the moment we can say to ourselves, to our Palestinian neighbors and the entire world that we too can be freed from the chains of hatred, fear and the racism that grips the State of Israel...Taking part in a solidarity march is a similar choice to the one of the whites who joined the march from Selma. It is the choice to take a stand, in real time, on the right side of history.

Of course, there really is no comparison - not in the matter of slavery, nor the circumstances which led to the administration by Israel of Judea, Samaria and Gaza following 1967 nor in the 'true feelings' we Israelis should feel/empathize with as regards the Arabs of the areas of the former Mandate of Palestine not as yet under full Israeli sovereignty.

The real hatred, fear (?) and racism exists mainly on the Arab side, as well as a significant dose of antisemitism.

Yael is a prime example of Jewish self-hatred. Her true father's daughter.

What a shameful display of misrepresentation.

^

Can You Get To Columbia Next Week?

If so, you might be interested in a very un-balanced panel discussion in the tradition of non-academic insitutions:

GAZA: ISRAEL'S WAR AND THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

RSVP:

This panel is dedicated to examining the reality and consequences of Israel's war and siege of Gaza. What do we know about Gaza 2008-2009 today after several investigations by various human rights organizations? Is the head of the UN fact-finding mission Justice Richard Goldstone right in arguing (as he did recently) that a 'reconsideration' of his UN report, which found evidence of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, is now in order?

Panelists:

Norman G. Finkelstein, author of This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion

Rashid Khalidi, author of The Iron Cage, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, and Co-Director of CPS

Peter Weiss, Vice President, Center for Constitutional Rights

2 May 2011, 7:30 PM ~ 10:00 PM
Room 417, Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building, Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, NY, NY 10027

And don't do anything I would do there.


UPDATE

Look at this "scholarship" there (lower down on the page):

SPRING 2011


Spring 2011 Middle East W4053 (NEW COURSE)

THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT. 3 points.

Instructor: Salim Tamari

Spring 2011 Middle East G6225 (NEW COURSE)

BIOGRAPHY & SOCIAL HISTORY. 3 points.

Instructor: Salim Tamari

Spring 2011 Anthropology V3887 (NEW COURSE)

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF PALESTINE. 3 points.

Instructor: Rhoda Kanaaneh

Spring 2011 English BC3149 (NEW COURSE)

CULTURES OF COLONIALISM: PALESTINE/ISRAEL (09734); 3 points

Instructor: Bashir Abu-Manneh

Tuesday & Thursday, 2:40-3:55 PM, Room TBA The significance of colonial encounter, statehood, and dispossession in Palestinian and Israeli cultures from 1948 to the present, examined in a range of cultural forms: poetry, political tracts, cinema, fiction, memoirs, and travel writing. Authors include: Darwish, Grossman, Habibi, Khalifeh, Khleifi, Kanafani, Oz, Shabtai, Shalev, and Yehoshua.

FALL 2010

Fall 2010 History G8716

POLTICS OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST; Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in the Middle East; 4 points

Instructor: Thomas Hill

W 2:10-4, 311 Fayerweather.

SPRING 2010

Spring 2010 History G9713

THE MODERN HIST OF PALESTINE; 4 points

Instructor: Rashid Khalidi

Tuesday 2:10pm-4:00pm 208 KNOX HALL

.
^

We Now Have Yet A New Academic Term

Yes, we do.

It's

ethno-security regime

as in

...what was once a border conflict has now become an ethnic struggle, with Jewish Israel establishing an ethno-security regime that stretches from Jordan to the Mediterranean, facilitated and accelerated by the recent results of elections in Israel, the United States, and the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority

.

That's to be found in Menachem Kleim's newest book, "The Shift: Israel-Palestine from Border Struggle to Ethnic Conflict", although exactly how "the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority has facilitated the establishment of such a 'regime' is beyond me, at this point. Unless someone's syntax is off.

But that is how the 'conflict' has always been.

Klein goes 'dark' and suggests a development that isn't there in claiming that he:

...identifies a radical shift that has put ethnicity at the center of its security initiatives. Even Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin are at risk of becoming targets.

Excuse me, but does that mean that when Israeli Arabs deicde to go 'Palestinian' and become security risks, spying and even aiding terror or participating, somehow Israel is at fault? Are they not citizens of Israel? Is that what loyal citizens do? And of they disagree with a policy they can demonstrate but no further.

Klein claims there is a

...legal and political apparatus now cocooning Israel's shrinking Jewish majority.

But if ther majority isn't shrinking? Is Klein off-base?

For example:

The most comprehensive study on Jewish-Arab demographics was published on January 15, 2011 by Yakov Faitelson, Institute for Zionist Strategies.
The study sheds light on the surge of Jewish demography, especially among secular Israeli Jews, and on the sharp decline of Arab natural growth and population growth, as a result of a most successful Arab integration into Israel's infrastructures of modernity.

No ground to the claim that Jews are doomed to become a minority west of the Jordan River: In 2011 there is a 66% Jewish majority - in the combined area of pre-1967 Israel, Judea and Samaria – which benefits from a demographic tailwind.

Faitelson's findings support the conclusion of a World Bank September 2006 study which documented a 32% "inflation" in the number of Arab births, as reported by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Excerpts of that:

1. "Despite 120 years of demographic calamity projections, the Jewish population in the Land of Israel succeeded to grow from a 5% minority to a 60% majority."
2. "The expanded Jewish population (6,122,000) grows faster than the highest scenario of the 2007 projection made by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. The Arab population (1,573,000) grows in accordance with the lowest scenario."
3. "According to the UN Population Division, the overall Middle East fertility rate peaked during the 1950s (6.33 births per woman) and declined gradually to 2.95 births in 2010."
4. "The Jewish fertility rate has risen since 1995, reaching 2.9 in 2010."
5. "In 2010, the Jewish fertility rate is 63% higher than Lebanon's, 53% higher than Iran's, 33% higher than Turkey's and Kuwait's, 23% higher than Saudi Arabia's, slightly higher than Egypt's and only 7% and 4% lower than Jordan's and Syria's respectively."
6. "The growth in Jewish fertility is driven by secular and not by religious or ultra-religious Jews. Since 2003, there has been a decline in ultra-religious fertility…The surge in secular fertility is driven mainly by the Olim (immigrants) from the former USSR…Their children and grandchildren has adopted typical Israeli fertility rates. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, Israeli-born Jewish fertility rate was over 3 births in 2009."
7. "Israeli Arab fertility rate has collapsed since the 1970s [due to a most successful integration into the infrastructures of education, employment, finance, politics, culture, sports, etc.]…It declined to 3.5 births per woman in 2009…By 2009 only 8.4% of 15 year old Arab women did not enroll in school."
8. "In 1995, there were 2.34 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth. In 2009-10, there were 3.12 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth."
9. "The demographic trends within pre-1967 Israel are identical to those in Judea and Samaria…but, in a much faster pace. The fertility rate of Judea and Samaria Arabs dropped from 6.44 births per woman in 1990 to 3.12 births in 2010...lower than Israeli Arabs and substantially lower than the Jewish fertility rate in the Jerusalem region."
10. "Net-emigration from the Palestinian Authority was 321,239 during 2007-1994, averaging about 23,000 annually."
11. "Mustafa Khawaja of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Net-emigration in 2007 reached about 60,000…Jordan recorded 44,000 and 63,000 net-emigration, during the first eight months in 2009 and 2008 respectively, through its-controlled international passages along the Jordan River."
12. Professor Arnon Sofer, Haifa University, projected in 1987 that by 2000 there will be 4.2 million Jews and 3.5 million Arabs (1.5 of them in Judea and Samaria) between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. However, in 2000, the number of Jews was 5 million and the number of Arabs was indeed 3.5 million. But, in 2000, Professor Sofer added 1 million Arabs to his estimate of the population in Judea and Samaria."
[Prof. Sofer, a leading "Demographer of Doom", consistently precluded the possibility of a wave of Aliya (Jewish migration) from the USSR, even if the gates were to be open…]

He then misidentifies how things happen:

...Palestinians have been divided into several categories with different privileges: Israel's Palestinian citizens; the residents of Jerusalem; the two groups that occupy the West Bank, separated by the Separation Barrier; and those who live under siege in the Gaza Strip.

Actually, the Arabs themselves have done that, willingly nad through negotiations or lack thereof.

His suggestion?

Typically pie-in-the-sky:

He ultimately argues that a single, nonethnic state is not the best solution, instead supporting a two-state compromise, as difficult as it may be, as the only viable way to peace.

Ideologically-driven Academia.

^

An Academic View of Terror Activity

From the Journal of Conflict Resolution February 2011 vol. 55 no. 1 133-158:-

Three Two Tango: Territorial Control and Selective Violence in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza

Ravi Bhavnani, Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA;
Dan Miodownik, Departments of Political Science & International Relations, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel;
Hyun Jin Choi, Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.

Abstract

This article extends the formal logic of Stathis Kalyvas’ theory of selective violence to account for three political actors with asymmetric capabilities. In contrast to Kalyvas’ theory, the authors’ computer simulation suggests that (1) selective violence by the stronger actor will be concentrated in areas where weaker actors exercise control; (2) the relative level of selective violence used by weaker actors will be lower because of a reduced capacity to induce civilian collaboration; and (3) areas of parity among the three actors will exhibit low levels of selective violence perpetrated primarily by the strongest actor.

Results from a logistic regression, using empirical data on Israel and two rival Palestinian factions from 2006 to 2008, are consistent with these predictions: Israel was more likely to use selective violence in areas largely controlled by Palestinian factions; zones of incomplete Israeli control were not prone to selective violence; and zones of mixed control witnessed moderate levels of selective violence, mainly by Israel. Nonetheless, Palestinian violence remained consistent with Kalyvas’ predictions.

Plaut Makes A Point

Haaretz reports that a group of “intellectuals” is calling on Netanyahu to fire all rabbis who signed the earlier call for Jews not to rent or sell property to Arabs in predominantly Jewish areas. Among the signers were Prof. Joseph Algassi (Tel Aviv University, philosophy), a leading proponent of the “One-State Solution” in which Israel will be obliterated and replaced by a Rwanda-style bi-national state with an Arab majority (see). Also signing was Prof. Haim Adler from the Hebrew University (education),
and Prof. Aliza Shenhar, the leftist head of the Galilee College (who was a Rector at Haifa University).

None of these same people called for firing leftwing anti-Zionist professors in Israel who call on people not to rent and sell property to Jews in East Jerusalem.

^

Scholatic Wisdom at Columbia University

Todd Gitlin writes in the Columbia Spectator (In 1963 and 1964, Gitlin was president of Students for a Democratic Society):

Now, it’s the habit of many American Jews to overlook, feel defensive about, apologize for, downplay, and explain away the awful, embarrassing, and infuriating direction in which Israel’s bankrupt political leaders are steering...

But the question for a Jew is finally: What does it mean to be a Jewish state? Does Israel really want to be judged by the standard of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran?...It was for this that the Jewish people persisted, against long odds, through centuries of exile?

Jewish Israelis, like Americans, have never freed themselves of the burdens of chosenness...Jews are gripped by an all-too-standard tribal impulse...

Gitlin, now a professor of journalism and sociology and the chair of the doctoral program in communications at Columbia, offered this at the Columbia Spectator as a piece of "share[d] scholastic wisdom readers won’t find in lectures".

Is this level of "wisdom" is what we can expect from the new Center of Palestine studies?

- - -

Gordon Gobbledygook

When?

Monday, February 22, 2010 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Where?

Social Science Research, Tea Room
1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL

What?

"Israel's Occupation through the Lens of the Education System"

Who?

Neve Gordon

Been informed by Israel Academia Monitor.

Unbelievable how academia has perverted itself:


Abstract of presentation -

Over the past four decades Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem has changed dramatically. Using the Palestinian education system as a case study, Neve Gordon argues that these changes were triggered by a series of contradictions and excesses emanating from the structure of Israel's occupation, and not from the policy choices of military or political leaders.

He shows how during the occupation's first two decades Israel attempted to mold the dispositions of the Palestinian students and teachers so as to normalize the occupation. The education system, in other words, became a prime site of management and control (and resistance). Next, he briefly focuses on the Palestinian universities in order to show how Israel's forms of control produced excesses and contradictions that precipitated social unrest and political crisis, leading Israel to change its policies and forms of management in the territories.

Finally, he discusses Israel's current approach towards the Palestinian education system. Focusing, once again on the universities, he illustrates how Israel is no longer interested in influencing the aspirations, views and attitudes of the students and teachers, which suggests that the population is no longer conceived as an object that needs to be managed. This does not mean that Israel is no longer interested in continuing the colonization project, but rather that Israel no longer considers the management of the population as a necessary component of the colonizing mission.

If Israel has so much power and control, why couldn't they 'educate' for peace? Could she not have altered the affects of Najah and Bir Zeit educational institutions? And why has the sole driving agenda item for the Pal. education system, now fully under its own control for 17 years (!), been hate, terror and denial of any Jewish element?

Neve is capable of a 40 year case study?

Neve is such a nut.

Or a sieve.

Washington Dubious Wisdom

Walter Russel Mead, a Carterist (that a Jimmy Carter backer), writs of "The Carter Syndrome" in Foreign Policy claiming that Barack Obama might yet revolutionize America's foreign policy. But if he can't reconcile his inner Thomas Jefferson with his inner Woodrow Wilson, the 44th president could end up like No. 39.

His touching on Israel:

While Bush argued that the only possible response to the 9/11 attacks was to deepen America's military and political commitments in the Middle East, Obama initially sought to enhance America's security by reducing those commitments and toning down aspects of U.S. Middle East policy, such as support for Israel, that foment hostility and suspicion in the region...

...It is not only Americans who will challenge the new American foreign policy. Will Russia and Iran respond to Obama's conciliatory approach with reciprocal concessions -- or, emboldened by what they interpret as American weakness and faltering willpower, will they keep pushing forward? Will the president's outreach to the moderate majority of Muslims around the world open an era of better understanding, or will the violent minority launch new attacks that undercut the president's standing at home? Will the president's inability to deliver all the Israeli concessions Arabs would like erode his credibility and contribute to even deeper levels of cynicism and alienation across the Middle East?...

You caught this, right?

support for Israel, that foment hostility and suspicion in the region

And does this fact, which I do not dispute:

the moderate majority of Muslims around the world

really mean anything in that they have not proven willing or capable of stymmieing the violent, terror minority?

This passes for wisdom in Washington?

But worse, read this again and contemplate what it really means:

all the Israeli concessions Arabs would like

because you know what the Arabs really want and like.

I'm All for Academic Freedom But...

At $160, this book, "Gender in Transnationalism: Home, Longing and Belonging Among Moroccan Migrant Women" by Ruba Salih, must be either heavy (but it weighs in at 208 pgs) or printed in some ornate publishing fashion.

The book, according to the blurb, "highlights women's construction of 'home' between Morocco and Italy as a significant site whereby broader feelings and narratives of displacement and belonging can be grasped. Salih investigates what Moroccan women's relations with their adopted country are and how their identities, conceptualisations of home and cultural practices are shaped by the transnational dimension of their lives. This interdisciplinary book provides a gendered account of transnational migration, in the context of changing configurations in both the social sciences and people's lives, of notions of locality, identity, difference and citizenship, and by focusing on the 'lived experience' of Moroccan migrant women's transnationalism between Morocco and Italy. It will interest students and researchers of transnationalism, migration and gender."

Back in May, Ruba gave a talk on how Muslim women in Europe challenge a nationally and culturally bounded conception of citizenship and of the public sphere. Amazingly, she asserts that "Gender lies at the heart of the frictions occurring as a result of contemporary transnational challenges. Muslim women’s bodies are becoming a sort of public space itself where different agendas and rhetoric of modernity, secularism and performances of loyalty are inscribed." Well, since women are women and that is gender, I don't see the shock value of that but, you know academia today.

Ruba Saliha holds a PhD from the University of Sussex and defines her private sphere as being a social anthropologist. She teaches at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the university of Exeter.

Here she is:




In reviewing Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh's "Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel", she notes:

Kanaaneh shows the context in which reproductive practices and discourses have become significant markers of identity and otherness in the context of the Galilee and beyond. Like many other colonized people, Palestinians have internalized, almost in Fanon’s terms, the Israeli dominant representations that, through the modernization rhetoric and language, tends to depict them as pre-modern, or even anti-modern, irrational reproducers of large families. For many Palestinians, reproductive strategies and choices, thus, have come to be a major terrain against which to assess the modernity of people, or alternatively their authenticity and resistance to colonial, dominant discourse. These kinds of representations, however, are not simply imposed, but interact with deep-rooted Palestinian social constructions which, for example, tend to oppose the traditionalism of “Beduins” and villagers (fellahin) to the modernity of city dwellers (madaniin).

and she observes further:

the book could have reached an even greater value by discussing further how Palestinians in the Galilee are producing alternative conceptions of modernity that disrupt and contest the binary categorization of the Israeli state. Although Kanaaneh does underline that this dualistic attitude does not account for the whole picture, in that many people are indeed able to escape the dichotomous reductive framework imposed by the Israeli modernist dominant discourse, the reader would have liked to know more about these alternative ways of life and how they are conveyed in alternative narratives, for example, by highlighting how “modernity” comes to be indigenized by Palestinians living in the Galilee.

The key theme of Ruba is that:

Central in the Zionist project was indeed the de-arabisation and consequent Judaization of Palestine. Along with the entire eradication of Palestinian villages, the Israeli state has carried out this project throughout the years by means of a powerful immigration policy and other instruments, such as the political use of census, family planning and the development of a powerful and pervasive modernization narrative which constructed reproduction as a field whereby to assess the modern or rather backward character of a people.

And the reason I went into this detail is that Ruba was the main speaker at a conference at Ben-Gurion University this past week and spoke on "Diaspora, Transnational Migration and 'Returns': Rethinking Palestinian Refugeehood".

Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for academic discussions including all sorts of subjects and opinions. And I think it fit and proper that Israeli universities should be studying and researching similar topics as those at that conference.

However, three things:

a. why don't Arab institutions of higher learning do the same?

b. why do Israeli universities always invite the most anti academics possible?

c. why are the panels so unbalanced? One responder to Ruba was Oren Yiftahel, one of the most post-Zionist lecturers around and the other was Sapa Abu-Rabiya.

Academic Freedom Means Free Discussion

I received Professor Itzhak Galnoor's article "Academic Freedom Under Political Duress: Israel" published in "Social Research", Issue: Volume 76, Number 2 / Summer 2009, Pages: 541 - 560, Special Issue: Special Issue: Free Inquiry at Risk: Universities in Dangerous Times, Part I, Published Online: 27 August 2009.

The Abstract:

Political duress within the academic community is a strong sense that there is a threat of external interference with core academic values and freedoms - free inquiry, free speech institutional autonomy and personal safety. After a short introduction to the background of Israeli higher education, this article focuses on two current threats: first, political intimidation originating from extreme nationalistic and religious groups aimed at silencing "nonloyal" voices inside and outside the Universities (for example, the pipe bomb that exploded on September 25, 2008, at the gate of Professor Ze'ev Sternhel's house, wounding him slightly, or the threats on the Israel-Academia-Monitor.com web site); second, a process of "commodification" - political and administrative pressures and the enforcement of a "management" and privatization policies (for example, budget cuts forcing internal institutional changes, shifts of resources, and competition). These steps have been accompanied by antiintellectualism under the slogan of the "democratization of higher education." Academic freedom is under duress in Israel because of the combination of these two attitudes and policies aimed at "taming" higher education.

Professor Steven Plaut took it on (here).

More criticism here and there's an interesting parallel subject here.

I also commented on the article within the Political Science Department list which is on the Social Science List of the Hebrew University.

So far, 10 days later, it has not been distributed.

I wonder why.


Anyway, in the interests of academic freedom, here are my observations as sent in:-

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yisrael Medad
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:23:29 +0200
Subject: Re: [Social Science- IL]: FW: מאמרי על השכלה גבוהה בישראל
To: Itzhak Galnoor

Since the article is in English, I will make my short comments in that language.

1. From an historic retrospective, I am surprised that Prof. Galnoor did not provide more information on the chronicles of the tension between the Hebrew University and its critics from the nationalist camp of Zionism. A most famous incident was the demonstration against the platform provided Norman Bentwich on February 10, 1932 when he was invited to talk on “Jerusalem, the City of Peace” as his inaugural lecture as a newly appointed academic staff member. Bentwich, who had
just been kicked out of the Mandatory administration as the attorney-general due to Arab pressure against Jewish officials, following the weak legal response to the 1929 riots, was seen as another attempt by the University’s head, JL Magnes, to fortify the Brit Shalom element within the faculty. A stink bomb was released and some arrests were made. (see: Nonnan and Helen Bentwich, Mandate Memories, 1918-1948, p.150; Shindler, Colin. The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right, p. 156).

The negotiations Magnes conducted with the Mufti (see: Cohen, Naomi, The Year after the Riots: American Responses to the Palestinian Crisis of 1929-30) as well as the mission of A.E. Simon to Germany on Magnes behalf for adult education were a clear pattern of political machinations and a clear ideological inclination and the University was considered almost from its beginning as a bastion for the pacifist, Central European approach to a Jewish presence in Eretz-Yisrael (background: Chen Merchaviah, Sefer Betar, Vol. I; S. Hattis, The Bi-National Idea in Palestine in Mandatory Times).

2. Besides the Min Hayesod episode and the powerful support provided by Hebrew University staff for opposition forces to Ben-Gurion mentioned, I am again surprised that Dr. Yoram Hazony’s story of the Hebrew U. and the establishment of Israel (in his The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul) is not mentioned nor the academic problems faced by Yosef Klausner in his non-appointments, evidence of
duress I would maintain from the Left. as well as other lecturers. Not even a footnote (see: Heyd, Michael, L’Université hébraïque de Jérusalem à travers ses acteurs: La première génération de professeurs, 1925–1948). Is duress only a right-wing/nationalist instrument?

3. But my main problem is one of definitions.

A) Is “political duress” correctly but “a strong sense of a threat of external interference with core academic values”? (p. 541) Could not there exist an internal phenomenon?

B) Are calls for the dismissal of academics for their opinions truly predicated on a “deep loathing for the whole [the whole?] idea of free thinking? (p. 549)

C) Is there really “a general negative disposition to professors” by the leaders of right-wing parties? (p. 549) Or, are professors respected (Chug HaProfessorim; BZ Netanyahu; et al.) by the right while these same professors are derided by their left-wing colleagues and left-wing political leaders? Is it all black and white?

If a professor expresses sympathy for Arab terrorists, even suggesting targets for them so as to better promote their political agenda (and I am specifically referring to an op-ed published in Haaretz on May 11, 2001, which was perceived as justifying Arab terror calling on Arabs to murder Jews and encouraging them to place explosive charges but only on the eastern side of the Green Line which contained these words: "There is no doubt regarding the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories themselves. If the Palestinians had a bit of sense, they would concentrate their struggle against the settlements.[...] They would similarly refrain from placing explosive charges on the western side of the Green Line."), is that an academic value that need be protected?

The article is an opening for a debate and I am sure other points will be discussed.

Yisrael Medad

Penn's Regimen Impens

This is real academic cowardice -

Gaza conflict puts Israel study abroad on hold
Students must take leave of absence to study abroad in Israel and West Bank this semester

In response to intensified conflict in the Gaza Strip, the University announced last week that it will not permit students to study abroad in Israel and the West Bank through Penn-approved exchanges this semester.

Ten Penn students planned to study in Israel or Palestine [there is no "Palestine"] this semester. Those who still want to study abroad must withdraw from Penn and enroll in the destination university, although officials say they do not encourage this option.

Director of Study Abroad Geoffrey Gee said the decision is based on the "Israeli military action in the Gaza strip and the potential for escalating conflict" and current U.S. State Department travel warnings.

Hey, the operation over guys.

P.S.

Impen


(Kippah tip: RH)