Pub Date : 2023-02-21DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2182475
D. Rodman
echoes in major respects the accounts of other prominent historians. He traces in meticulous (and often excruciating) detail the path taken by the conflict, from its beginnings in the Galilee to its climax in Judea to its close in perhaps the most ‘celebrated’ single event of the fighting, the Roman siege of the mountain fortress of Masada. Nor does Rogers’ account depart noticeably in major respects from these other accounts in regard to the outcome of the revolt, particularly insofar as concerns the replacement of a ‘temple-centric’ Judaism by a ‘text-centric’ Judaism. He does part company with his peers, however, when it comes to speculating about the inevitability of the revolt’s course and consequences. Many of his colleagues strongly imply, if they do not say so explicitly, that the Jewish rebels had no chance of victory against the Roman Empire, that their cause was doomed from the very start. Rogers contends, to the contrary, that the rebels might well have achieved a measure of success in the revolt – in the form of enhanced autonomy for Judea, though probably not genuine independence from Rome – had they been better at strategy, tactics and logistics. The rebels, he correctly observes, never had a coherent and effective plan for confronting the Roman Empire, whilst the empire surely did have such a plan for confronting them. Regardless of whether one agrees with what is certain to be a controversial view, Rogers’ account of the first (but not the last) cataclysmic Roman–Jewish war offers superb insight into a fateful conflict, not only for Romans and Jews but also for the entire world. His book is most heartily recommended to anyone, scholar and layperson alike, who has an interest in the troubled relationship between the Roman Empire and the Jewish people.
{"title":"The making of an alliance: the origins and development of the US–Israel relationship","authors":"D. Rodman","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2182475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2182475","url":null,"abstract":"echoes in major respects the accounts of other prominent historians. He traces in meticulous (and often excruciating) detail the path taken by the conflict, from its beginnings in the Galilee to its climax in Judea to its close in perhaps the most ‘celebrated’ single event of the fighting, the Roman siege of the mountain fortress of Masada. Nor does Rogers’ account depart noticeably in major respects from these other accounts in regard to the outcome of the revolt, particularly insofar as concerns the replacement of a ‘temple-centric’ Judaism by a ‘text-centric’ Judaism. He does part company with his peers, however, when it comes to speculating about the inevitability of the revolt’s course and consequences. Many of his colleagues strongly imply, if they do not say so explicitly, that the Jewish rebels had no chance of victory against the Roman Empire, that their cause was doomed from the very start. Rogers contends, to the contrary, that the rebels might well have achieved a measure of success in the revolt – in the form of enhanced autonomy for Judea, though probably not genuine independence from Rome – had they been better at strategy, tactics and logistics. The rebels, he correctly observes, never had a coherent and effective plan for confronting the Roman Empire, whilst the empire surely did have such a plan for confronting them. Regardless of whether one agrees with what is certain to be a controversial view, Rogers’ account of the first (but not the last) cataclysmic Roman–Jewish war offers superb insight into a fateful conflict, not only for Romans and Jews but also for the entire world. His book is most heartily recommended to anyone, scholar and layperson alike, who has an interest in the troubled relationship between the Roman Empire and the Jewish people.","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43555355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-21DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2182471
D. Rodman
{"title":"Golani commando: a memoir of special operations in the Israel Defense Forces","authors":"D. Rodman","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2182471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2182471","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47845222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2162266
Rumyana Marinova-Christidi
ABSTRACT This article examines the conceptual elements of antisemitism in Bulgaria today as well as the ways in which these concepts are communicated linguistically and visually. It seeks to provide an insight into different aspects of antisemitism – from direct manifestations to attempts at rewriting or distorting the history of Bulgaria’s Jewry. The IHRA definition is used for the identification of antisemitic manifestations, from classical stereotypes (power, greed, etc.) to more contemporary attributions (Israel-related antisemitism such as instrumentalisation of the Holocaust, Nazi analogy, denial of Israel’s right to exist).
{"title":"Bulgarian antisemitism in the 21st century","authors":"Rumyana Marinova-Christidi","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2162266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2162266","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the conceptual elements of antisemitism in Bulgaria today as well as the ways in which these concepts are communicated linguistically and visually. It seeks to provide an insight into different aspects of antisemitism – from direct manifestations to attempts at rewriting or distorting the history of Bulgaria’s Jewry. The IHRA definition is used for the identification of antisemitic manifestations, from classical stereotypes (power, greed, etc.) to more contemporary attributions (Israel-related antisemitism such as instrumentalisation of the Holocaust, Nazi analogy, denial of Israel’s right to exist).","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49364847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2166203
R. Jaspal
ABSTRACT This article focuses upon the social psychological aspects of antisemitism. Empirical research into three forms of antisemitism is reviewed through the lens of social psychological theories of social representation, intergroup relations and identity processes. Across research, perceived threat from Jews and Israel is a recurrent theme. The proposed integrative model suggests that negative social representations of Jews and Israel that accentuate intergroup threat can in turn have implications for identity processes at an individual level, mainly by curtailing feels of self-esteem, self-efficacy, continuity and distinctiveness. Identity threat can lead the individual to react defensively by engaging in antisemitism.
{"title":"The social psychology of contemporary antisemitism","authors":"R. Jaspal","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2166203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2166203","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article focuses upon the social psychological aspects of antisemitism. Empirical research into three forms of antisemitism is reviewed through the lens of social psychological theories of social representation, intergroup relations and identity processes. Across research, perceived threat from Jews and Israel is a recurrent theme. The proposed integrative model suggests that negative social representations of Jews and Israel that accentuate intergroup threat can in turn have implications for identity processes at an individual level, mainly by curtailing feels of self-esteem, self-efficacy, continuity and distinctiveness. Identity threat can lead the individual to react defensively by engaging in antisemitism.","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44492610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2162250
Efraim Karsh
It has been one of Zionism’s foremost credos that so long as Jews continued their millenarian dispersal as small minorities in countless countries around the globe, antisemitism would remain unabated. Only by reinstating the Jewish people as an equal member of the comity of nations through reestablishment of its own independent state in the ancestral homeland would Jews be able to regain normalcy and respectability and to ameliorate, if not eliminate altogether, this long hatred. ‘Every single one of the nations in whose midst Jews live are shamefacedly or brazenly anti-Semitic’, wrote political Zionism’s founding father Theodor Herzl,
{"title":"Introduction: the never-ending war against the Jews","authors":"Efraim Karsh","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2162250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2162250","url":null,"abstract":"It has been one of Zionism’s foremost credos that so long as Jews continued their millenarian dispersal as small minorities in countless countries around the globe, antisemitism would remain unabated. Only by reinstating the Jewish people as an equal member of the comity of nations through reestablishment of its own independent state in the ancestral homeland would Jews be able to regain normalcy and respectability and to ameliorate, if not eliminate altogether, this long hatred. ‘Every single one of the nations in whose midst Jews live are shamefacedly or brazenly anti-Semitic’, wrote political Zionism’s founding father Theodor Herzl,","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43769307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2169491
R. Landes
ABSTRACT This article examines the close relationship between the consistent practice of lethal journalism (in this case reporting Palestinian war propaganda as news) among Western journalists, and the sudden appearance of the ‘new antisemitism’ at the turn of the last millennium. It looks closely at two cases – the al-Durah ‘murder’ (September 2000) and the Jenin ‘massacre’ (April 2002), and the manner in which this allegedly professional journalism opened the door to a host of postmodern antisemitic themes, from Holocaust inversion to progressive supersessionist projections, and the manner in which Jihadists bent on destroying the West have used through this unacknowledged hostility to Jews – it’s merely criticism of Israel – as the West’s soft underbelly.
{"title":"Lethal journalism and own-goal antisemitism: the tragic march of folly at the turn of the millennium","authors":"R. Landes","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2169491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2169491","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the close relationship between the consistent practice of lethal journalism (in this case reporting Palestinian war propaganda as news) among Western journalists, and the sudden appearance of the ‘new antisemitism’ at the turn of the last millennium. It looks closely at two cases – the al-Durah ‘murder’ (September 2000) and the Jenin ‘massacre’ (April 2002), and the manner in which this allegedly professional journalism opened the door to a host of postmodern antisemitic themes, from Holocaust inversion to progressive supersessionist projections, and the manner in which Jihadists bent on destroying the West have used through this unacknowledged hostility to Jews – it’s merely criticism of Israel – as the West’s soft underbelly.","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41724584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2162265
Alon Levkowitz, Ran Shauli, Michal Zelcer-Lavid
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the ways in which concepts and tropes of the Holocaust are used as political instruments in a part of the world that was not immediately affected by its events. It reviews the use of these concepts in selected cases from areas of political conflict in South Korea, Malaysia, and China and compares them with a view to finding a common denominator specific to these Asian countries. The article questions the futility of the current attempt to regulate definitions of antisemitism and its detachment from the realities of politics and academic and public discourse, especially in Asia. Finally, it demonstrates that the semantics of the Holocaust in the selected cases seldom signify anti-Jewish sentiment but are used for other rhetorical and political purposes.
{"title":"Localised tropes of antisemitism and the Holocaust in East-Asian political discourses: three case studies","authors":"Alon Levkowitz, Ran Shauli, Michal Zelcer-Lavid","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2162265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2162265","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article focuses on the ways in which concepts and tropes of the Holocaust are used as political instruments in a part of the world that was not immediately affected by its events. It reviews the use of these concepts in selected cases from areas of political conflict in South Korea, Malaysia, and China and compares them with a view to finding a common denominator specific to these Asian countries. The article questions the futility of the current attempt to regulate definitions of antisemitism and its detachment from the realities of politics and academic and public discourse, especially in Asia. Finally, it demonstrates that the semantics of the Holocaust in the selected cases seldom signify anti-Jewish sentiment but are used for other rhetorical and political purposes.","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49638738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2162268
D. Gurevitch, X. Gao
ABSTRACT In contrast to the steady increase in discrimination against Jewish and/or Israeli scholarship in Western academic circles over the past decade, supported by traditional antisemitic conspiracy tropes, Chinese academia, encouraged by government support for translation and publication of Israeli literature, has consistently expanded the opportunities for studying Israeli literature. This article analyzes the reception of Jewish and Israeli literature in China today, principally through assessment of the popularity of the writings of Etgar Keret, a contemporary writer well-known for his surrealist and sardonic writing style grounded in the hard realities of daily life in Israel. It will demonstrate a positive approach to contemporary Israeli literature in mainland Chinese universities and assess the reasons for it.
{"title":"The reception of contemporary Israeli literature in China: the case of Etgar Keret","authors":"D. Gurevitch, X. Gao","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2162268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2162268","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In contrast to the steady increase in discrimination against Jewish and/or Israeli scholarship in Western academic circles over the past decade, supported by traditional antisemitic conspiracy tropes, Chinese academia, encouraged by government support for translation and publication of Israeli literature, has consistently expanded the opportunities for studying Israeli literature. This article analyzes the reception of Jewish and Israeli literature in China today, principally through assessment of the popularity of the writings of Etgar Keret, a contemporary writer well-known for his surrealist and sardonic writing style grounded in the hard realities of daily life in Israel. It will demonstrate a positive approach to contemporary Israeli literature in mainland Chinese universities and assess the reasons for it.","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47392312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2162258
E. Friesel, M. Schwarz-Friesel
ABSTRACT A new wave of antisemitism has lately emerged, mostly directed against the Jewish state of Israel. It justifies itself with a new formulation that obfuscates Jew-hatred and its main bearers are Western left-oriented academics. A worrying fact is the large number of Jewish intellectuals, among them Israelis, who support such positions. This reflects the deepening ideological differences in present-day Jewry with regard to the Jewish state and its characteristics, an issue that is insufficiently addressed.
{"title":"The Israelization of Jew-hatred and the concept ‘antisemitism-light’","authors":"E. Friesel, M. Schwarz-Friesel","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2162258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2162258","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A new wave of antisemitism has lately emerged, mostly directed against the Jewish state of Israel. It justifies itself with a new formulation that obfuscates Jew-hatred and its main bearers are Western left-oriented academics. A worrying fact is the large number of Jewish intellectuals, among them Israelis, who support such positions. This reflects the deepening ideological differences in present-day Jewry with regard to the Jewish state and its characteristics, an issue that is insufficiently addressed.","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44242453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2162259
Efraim Karsh
ABSTRACT Contrary to the commonly held misconception, Palestinian antisemitism is not a corollary of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but the other way around: the perpetuation of the conflict is a direct result of the deeply ingrained Palestinian-Arab Jew-hatred and the attendant rejection of any form of Jewish statehood. From the onset of the conflict, a century ago to this day, Palestinian Arabs have been subjected to a sustained hate campaign of racial, religious and political incitement that has portrayed Jews (and Israelis) as the source of all evil, synonyms for iniquity, corruption and decadence, whose clear and present danger to human kind can only be removed through their complete annihilation. Small wonder that not a single Palestinian-Arab leader has ever recognised the millenarian Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel or evinced a true liking for the ‘two-state solution’ since it was first evoked in 1937.
{"title":"The long trail of Palestinian antisemitism","authors":"Efraim Karsh","doi":"10.1080/13537121.2023.2162259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2162259","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Contrary to the commonly held misconception, Palestinian antisemitism is not a corollary of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but the other way around: the perpetuation of the conflict is a direct result of the deeply ingrained Palestinian-Arab Jew-hatred and the attendant rejection of any form of Jewish statehood. From the onset of the conflict, a century ago to this day, Palestinian Arabs have been subjected to a sustained hate campaign of racial, religious and political incitement that has portrayed Jews (and Israelis) as the source of all evil, synonyms for iniquity, corruption and decadence, whose clear and present danger to human kind can only be removed through their complete annihilation. Small wonder that not a single Palestinian-Arab leader has ever recognised the millenarian Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel or evinced a true liking for the ‘two-state solution’ since it was first evoked in 1937.","PeriodicalId":45036,"journal":{"name":"Israel Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48244759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}