Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Sara
Roy. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2007. 379 pp. Paperback,
$29.95.
Palestine Refugee Repatriation: Global Perspectives edited by
Michael Dumper. London and New York: Routledge Studies in Middle
East Politics, 2006. 338 pp. Cloth, $120.
A Violent World: TV News Images of Middle Eastern Terror and War by
Nitzan Ben-Shaul. Lanham, MD, and London: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishing Group, 2006. 166 pp. Cloth, $69.
The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the
Israeli Right by Colin Shindler. London and New York: I.B.Tauris
& Co Ltd, 2006. 282 pp. Cloth, $74.95.
Sol Gittleman
Sol Gittleman, former provost of Tufts University, Massachusetts,
is now the Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor at
Tufts.
Man plans, and God laughs. Each of these scholarly books reflects
the earnest efforts of their authors to address critical issues
that are part of the intransigence representing what seems to be
the eternally irreconcilable Palestinian-Israeli conflict; and
each, in its turn, demonstrates why there seems to be an increased
pessimism among even the rational observers of the Middle East
conflict.
As an American, I look at the current state of dialogue in my
country among scholars in Middle East studies - and despair. Most
civility seems to have disappeared; web sites and bloggers destroy
reputations, make visceral attacks on anyone taking a different
position and accuse each other of anti-Semitism or
anti-Americanism, among the endless stream of charges. Candidates
for tenure at small, regional colleges become the center of a
national storm; senior scholars being considered for appointments
at other schools cannot escape the scrutiny of electronic
vigilantes who keep their eyes peeled to prevent the spread of what
they consider ideological heresy. They survey foundations to see if
any of their enemies are funded, then blast away at the awardees
and the awarders. Faculty motions are made to bar visits from
Israeli scholars, while visiting Arab researchers are routinely
denounced on web sites.
Sara Roy is no stranger to this current atmosphere, and she makes
it clear from the cover of her book, Failing Peace: Gaza and the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, that this is where she wants to be,
even at the risk of her credibility. In the academic world, it is
somewhat unusual to have a plug for a book appear on the front
cover, yet there it is, by Edward Said: "Unique … No one has
reported more accurately and scrupulously on the economic
devastation attendant on the Oslo process."
Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern
Studies at Harvard, a political economist who has written
extensively on Gaza economics.
Perhaps no one knows more about economic development in Gaza; yet
her influence will be limited. She will be alternately denounced,
praised, vilified and cheered by her detractors and supporters,
because she is viewed to be on one side of the chasm. In her
conclusion, she quotes Said and Noam Chomsky, both names no less
than kerosene poured on the fire of pro-Israeli advocacy among the
"other" camp of American scholarship on the Middle East.
This is not an exclusively academic study; it is a compilation of
her writings over the past two decades and as much memoir as it is
scholarship; at times the personal journey overwhelms the detached
interviewer - who is unable to separate herself from the plight of
the Gazans. In a chapter titled "Living with the Holocaust: The
Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors," Roy states: "The
Holocaust has been the defining feature of my life." Her experience
living among the Palestinians after 1985 has clearly defined her
later life and her current ironic position as a pariah among those
unabashedly pro-Israeli scholars in America. Read Roy's book, then
read the reviews; and you will weep for the future of American
scholarship in this field.
***
Yet there are unfailing optimists. No problem seems as intransigent
as the issue of Palestinian refugee repatriation. After nearly 60
years and generations living in dozens of squalid camps in Jordan,
Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza, these outcasts exist with a
crushing problem no closer to a solution. Yet Michael Dumper,
reader on Middle East Politics at Exeter University in Britain, has
edited a collection of global perspectives that emerged from an
international workshop in 2004 that sought solutions, best
practices and examples of success in international refugee
issues.
Dumper asks: Have there been solutions to problems that seem as
insoluble as this one? What are the points of similarity with other
refugee plights? Why do we think this refugee plight is unique?
Part I is an examination of past practices in refugee repatriation
and a look at the key issues in the Palestinian situation; Part II
consists of a broad series of case studies involving refugee
repatriation from Guatemala, the Horn of Africa, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq. At the front end of
every discussion is the question: Can this work in the case of the
Palestinian refugees? A dozen scholars, among them Michael Kagan,
Menachem Klein and Laura Hammond, face the hard issues of "dream
and the reality of return." In the concluding Part III, Dumper
offers a "toolbox" of suggestions taken from the previous two
parts. At the end of the day, there is a glimmer of hope.
***
Ever since the images of the suicide attacks on the Twin Towers in
New York City raced around the world, scholars from a broad range
of academic interests have turned their attention to the news media
and how they deal with the polarizing issues of coverage. Nitzan
Ben-Shaul is senior lecturer in the Film and Television Department
at Tel Aviv University and well known as a cinema critic. In this
slender volume he turns his well-trained eye on television news and
visual coverage of the Middle East conflict.
If you are not conversant with the Gramschian Marxist paradigm and
the language of post-Fordist globalization theory, you may get
lost. This is not an easy book to read. Yet, in his analysis of
CNN, the Israeli Broadcasting Authorities' Channel 1 and Channel 2,
and the Palestinian PATV, Ben-Shaul brings to bear his considerable
intellect to examine the dominant ideologies of the media.
The reader has to wade through the swampy waters of historical and
theoretical background to get to the high ground of analysis: how
the different national news organs, each with its own agenda,
manages to cover the same events and present the horrors of war in
a way guaranteed to satisfy their customers and to advance a
particular national view. Terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, the
tapes of Osama bin Laden and the images of war as the modern world
has come to explore them: Ben-Shaul possesses all the skills
necessary to parse the images for the viewer and to help us
understand how this medium has become another weapon in the
conflict.
***
Colin Shindler's The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and
the Origins of the Israeli Right is a convincing analysis of how
Menachem Begin manipulated the ideas of Ze'ev Jabotinsky to create
the Likud philosophy of biblical inevitability in creating a
militant Jewish state in the image of King David.
Here is the main distinction between the two that Shindler
underlines: Jabotinsky's militancy emerged from his understanding
of the French Revolution and rejected rabbinic Judaism for the
Jewish state. Begin, on the other hand, turned to the Bible for his
inspiration of the state, and along the way convinced his followers
that Jabotinsky also saw it this way. Shindler has turned
Jabotinsky and Begin into Danton and Robespierre, battling over the
future of their revolution in political meetings and conventions.
Ultimately, the acolyte Begin took what he wanted from his mentor
and made the Jewish state in his own image after Likud came to
power.
Shindler is a first-rate historian writing about the Zionist right.
His analysis of these two most charismatic figures during the
formative evolution of Zionist militancy sheds light on the
ultimate triumph of Begin's faith-based vision and the defeat of
Jabotinsky's secular nationalism. Anyone who has seen the fire in
the eyes of the settlers in the West Bank will understand
Shindler's thesis.
