Born in a displaced persons' camp two years after the end of the Holocaust, Michael Gawenda spent his childhood and teenage years in a left-wing non-Zionist Jewish youth group in Melbourne. This shaped the sort of Jew he became - a secular Jew who loved the Yiddish language and Yiddish culture. Gawenda went on to become a public figure during his 40 years as a journalist, including his role as editor-in-chief of The Age - the only Jewish editor-in-chief in the newspaper's history. Throughout this time, and since, he became dismayed and pained by the growing hostility of the left to Israel and to Jews like him who were not prepared to declare themselves as anti-Zionists. This has also forced him to examine his own Jewish identity and his relationships with his Jewish friends, and to forensically examine the basis of the critiques of Israel. At a time of rising anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, My Life as a Jew is a controversial book. It is also a vital book. It should be read by activists for Israel and Zionism, as well as for the Palestinians. It should be read by readers of all political stripes. It should be read by journalists, as it is in part about journalism and its failings. And it should also be read by people interested in the remarkable life and career of its author, Michael Gawenda.

Contents: Introduction / Adi Ophir, Michael Givoni, and Sari Hanafi --The Illegality of the occupation regime : the fabric of law in the occupied Palestinian territory / Orna Ben-Naftali, Aeyal M. Gross, and Keren Michaeli --The occupation's paper trail I / Michal Givoni --The order of violence / Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir --The occupation's paper trail II --The (in)human spatial condition : a visual essay / Ariella Azoulay --Photo dossier I : the architecture of destruction --Where, where to, and when in the occupied territories : an introduction to geography of disaster / Ariel Handel --The occupation's paper trail III --Photo dossier II : types of blockage --From colonization to separation : exploring the structure of Israel's occupation / Neve Gordon --The occupation's paper trail IV --Regimes of separation : Israel/Palestine and the shadow of apartheid / Hilla Dayan --The occupations paper trail V --Photo dossier III : the architecture of separation --The colonial foundations of the state of exception : juxtaposing the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories with colonial bureaucratic history / Yehouda Shenhav and Yael Berda --The occupation's paper trail VI --From domination to destruction : the Palestinian economy under the Israeli occupation / Leila Farsakh --The occupation's paper trail VII --Cultivating dependence : Palestinian agriculture under the Israeli occupation / Caroline Abu-Sada --Photo dossier IV : the architecture of fear/the language of subjugation --The destruction of risk society and the ascendancy of Hamas / Neve Gordon and Dani Filc --The occupation's paper trail VIII --Palestinian refugee camps in the Palestinian territory : territory of exception and locus of resistance / Sari Hanafi --Matrix in Bilʹin : colonial capitalism in the occupied territories / Gadi Algazi --Photo dossier V : textures of destruction --Thanato-tactics / Eyal Weizman --The occupation's paper

"The Middle East peace process has been covered extensively by the press, but still has retained many of its secrets. In this book, a selection of articles by former senior Israeli diplomat, Mordechai Gazit, some of these secrets are revealed. The author offers a unique viewpoint on Arab-Israeli relations which is extremely relevant to participants, and to the current debate among historians concerning key events in Israel's history."--Jacket.

The 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel also resulted in the destruction of Palestinian society when some 80 per cent of the Palestinians who lived in the major part of Palestine upon which Israel was established became refugees. Israelis call the 1948 war their 'War of Independence' and the Palestinians their 'Nakba', or catastrophe. After many years of Nakba denial, land appropriation, political discrimination against the Palestinians within Israel and the denial of rights to Palestinian refugees, the Nakba is beginning to penetrate Israeli public discourse. This book explores the construction of collective memory in Israeli society, where the memory of the trauma of the Holocaust and of Israel's war dead competes with the memory claims of the dispossessed Palestinians. Against a background of the Israeli resistance movement, Lentin's central argument is that commemorating the Nakba by Israeli Jews is motivated by an unresolved melancholia about the disappearance of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinians, a melancholia that shifts mourning from the lost object to the grieving subject. Lentin theorises Nakba co-memory as a politics of resistance, counterpoising commemorative practices by internally displaced Israeli Palestinians with Israeli Jewish discourses of the Palestinian right of return, and questions whether return narratives by Israeli Jews, courageous as they may seem, are ultimately about Israeli Jewish self-healing rather than justice for Palestine.

This book reveals the interplay between official government channels, covert intelligence agents and others, who acted largely behind the scenes of the peace process between Egypt and Israel that began in1978 and is still holding. The world leaders: Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, were driven by deeply held faith and conviction. Others were military hawks who, later saw peace as the only viable option. Still others saw peace and stability in terms of business and prosperity. Covered are the confluence of events that led to the Camp David Accords, the powerful personalities involved as well as the secret liaisons, communications, and third-party world leaders who played important yet seldom understood roles in forging that peace agreement.

Ammiel Alcalay's groundbreaking work, After Jews and Arabs, published in 1993, redrew the geographic, political, cultural, and emotional map of relations between Jews and Arabs in the Levantine/Mediterranean world over a thousand-year period. Based on over a decade of research and fieldwork in many disciplines-including history and historiography; anthropology, ethnography, and ethnomusicology; political economy and geography; linguistics; philosophy; and the history of science and technology-the book presented a radically different perspective than that presented by received opinion. Given the radical and iconoclastic nature of Alcalay's perspective, After Jews and Arabs met great resistance in attempts to publish it. Though completed and already circulating in 1989, it didn't appear until 1993. In addition, when the book was published, there wasn't enough space to include its original bibliography, a foundational part of the project. A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs presents the original bibliography, as completed in 1992, without changes, as a glimpse into the historical record of a unique scholarly, political, poetic, and cultural journey. The bibliography itself had roots in research begun in the late 1970s and demonstrates a very wide arc. In addition to the bibliography, we include three accompanying texts here. In "Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs, " Alcalay takes us behind the closed doors of the academic process, reprinting the original reader reports and his detailed rebuttals, and in "A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs A Brief Introduction," Alcalay contextualizes his own path to the work he undertook, in methodological, historical, and political terms. Also included is "A Poetics of Bibliography." Poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay teaches at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. His books include After Jews and Arabs, Keys to the Garden, Memories of Our Future, Islanders, and neither wit nor gold: from then. A 10th-anniversary edition of from the warring factions, a book-length poem dedicated to Srebrenica, and a book of essays, a little history, came out in 2013. a little history also came out in a Portuguese translation with Editor Lumme, São Paolo in 2019. During the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, he was the primary translator of texts from Bosnia, and translations include Sarajevo Blues and Nine Alexandrias by poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic, as well as works by journalist Zlatko Dizdarevic, and many others. Alcalay is the General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, a series of student and guest-edited archival texts emerging from New American Poetry, and he was the recipient of a 2017 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for this work.

Uri Avnery is one of the best-known peace activists in Israel and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. He has been involved in, and written about, all major events in Israel's history since its creation in 1948, and was the first Israeli to meet Yasser Arafat. This is a carefully selected collection of his articles from the last 10 years. Additionally, he has written a rigorous introduction that shows how peace can be achieved. Avnery offers a unique perspective on the Middle-East conflict, drawing on his enormous experience of advocating Palestinian rights from within the system as a member of parliament and from outside as a peace activist. Written with passion and wit, his articles reveal and analyse the 'facts on the ground', always pointing out opportunities for reconciliation between the two sides and exposing those who exacerbate the conflict. This book is a must-read for everyone who wants peace in the Middle East.

Most Americans are ill-prepared to engage thoughtfully in the increasingly serious debate about Israel, its place in the Middle East, and its relations with the United States. Essential Israel examines a wide variety of complex issues and current concerns in historical and contemporary contexts to provide readers with an intimate sense of the dynamic society and culture that is Israel today. The expert contributors to this volume address the Arab-Israeli conflict, the state of diplomatic efforts to bring about peace, Zionism and the impact of the Holocaust, the status of the Jewish state and Israeli democracy, foreign relations, immigration and Israeli identity, as well as literature, film, and the other arts. This unique and innovative volume provides solid grounding to understandings of Israel's history, politics, culture, and possibilities for the future.

The first eight essays offer personal accounts, from both Jewish and Palestinian perspectives, of the 1948 massacre of the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. In the last four essays, theologians and scholars discuss possibilities for a tenable future for both Israelis and Palestinians. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

"The struggle over Israel/Palestine is not just another contest by competing nationalisms or an instance of geopolitical competition. It is also about control of sacred territory that involves local Jews, Muslims, and Christians as well as worldwide faith communities, each with their own interests and stake in what transpires. This balanced introduction to a complex subject presents the multiple positions within the great monotheistic traditions. It demonstrates that the secular discourses in the public square concerning ownership privileges, historical precedence, political rights, and justice that have allegedly replaced religious claims actually coexist with, and often complement, the theological. It explores the century-long tangle of secular and theological debates about Israel's legitimacy. Whether readers support a Jewish state or are resolutely opposed, the serious and substantial scholarship of this well-reasoned and innovative book will contribute to a nuanced and better-informed understanding of this persistent issue that has entered its second century on the international agenda."--

Published in the year 1982, Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel is a valuable contribution to the field of Middle Eastern studies.

"Beyond the immediate issues of politics and economics lie the larger and deeper realities of history and fidelity. As a Jew I am asking in these essays traditional religious questions in light of our present circumstances: What does it mean to be Jewish after the Holocaust and the consolidation of our empowerment in Israel/Palestine? Coming from a situation of oppression, what does it mean for Jewish history and theology to continue oppressing the Palestinian people? Has our empowerment in Israel brought us the freedom we so urgently needed, or has our abuse of power in Israel brought us a new enslavement and ghettoization which we did not seek, but now pursue almost blindly? Can we be healed of our trauma of Holocaust by finalizing the trauma of the Palestinian people which we as Jews have inflicted? At the lighting of the Shabbat candles, shall we bless our endeavor and thank God for making us into a warrior people?"--