Harvard Does (In) the Temple Mount (UPDATED)

As we learn from here, the Julis-Rabinowitz Program  on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School, founded out of a recognition that the benefactor's parents and relatives "made sure that the rich heritage of Judaism, including its values and history, and the importance of Israel, both to the Jewish People and the world, were consistent parts of our spiritual and intellectual growth" and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University will be holding an international academic conference on the topic of the "Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif: Conflict, Culture, Law" during November 28-29, 2017.

The Prince himself possibly won't attend as he is under arrest on suspicion of corruption crimes in his native Saudi Arabia.

[UPDATE: He may be hanging upside-down at this moment]

The aim of the conference is

to explore several specific, interlocking aspects of the dynamic struggle to conceptualize, govern, and control the site...through analysis of its complex history, the evolving religious beliefs and practices that are attached to it, and the intricate legal frameworks in which it is enmeshed...the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif is an important lynchpin in a struggle of global importance, one that merits close attention and engagement by people everywhere. 

Leading scholars of history, religion, culture, and international law to approach these questions from a range of directions.

(By the way,  a conference titled “Marking the Sacred: ​The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem” took place at Providence College on June 5-7, 2017 and involved about thirty scholars who discussed the archaeology and significance of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives.  Hmm. This one seems to have been much more academic and professional and less political.)(UPDATE: And another lecture on the subject in North Carolina's Wake Forest University on November 27 entitled: "Temple Mount or Haram al Sharif? Myth, Meaning, And Manipulation, An examination of ancient texts and current rhetoric".  And there was a three-day conference at Providence College in June, "Marking the Sacred: ​The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem".)

Sounds almost wonderful. An academic conference, Jewish-Muslim cooperation and a high profile platform. Even "Temple Mount" precedes "Haram al-Sharif".

Almost wonderful, though. Almost but not quite.

Let's see the range of speakers.

Noah Feldman, Opening Remarks

Joseph Patrich, “From Restoration to Destruction: 600 years of the Second Jewish Temple”

Beatrice St. Laurent, “Unity in Diversity: Inclusiveness and Globalization in Early Islamic Jerusalem Reflected in the Dome of the Rock and the Haram al-Sharif (638-680)”

Suleiman Mourad, “Al-Haram al-Sharif of Jerusalem in the Muslim Historical Consciousness”

Moshe Halbertal, “Sovereignty and the Sacred: Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif”

Robert O. Smith, “Christian Zionism, the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, and the Contemporary Theopolitics of Jerusalem”

David Cook, “The Haram al-Sharif and Topographical Eschatology”

Jodi Magness, “Why is Jerusalem’s Temple Mount Sacred?”

Jonathan Rubin, “From Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock to Templum Domini and Palatium Salomonis: The Temple Mount in the Frankish Period”

Sarina Chen, “To Challenge and to Obey: The Double Role of Israeli Women in Temple Mount Activist Groups”

Ali Abu Al-Awar, “Al-Aqsa Murabitat’s Accomplishments in the Political and Gender Levels”

David Landes and Assaf Harel, “Freedom of Worship: The Use of Human Rights Discourse by Jewish Temple Mount Activists”

Wasfi Kialani, “The Hashemite King’s Role and Status at Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif, 1917-2017”

Nadia Abu El-Haj, “What Would a Shared Archeology Look Like?”

Yitzhak Reiter, “The Dynamics of Status Quo at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif”

Omar M. Dajani, “’Touching the Holy’: How Palestinians Negotiated Jerusalem”

Maymanah Farhat, “The Dome of the Rock in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Arab Art”

Heather Coffey, “Sustaining Vectors of Sacrality in Images of the Prophet’s Ascension (Mi‘raj)”

Pamela Berger, “The Dome of the Rock as Image of the Temple of Solomon”

Maya Balakirsky Katz, “Scaling the Divide: Architectural Scale Models of the Jerusalem Temple”

That's a list for an academic Jewish self-destruct death wish.  And the program deals with law.  No one to discuss the law?  The Law for the Protection of the Holy Places (Whosoever does anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of five years)?  Article 9 of the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty (Each party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance...to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship)?

Let's start with Nadia Abu-al Haj. As even the NYTimes reported at the time

In her book...Dr. Abu El-Haj says Israeli archaeologists searched for an ancient Jewish presence to help build the case for a Jewish state. In their quest, she writes, they sometimes used bulldozers, destroying remains of other cultures, including those of Arabs.She concludes her book by saying the ransacking by thousands of Palestinians in 2000 of Joseph’s tomb, a Jewish holy site in the West Bank, “needs to be understood in relation to a colonial-national history” of Israel and the symbolic resonance of artifacts.

The book, to take an extreme example, has been described as

a specious work as it aims to perpetuate under the guise of 'scholarship" the noxious lies perpetrated by Palestinain apologists, such as herself and others

Professor Jacob Lassner's review contained this

This is a book about the politicization of the academy. Her very title is revealing. One would expect a book on archeology to be titled Facts in the Ground, but her title is Facts on the Ground...her focus is less the "archeological practice" she stakes out in the subtitle and more the political uses of archeology, that is "territorial fashioning."

and

Abu el-Haj's reading of Israeli academic culture and its relationship to the politics of statehood politicizes the work of Israel's scholarly establishment in a way that can be misleading. Even when granting certain Israeli archeologists their academic integrity, she tends to describe their findings as bent by the state for its own political purposes. This is inaccurate... In the end, Abu el-Haj misrepresents the Israeli passion for archeology.

Earlier this year, we learned that

Abu El-Haj is a supporter of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions and was among the leaders in the effort to push forward a resolution in the American Anthropological Association endorsing it (the resolution was narrowly rejected by the membership)

and as prominent investigative reporter Rachel Frommer has informed us, internal emails of a parallel group revealed that

The leadership of the American Studies Association (ASA) was "covertly pack[ed]" with professors known to be in favor of an academic boycott of Israel as part of a surreptitious effort to push the professional academic organization to adopt such a position

Not very academic that. 

Then there are David Landes and Assaf Harel.  Landes I personally heard at a Limmud Conference in England and was not impressed by his scholarship and certainly not by his political bent.  Harel definitely is a scholar.  He has written in the in-house journal of the radical leftist Van Leer Institute of a 

 persisting but altered centrality of messianism within the settlement project

and also that 

Alon Shvut offers one example of a successful amalgamation of messianism and Zionism

One need not be sympathetic to a subject one lectures on. One also need not be unsympathetic.

Omar Dajani  served as legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel. In that capacity, he participated in negotiations of borders, security, and economic issues, including summits at Camp David and Taba.

Maya Balakirsky Katz has been published what seems an interesting book and her article is "Avi Yonah’s Model of Second Temple Jerusalem and the Development of Israeli Visual Culture". However, she does write on the model's use in a "public messianic campaign of Brooklyn-based Chabad Hasidim" as "contentious".

Sarina Chen's doctorate was published as a book, "Speedily in Our Days: The Temple Activists and The National Religious Society in Israel (Hebrew)" but almost a decade after it was completed.  It is woefully out-of-date as it does not deal with the major trend shift that has occurred in the past four-five years.

Yitzhak Reiter is an excellent choice, if he decides to confront unabashedly the Islamic campaigns he has studied that deny Jewish history and incite, based on falsehoods, to kill Jews. He is not at all pro-Temple Mount.

Jodi Magness wrote that letter correcting a NYTimes' error regarding the Temple Mount and is an outstanding archaeologist.

Joseph Patrich's findings are that the rock on which the Dome of the Rock is built is outside the confines of the Temple and he was at pains to stress "that his research on the location of the sanctuary on the Temple Mount is purely academic, and should not be dealt with in a political context."

Moshe Halbertal, a participant at solidarity protests on behalf of Sheikh Jarrah, thinks that Judaism has moved beyond the Temple Mount, a sort of orthodox Reform position. In a forum last year, he put forth the question, “Will the State of Israel survive the religion of Israel?”

Ali Abu Al-Awar, of whom I know nothing, is talking on the accomplishments of Al-Aqsa's Murabitat. The banned Murabitat is a proscribed organization, funded by the Islamic Movement-North, which for three years engaged in violence, both verbal and physical, including spitting at, pushing, bansheeing and endangering the safety of young children (and were suspected of planting glass shards on the pathways taken by religiously-observant Jews who walk them barefooted.  He may be reiterating the research of Salwa Alenat.  Four years ago I termed them the Wicked Witches of the Waqf.

Suleiman Mourad at least does not deny the Temple Mount's Biblical roots.

Robert O. Smith asserted that this summer's post-murder of three Israeli policemen confrontation at the Temple Mount was a "nonviolent movement" of "mass Palestinian nonviolent resistance" despite the multiple rock-throwing incidents at the site, not to mention various terrorist murders.  My reading of his thinking, that there was a "validation of religion as an effective component of resistance to state domination again changes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" was one of his pure excitement. Whether it was one of spiritual ecstasy is still, er, up in the air.  And he adds that "As much as Israel factors religious claims into its models of governance and security, it does so from a distinctively ethnocentric perspective". Does Islam do that as well? Or does it not?

That's enough, I think, to illustrate the conference's "balance".

No Nadav Shragai. No Dr. Shmuel Berkowitz, author of two books on the subject, The War of the Holy Places and How Fearful is This Place . Nor Dr. Moti Inbari.  No experts who might be even empathetic.  Maybe they couldn't come? Were they approached?

I, for what it is worth, am disappointed.  I was sure the staff at the Center could have organized a better conference. Why they didn't, I do not know.

^

Neither Ancient Israel nor Even Palestine

I received the following notification:

We are pleased to announce the Journal of Ancient Near EasternHistory.  JANEH is an international, double blind peer reviewed journal that will be published by De Gruyter twice a year beginning in 2014...

Aims and scope:

The Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History seeks to encourage and stimulate the study of the history of the ancient Near East, which is broadly defined to include areas from Iran to the western Anatolian coast and the Black Sea to Southern Arabia from its prehistoric foundations to the Late Antique period. The journal is also interested in interactions with other regions and cultures, such as Ancient Egypt, the Mediterranean World, the Indian Ocean and Central Asia. Articles may focus on any aspect of history (political, social, economic, cultural, intellectual, etc.) and of modern historiography. The journal seeks to integrate the study of the ancient Near East firmly in the historical discipline in general and encourages its authors to take into account current methodological debates and approaches.

"Modern historiography"? 

"Current methodological debates"?

Is that why neither "Ancient Israel" or even "Palestine" is missing in the territory covered?

^

The Easy Peaces

Found here:

An Easy Coalition: The Peacecamp Identity and Israeli–Palestinian Track Two Diplomacy

Abstract

This study presents a systematic transcript-based analysis of the dialogue occurring in a track two workshop attended by Jewish–Israelis and Palestinians. We hypothesized that participants from conflicting groups would form a shared superordinate identity in the course of the workshop. Our findings confirmed this hypothesis. 

Consistent with self-categorization theory, we demonstrate that the observed Jewish–Israelis and Palestinians mutually identified with the peacecamp, a collection of people and organizations that promote dialogue and conflict resolution efforts. In line with our expectations, and in contradiction to previous findings concerning communication between groups in conflict, participants demonstrated patterns of cooperative, counter-ethnocentric interaction. Through the paradigm of social identity theory, we explain these phenomena as the result of the participants' salient superordinate peacecamp identity. The study's findings offer an innovative theoretical contribution to the common ingroup identity model, showing that the reduction of intergroup bias can actually hinder the effectiveness of conflict resolution efforts. 

Specifically, by forming a superordinate identity, the observed participants are left less able to represents the needs, demands, and claims of their respective national groups and, hence, less able to produce ideas acceptable to their respective publics. The study also offers a practical contribution to the field of track two diplomacy, empirically verifying Hebert Kelman's assertion that when facilitators allow participants to form a cohesive group, they risk damaging both the quality of the workshop's ideas and the participants' ability to influence their leaderships (Rouhana and Kelman 1994; Kelman 1999, 2002).

I have not read this but I am going to offer my own theoretical suspicions:

these key phrases:

-  mutually identified with the peacecamp 

-  participants demonstrated patterns of cooperative, counter-ethnocentric interaction 

-  the result of the participants' salient superordinate peacecamp identity 

-  forming a superordinate identity

are a giveaway. 

I think I'd call it 

self-induced pre-participation submissive identification.

I mean, if the participants are, from the start, sharing not only goals but a history and tag-line of "peace camp" which, given the reality, has proven to be (a) one-sided on the Israelis side; (b) virtually non-existent of the Arab side; (c) basically, radical left-wingers for the most part in Israel who are self-delusional, ignorant of facts, too critical of Zionism and proven unwilling to accept the multiple proofs of failure, then of course they will cooperate.

The model of "a superordinate identity" is basically a trick.  It makes use of an 'umbrella' group identity to erase the tensions of prejudice and animosity by having the groups that are in conflict adopt a new definition of who they are.  In this study, I would guess that instead of being Jews and Muslims, Arabs and Zionists, Israelis and Palestinians, etc., they convinced themselves they were all peaceniks or some other identity label, maybe even citizens of a new "state of all its citizens".

Thus, these two claims:

the reduction of intergroup bias can actually hinder the effectiveness of conflict resolution efforts

and

by forming a superordinate identity, the observed participants are left less able to represents the needs, demands, and claims of their respective national groups and, hence, less able to produce ideas acceptable to their respective publics.

are obvious, or should be.

The question is, however, how did the study develop?  If the apparent result was "a hindering of the effectiveness of conflict resolution effects", how is peace to be achieved?

If peace is the supreme value, rather than, say, security or national identity, were attempts made to alter identities drastically?

So, how easy, or not, was it to make peace?

^

National Identity as a Powerful Force

A new dissertation:

Security or Identity? Narratives of State & Nation in International Territorial Conflict Protraction

My dissertation explores how popular domestic beliefs regarding the meaning and value of disputed lands contribute to the protraction and resolution of international territorial conflict. Using comparative historical analysis and artefactual field experiments, I find in Israel and Serbia that persistent popular unwillingness to relinquish claims to a “United Jerusalem” and “Kosovo and Metohija” have resulted from the extraordinary position of these territories in their respective national homeland narratives. These outcomes stand in stark contrast to Israel’s largely popular withdrawals from the Sinai Peninsula, Southern Lebanon, and Gaza Strip, dominantly valued as strategic rather than cultural assets. They also contrast with Serbia’s acquiescence to the political independence of both Bosnia and Montenegro, spaces of high concern for Serb political self-determination but relatively low territorial-cultural priority. The Golan Heights and the West Bank are also analyzed as disputed spaces wherein strategic and cultural narratives continue to contribute to conflict protraction. In doing so, I demonstrate how particular strategic and cultural narratives come to dominate public discourse over disputed spaces and, in turn, how these narratives constrain the policies states can legitimately pursue in these spaces. Ultimately, I find that popular perceptions of national identity can be as powerful a force in determining government policy as state security prerogatives.

^

Your Jewish Body Academically Dissected

Here is an "Upcoming Event" that may interest you, or your Jewish body, the Inaugural Jewish Studies Conference for Graduate Students:-

"Jews in Image and Imagination: Jewish Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Representation", to take place  February 7-8, 2013 with Keynote Speaker: Charlotte E. Fonrobert, Stanford University.

What's it about?

The  inaugural conference...will explore the representational relationship between Jews and sexuality, Jews and gender, Jews and physicality, and Jews and the body.  How have Jews imagined themselves throughout history and how do they imagine themselves today?  Or, how do others imagine Jews or even “the Jew”? Appropriate proposals might explore such topics as the new Israeli masculinity in Hebrew literature,  the figuring of queer Jews in  film, Jews on stage, representations of Jews in the medical profession, medicine’s treatment of Jews, or Jews in athletics...

Do I have to be a Jewish feminist to be...anxious - or excited - about this?

^

Recalcitrant Status Quo

Informed that:

Dana Rubin will participate in this year's conference of the Graduate Section of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies with the title 'Change and Continuity in the Middle East: Rethinking West Asia, North Africa and the Gulf after 2011'.

She will present her paper on ''Non-Ideological' Settlements: Neoliberal Colonialism in the West Bank' as part of the Panel on 'More Continuity than Change? Understanding the Resilience of Oppressive Political and Social Structures'...

Paper abstract:

In a time of transformations in the Middle East, Palestine/Israel seems caught in a combination of apparent change and a recalcitrant status quo. This paper examines how anachronistic settler-colonialism and contemporary neoliberalism, a combination which symbolises the dangers of this recalcitrant state of affairs, coexist in the West Bank settlements. I address the so-called ‘non-ideological’ Jewish-Israeli settlements in the West Bank to which Israeli-Jews relocate for reasons such as quality-of-life or social mobility rather than identification with the religious-colonialist motives of the early settlement movement that followed the 1967 Israeli occupation. In the 1980s, Israel went through an intensive process of liberalisation and privatisation: processes in which developments such as the 1980s legislation permitting private purchase of land in the occupied Palestinian territories, the erosion of the Israeli welfare system and the emerging form of suburban community settlement brought the new configuration of ‘non-ideological’ settlements and settlers to the contested geopolitical space. This paper shows how the new notion of ‘non-ideology’ joined the vocabulary and practice of Zionist settlement and argues that it underpins the distinctive articulation of neoliberalism with settler-colonialism.

More on her theoretical model.

Maybe I should try to push my Inventivity Model of Palestinianism more?

^

She's a Mobilized Propagandist

Here are the introductory outlines of a graduate student's paper, see p. 6 here:

The long 19th century (c. 1750-1918) witnessed significant social, economic, and political transformations that altered the hierarchy of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Ottoman lands. During this period, Hebron has been characterized as an Ottoman hinterland town with an overwhelmingly Muslim population;
a place untouched by Zionist immigration; head of a politically marginal subdistrict and a regional and an economy that had little involvement with the northern, central, or coastal regions of Palestine or the Mediterranean-based trade with European merchants;
and home to revered religious sites to which all but a few Christian travelers were forbidden access, and of secondary importance to European Christian institutions in “the Holy Land.”

So, among other inanities, "Zionist immigration" means for her only after, what, 1897? But practical Zionism began with the Bilu in 1881. Before that there were the waves of the pupils of the Gaon of Vilna begining in 1809. Waves of immigrating Hassidim beginning in 1777. What of the 1740 messianic fervors. Of the 1666 Shabtai Tzvi false messianic expectations? The early 16th century exiles from Spain?

Does she know any history of the region?

It's all here.

And you'll note the complete fractionalization of a (non-existing) Arab Palestinian social identity in this phrase: "little involvement with the northern, central, or coastal regions of Palestine".  There was no "Palestinian people" or "nation".

And she fails to mention Jewish religious elements or that Jews were residents of the city of Hebron but couldn't ascend past the 7th step of the Cave of the Patriarchs.

This isn't academic research but mobilized propaganda.

^

What Equals A 5.3% Increase in Unemployment?

A successful suicide terror attack.

Your academia at work:

The Economic Cost of Harboring Terrorism

Efraim Benmelech,
Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Claude Berrebi
RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA

Esteban F. Klor
Department of Economics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

The literature on conflict and terrorism has paid little attention to the economic costs of terrorism for the perpetrators. This article aims to fill that gap by examining the economic costs of harboring suicide terror attacks. Using data covering the universe of Palestinian suicide terrorists during the second Palestinian uprising, combined with data from the Palestinian Labor Force Survey, the authors identify and quantify the impact of a successful attack on unemployment and wages.

They find robust evidence that terror attacks have important economic costs. The results suggest that a successful attack causes an increase of 5.3 percent in unemployment, increases the likelihood that the district’s average wages fall in the quarter following an attack by more than 20.0 percent, and reduces the number of Palestinians working in Israel by 6.7 percent relative to its mean. Importantly, these effects are persistent and last for at least six months after the attack.

Out of Zion Shall Come...Claptrap

Another Israeli academic:

The Right to Refuse: Abject Theory and the Return of Palestinian Refugees
Dan Rabinowitz
Dept. Of Sociology and Anthropology
Tel-Aviv University and CEU
msdan@post.tau.ac.il

Abstract

The Palestinian claim for the right of refugees to return to places from which they were displaced in 1948, and the notion that return, if implemented, might bring them back to areas now part of Israel within the Green Line, touches raw nerves for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Measures to redress the tragedy of Palestinian refugees, once implemented, could have far reaching practical consequences for many. Not least, they could redefine people’s sense of historic justice, individual and collective choice, identity, morality and destiny.

This essay follows two trajectories. One explores the cultural, historical and political origins of the meta-narratives that inform Palestinian and Israeli mainstream views of return. The other is a thought experiment that seeks to bridge theory and practice. Cognizant of the merits of transitional justice and sceptical about the feasibility and efficacy of closure, it presents a formula for settlement which could transform the lives of a substantial proportion of the 1.36 million refugees most urgently in need of such a change. Working from Julia Kristeva’s abjection theory, I propose the right to refuse as a viable alterative to the elusive and impractical quest for universal return. This attempt to fuse theory and practice invites some humbling thoughts on the role of intellectuals in political negotiations.

...The Palestinian view of the historic injustice that befell them is exacerbated by the recognition that most ordinary Palestinians, including those who eventually became refugees, had no control over events that led to their demise in 1948 and over circumstances that determined their fate in exile. This informs an intuitive, self evident moral position featuring four main sensibilities.

One - universal return and restitution is the only true rectification of the injustices incurred in 1948 and in exile since. Second - those originally displaced and their descendants make one inseparable and indivisible community. Third – refugees are entitled to a spectrum of remedial options that should include return, indemnities and settlement elsewhere. Finally, the Palestinian themselves, as individuals and as a collective, should have the sole discretion to choose between these options.

Thanks to IAM.

Talk to Me

Found in this Journal:
Communication Research, Vol. 37, No. 1, 3-19 (2010):

Language Style Matching as a Predictor of Social Dynamics in Small Groups
Amy L. Gonzales, Cornell University, alg49@cornell.edu
Jeffrey T. Hancock, Cornell University
James W. Pennebaker, University of Texas at Austin

.

Synchronized verbal behavior can reveal important information about social dynamics. This study introduces the linguistic style matching (LSM) algorithm for calculating verbal mimicry based on an automated textual analysis of function words. The LSM algorithm was applied to language generated during a small group discussion in which 70 groups comprised of 324 individuals engaged in an information search task either face-to-face or via text-based computer-mediated communication. As a metric, LSM predicted the cohesiveness of groups in both communication environments, and it predicted task performance in face-to-face groups. Other language features were also related to the groups’ cohesiveness and performance, including word count, pronoun patterns, and verb tense. The results reveal that this type of automated measure of verbal mimicry can be an objective, efficient, and unobtrusive tool for predicting underlying social dynamics. In total, the study demonstrates the effectiveness of using language to predict change in social psychological factors of interest.

Academic Lack of Perspective

I found this article from 2005 and I ask you to spend two minutes and read the abstract and come to the realization that the reality - continued terror, Hamas takeover, etc. - is missing from this academic analysis:

Disengagement - And What After?
Hasson Shlomo
2005
Abstract of publication #3/37e

What will happen the day after the disengagement? Will disengagement herald tranquility and stabilization for Israeli-Palestinian relations, and enable the parties to resume negotiations and progress toward a permanent status agreement? Or, will the opposite occur, and disengagement will reinforce extreme Islamic factions who believe that only force can influence Israel? This essay examines these questions, through the perspective of four central and prevalent geopolitical approaches in Israel:

* The Inevitability of Separation: this approach holds that demographic and security considerations make Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria a necessity – even unilaterally, if need be.

* The Two State Solution: this approach supports a final status agreement, based on the principle of two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea, in which both peoples will exercise their right to self determination.

* The Greater Land of Israel: The Greater Land of Israel approach calls for Israel to remain in the territories, for various reasons: National-Religious circles, who believe in territorial integrity, justify their position through national and religious reasoning. Security circles supporting this approach argue that given the present security circumstances, and especially in light of threats of terrorism and the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should not leave the territories.

* Bi-National State: This approach, which characterizes Jewish post-Zionist circles in Israel and nationalist circles among Israeli Arabs, sees a bi-national state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as inevitable.

The essay presents the various approaches, elaborates the scenarios relating to them, and points out the signs marking the realization of each approach. Analysis of the various geopolitical approaches suggests two main options, which are, in my opinion, those which will stand at the center of the internal Israeli political debate, and around which the main political positioning will be formulated:

1. Containing itself inside the border
2. Deployment in the frontier area beyond the border.

A geopolitical approach is a sort of psycho-political pattern of thought, resulting from life experience and affiliation to a defined cultural group. It reflects one’s personal and collective beliefs and life experience, the opinions one is exposed to, and the social groups to which one is connected. It acts as a filtering lens, through which reality is examined, processed and interpreted. Based upon this processed reality, one reaches conclusions regarding the desirable course of action.

Underlying each geopolitical approach is a basic assumption; an irrefutable axiom. This assumption is sometimes displayed as an imperative, or as an inevitable process. The Inevitability of Separation approach assumes that the demographic process endangers the State of Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish and democratic state, and therefore, that disengagement is inevitable. The Two State Solution approach assumes that moral imperative and economic needs necessitate separation and the achievement of peace. Supporters of the Greater Land of Israel believe that settling the Land of Israel accomplishes a national vision and fulfills a divine imperative. The Bi-National State approach is based on the assumption that both communities, Jewish and Arab, are irreversibly intertwined, territorially and community-wise.

Despite substantial differences between the four approaches, they all share the historicist approach: the view that historical development is not a matter of chance, and that there is a constitutional logic at its foundation, which determines the direction of events. The approaches differ regarding the identity of the factor which determines historic development. Each emphasizes a different, exclusive factor which determines historic development in general, and, specifically, the nature of the relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These factors, which include demography, morality and progress, national vision and divine promise, and irreversible intertwining, determine the history of the relations between Israelis and Palestinians. These factors determine who will take part in shaping history, and which political views and strategies will shape the settlement map.

The essay is guided by an approach of skepticism regarding the validity of the historicist worldview, that is, the worldview which seeks out a logic which determines the path of history. It also distances itself from philosophical-political relativism, which assumes that every geopolitical approach is legitimate. Policymakers must base their geopolitical approach upon a system of criteria maximizing the number of advantages. The essay presents six criteria, whose essence is the existence of a Jewish democratic state, living in security and peace and enjoying internal solidarity and international support. True statehood is the choice, between geopolitical options, which strives for harmony between the various principles, while moderating the contradictions between them and preserving proportionality in their realization.

The geopolitical option proposed in the essay in light of these principles, is an Israeli initiative to rein in within the borders and to stabilize the frontier beyond the border. This option fits the Inevitability of Separation approach, but is also aware of the dangers indicated by Greater Land of Israel devotees. It does not stop at the inevitability of separation, rather continues in the direction of a two state solution, while understanding that the process will be slow and paved with crises, as predicted by the Inevitability of Separation approach. The two state solution scenario will not be manifested in a complete separation, due to the special circumstances of the two states as indicated by the Bi-National State approach, and a certain amount of common space will exist in the future as well.

However, most of the public in Israel oppose such a state, whether as the Greater Land of Israel or as the post-Zionist version of a bi-national state. Israel cannot eternally maintain a situation of separation amidst increasing enmity; reality necessitates progress from unilateral separation to a two state solution of the conflict.

Worthless dribble for which he got paid.

Have You Studied Your Toponymy Lately?

Ddi you know that a Professor Thomas L. Thompson has published an article, "The Politics of Reading the Bible in Israel" in the Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Volume 7, Number 1, May 2008, pp. 1-15?

Here's the abstract:

The biblical themes of exile, return, the blossoming of the desert and the promise of the land have been transformed to support Zionist nationalist policies of ethnic cleansing. Biblical and archaeological scholarship, itself, has contributed substantially to the de-Arabicisation of Palestinian toponymy, the understanding of the Bible's allegorical narratives as nationalist epic and an ethno-centric understanding of Palestine's ancient history.

Imagine that. Our history, culture, religion, literature, philosophy and an 1800-year continuous presence in the Land of Israel under Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders and other invaders and conquerors leading up to the Ottomans, English and Jordanians is, what? A misplaced toponymy?

Pluh-ese!

Science or Alchemy?

I spotted an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune entitled "How words could end a war" and its authors champion intangible symbolic concessions, like an apology or recognition of a right to exist.

This seems to me almost infantile thinking, so empty and insignificant. It's like all you have to do to succeed in getting a girl into bed is to tell her you love her. Now, I am quite aware that happens, and it happens a lot, but it doesn't mean that it's just or correct or will all turn out for the best in most cases.

Here's the basis for their study:

...the essentially religious nature of the conflict. But research we recently undertook suggests a way to go beyond that. For there is a moral logic to seemingly intractable religious and cultural disputes. These conflicts cannot be reduced to secular calculations of interest but must be dealt with on their own terms, a logic very different from the marketplace or realpolitik.

Across the world, people believe that devotion to sacred or core values that incorporate moral beliefs - like the welfare of family and country, or commitment to religion and honor - are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. Our studies, carried out with the support of the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department, suggest that people will reject material compensation for dropping their commitment to sacred values and will defend those values regardless of the costs.

But they don't understand all the words:

For example, Mousa Abu Marzook (the deputy chairman of Hamas) said no when we proposed a trade-off for peace without granting a right of return. He became angry when we added in the idea of substantial American aid for rebuilding: "No, we do not sell ourselves for any amount."

But when we mentioned a potential Israeli apology for 1948, he brightened: "Yes, an apology is important, as a beginning. It's not enough, because our houses and land were taken away from us, and something has to be done about that." This suggested that progress on values might open the way for negotiations on material issues.

The authors, Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, (see here for more bio info), while pointing out the fault line of Western approaches to the Arab-Israel conflict fall into the trap of not understanding thye understanding of the both sides to the hostility/animosity displayed.

Another example is Binyamin Netanyahu in their article:

We got a similar reaction from Benjamin Netanyahu, the hard-line former Israeli prime minister. We asked him whether he would seriously consider accepting a two-state solution following the 1967 borders if all major Palestinian factions, including Hamas, were to recognize the right of the Jewish people to an independent state. He answered, "O.K., but the Palestinians would have to show that they sincerely mean it, change their textbooks and anti-Semitic characterizations."

Bibi really doesn't believe, as most Israelis would agree, that this (sincerely mean it, change their textbooks and anti-Semitic characterizations) would ever come about and some of us think it's not enough. We do so belive because we've been through a lot of this before. Why would the Grand Mufti Haj Amin El-Husseini have aided Hitler to the extent of recruiting Bosnian Muslims into the Wehrmacht? Is antisemitism perhaps intrinsic to the Arab outlook on Jews or is it an instrument? But if an instrument, if what the Mufti did in World War II should be considered today, after all we know of the horro of Hitler, why should there still be antisemitic propaganda?

But the most ridiculous claim these two academics make is this:

Making these sorts of wholly intangible "symbolic" concessions, like an apology or recognition of a right to exist, simply doesn't compute on any utilitarian calculus. And yet the science says they may be the best way to start cutting the knot.

"Science"? What science?

Here's another take.

More Academic Gobbledygook

American Politics Research, Vol. 36, No. 6, 803-823 (2008)

Geographic Proximity Versus Institutions
Evaluating Borders as Real Political Boundaries

Wendy K. Tam Cho
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Erinn P. Nicley
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Scholars have recently begun to connect political phenomena with geographic proximity, noting that in addition to one's personal characteristics, individuals are strongly affected by their social context. We push this literature further by examining how institutions such as state borders mediate and condition the effects of geographic proximity. Our findings expand our understanding of geography by demonstrating that the geographic landscape has interesting facets beyond proximity and distance. Rather, geography is the product of political relationships that intersect in particular places.

Self-Destruction in the Name of Democracy

In Political Theory, Vol. 36, No. 1, 37-65 (2008), Arash Abizadeh of McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada where he is Associate Professor specializing in contemporary political theory and the history of political philosophy (home page here) published an article entitled "Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders".

Here's the abstract:-

The question of whether a closed border entry policy under the unilateral control of a democratic state is legitimate cannot be settled until we first know to whom the justification of a regime of control is owed. According to the state sovereignty view, the control of entry policy, including of movement, immigration, and naturalization, ought to be under the unilateral discretion of the state itself: justification for entry policy is owed solely to members. This position, however, is inconsistent with the democratic theory of popular sovereignty. Anyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries. Because the demos of democratic theory is in principle unbounded, the regime of boundary control must be democratically justified to foreigners as well as to citizens, in political institutions in which both foreigners and citizens can participate.

Abizadeh's research interests include History of Political Philosophy; Contemporary Political Theory; Nationalism; Democratic Theory; Discourse Ethics. His areas of current research include the relation between the emotions, rhetoric, discourse, practical reason, and politics; identity, nationalism, nation-state, and cosmopolitanism; territoriality, globalization, and sovereignty; Rousseau and the French Enlightenment; Habermas and German critical theory.

He's babbling. And he's dangerous. Actually, he seems to be a Bahaist.

But that's the level of scholarship today.

Let's Get Academic About Blogging

Conceptualizing The Weblog: Understanding What It Is In Order To Imagine What It Can Be By Andrew Ó Baoill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract:

This article provides a model for defining the weblog and differentiating between its manifestations. First we have the definition of the weblog based on the basic format - websites with posts in reverse-chronological order. Second we have audience, the division between those weblogs that deal with personal issues and expect an audience known to the author, and those that place themselves in the public sphere, addressing a more general audience. Within those weblogs operating in the public sphere we can make a further delineation in terms of the domain of issues covered. Third, and finally, we have the organization of the weblog, either as a hobby, an income generating operation, or a professional operation.

Weblogs have received much recent popular and academic attention, being seen by some as heralding a potential inversion in information flows in society and online. However, concurrent with the coverage of the potential of weblogs has been a discussion of what actually constitutes a weblog. It is necessary to have a clear understanding of what weblogs are, and of their structural context in order to properly assess the potential role of weblogs in the greater media environment. In this essay I examine the various elements associated with the weblog, and previous attempts at classification and definition. I develop a model that will assist future
research into this phenomenon. By developing a multi-faceted understanding of the various forms of weblogs, and the roles assigned them, we can better hone research and obtain clarity on what we can reasonably expect of weblogs.

Weblogs emerged online in a rather unplanned fashion. While hosting companies and email providers throughout the 1990s billed themselves as helping to create ‘communities’ online, and tried to figure out exactly how to ‘leverage’ these communities,1 computer savvy amateurs were doing it for themselves. Slashdot, for example, was an early entrant to the scene, allowing readers to discuss stories that had been submitted by other readers.2 Relying largely on other online outlets for original content, the emphasis is on technology related news. Entries are usually short, consisting of a link to a timely article, though there are occasional interviews and essays.

Academic Research

In the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 50, No. 6, 899-925 (2006), appears an article by Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation and Esteban F. Klor of the
Department of Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Entitled "On Terrorism and Electoral Outcomes - Theory and Evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" it investigates the interaction between terror attacks and electoral outcomes in Israel. The authors analyze a dynamic model of reputation that captures the salient characteristics of this conflict.

The equilibrium of the theoretical model generates two precise empirical predictions about the interaction between terrorism and electoral outcomes. First, the relative support for the right-wing party is expected to increase after periods with high levels of terrorism and to decrease after periods of relative calm. Second, the expected level of terrorism is higher when the left-wing party is in office than it is during the term of the right-wing party.

The authors test these hypotheses by using a newly created data set on terrorist attacks in Israel between 1990 and 2003. The first hypothesis is strongly supported by data culled from public opinion polls about the Israeli electorate’s political preferences. The second theoretical hypothesis is strongly supported by the three Israeli governments to which the theory can be applied that served during the studied time period.

Gee, we all could have guessed that.