Search

This article analyses the debate over an ‘antisemitic Marx’ in the French context. Since the republication of On the Jewish Question in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, the French intellectual field has seen continuous conflict between supporters of this ‘thesis’ (Mishari, Kaplan, Birnbaum) and their detractors, who are sometimes militant (J. Aron, Bensaïd) and sometimes academic (De Fontenay, Traverso), including those involved in the Grande édition Marx et Engels (Clochec). First, the article examines at length the French debate which spans over 50 years. Second, building on the insights garnered from this debate, it tackles the limits of materialist criticism of religious views. In light of the contemporary crisis of secularism in France, this problem forces Marxist and critical thinkers (Tosel, Meziane) to reassess the issue of religious minorities and their ‘assimilation’ to the ‘national majority’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The document titled "Letter to the Damned of Israel" by Abraham Serfaty addresses Arab Jews oppressed in Israel, discussing the impact of Zionism and discrimination they face. Serfaty criticizes Zionist leaders like Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, highlighting the racist and oppressive nature of the regime. He calls for solidarity with Palestinian people and advocates for a future of peace, justice, and dignity through resistance against Zionist oppression. The letter emphasizes the importance of reclaiming identity, unity with other oppressed groups, and working towards a shared future of peace and democracy in a secular, unified Palestine. [Extracted from the article]

This article introduces Abraham Serfaty’s ‘Letter to the Damned of Israel’ (https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206X-20242132), written in 1982 while he was imprisoned. Serfaty, a Jewish-Moroccan Marxist, reflects on antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and the oppression of both Palestinians and Jews by Zionism. This introduction explores Serfaty’s political thoughts on the relationship between Palestinian liberation, Zionism, and the Jewish Question. It highlights his belief in the importance of Arab-Jewish identity and the role of Arab Jews in the anti-Zionist struggle. ​It also discusses Serfaty’s engagement with various international issues and his influence on the Moroccan leftist movement, particularly through his involvement with the Marxist-Leninist organisation Ila Al Amam and the journal Souffles. ​ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws attention to Yehuda Benari, a forgotten figure in the Revisionist Zionist movement who, in addition to serving as the movement’s attorney general (1938–46) and the head of the London office (1947–48), was a leading Zionist lawyer, activist, historian, and journalist. My thesis is that Benari modeled his life, both actively and intellectually, on the leading principles and ideals of Vladimir Jabotinsky. However, his unwavering commitment to Jabotinsky’s interpretation of Revisionist Zionism impeded Benari’s chances of adapting to change and prevented a political career in independent Israel. Nonetheless, his work in the 1940s on behalf of political prisoners sheds light on the way Revisionists used British law as part of their overall struggle. This piece also helps us interpret the political fate of a generation of Revisionist Zionists between Jabotinsky’s death (1940) and the establishment of the State of Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the development of capitalism in Palestine under British colonialism and the Zionist settler colonial project. It examines first, Israel's internal and external capitalist dynamism, including its treatment of its non-European citizens, namely indigenous Palestinians, and non-Ashkenazi (Arab) Jewish settlers. Second, it explores the state's interdependent relationship with Western, especially US imperialism. The article argues that the British colonial state was crucial in enabling the Zionist project to materialize, leading to weakening the socio-economic fabric of the Palestinians in their own lands and homeland, creating a favourable condition for the Zionist project to gradually penetrate the land of Palestine and dispossess its population. As a European (Jewish) settler colonial movement, Zionism, founded on racism and racialization, aimed at establishing a new Jewish enclave separate and independent from the indigenous Palestinians. This separateness made it resemble apartheid South Africa, yet the historical specificity of Palestine, where the Zionist settlers did not just alienate, exclude and when needed, use and exploit the Palestinians, but also expelled the indigenous Palestinians and claim Palestine as a 'pure' Jewish state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as a starting point the desire of many to locate the unfolding genocide in Gaza in the irrationality of its perpetrators — the Israeli state and/or its imperial backers — this article proposes instead to understand it as an extreme expression of the continuous violence necessary to maintain not only local settler colonial rule, but the global capitalist system as a whole. Building on the existing literature on settler colonialism and racial capitalism, and insisting on the ways that both should be understood not as discrete, self-contained objects of study, but as co-constitutive elements of the global order, this article attempts to illuminate the structural logics at play in Israel's latest and most brutal assault on Palestinian life. In doing so, the article emphasises Zionism's role in maintaining western imperialism at a crucial nodal point of the world economy and, in turn, the latter's commitment to guaranteeing its stability and dominance. The article resists, however, the urge to move from explaining current structures of domination to declaring them as final or unshakable. It therefore ends by proposing possible different tomorrows, through an engagement with the Palestinian revolutionary tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Zionist challenges regarding "Jewish labor" through the micro-history of the Salonikian longshoremen on the eve of their emigration from Greece (early 1930s), and during the first period of integration in the Haifa Port (1933–1936). To date, the hegemonic perspective on Salonikian longshoremen has emphasized the immigrants' crucial role in overcoming the Arab-dominated port labor market. However, while tending to paint a romantic picture of national fervor, this Zionist view obscured the economic, ethnic, and cultural confrontation involved in realizing "Jewish labor". These multiple forms of confrontation occurred not only between ethnic groups (Jewish-Arab struggle) but also within the local Jewish labor community. Re-visiting the Zionist agenda from the vantage point of both the Salonikian longshoremen and the Zionist establishment enables to present largely neglected aspects of the complex relations between the Sephardic Salonikians and the Ashkenazi/Eastern European-dominated Jewish labor establishment. Due to heavy doubts about the Salonikian commitment to the uphill battle for "Jewish labor," the Haifa Labor Council excluded the latter from the labor community. Consequently, the cultural marginality of the Salonikians weakened the Zionist vision of uniting all Jewish wage earners into a cohesive working class in the middle of the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arab Palestinian youth and children's political socialization during the British Mandate (1922–1948) has largely been ignored in the literature. Most of the research has focused on the colonial project in Palestine and how different figureheads influenced the discourse. Indeed, this does not mean there isn't a framework in place to understand youth and children's political engagement. This study will focus on how social-political elements conceptualized the formation of Arab Palestinian youth's political socialization. The Mandate period provided distinct social-political actors elements that were articulated within demographic control, semi-education, and economic deprivation. Arab Palestinian children and youth's political socialization was shaped within the context of these interweaving social-political aspects. These elements altered the Arab Palestinian community's livelihood and by extension youth and children's political engagement. Each one of these aspects was centred within the Zionist ideology and administrated by the British Mandates' colonial policies. This research deconstructs the juxtaposition of each element in relation to children's political socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Cultural Poetics / KulturPoetik: Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft is the property of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the impact of Muslim Brotherhood and jihadist theorists on the making of Hamas’s 7 October 2023, assault. By way of doing so, it discusses Hamas’s historic, ideological, and organisational connections to the Muslim Brotherhood before exploring jihadist warfare doctrine to liberate al-Quds (Jerusalem) from ‘Zionist occupation’, which shaped Hamas’s covenant and may have influenced its military strategy including the 10/7 massacres. The article concludes that Hamas’s ideology is closely aligned with most extremist factions of jihadist and Muslim Brotherhood thought and that efforts to characterise the organisation’s terrorist activities as motivated by national considerations are totally misconceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) was the best-known Jewish anglophone writer and public intellectual during his lifetime. There has been a contemporary resurgence of interest in Zangwill's life and work in Britain, France, America and Israel, which will be discussed in the introduction and is illustrated by the articles in the special issue. I focus on the legacies of Zangwill both locally and globally. At the heart of the introduction is the way that Zangwill's legacy varies in different national cultures. It explores how Zangwill reuses the idea of the ghetto from the German tradition of ghetto literature; radicalises Herzl's political Zionism in the form of Jewish territorialism; and refashions President Roosevelt's idea of the melting-pot for popular consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides theoretical and contextual background to The Academic Question of Palestine. Building on the work of Edward Said, we maintain that Palestine constitutes a unique question with special status in international academic spaces, particularly in the West, because of its entanglement with other imperial and settler colonial forms of dispossession. We argue that the special place that Zionism and its defence has occupied for decades in academia has rendered Palestine one of the thorniest and most divisive issues of our time. In the new millennium, the birth of the BDS movement; the emergence of new solidarities with global anti-racist movements; the scholarly and human rights consensus that Israel constitutes a regime settler colonial apartheid; the acceleration of Zionist violence, until the Gaza genocide, have generated new forms of repression and resistance in the academic space. This Special Issue offers the tools for understanding these recent transformations of the question of Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on my experience of being suspended and reinstated. It demonstrates how administrators, including those at my institution, knowingly violate academic freedom and free speech. Throughout, I discuss the institutional and political machinations seeking to silence dissident voices, particularly those who critique Israel and Zionist settler colonialism. The aim is to make more visible the linkages between external pressure and the capitulation of administrators influenced by donors. I highlight the university's role in producing technologies of colonial violence used on Palestinian bodies and the significance of the Gaza solidarity encampments. In the subsequent sections, I critique the weaponization of antisemitism and the Palestine exception to academic freedom. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of speaking and writing truth to power during a genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2023–2024, US academia witnessed the largest ever protests condemning Israeli state violence against Palestinians and the most vociferous repression of these protests and other criticisms of that violence. This article situates this moment within the longer history of support for Palestinian liberation in US colleges and universities, as well as the decades-long rise of organizations to combat this support and critical analysis of the Israeli state. We do so to make two arguments. First, there has been a continuous interrelationship between resistance and repression, with one feeding the other, and always in relationship to events in the Middle East and the US. Second, and using analysis of our experience with academic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as an example, we argue that understanding this history is necessary for building a more broad-based, international, and intersectional movement for liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnographic article unpacks a highly publicized, Zionist, and right-wing smear campaign. Rather than individualize this process, the article discusses this smear campaign to outline the mechanics of what are referred to as "settler colonial outposts" that extend the sovereignty of the Israeli settler state. The article maps out how settler colonial outposts are ideological formations and thus also spaces of convergence for fascists and liberal Zionists. Finally, it attends to the psychic and affective features of settler colonial outposts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An exploration of how discourses around free speech actually facilitaterepression against those expressing pro-Palestine sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic solidarity with Palestine in Australia is strongly influenced by multiple factors, in particular the strength of the powerful local Zionist lobby and growing public awareness of Israeli crimes. Repression of the Palestine justice movement has run along internationally familiar lines, involving both the targeting of individuals and a broader ideological 'war of position.' In response, the boycott is gaining momentum in Australian universities, as manifested in the formation of new BDS and Palestine solidarity organizations, in efforts within the National Tertiary Education Union, in conferences on the topic of Palestine and BDS and similar academic activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I focus on the cultural and political work the IHRA definition of antisemitism carries out to explain why it has been adopted by hundreds of actors. I offer three key reasons to explain its effectiveness: First, it operates on an affective level, interpolating people who identify as Jews to also identify with Israel and Zionism; Second, it ties the right to Jewish difference with a Jewish State and Jewish sovereignty; Third, the definition provides a defence of a regime I call 'democratic apartheid'. The analysis reveals that the IHRA definition of antisemitism serves as a counterinsurgency tool aimed at shielding Israel from resistance to its oppressive form of racial governance and, following its recent war on Gaza, from accusations of genocidal violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to investigate how the value of the unity of the homeland (Israel) and the value of the unity of the people (Jewish Nation) in the writings and policy of Yitzhak Shamir as a warrior and commander in Lehi, as a Knesset member, Foreign Minister and Prime Minister. The realization of two goals which are to a certain extent fundamentally opposed may generate pressure for the decisionmaker concerning the national priorities defining the dominant goal which subordinates other considerations to its achievement. Indeed, he claimed it was not possible to maintain the integrity of the Jewish People without the integrity of the Homeland, or the integrity of the Homeland without the integrity of the Jewish People. show [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over ten months, actions have given voice to previously silent mouths, and global media channels have once again highlighted the struggles that Palestinian endure under Zionist occupation. Despite the suffering that the Palestinians had to endure for over a century, the »Al-Aqsa Flood» came to relieve Al-Aqsa, revealing the collective genocide as witnessed by all through real-life testimonials. The »AlAqsa Flood» has exposed the true nature of Zionism, as embodying imperialistic power through military control to maintain economic gains in this vital region at the center of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Olam Katan ['Small world'] was the first illustrated Hebrew periodical for Jewish children, published first in Vienna (1901–1902), then in Cracow (1902–1904). Although the periodical reached three continents, the overwhelming majority of its readers were located in Eastern Europe. This article analyses the editors' efforts to create an attractive yet educational magazine for young readers as a part of a much bigger enterprise: raising a generation of Hebrew users and contributing to the revival of Hebrew. Through a content analysis of the periodical, I reconstruct not only the editors' strategy to reach children and young readers but also the obstacles they faced in the process. I also seek to determine what the role of adults was in the process of children's Hebrew education in general, and in mediating the content of this Hebrew periodical in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the role of music in Jewish thought, specifically its connection to Zionism and messianism. It focuses on the writings of Rav Kook and his belief that music is crucial for understanding the cosmic structure of the present and shaping the future. The article suggests that future works should also include an overview of music in the Sephardic and Mizrahi world, as well as in contemporary European and US Jewish diasporas. Overall, this article provides a theoretical overview of music in Jewish thought and is recommended for academic libraries. The book explores the efforts of the Kennedy administration to promote the concept of "freedom" as a prerequisite for creative achievement, particularly in contrast to the Soviet Union. The author, a cultural historian, examines the influence of figures like Arthur M. Schlesinger and Nicolas Nabokov in shaping this propaganda of freedom. The book delves into the music, composers, and events that were part of the cultural battles of the Cold War era, highlighting the ideological conflicts that mirrored the potential for armed conflict between the US and USSR. [Extracted from the article]

Our ethical responsibilities as researchers within or related to the study of "terrorism" could not be clearer than in moments when the "terrorism" label is used to justify mass killing and destruction. The state of Israel has relentlessly continued to bombard Gaza since 7 October 2023 and, with the support of Western nations, built consensus around framing all Palestinians as (potential) terrorists. In light of the horrors that the world is witnessing today, and the lack of engagement with Palestine in Critical Terrorism Studies research, we ask, how does – and should - Palestine feature in Critical Terrorism Studies scholarship? How can we, as researchers and educators, facilitate deeper conversations that challenge hegemonic and racist framings of "terrorism"? This roundtable discussion brings critical, anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist, and queer scholars together to discuss 1) the exclusion of Palestine from the critical study of "terrorism" and 2) the significance of the Palestinian struggle for liberation for all researchers invested in the critical study of "terrorism". We call for more serious engagement with Palestine and acknowledge that such a call is inseparable from a commitment to anti-colonial scholarship and activism.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Zionist movement idea did not leave indifferent representatives of the Jews in the Russian Empire. In connection with the repeal of restrictive laws after February 1917, the political activity of the Jewish population increased significantly. However, October 1917 changed the direction of the Zionist movement, as the new government gradually began to persecute members of the parties and organizations that existed at that time, declaring them counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet. At that time, the Zionist movement was already a political force with programmatic documents, statutes, educational literature, printing presses. One of the issues that occupied her mind was the question of educational and cultural work in the ranks of the Zionist movement. One of the organizations that prepared young people for a new life in the new state was «Gekholuts». Program documents covering the main points of her work in Soviet Russia have been preserved in Russian archives and partially published. They contain information about what kind of cultural work should be carried out with young adherents of the Zionist idea in building a future Jewish state. By 1930, the Soviets had eradicated the Zionist movement, and its followers moved to Palestine whenever possible to implement their ideas, particularly on the importance of cultural work, there.

This article focuses on the so-called Zionist utopias in order to reconsider these unprecedented Jewish utopian novels, which arose in the late nineteenth century, from a different perspective to the canonical one that formed within the Zionist historiography of the 1940s. To do so, it examines the literary textual corpus and includes other new utopian sources that have not been considered thus far. It then offers a brief reconstruction of the rediscovery of this utopian imaginary by Zionist scholars. Finally, this article proposes a new historiographical interpretation based on the disjunction between dreaming of Zion and founding Israel in order to deconstruct the underlying Zionist teleological view and thus reconsider these utopias in the long history of Jewish emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a nuanced understanding of novelist Yoram Kaniuk's national ideology as a representative of a generation, as well as unveils personal, untreated trauma as reflected in his writing. By way of doing so, it employs two research approaches: a literary speculative fiction interpretation examined through a lens of alternative history, and a cultural sociology perspective based on the concepts of 'Imagined Communities' and 'Liquid Modernity'. On a broader level, his novel Scums portrays the deep disillusionment and disappointment experienced by veterans of Israel's founding generation, who felt abandoned by their successors and betrayed by their values. On a personal level, Kaniuk's writing reflects military flashbacks that significantly impacted his post-traumatic state of mind, which in turn influenced the way he perceived, described, and interpreted the historical fragments of his generation. Considering Kaniuk's discomfort in discussing issues that deeply concerned him, he found solace and liberation through the medium of writing, which enabled him to express his thoughts and emotions, shouting them onto the page, unburdening himself, and making sense of his experiences. Thus, by writing in an unapologetic and candid manner, Kaniuk navigated the complexities of his inner world and external challenges, embracing his own truth and carving out a place for himself to be heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to research Israeli Haredi parties through engaging in theoretical discourse and critique of prevalent assumptions regarding their nature and relationship with Zionism. It addresses a fundamental question concerning the shift towards extremism within these parties, employing an interdisciplinary approach and analyzing their electoral discourse. The paper argues about the centrality of Haredi parties and their impact on Israeli decision-making, asserting that recent extremist stances within these parties do not represent a transformation but rather a reproduction of discourse which reveals the essence of Israeli Zionist colonization. This is closer to giving religiosity to Zionism more than endorsing Haredi parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of the state of Israel was the outcome of the Zionist movement, which originated in Europe and was itself inspired by fundamental European ideas—Enlightenment, national self-determination, democracy and socialism. From its earliest days Zionism was primarily a secular movement that rejected the religious establishment and religious way of life of the Jews in the Diaspora. In many respects, however, the founders of the state and the principles on which they founded its institutions—the political, judicial, economic, social, and educational—were rooted in the ethical values and cultural practices of the Jewish tradition which they had apparently rejected. To explain this complex process of secularization of a very ancient religious and cultural tradition—which many see as an unresolved or unresolvable conflict between two opposing systems of thought—I draw on the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer and especially on his Truth and Method (1960). Culture, according to Gadamer, is a continuous flow of tradition within what he called "the horizon." People, he argued, create and live within a given cultural tradition, but they are at the same time its interpreters, enlarging it by adopting elements from various cultures and ideologies, or "horizons." From this hermeneutic perspective, the founders of modern Israel and their successors were the active interpreters of the Jewish tradition within the larger historical context of the European Enlightenment. I illustrate this process of cultural interpretation by focusing on the secularization of the Jewish holidays, specifically on the way the Kibbutz movement, a leading symbol of the new Israel, re-interpretated Jewish holidays like Passover, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Yom Kippur, and gave these religious festivals a secular-Israeli content. However, this dynamic pioneering stage of secularization may be said to have ended by the 1980s. From then on, the secular identity of Israeli society has been undergoing a variety of radical changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at images of wildflowers in contemporary Israeli art and their evolution in Israel's visual cultural. Wildflowers were regarded a part of the Zionist ideology in strengthening the connection of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel. They served as “cultural objects’ that contributed to shaping national identity by appearing on stamps, bank notes, in official Zionist publications and in botanical guidebooks. The article examines how contemporary Israeli artists relate to this tradition by looking at the artworks of six contemporary Israeli Jewish artists, using both visual analysis and in-depth interviews with the artists. The findings indicate that contemporary artists conduct a complex dialogue with the wildflowers and challenge their national symbolism. The images reflect an ambivalent relationship that includes attachment and belonging alongside discomfort and criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A typology presents ideal concrete types, and probing their personality and character enables the creation of general patterns. The study of the personality thus grants access to the depth of an idea not only in abstract terms but also in its function as a guide to, and a source of, an ethos. Furthermore, the personality construct plays a significant role in the understanding of historical processes because many events are ascribed or tied to the centrality of a specific individual. The study of typology is especially linked to Eduard Spranger (1882–1963), who claimed that ideal types convey conscious structures. In his view, we can impart significance to actions and behaviors only in relation to the agent's set of values. In his writings, Spranger presented six ideal types. What is the meaning of a typology when discussing a movement such as religious Zionism? In this article, I attempt to trace an ideological portrait of two types that, in my estimate, created through their personality and their endeavor the ideological pattern that has accompanied religious Zionism and the religious-Zionist idea throughout this movement's existence. I set up these two thinkers and entrepreneurs as pure types, even though no such types exist in reality. I present the pure types as founded on dominant features although, again, well aware that there are no pure features in the concrete world. Besides describing the characteristic features of the two types, I will argue that the interaction between the patterns they established facilitates understanding of several historical events. These patterns at times continue one another but, mainly, they confront one another. To illustrate their course, I will relate to two historical episodes where these personality patterns come forth, one that took place a few years after R. Reines' death and the other about fifty years later or more, whose implications are felt up to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jewish Left is having an intertwined renaissance and crisis, with a level of influence and growth not seen in decades. What explains the revitalization of the Jewish Left? What can the older generation teach to and learn from the young generation? What are the possibilities for institution-building? And why should scholars care? To tackle these questions, Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA) organized a symposium on the Jewish Left. Bringing together activists and theorists, scholars and practitioners, grandparents and grandchildren, the event worked to theorize the past and present to map the Jewish left's path forward. Speakers included some of the leading voices of the Jewish Left, representatives of progressive Jewish organizations, and provided a gathering space for scholars, students, and activists to examine the evolving role of the Jewish Left in world affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay engages the challenges and future of the New Jewish Anti-Zionist Left in America. How has anti-Zionism become an expression of progressive Jewishness and in what ways is this anti-Zionism itself a product of the Zionization of American Judaism in the past half century? The essay then turns to ask the ways progressive Jewish America can move past anti-Zionism and in doing so move past Zionization and begin to construct a New Radical Jewish Diasporism that would include new forms of religious/spiritual expression not bound by fidelity to Israel. This final section is more a prolegomenon for a possible future for the Jewish Left today to revive a new form of Radical Diasporism that is both not Zionist, and not anti-Zionist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historische Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This article argues that truth recovery practices that take place against the backdrop of ongoing settler colonial erasure, as is the case when considering Zionist colonial violence in Palestine, must focus on combating state-sponsored attempts at erasure, rather than solely providing a platform for the expression of settler guilt. Design/methodology/approach: The article analyses existing literature on truth recovery practices that take place in Palestine, including the work of a variety of local NGOs engaged in such praxis, with a view to considering how this form of transitional justice has germinated incrementally in the space. Critical reflection on the work of a variety of grassroots NGOs is situated alongside other forms of transitional justice intervention. Findings: The article argues that in the context of enduring settler colonialism, the truth regarding past Zionist atrocities in historic Palestine must avoid being curated in the present day in such a way as to allow for damage limitation rather than the platforming of conversations around meaningful repair. Truth recovery for recovery's sake serves only to reinforce the settler colonial status quo rather than properly agitate for a full decolonisation, one that demands and facilitates indigenous Palestinian return. Originality/value: The article challenges prevailing notions of the role of truth recovery practices in spaces of enduring settler colonial value. It makes clear that the role of truth recovery interventions in sites where colonial violence endures must be to actively and meaningfully support activities that reinforce native identity, history and presence on the land. Moreover, by reference to existing grassroots attempts at truth recovery in Palestine, the article provides an original and clear argument that states it is simply not enough to platform the revelation of uncomfortable truths or to provide opportunities for settler violence of the past to be "confessed" in public if it is disassociated from challenging the present-day structures of ongoing oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Communist regime in Hungary had an ambivalent and contradictory attitude towards Jews, people of Jewish origin, and the Jewish identity during the Rákosi era. While Zionism was tolerated previously, after the Communist takeover, it began to persecute Zionists through (amongst other means) a series of show trials. In these trials, the weight of different accusations (Zionism, anti-Semitism, cosmopolitanism) changed due to various factors, and therefore the anti-Jewish/anti-Semitic characteristics of the court proceedings also changed dynamically. This study draws on archival sources and the Hungarian historical literature to present a comprehensive view of this time and these circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Middle East, as elsewhere, the protracted transition from empire to nation-state was accompanied by a brutal tide of ethnoreligious homogenisation. One of the more dramatic examples was the destruction of the Arab world’s millennia-old Jewish communities.While this destruction is often discussed only in reference to the creation of the State of Israel, this article proposes a complementary model for understanding it, a model predicated on these Jews’ status as ordinary, not exceptional, inhabitants of the Ottoman world, and the disruption caused by the end of the Ottoman empire and its replacement with European colonial rule.Using interwar Aleppo as a case study, this article demonstrates how the end of the Ottoman system of religious communities led to an extended period of dysfunction for Aleppo’s Jewish communal institutions. Under the French Mandate, this dysfunction left Aleppo’s Jews unable to contend with a succession of crises, including a three-way competition for the community’s loyalty between French administrators, Arab nationalists and the Zionist movement. This dysfunction set the stage for the community’s terminal crisis – the 1947 pogroms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I examine the intersection between the concepts of freedom, the self, God, and creativity in the works of one of the most prominent twentieth-century Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865–1935), exploring his use of these concepts through the lens of the Lebensphilosophie of the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941). I first draw a historical and thematic parallel between Bergson's and Kook's philosophies that to date has not been considered extensively. I then argue that five different interpretative puzzles related to the topic of freedom in Kook's teachings can be explained against the background of Bergson's thought. This Bergsonian interpretation enables the reader to appreciate in what way different aspects of Kook's thought—the metaphysical, ethical, epistemological, and theological—are interconnected and can be understood as an organic whole. I thereby show that the Bergsonian philosophical and systematic models are an important, and yet unexplored, interpretative tool for the study of Kook's theological and philosophical thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with editor-in-chief Arielle Angel of "Jewish Currents" who discusses her critical discussions within the Jewish community, regarding Israel's policies and their impact on Palestinian rights, reflecting a broader generational shift in attitudes towards Zionism.

Loyalty to Israel has been described as a fundamental aim of the German state (a Staatsräson), and a stifling ideological consensus tars virtually any criticism of Zionism with the brush of "antisemitism." Some on the Left, belonging to the so-called Anti-German (antideutsche) movement, consider support for "the Jewish state" to be a way of atoning for German sins—an ideology it ironically shares with some of the most outspoken of German nationalists. The result? Accusations and cancellations are visited on academics and artists; under McCarthyite conditions, the public sphere withers. "Counterpublics in Search of Infrastructures" analyzes some of the new kinds of counterpublicness that have emerged in response, particularly on social-media apps. The article considers historical theorizations of the counterpublic in order to address contemporary conditions and challenges. Discussing artistic and academic groups on social media as well as projects in exhibition spaces, it culminates in an inquiry into the notion of abstraction, both in accounts of the public sphere as consisting of abstract legal persons—as embodied by the male white bourgeois—and as certain theorizations of antisemitism as a phobic rejection of capitalist exchange value. Now that the dominant discourse once again pits property-owning and rights-bearing white subjects against racialized and dehumanized others, we need to ask: How can abstraction be performed otherwise? What are the kinds of relations that can enable a qualitatively different forms of publicness? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forced displacement operation held by the Zionist government in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of its war on the Strip in October 7, 2023 have faced criticism and opposition from all sides. However, the Israeli war government, which found in Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa an opportunity to expel the people of Gaza to areas outside the Strip, insists on implementing this plan. This paper discusses the nature of the Zionist plans that aim to displace and uproot the Palestinians from their land. These are old and renewed plans that accompanied the plan to establish the Jewish national homeland in Palestine. The paper seeks to track these plans and anticipate the future of the population in the Gaza Strip in light of the war of extermination waged by «Israel», and preventing the displaced to the southern part of the Strip on the border with Egypt from returning to their homes in the central and northern areas of Gaza. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research deals with an explanation of the crimes committed by the Zionist entity in Palestine and Gaza specifically before and after the October 7 operation. These crimes have been refuted to prove that they constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, in addition to the crime of genocide. The possibilities of prosecuting «Israel» before the International Court of Justice and prosecuting its leaders before the international criminal courts were presented. The outcomes that these lawsuits could take before these courts and the difficulties in criminalizing the leaders of the usurping entity were reviewed. All this, despite skepticism about the feasibility of international justice with the unlimited support for Israel by Western countries and the impossibility of referring its leaders or implementing judgments against it through the Security Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The brutal Israeli war on Gaza continued for many months as a retaliation for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which revealed qualitative developments in the capabilities of the resistance. Palestinian steadfastness continued despite the humanitarian catastrophe of the war in Gaza. The occupation exacts a heavy price for aggression at various levels. The paper discussed in detail the political repercussions, the most important of which were the dispute between the components of the war cabinet and the decline in Netanyahu’s popularity, then the social, environmental, economic and security repercussions of the war on the Israeli interior. It ends with multiple losses at Israeli inside and a decline in its image abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the British trade union movement's relationship with Zionism in the period from the Arab Revolt to the Six Day War. It argues that despite an appearance of fraternalism between the British and Zionist labour movements, this relationship was, in fact, governed more by indifference and political expediency on behalf of British trade unions and unionists than by any genuine ideological solidarity or conviction. It shows the Trades Union Congress's reluctance to give any tangible support to Zionist political aims, most clearly when such aims were in opposition to the Attlee government's Palestine policy, but even at other points when the Zionist project faced existential threats to its continued existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay stages an encounter between Michel Foucault and Franz Rosenzweig by juxtaposing their parallel observations on the continuity between history and war. While Foucault analyzes the strategies organizing seventeenth-century historical writing about the Norman conquest of England and the Frankish invasion of Gaul, Rosenzweig opposes the warlike progress of Christian history to the eternal peace of Jewish time. Through this comparison, the essay reevaluates the terms governing well-known debates about Jewish history and Jewish memory. It asks what role the concept of "war" has played in the emergence of modern Jewish historicism and the so-called Jewish return to history. The essay concludes by submitting the Israelite conquest of Canaan as a supplement to Foucault's examples and as a critical index of the bellicose grammar underwriting the representation of Jewish history as a field of struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the Second World War and the Allied occupation of Iran came with a relaxation of censorship laws in the country. This in turn permitted the revival of an active Jewish press after a lull of almost two decades. One of the main publications of this period, 'Alam-e Yahud (The Jewish world), frequently translated prose and literary texts for the benefit of its readers, including a great deal of Hebrew poetry. Translations were designed to encourage a global Jewish, literary, and political modernity (on both a Zionist and domestic Iranian plane) and to promote a participation within these projects by the periodical's readers.This essay analyses these literary translations and adaptations, demonstrating Iranian Jewish writers' active engagement with Hebrew literary works, shifting and molding them for their own context and ideals. It begins with an examination of the periodical's wider translation project and its function as a political and cultural bridge during a period of change. It moves on to examine the "foreignness" of authors including Haim Nahman Bialik, and Bialik's normative cachet as an Ashkenazi/European and later Palestine-based writer. The essay proceeds to analyze other Hebrew-language contemporaries as spurs for linguistic and national renewal in both Hebrew and Persian, and concludes by reading original popular and belletristic poetry in Persian by Iranian Jews published in the periodical as a signifier of distinctiveness away from these sometimes-Eurocentric translated models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 1947, following the UN decision to divide Palestine, Bahrain's Jewish community became the target of communal violence. As crowds protested the partition plan, Manama's Jewish quarter was attacked and looted. In their aftermath, the Manama riots have been understood as a nationalist show of anger against Zionism, unfortunately unleashed against local Bahraini Jews. However, a close reading of events shows the riot as complex event involving local labour politics, anti-colonialism and Shi'a religious rituals. Drawing on British records, Jewish correspondence and personal memoirs, this paper locates the riot in its post-war Persian Gulf context and argues that it represented an encounter between regional politics of the Palestine Mandate and the post-war tensions of Manama as a late colonial oil city. While ostensibly driven by Arab opposition to Zionism, the riots also saw the culmination of socio-political tensions over labour and colonial rule, exacerbated by five years of war. As such, the Manama riots should be understood not only as an extension of emerging Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine, but also within the local politics of the post-war Persian Gulf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study discusses the assults of the Hilltop Youth gangs on Palestinians in the hills and mountains of the West Bank, using Khirbet Hassan in Biddya as a case study. The study will introduce the area, the Hilltop Youth gangs, their origins, goals, supporters, and their clashes with landowners. The study highlights the methods used by these gangs to uproot landowners from their lands in Khirbet Hassan. It also discusses the personal tactics and strategies used by farmers and landowners to defend against and monitor attacks by these armed gangs on them and their lands. Objectives: The study aims to highlight the role of the Zionist Hilltop Youth gangs in establishing settlement outposts in the hills and mountain tops of the West Bank, and their attacks on Palestinian lands, taking the lands of Khirbet Hassan in Biddya as a model. Methodology: The study utilized a combination of historical oral documentation, analytical methods, and qualitative approaches to demonstrate the daily suffering experienced by the agricultural landowners in Khirbet Hassan. Results: The study showed the brutality of these gangs, supported by the Israeli occupation, in bulldozing Palestinian farmers' lands, uprooting their planted trees, vandalizing retaining walls, and preventing them from accessing their lands. Conclusion: The study concluded that it is necessary for the farmers in Khirbet Hassan to cooperate and be present on their lands in groups to be able to defend the attacks of these gangs. It also concluded that it is essential for the Palestinian authority to support these landowners legally and financially and to raise their awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]