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"The Jewish 'East' and its Restricted Agencies" is an article that examines the historical relationship between Jews and Muslims in Israel and the MENA region. It challenges the simplistic portrayal of Israel as a Western oppressor and Islamic entities as oppressed Easterners, arguing that this oversimplifies the complex dynamics at play. The article also discusses the treatment of Mizrahi Jews in Israel and their integration into a predominantly European-oriented Zionist society. It emphasizes the need to reclaim Jewish agencies and challenges the perception of Israel as a white-Ashkenazi presence in the Middle East. The article calls for a more nuanced exploration of Jewish history in Islamic contexts to give voice to Mizrahi Jewish experiences. [Extracted from the article]

"The Jewish 'East' and its Restricted Agencies" is an article that examines the historical relationship between Jews and Muslims in Israel and the MENA region. It challenges the simplistic portrayal of Israel as a Western oppressor and Islamic entities as oppressed Easterners, arguing that this oversimplifies the complex dynamics at play. The article also discusses the treatment of Mizrahi Jews in Israel and their integration into a predominantly European-oriented Zionist society. It emphasizes the need to reclaim Jewish agencies and challenges the perception of Israel as a white-Ashkenazi presence in the Middle East. The article calls for a more nuanced exploration of Jewish history in Islamic contexts to give voice to Mizrahi Jewish experiences. [Extracted from the article]

This article looks at nationalism and religion, analyzing the sociological mechanisms by which their intersection is simultaneously produced and obscured. I propose that the construction of modern nationalism follows two contradictory principles that operate simultaneously: hybridization and purification. Hybridization refers to the mixing of “religious” and “secular” practices; purification refers to the separation between “religion” and “nationalism” as two distinct ontological zones. I test these arguments empirically using the case of Zionist nationalism. As a movement that was born in Europe but traveled to the Middle East, Zionism exhibits traits of both of these seemingly contradictory principles, of hybridization and purification, and pushes them to their limits. The article concludes by pointing to an epistemological asymmetry in the literature by which the fusion of nationalism and religion tends to be underplayed in studies of the West and overplayed in studies of the East/global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares European and Middle Eastern anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1870s through the 1930s, in parallel fashion anti-Semitism became a mobilizing, all-embracing ideology in Europe, while the Arab world witnessed an eruption of anticolonial and nationalist sentiment, often directed against the Zionist project. Arab anti-Semitism featured the irrational and fantastic qualities of its European counterpart, but it took form against the reality of the Zionist project. The article draws a distinction between the realms of systemic intolerance, aggravated by socio-economic crisis, and political strife, driven by discrete events and policies. Its main sources are fin-de-siècle European anti-Semites' writings on Zionism, which are shown to be fundamentally different from the anti-Zionist rhetoric emanating from the Middle East at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on three separate debates held between Arnold Toynbee and Yaacov Talmon, Yaacov Herzog, and Isaiah Friedman. Unlike the first two, who argued with Toynbee in general terms over his evaluation of the Jewish people and Zionism, Isaiah Friedman's debate with Toynbee was held on different grounds and along other lines. Friedman's debate was not ideological, but professional, academic, historical, and based upon diplomatic documents as his chief tools. He aimed to undermine the historical claims made by a great historian who had also filled a marginal role in the process of shaping the new Middle East after the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent discourse on 'new antisemitism' and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sometime gives the impression that Europe is fundamentally and irredeemably antisemitic. Klug maintains that, while there is a persistent vein of antisemitism in the culture, and while there is evidence of an increase in anti-Jewish attacks since 2000, this perception of Europe is exaggerated. He argues that it is part of a mindset that tends to overstate hostility towards Israel and Jews, or to assume that this hostility is antisemitic, or both. Often this goes along with a tendency to connect antisemitism, via anti-Zionism, with anti-Americanism. Klug believes that notion of a mindset, Klug turns to the question of definition, examining the view that antisemitism is indefinitely mutable. Invoking recent work on the subject, he suggests that at the core of antisemitism is the stock figure of the 'Jew'. This gives us a criterion with which to judge whether or not a given text--including an attack on Israel or Zionism--is antisemitic. On the basis of the analysis so far, Klug critiques the view that hostility to Israel in general is a new twist on an old antisemitic theme. In this connection, he discussed a 2003 Eurobarometer opinion poll in which 59 per cent of respondents said that Israel is a 'threat to peace in the world'. Some see this as proof that Europe is antisemitic; Klug rejects this interpretation and traces it back to the mindset he has describing. He argues that people in the grip of this mindset tend to take a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This can lead to 'antisemitism in reverse': projecting the figure of the antisemite on to someone who does not fit the bill. Klug concludes that the prospects for the European debate on antisemitism are poor unless it can be disentangled from partisan Middle East politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the new thinking on Jewish security, both inside and outside the state of Israel, since the collapse of the Oslo peace process and in the aftermath of 11 September 2001. To what extent are Jewish diaspora voices and concerns being heeded in Israel, and how are new manifestations of anti-Semitism being addressed in this context? What is the new role that Israel ascribes to the diaspora in its redefinition of itself and its security environment? In addition, how is the diaspora responding to these new challenges and how is it defining its own role? All of these elements are examined by the authors in the different contexts of Israel, western Europe and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]