My engagement in the topic has two distinct vectors, academic, and personal, or, if you wish, existential. My academic engagement began when Buber's son Raphael (1900-91), who served as the Executor of the Martin Buber Literary Estate, invited me to assemble and edit his father's writings on the "Arab Question." He explained that of all of his father's publications, his ramified writings promoting the political and human dignity of the Palestinian Arabs spoke most dearly and, as a citizen of the State of Israel, most immediately to him. I accepted Rafael's invitation with alacrity, for like Raphael I'm an Israeli by choice, having emigrated to the country in 1970.
I wrote
A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs
Examines
how the architects of the conflict worked to influence and indoctrinate their
respective ideologies in the ordinary soldiers by analyzing the battle orders,
pamphlets, army journals, and recordings of radio broadcasts in Hebrew, Arabic,
and English. Through two overarching narratives – the official and unofficial,
the propaganda and personal letters, Dear Palestine reveals the fissures
between ‘sanctioned nationalism’ and individual experience and identity. This
book reminds one that everyday individual’s fears, bravery, hubris, base
cruelty, lies, and fantasies are as important in history as the preoccupations
of the elites.
In 1948, a war broke out that would result in Israeli independence and the erasure of Arab Palestine. Over twenty months, thousands of Jews and Arabs came from all over the world to join those already on the ground to fight in the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces and the Arab Liberation Army. With this book, the young men and women who made up these armies come to life through their letters home, writing about everything from daily life to nationalism, colonialism, race, and the character of their enemies. Shay Hazkani offers a new history of the 1948 War…
Partition—the idea of separating Jews and Arabs along ethnic
or national lines—is a legacy at least as old as the Zionist-Palestinian
conflict. Challenging the widespread "separatist imagination" behind
partition, Gil Hochberg demonstrates the ways in which works of contemporary
Jewish and Arab literature reject simple notions of separatism and instead
display complex configurations of identity that emphasize the presence of
alterity within the self—the Jew within the Arab, and the Arab within the Jew. In
Spite of Partition examines Hebrew, Arabic, and French works that are
largely unknown to English readers to reveal how, far from being independent,
the signifiers "Jew" and "Arab" are inseparable.
Partition--the idea of separating Jews and Arabs along ethnic or national lines--is a legacy at least as old as the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. Challenging the widespread "separatist imagination" behind partition, Gil Hochberg demonstrates the ways in which works of contemporary Jewish and Arab literature reject simple notions of separatism and instead display complex configurations of identity that emphasize the presence of alterity within the self--the Jew within the Arab, and the Arab within the Jew. In Spite of Partition examines Hebrew, Arabic, and French works that are largely unknown to English readers to reveal how, far from being independent, the signifiers…
In
this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and
why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental
differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often
discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global
contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores
the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The
majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in
cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities,
and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical,
and moral grammar that enables a joint Arab-Jewish dwelling and supports
historical reconciliation in Israel/Palestine.
This book does not seek to draw a parallel or comparison between the Holocaust
and Nakba or to merely inaugurate a “dialogue” between them. Instead, it
searches for a new historical and political grammar for relating and narrating
their complicated intersections. The book features prominent international
contributors, including a foreword by Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury on the
centrality of the Holocaust and Nakba in the essential struggle of humanity against
racism, and an afterword by literary scholar Jacqueline Rose on the challenges
and contributions of the linkage between the Holocaust and Nakba for power to
shift and a world of justice and equality to be created between the two
peoples. The Holocaust and the Nakbais the first extended
and collective scholarly treatment in English of these two constitutive traumas
together.
In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables…
Silencing the Sea follows Palestinian poets'
debates about their craft as they traverse multiple and competing realities of
secularism and religion, expulsion and occupation, art, politics, immortality,
death, fame, and obscurity. Khaled Furani eloquently leads his reader along
ancient roads and across Israeli military checkpoints to join the poets' worlds
and engage with the rhythms of their lifelong journeys in Islamic and Arabic
history, language, and verse. This excursion offers newfound understandings of
how today's secular age goes far beyond doctrine, to inhabit our very senses,
imbuing all that we see, hear, feel, and utter.
Poetry, the traditional
repository of Arab history, has become the preeminent medium of Palestinian
memory in exile. In probing poets' writings, this work investigates how
struggles over poetic form can host larger struggles over authority, knowledge,
language, and freedom. It reveals a very intimate and venerated world,
entwining art, intellect, and politics, narrating previously untold stories of
a highly stereotyped people.
Silencing the Sea follows Palestinian poets' debates about their craft as they traverse multiple and competing realities of secularism and religion, expulsion and occupation, art, politics, immortality, death, fame, and obscurity. Khaled Furani takes his reader down ancient roads and across military checkpoints to join the poets' worlds and engage with the rhythms of their lifelong journeys in Islamic and Arabic history, language, and verse. This excursion offers newfound understandings of how today's secular age goes far beyond doctrine, to inhabit our very senses, imbuing all that we see, hear, feel, and say.
Poetry, the traditional repository of Arab history,…
The tension between nationalism and humanism, on the one hand, and between Zionism and Judaism, on the other, is vividly illustrated by this work. This is done through a comprehensive description of a variety of sources and ideas that inspired the Brith Shalom Society's radical circle in early twentieth-century Palestine, which advocated a bi-national state, in which Jews and Arabs would share on the basis of absolute parity.
This work provides a vivid picture of the dichotomy between the ideology preached by the radical circle of the Brith Shalom Society and the nationalism of early twentieth-century Palestine. Many considered the Brith Shalom Society representative of the spiritual trend of Zionism.This important book examines the aspirations and cultural sources of these men from Central Europe who met in Palestine as members of the Brith Shalom Society during the first half of the twentieth century, in the context of the political reality of a pre-independent Palestine and the new state of Israel. The fact that this circle included well-known personalities,…
In this volume of essays, addresses, and op-eds, the
philosopher of dialogue, Martin Buber emerges as a public intellectual deeply
committed to Jewish-Arab rapprochement. To this end, he relentlessly urged the
Zionist movement to disengage its project from the colonial imperialism of the
British mandate and to acknowledge the political and human rights of the
Palestinian Arabs. Accordingly, Zionism must affirm that Israel’s ancient
patrimony is “a land of two peoples,” who are destined not merely to live next to each other but with each other in fraternal solidarity. He thus
envisioned the establishment of Palestine as a bi-national state, in which Jews
and Arab would share sovereignty based on absolute parity.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
