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141. Truman the Politician and the Establishment of Israel

Author:
Lawrence Davidson
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Harry S. Truman was a temperamental and politically ambitious man. Both his sensitivities and ambition influenced his actions during his presidency. This was particularly the case when it came to Palestine because there existed a strong domestic Zionist lobby that played to Truman's wants and needs in order to influence his decision making. This article examines that process of policy formulation and shows how personality played into the president's behavior in ways that allowed the Zionist lobby to accomplish its ends. Though Truman's actions can be seen as a product of his personal sensitivities, his prioritizing of domestic political ambitions with regard to policy on Palestine set a harmful precedent for the future.
Political Geography:
Israel

142. Lawrence Davidson on American Presidents and Israel

Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Political Geography:
America and Israel

143. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The role of U.S. presidents in making policy on Palestine is an insufficiently studied topic. Many believe that if the policy of a given administration is particularly favorable to Israel, this is entirely due to the president's predilections. Disappointment with the policies of the Obama administration after the high hopes raised by his initial declarations is based on this belief. Others are convinced that the Israel lobby is and has always been all powerful, imposing its views on different administrations. Neither of these views is correct. There is no question that a president's personal attitude is important, as could be seen during the Eisenhower and other administrations when U.S. policy showed a degree of balance between Israel and the Arabs. At the same time, the Israel lobby has grown much more powerful, especially since the 1980s and especially in Congress, where it initially focused its efforts and where it has virtually unchallenged influence.
Political Geography:
United States and Israel

144. Under a Cloud of Uncertainty: AIPAC's 2010 Policy Conference, 21--23 March

Author:
Cléa Thouin
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
ON THE SECOND DAY of the 2010 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy conference, Eric Cantor, the Republican Whip for the 111th U.S. Congress, declared, “We gather today under a dark cloud of uncertainty.” Cantor may have been referring to most participants' favorite subject, the Iranian “nuclear threat,” but his statement proved an apt description of the overall atmosphere at this year's conference. The conference came in the midst of unusually fraught public tensions between the United States and Israel over the announcement two weeks earlier of new settlement construction in East Jerusalem. The dispute over an issue as important to the United States as the peace process, against the background of recently revealed statements by the U.S. military high command that the nonresolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was negatively impacting U.S. security and military operations elsewhere in the world, directly challenged AIPAC's fundamental founding premise: the identity of U.S. and Israeli interests. As a result, the conference was colored by a palpable level of uncertainty about the way forward for the pro-Israel community in the United States. TELLING THE STORY AIPAC's fifty-first annual conference, which took place from 21 to 23 March in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., was billed as the largest ever, with 7,500 delegates. The size itself posed challenges. To accommodate such numbers, the plenary sessions were held in a 780-foot-long conference hall—more than twice the size of a U.S. football field. This meant that despite the extravagant 500-foot split screen, the crowd on one side of the hall could not see what was happening at ground level on the other side, sometimes resulting in serious confusion. On more than one occasion, for example, half the audience, spontaneously joining with commotion on the other side of the hall without being able to see the source, unwittingly applauded pro-Palestinian activists protesting speeches, particularly by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Middle East Quartet envoy (and former British prime minister) Tony Blair. These were two of the main speakers, the other most highly anticipated speaker at this year's conference being U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Besides four plenary sessions (and a gala dinner) that featured the main speakers, the program consisted of approximately one hundred “breakout sessions”—focused panels, university-type seminars, and advocacy training sessions led by scholars, professionals, or lobbyists. These took place concurrently before or after the plenary sessions, and most were repeated more than once in the course of the conference (sometimes with different speakers). There were also luncheons and dinners with distinguished guests, most of which (as well as some panels) were “by invitation only,” restricted to select AIPAC members. Only one plenary session was held on the last day of the conference, as most of the morning was dedicated to training workshops in preparation for AIPAC's traditional day of lobbying on Capitol Hill. These workshops were organized by region, with participants attending lobbying sessions for their specific region so as to receive targeted training on their congressional representatives. The overall conference theme, “Israel: Tell the Story,” represented AIPAC's effort to redirect the increasingly negative public narrative on Israel that has emerged since Israel's winter 2008–2009 assault on Gaza. This was part of a broader attempt to shift from a defensive campaign aimed at refuting criticism of Israel to an offensive campaign focused on advancing a positive picture of Israel, that of “an innovator, a Jewish homeland, an open society, a light unto the nations.” AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr outlined in broad strokes the new strategy, expressly calling on his audience to shed their “defensive mentality,” which he argued focused “all too often on the slights Israel faces,” and instead “tell the story of Israel's hand extended in peace . . . Israel's example of freedom and democracy.” The results of the conference fell short of this goal. The only successful “storytelling” took place at the opening plenary session titled “Innovation Nation,” which framed Israel's modern technological entrepreneurship as a continuation of early Zionist settlers' alleged ability to “make the desert bloom,” and in a video (one of many screened on the conference hall's mega screen) that depicted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a humanitarian vanguard without ever hinting at the possibility of improper conduct during Operation Cast Lead (OCL). Only four “breakout” panels addressed the Israel-as-innovation-nation theme—two on Israel's economic and technological achievements, the other two on its military innovation. Moreover, most panels on Israel throughout the conference could be seen as “defensive,” for example, “Singled Out: Delegitimizing Israel at the United Nations,” “Mainstream to Fringe: Reality of Anti-Israel Effort in America,” or “Tough Questions: Answering Israel's Detractors.” Similarly, although a number of secondary speakers, from a Paraguayan entrepreneur to a Nigerian doctor, were tasked with “telling Israel's story” during the conference's plenary sessions, they were never the focus of the sessions at which they spoke and instead seemed to be no more than fillers before anticipated speakers like Clinton and Netanyahu. Even main speakers like Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz inevitably found themselves defending Israel's policies—whether on settlements or on the IDF's conduct during OCL—rather than actually telling the story of what Kohr called the “small miracle we know as Israel.”
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
America and Israel

145. The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, edited by Adi Ophir, Michal Givoni, and Sari Hanafi. New York: Zone Books, 2009. 641 pages. $38.95 cloth.

Author:
Roger Heacock
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This book is largely the fruit of a research effort sponsored by the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, involving around twenty Israeli and three Palestinian contributors (one a coeditor), and comes highly praised on the jacket by sometime Van Leer visiting professor Ann Stoler.
Political Geography:
New York and Israel

146. Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine since 1989, by Mark LeVine. London and New York: Zed Books, 2009. xii + 182 pages. Notes to p. 208. Bibliography to p. 215. Index to p. 222. $25.95 paper; $85.95 cloth. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People's War, by Beverley Milton-Edwards. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. xii + 205 pages. Chronology to p. 209. Bibliography to p. 222. Index to p. 228. $39.95 paper; $140.00 cloth.

Author:
Helena Cobban
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Pity the poor writer who sets out to write a book about the “recent” history of the Palestine question, because this question continues to be dynamic and, like time and tides, stands still for no one. In the first sentence of Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine since 1989, cultural historian Mark LeVine tells us, “As I began writing this book, the Israel Defense Forces had just removed the last Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip,” placing it in September 2005. The writing evidently took some time because in later chapters LeVine refers (albeit in a less than satisfactory way) to events of 2007 and early 2008. For her part, political scientist Beverley Milton-Edwards brought her historical survey up only to 2005. Both books were published in 2009, in the aftermath of yet another landmark regarding the Palestine question: the lethal assault that Israel launched on Gaza in late 2008 and, even more significantly, the ability that Gaza's elected Hamas rulers evinced to survive that assault.
Political Geography:
New York, Israel, and London

147. The Arab Lobby and US Foreign Policy: The Two-State Solution, by Khalil Marrar. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. xii + 149 pages. Appendices to p. 164. Notes to p. 220. Bibliography to p. 254. Index to p. 269. $140.00 cloth; $39.95 paper.

Author:
Steven Salaita
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Khalil Marrar's The Arab Lobby and US Foreign Policy: The Two-State Solution is a provocative and comprehensive monograph that surveys and analyzes the role of Arab and Arab American activist and political organizations—together comprising what Marrar calls the “pro-Arab lobby”—in the policy discourses of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Marrar is concerned in particular with the now-widespread one-state/ two-state debate and its influence on both pro-Arab and pro-Israel lobbying efforts. He asks, “[W]hy has the US shifted away from an 'Israel only' position toward the Israeli- Palestinian conflict to supporting an 'Israel and Palestine' formula for peace?” (p. 3)
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
New York, America, Israel, London, and Arabia

148. Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat)

Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

149. Selections from the Press

Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

150. Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy-16 February–15 May 2010

Author:
Michele K. Esposito
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The Quarterly Update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and the future of the peace process. More than 100 print, wire, television, and online sources providing U.S., Israeli, Arab, and international independent and government coverage of unfolding events are surveyed to compile the Quarterly Update. The most relevant sources are cited in JPS's Chronology section, which tracks events day by day.
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, Palestine, and Arabia