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1. Antisemitism: The “New Normal” in Turkey

Author:
Betsy Penso
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
In our latest issue of Turkeyscope, Adv. Betsy Penso explains how antisemitism has risen in recent months in Turkey since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. From the government to the media and online networks, virulent anti-Israel speech increasingly threatens Turkey's Jewish minority.
Topic:
Minorities, Jewish community, October 7, 2023 Gaza War, and Antisemitism
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

2. The changes in the legal system and their effect on the regime and the Palestinian minority in Israel

Author:
Manal Totry Jubran
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
The current issue of Bayan is being published amidst an emotional public and political controversy over the reform of the judicial system in the State of Israel, and deals with the Arab public’s position on the judicial reform. The article by Dr. Manal Totry Jubran surveys the proposed changes to the Israeli judicial system and their effect on Arab citizens.
Topic:
Minorities, Reform, Domestic Politics, Protests, Judiciary, and Palestinians
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

3. Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse

Author:
Race and Rights (CSRR) Center for Security
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), Rutgers University School of Law
Abstract:
A bastion of free speech, individual liberty, and equality. This is the mantra our government repeats across the world and teaches nationwide in American schools. Rarely stated, however, are the varying limitations imposed on persons seeking to exercise such rights according to their identity. Protection of fundamental rights is at its zenith when exercised by white, Judeo-Christian communities, while exceptions are frequently invoked when racial or ethnic minorities exercise the same rights to challenge policies and laws harmful to their communities. Members of the majority engaged in dissent are treated as patriots with different political views. Minorities who dissent are treated as security and cultural threats deserving of social stigma at best or criminalization at worst.1 This racialized double standard is most acute for Muslim or Arab Americans when they exercise their free speech rights to criticize the U.S. government’s failure to hold Israel accountable for its systematic violations of Palestinians’ human rights. Often repeated statements in support of Israel across U.S. administrations stand as a reminder of Israel’s central place in U.S. foreign policy. A most recent example occurred in Jerusalem on July 14, 2022 when President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid issued a joint statement declaring: “The United States and Israel reaffirm the unbreakable bonds between our two countries and the enduring commitment of the United States to Israel’s security. Our countries further reaffirm that the strategic U.S.-Israel partnership is based on a bedrock of shared values, shared interests, and true friendship.”2 Among the countless analyses expounding on the strong bond between the U.S. and Israel in policy terms, few examine the relationship between Islamophobia and U.S. policy on Palestine-Israel.3 Specifically, when Muslims and Arabs in America defend the rights of Palestinians or criticize Israeli state policy, they are often baselessly presumed to be motivated by a hatred for Jews rather than support for human rights, freedom, and consistent enforcement of international law. The resulting harm occurs at the individual and systemic level. Systemically, informed and critical debate about U.S. foreign policy is hampered by censorship campaigns targeting college students, faculty, human rights organizations, journalists, and elected officials.4 Individually, Muslim and Arab Americans are defamed and effectively excluded from critical public debates pertaining to U.S. policies executed in their names and with their tax funds. Should Arabs and Muslims exercise their constitutional rights of free speech and assembly in defense of Palestinian human rights, they frequently become targets of aggressive intimidation, harassment, and blacklisting campaigns5 in their workplaces, towns, and universities.6 This report examines how Islamophobia shapes American foreign policy in the three following ways: 1) restricting open debate about unconditional U.S. support for Israel notwithstanding documented and systematic violations of international law by the Israeli government,7 2) perpetuating racist tropes that Muslims and Arabs innately hate Jews, and 3) discrediting the Palestinian people from realizing their full civil, political, national, and human rights. Such racialized foreign and domestic policy was brought into sharp relief in 2022, with the response in the United States and Europe to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. As Americans in and out of government united in supporting the political, civil, and national rights and defense of Ukraine and Ukrainians, the approach in Washington to similar Palestinian interests ranges, with a few exceptions, from qualified, muted neutrality to outright hostile opposition.8 Such double standards prompt multiple questions that reveal how race and racism infect foreign policy and the treatment of minority communities who espouse unpopular views or dissent from the political orthodoxy, including the defense of human rights for all. What role does Islamophobia play in the formation of policies that restrict Palestinians from the same right of self-determination that are celebrated for Ukrainians and Israelis? How does Islamophobia silence and punish Muslim and Arab Americans who defend Palestinians’ rights in universities, the media, the public square, and online? This report explores these questions by addressing three key components of Islamophobia and related (though not identical) anti-Palestinian racism. First, Islamophobia adversely shapes public discourse on Palestine in the United States, currently and predating the “War on Terror.” Racist stereotypes of Muslims as savage are deployed to promote discriminatory policies against Palestinians. Second, an ecosystem of Zionist institutions and prominent individuals perpetuate Islamophobia to promote the policies and goals of Israel in its theft and occupation of Palestinian territory, decades of dispossession and marginalization of the Palestinian people, and denial of the rights of Palestinian refugees. Finally, Islamophobia is juxtaposed against antisemitism, portraying Muslims globally and domestically as agents of antisemitism; attempting to create a competition, or even a zero-sum scenario between Muslims and Jews–rather than allowing principled opposition to both antisemitism and Islamophobia to unite joint social justice struggles. As a result, legitimate efforts to combat antisemitism are disingenuously co-opted to undermine Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and human rights, as well as to defame Muslim and Arab human rights defenders as inherently antisemitic. Palestinian aspirations are often portrayed by the media and Zionist organizations as a cover for a uniquely Arab and Muslim antisemitism. Related is the tendency to pathologize Palestinians and all aspects of their political, cultural and social lives. This both stigmatizes the very idea of civil, national, and human rights of Palestinians and attempts to censor Arab and Muslim Americans’ political activism. Discrediting any criticism of Israeli state practices violating Palestinian human rights as antisemitism overlooks the growing number of Jews and Muslims working together to promote Palestinian rights.9 Concerns of American supporters of Israel, including Jewish Americans who have a deeply personal stake in the well-being of the Jewish people of Israel, and American supporters of Palestinians, who have an equally deep and personal stake in the well-being of the Palestinian people in Palestine, are not equally considered when crafting American policy in the region. Islamophobia, though far from being the sole reason for U.S. policy exceptionalizing Palestine, is a substantial factor. In turn, Muslims or Arabs (who are often mistaken as all Muslim) who criticize America’s unconditional support for Israeli state practices, regardless of the human rights implications, are immediately ostracized as antisemitic. The consequent harm is twofold: Palestinians’ lives and rights are discounted, and Muslim and Arab Americans are denied meaningful participation in public discourse on U.S. foreign policy and the ability to exercise their free speech rights.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Law, Minorities, Freedom of Expression, Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, Discourse, Racism, Self-Determination, Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and United States of America

4. First year of the coalition: The situation of the Arab parties and the balance of power between them

Author:
Rany Hasan
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
The current issue of Bayan is being published more than a year after the Knesset elections. For the first time in Arab politics in Israel, one party (United Arab List, Ra'am) joined the government coalition while another party (Joint Arab List) stays in the opposition. In his article, Rany Hasan examines the dynamics and relations between the two parties in recent years, and the balance of power between them, one year after the elections.
Topic:
Politics, Minorities, Elections, Political Parties, and Arabs
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

5. Analysis of Arab Voting Patterns in the Elections for the 24th Knesset

Author:
Ziyad Abu Habla
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
The Arab sector has the electoral potential to win 25 seats in the Knesset. The low voter participation rate in the last elections (44.6%) was the result of a number of factors: the Arab representatives’ lack of influence on the government; the Arab community’s lack of confidence in parliamentary endeavor; the marginal status of Arab society; and the ideological boycotting of the elections. The poor results of the parties on the Left among Arab voters reflect their problematic relations with the Arab community. Arab voters do not view the leftist parties as a viable electoral alternative. On the other hand, only a negligible number of Jewish voters voted for the two Arab parties. The success of the United Arab List (Ra’am) and the failure of the Joint List in the Bedouin sector are the result of the latter’s inability to provide solutions to the problems of the Bedouin population, as well as the support in Bedouin society for Ra’am’s religious and conservative platform.
Topic:
Politics, Minorities, Elections, Ethnicity, and Voting
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

6. From a Community to a Society: Trends in Druze Voting Patterns in the Knesset Elections, 1996–2020

Author:
Mahmoud Shanan and Omri Eilat
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
The rate of voter turnout in the Druze community has been characterized by a continual downward trend for the past three decades. In deciding whether to vote and which party to vote for, Druze voters take individualistic considerations into account more than collective considerations which are related to the Druze community as a whole. Like other Druze communities throughout the Middle East, the Druze community in Israel is characterized by a pragmatic approach and political moderation. Therefore, the radical political views that the Arab parties try to promote are unattractive to most Druze voters. While Labor was the dominant party in the Druze community until 1999, there was no dominant party again until Blue-White in the 2019 elections. The expected collapse of Blue-White in the upcoming Knesset elections will leave a vacuum among the Druze and will lead to a further decline in their rate of voter turnout. The dispersed voting pattern of the Druze in the elections proves that politically they are not a homogenous community but rather a heterogeneous society.
Topic:
Minorities, Elections, Voting, and Druze
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

7. The Rwandan Experience: How Palestine Can Benefit from It

Author:
Adv. Belal Al-Najjar
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Pal-Think For Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Rwandan experience accomplished a success in dealing with conflicts, making an example for countries that are suffering from civil wars, internal divisions, or armed conflicts now. It demonstrates the ability to rebuild a modern state if an actual willingness is available in spite of the existence of tremendous historical epic violence, oppression or armed conflict. Since the beginning of the nineties, Rwanda has been the scene of the most horrific genocidal wars which caused nearly a million lives of people to be gone. These crimes prompted the resignation of President Bisi Mongo, who was unable to control the country after it plunged into chaos. As a result, a civil war broke out in Rwanda between the government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The Hutu majority confronted the Tutsi minority. Their conflict continued until the outbreak of a three-month genocidal war. The massacres, which occurred during the conflict period, are considered the fourth largest genocide in the modern history.
Topic:
Civil War, Genocide, Minorities, Discrimination, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Africa, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Rwanda

8. Arab Citizens are Not the Problem: How the 2020 Election Might Redefine the Israeli Political Landscape

Author:
Ahmad Agabaria
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
The elections conveyed a message: The Arab public refuses to be a problem in Israeli society, and strives to return to normalcy. The 1990s were engraved in the memory of the Arab public as a promising period for their rights, but today the tables have been turned. The establishment doubts the ability of Arab Knesset members to represent their constituents and doubts their allegiance to the state. Many in the Arab public understand that the enshrining national-Zionist identity of the state is directed against them. The delegitimization of the Arab minority and its elected representatives reached its peak in the recent elections. The slogan "Bibi or Tibi" is an expression of incitement and racism that should be denounced. The "deal of the century" plan, and in particular its intention to annex the Triangle Region to a Palestinian state, actually contributed to raising the turnout rate on the Arab street. The 15 seats won by the Joint List restored the belief to Arab citizens that change is possible.
Topic:
Politics, Minorities, Elections, and Citizenship
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

9. The “Gender Genie”: Bedouin Women between the Generations

Author:
Nuzha Allassad Alhuzail
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
In recent years, social and cultural processes in Bedouin society in the Negev have had an effect on the social fabric and the status of women. The first generation of Bedouin women grew up in the nomadic period and were born before the establishment of the State. They are characterized by strong self-confidence based on their social, family and personal status. The second generation of women grew up during the urbanization period and they experienced the difficulties of transitioning from a nomadic way of life to life in a permanent settlement. They feel confused and angry about the transition process; nonetheless, they occupy key positions in Bedouin society and serve as the bridging generation between the past and the present. The third generation of women are divided between obeying their inner voices and obeying the collective social will. The women of this generation are in the midst of a transition process that is still ongoing. Bedouin society is flourishing and developing, as reflected in its integration within higher education and the labor market. In contrast, the advancement of women faces the barrier of traditional male domination. Although there is a small handful of men in Bedouin society who yearn for change and gender equality, they are torn between traditional masculinity – which calls for the man to be dominant – and modern masculinity.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Minorities, and Women
Political Geography:
Palestine and Israel

10. Memory of the Nakba in the Palestinian Public Sphere

Author:
Michael Milshtein
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
In the latest issue of Tel Aviv Notes, Michael Milshtein examines how the collective memory of the Nakba has become anchored in the Palestinian public sphere.
Topic:
History, Minorities, Memory, Nakba, and Palestinian Authority
Political Geography:
Middle East, Palestine, and Israel