Israeli Perceptions of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Zionist thinkers assumed that the establishment of a Jewish state, which entailed a fundamental change in traits that non-Jews found contemptible, would bring an end to anti-Semitism. Yet after the 1967 war, the Soviet Union, the Western left and Third World governments, previously supportive of Israel, placed Israel in the camp of Western imperialism, while the emerging New Left identified Israel as imperialistic and racist. Against the background of the change in the international climate, debates in Israel over anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were shaped by domestic politics. While the right saw anti-Semitism as the cause of hostility to Israel, the left argued that anti-Zionism, rooted in political arguments about the Middle East conflict, fanned the flames of anti-Semitism. The attitude to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism became a cultural code, highlighting the divide between left and right, and between religious and secular.     

Legacies of War in Creating a Common European Identity

Recent fieldwork, carried out as part of the Bloody Meadows Project on historic battlefields, has revealed the diversity of approaches to memorialising places of conflict in the European past. The different ways in which such places are marked and remembered has something to tell us about how we may construct a new sense of European identity. It thus provides the basis for the emergence of a sense of 'European-ness' that is not a copy of nationalist forms but which allows us to take into account the complexity of historical pasts and the many forms of human interaction involved in the historical process.     

Gustaf Dalman, Anti-Semitism, and the Language of Jesus Debate

The theory that Jesus of Nazareth spoke and taught exclusively in Aramaic rather than Hebrew achieved its present dominant position just over a century ago due largely to the labour of Gustaf Dalman. His primary motivation was not the recovery of the historical Jesus, however, but to support his deep commitment to the Protestant movement to convert Jews. This movement did not escape the impact of escalating anti-Semitism in society, intensified by rapid progress towards German national unification. One Christian response to anti-Semitism was to "extract" Jesus from Judaism by contrasting him with "Jewish" attitudes and values held by Jewish spiritual authorities. Dalman's contribution was to extract Jesus from the ethnically exclusive Hebrew language by insisting that he spoke only the more widely used lingua franca of the region, Aramaic. By overstating his case and going beyond the evidence, Dalman revealed his indebtedness to the anti-Semitic spirit of his age.     

Introduction: The Materiality of Traces and Legacies

This Special Issue presents issues in contemporary archaeological theory and practice as influenced by the work of H. Martin Wobst. Wobst came to study in the U.S. nearly 50 years ago and has contributed to many changes in the theory and practice of archaeology since then. Though the papers cover a wide range of topics they share common interests in seeing materiality as constitutive of culture, archaeologists as participants in the present as well as observers of the past, and an interest in transcending traditional definitions of archaeological research.     

Into the Spiral of Problematic Perceptions: Modern Anti-Semitism and gebildetes Burgertum in Nineteenth-Century Germany

This article attempts to relate modern anti-Semitism to theincreasingly close interactions of Jews and non-Jews in an ageof political emancipation and social integration. It arguesthat the changing mutual perceptions of Jews and Protestantsin the German educated bourgeoisie are of central importancein this regard. In nineteenth-century Germany, literature movementssuch as realism, and various human sciences such as anthropology,Protestant theology or philology provided ample material fordiscussing the Jewish character. These fields suggest four waysof perceiving Jews: the Jew as parvenu, as Talmudist, as materialistand as nomad. Indeed, bourgeois Jews themselves contributedto these literary and scholarly debates. Their discussions werefrequently shaped by the attempt to confront anti-Jewish misconceptions.Moreover, they propagated their own interpretation of the Jewishcharacter: the figure of the humanistic Jew. This Jewish interpretation,which identifies a universal mission, proves to have a twofoldnature: it is not only a counter-attack against anti-Semiticpolemics, but also a particular result of the peculiar Jewishadaptation of bourgeois culture. As the article argues, however,this humanistic perception of Jewish identity caused concernon the Protestant side, which led to further polemics and thusfurther Jewish defence. The resulting spiral of problematicperceptions was the consequence of the growing social intimacyof bourgeois Jews and Protestants in nineteenth-century Germany.Modern anti-Semitism, it is thus argued, can be interpretedas a specific form of rejection of ambivalence and the establishmentof neat binary codes in the confusing closeness of Jews andnon-Jews.     

Facing the Future: The Legacies of Post-Neoliberalism in Latin America

This virtual issue reviews the post-neoliberalism literature published in Development and Change between 2012 and 2018. It reflects on recent and ongoing, multiple experiences of resistance to speculative, extractive, inequitable and unsustainable development and the demands for alternatives that emerged in Latin America. The argument is developed through an analysis of the 18 most relevant articles published in this journal, that make a major contribution to three key interrelated debates, namely: the meaning and policies associated with post-neoliberalism; challenges of citizenship and democracy; and the sustainability agenda. Collectively, the selected articles provide a detailed and much-needed discussion about the key achievements, limitations and legacies of post-neoliberalism.     

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Iran espouses the most radical anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist position in the Muslim Middle East, calling for the elimination of Israel. Drawing on anti-Jewish traditions in Shi^ci Islam, Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, maintained that Zionism is the culmination of the Jewish-Christian conspiracy against Islam and undermines its historical mission. Fusing together Islamic and European anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist ideologies, Iran became a disseminator of Holocaust denial in the Middle East and a sponsor of Western Holocaust deniers. Iran's Holocaust denial, which aims at demolishing the legitimacy of the Jewish state, denies Jewish history and deprives the Jews of their human dignity by presenting their worst tragedy as a scam.     

Alexandra C. Kelly: Consuming Ivory: Mercantile Legacies of East Africa and New England

African Archaeological Review -