Israel Studies: An Anthology

Contributors

Mitchell Bard is AICE’s Executive Director and a foreign policy analyst who lectures frequently on U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Bard is also the director of the Jewish Virtual Library. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and is the editor and author of 22 books.

Aharon Barak served as a Lecturer, Professor, and Dean of the Law School at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 1975, he served as Attorney General of the State of Israel. In 1978, he was appointed Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, where he served in the capacity as President from August 1995 until his retirement in September 2006. All these years he remained active in academia through his ongoing teaching relationship with The Hebrew University and Yale University in the United States. Since 2007 academic year, Professor Barak is a faculty member at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya. In 1975, Barak was awarded the Israel Prize, in jurisprudence.

Shlomo Aronson served as a news editor and correspondent; covering the Eichmann Trial on Israel Radio as well as the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War on Israel Television.  He served multiple times as a scholar in residence and an historical advisor for Holocaust publications and documentaries. Aronson was appointed as an AICE/Schusterman Visting Israel Scholar at the University of Arizona from 2006-2008. His publications include: The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1992) and Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Uri Bar-Joseph teaches in the Division of International Relations in the School of Political Science at Haifa University. In addition to over 30 referred journal articles on national security issues, intelligence and the Arab-Israeli conflict, he has written four books; the most recent of which is The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources (SUNY Press, 2005).

Michal Ben-Horin is an Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature at the University of Florida. Her research interests include theories of music and poetic representation in the Jewish, Hebrew and German worlds.

Guy Ben-Porat is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He is the author of Global Liberalism, Local Populism, Peace and Conflict in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland (Syracuse University Press 2006) and a co-author of Israel Since 1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Abraham Ben-Zvi is a full professor in the Department of International Relations and head of the M.A.executive program on negotiations and decision-making in International Relations at the University of Haifa.Professor Ben-Zvi received his Ph.D.degree in political science from the University of Chicago in 1973,and-before joining the University of haifa-lectured for 26 years in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv university.His major field of expertise is the origins and evolution of the American-Israeli alliance,and his publication list includes 11 books and numerous articles,which largely address various aspects of this partnership.

Alexander Bligh is a former Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister on Arab Affairs (1990-1992) and he served as Deputy in the Prime Minister‟s office for the past three years. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies at the College of Judea and Samaria and the Director of its Center for International Strategic Assessment. He is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Bar Ilan University and the Director of the Master of Arts degree program on Democracy and Democratization in the Arab World. His lecture topics include: Ethnic conflicts in comparative perspective, the history of Islam, International Relations, political and social history of the Middle East, radical Islam, refugees and human rights post WWII, regimes, the political development, security and foreign policies of Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the political, religious and economic dimensions of terror.

Ilan Fuchs is a Professor of secular and religious law at Bar-Ilan University. His research focuses on women in Jewish law as well as general Israeli legal issues. He received his Ph.D. in Law from Bar-Ilan University and received his Rabbinic Ordination from Bar-Ilan University’s Institute for Higher Torah Learning. He clerked at the Israeli Supreme Court for its Registrar, Judge Oded Shaham and Justice Elyakim Rubenstein. He has published several articles addressing women’s rights in Israel, specifically under modern Orthodox law. Professor Fuchs has taught classes on Israeli constitutional law, legal theory, legal writing, Jewish law, Jewish family law and the history of Chasidism.

Yoav Gelber is the head of the Herzl Institute for the Research of Zionism at the University of Haifa. He is the author of: Jewish - Transjordanian Relations (1997); The Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue (2004); Palestine 1948 (2001, 2006); and History and Nation: Israeli Historiography, Memory and Identity Between Zionism and Post-Zionism (forthcoming, 2010).

Galia Golan is a Darwin Professor of Soviet and East European Studies (emerita) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is also a professor of Government and Chair, Programs in Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.  She is the author of nine books, the most recent of which is Israel and Palestine: Peace Plans and Proposals from Oslo to Disengagement.

Motti Golani is a historian of Mandate Palestine and the State of Israel at the University of Haifa in Israel. He wrote on Jerusalem and Zionism, Sinai War of 1956, on Israel – Power and Memory and on the End of the British Mandate for Palestine. He is currently working on a biography of Chaim Weizmann and on the Israeli narratives on the 1948 War of Independence.

Aviva Halamish is head of Modern History Studies at The Open University of Israel. Her research focuses on the history of the Jewish people in the twentieth century and of Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel, with emphasis on immigration and Arab-Jewish relations. Among her books are: The Exodus Affair: Holocaust Survivors and the Struggle for Palestine, (Syracuse University Press 1998);  From National Home to a State in the Making: History of the Jewish Community in Palestine between the World Wars [Hebrew], The Open University of Israel, Vols. I-II, 2004; A Dual Race against Time: Zionist Immigration Policy in the 1930s [Hebrew], (Yad ben-Zvi Press, 2006). Professor Halamish is the President of the Association for Israel Studies.

Dalia Liran-Alper is the Students Dean and staff member of School of Media Studies, at the College of Management-Academic Studies. Dr. Liran-Alper is also teaching at Tel Aviv University and Beit Berl College. She is a researcher and a lecturer in a variety of areas like: The History of the Media, Israeli Culture and Policy of Information (Hasbara), Television in Popular Culture, Gender Aspects of Mass Communication, Consumption and Images. Dr. Dalia Liran-Alper has pursued several professional and public positions. Among those, she was elected as a member of the General Assembly of IBA (Israel Broadcasting Authority).

Anar Maor is a lecturer in Social-Economic Policy and Gender at The Open University of Israel and the Ruppin Academic Center. She served was a Member of the Knesset from 1992 to 2003 and authored the book Private Legisaltion of Knesset Members (2009). She was also editor of Affirmative Action in Israel (2004) and The Promotion of Women in the Workplace - Breaking the Glass Ceiling (1997).

Moshe Maor is a Wolfson Family Associate Professor of Public Administration at the Department of Political Science, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His interests include bureaucratic organizations, comparative public administration and comparative politics. He is also the author of The Right Way to Society(Menachem Begin Heritage Center and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Pub. House, 2004).

Yosef Mealem has a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. He currently heads a company that provides economic consulting and serves as a university lecturer in Economics and Business Administration. His past positions include: Chief Economist and Macroeconomic Manager at a large finance company, Chairman of the Board at a number of finance companies, member of advisory committees to the Supervisor of Insurance and the Supervisor of the Capital Market in the Ministry of Finance as well as an economist with the Research Department of the Bank of Israel. 

Rafi Melnick joined The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya (IDC) in 1998 and currently serves as Provost. Prior to that he was Dean of the Lauder School of Government, Strategy and Diplomacy and a professor at The Arison Business School. Melnick served as a senior economist at the research department of the Bank of Israel. He developed the State of the economy index for the Israeli economy.

Alec Mishory is a Lecturer of art history at the Open University in Tel Aviv. He is a well-known author and art critic in Israel and has taught at the prestigious Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem and the State Art Teacher’s College. He was a member of the Visual Arts Committee of the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture’s Organization of Cultural Arts. He is widely published in academic journals and his art critiques are featured in newspapers and on Israel Radio. His books include Still Life: from Depicted Objects to Real Objects (2008), Joseph Budko and H.N. Bialik’s Complete Works Edition of 1923: Modern Hebrew Poetry and Art in Harmony (2006) and Lo and Behold: Visual Aspects of Zionist Myths in Israeli Culture (2000).

David Nachmias is a Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. He has published numerous books and articles for professional journals and is the recipient of several professional awards, including the Donald Campbell Award for methodological contributions.

Arie Perliger is an Associate at the Combating Terrorism Center and Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences, US Military Academy at West Point. After completing his PhD in Political Science at the University of Haifa Israel (2007), where he was also a fellow at the National Security Studies Center (NSSC), Dr. Perliger became affiliated with the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a Golda Meir Post-Doctoral Fellow (2007-2008). On August 2008 Dr. Perliger joined the Department of Political Science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he was a Schusterman Visiting Assistant Professor until the summer of 2010. In the past eight years he has published four books and 15 articles and book chapters in the fields of terrorism, political violence and extremism and the principal ways democratic states respond to these challenges.

Yitzhak Reiter is an expert in Middle East Studies and Islam. He teaches in the Conflict Studies Program of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is also a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science of Ashkelon Academic College. Between 1978 and 1986 he served as the Deputy Advisor on Arab Affairs to three Israeli Prime Ministers and he is very active in projects of Jewish-Arab dialogue iin Israel. He is a senior fellow of the Truman Institute for Peace Studies of the Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. His recent book is entitled: National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs versus Jews in Israel. (Syracuse University Press, 2009).

Amnon Rubinstein served as a Member of Knesset from 1977-2001.  He also served as Minister of Communication, Minister of Science and Technology, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure and Minister of Education, Culture and Sport in the Israeli government.  Rubinstein currently teaches Law at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya.

Doron Shultziner is currently a Lady Davis postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wrote this chapter while affiliated with Emory University, where he taught courses on Israeli politics and society for two years (2007-2009). He received his PhD from the University of Oxford.

David Tal is the Kahanoff Chair in Israel Studies and a professor in the Department of History at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada since Summer 2009. He is also the Director of the Israel Studies program at University of Calgary. He is an expert in the diplomatic and military history of Israel as well as nuclear proliferation and disarmament. Professor Tal has published several books, including The American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma, 1945-1963 (2008), War in Palestine, 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy (2004), The 1956 War: Collusion and Rivalry in the Middle East (2001- edited) and Israel’s Conception of Current Security: Origins and Development 1949-1956 (1998). His articles have appeared in a variety of journals and at present he is working on a book on Israel Between Orient and Occident.

Ilan Troen is director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Stoll Family Chair in Israel Studies at Brandeis University. Before joining Brandeis, he served as director of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute and Archives in Sede Boker, Israel, and as founding dean of the faculty of humanities and social sciences at Ben-Gurion University. He has authored or edited numerous books in American, Jewish and Israeli history. Among his most recent are Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement (Yale, 2003); and, with Jacob Lassner, Jews and Muslims in the Arab World; Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined (Roman and Littlefield, 2007). Expected for release in the fall of 2011 is, with Maoz Azaryahu, Tel-Aviv, The First Century; Visions, Designs and Actualities. Troen is also Editor of Israel Studies, an international journal published by Indiana University Press.

Michael Widlanski teaches political communication and comparative politics  at the Rothberg School of Hebrew University. He was the Schusterman Visiting Scholar at Washington University for 2007-8, and he was a research fellow at the Shalem Center for 2008-2009. He is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively,  at The New York Times, The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, The Boston Globe, IDF Radio, IBA Television,  and The Jerusalem Post. Dr. Widlanski  also served as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret  PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem.

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