MER Article "We Are Willing to Pay for Settlements But Not for Health Care" One key to understanding how the Israeli economy (malfunctions is that the Histadrut (The General Federation of Workers in Israel; up to 1965 the “Jewish Workers in Israel”) was never simply a trade union. Joel Beinin • 10 min read
MER Article "Transfer" and the Discourse of Racism Saturday night I decided to go to a campaign meeting of the Moledet Party in Kfar Shalem, a rough neighborhood in the south of Tel Aviv. In the past, houses there were periodically served with demolition orders by the Tel Aviv municipality; in 1982 one inhabitant pulled a gun on demolition crews who Ken Brown • 6 min read
MER Article The Elections, the Peace Camp and the Left The November 1988 Israeli election confirmed a pattern set in 1981 and 1984: the vote was nearly equal between the two large bourgeois parties, the Likud and the Alignment (Labor), and both these parties lost strength to their left and right. Asher Davidi • 4 min read
MER Article The Great Divide One of the most intriguing questions after a year of the intifada is the paucity of Israeli opposition to the government’s “iron fist” policy. True, dozens of small groups demonstrate against the occupation, the atrocities, the deportations, the mass arrests. There have been many calls for “better I Emmanuel Farjoun • 13 min read
MER Article Israel Faces the Uprising The Palestinian uprising has stripped away Israel’s externally oriented masks (propaganda) and its internally oriented masks (defense mechanisms), as political rationality has steadily retreated before the state’s frantic response. Israel’s confrontation with the colonial reality of the occupied ter Azmi Bishara • 22 min read
MER Article "Suddenly I Can't Hold My Head Up" Dan Almagor personifies Israeli popular culture of the post-1948 period. He is the master lyricist of the modern Hebrew song, with over 600 compositions and 300 translations to his credit. His songs have been performed on many official and semi-official occasions, and he has composed for the Israel Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editors (March-April 1989) For well over a year now, the Israeli state has confronted the Palestinian uprising with what Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin calls “the iron fist.” The army’s goal is to restore order, Deputy Chief-of-Staff Ehud Barak said recently, “so that the Israeli government can pursue political initiatives fr The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Letters (November/December 1988) Reopen Palestinian Universities In my capacity as President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), I am forwarding to you the following resolution adopted during our recent annual meeting. For your information, MESA is a professional association of Middle East scholars, now numbering nearly (Author not identified) • 6 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf (November/December 1989) Between 1975 and 1978 a group of scholars in England published three annual issues of the Review of Middle East Studies. This political and intellectual project sought to articulate a radical critique of the dominant paradigms in Middle East studies. ROMES unmasked the relations among modernization Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, The United States and Post-War Imperialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). This rich and highly informative book charts the history of the post-war British Labor government’s policies in the Middle East. It is imm Peter Sluglett • 5 min read
MER Article Pfeifer, Agrarian Reform Under State Capitalism in Algeria Karen Pfeifer, Agrarian Reform Under State Capitalism in Algeria (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985). The analysis of contemporary Algerian politics is a matter of considerable controversy. [1] Karen Pfeifer’s excellent study will certainly not put an end to argument; indeed it contributes to the d David Seddon • 6 min read
MER Article Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker Ellis Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930-1952 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986). The critique of modernization theory that began in the late 1960s had an especially significant impact on a new generation of Western scholars who rejected Eric Davis • 4 min read
