Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus auth ..read more

In Photography and Making Bedouin Histories in the Naqab, 1906-2013:: An Anthropological Approach (Routledge, 2023), Emilie Le Febvre takes us to the Naqab Desert where Bedouin use photographs to make, and respond to, their own histories. She argues Bedouin presentations of the past are selective, but increasingly reliant on archival documents such as photographs, which spokespersons treat as evidence of their local histories amid escalating tensions in Israel-Palestine. These practices shape Bedouin visual historicity; the diverse ways people produce their pasts in the present ..read more

In Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the Ethnic Revolution in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946 (Indiana UP, 2023), Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish and non-Jewish decision makers exiled from wartime east central Europe and the powerbrokers surrounding them? Usually, the creation of the State of Israel is cast as a story that begins w ..read more

In their handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process over the decades, U.S. officials have displayed a “systemic blind spot” by alleviating pressure on the stronger party, Israel, and increasing pressure on the weaker party, the Palestinians, Khaled Elgindy argues in Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump (Brookings Institution Press, 2019). In my conversation with Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, we explore the particular forms that this blind spot took in successive presidential administrations from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump ..read more

How should we think about violent accounts in the Bible? Why did Gandhi urge the Jews to turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism during World War II? What is the reality behind buzz-words like asymmetric warfare and collective punishment that come up so often when discussing events in Gaza? What role should global opinion and the hostage crisis play in Israeli strategy? Is there a moral imperative to win? Jewish ethicist Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Brody discusses these questions and more in this discussion of his recent book Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View on War and Morality. This conver ..read more

“How has it come to this? How has ‘Zionist’…become the dirtiest word to the international Left?” Susie Linfield poses that ripe question at the outset of her book, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (Yale University Press, 2019). In the podcast, our discussion focuses on three prominent figures examined in The Lions’ Den: Isaac Deutscher, I.F. Stone, and Fred Halliday. And we explore present-day sentiments about Zionism among the Left amid the Gaza-Israel conflict. What’s needed in thinking about Zionism and about Israel, Linfield assert ..read more

Beginning in August 1946, stateless and visaless Jews, most of them survivors of the Nazi death camps, who sought to immigrate to the Land of Israel were intercepted by the Royal Navy and deported to the nearby island of Cyprus, where they were detained in camps surrounded by barbed wire. Despite occupying a dramatic and fateful position in modern history, this saga has remained largely inaccessible due to the widespread dispersal of the primary sources and the linguistic difficulties presented by them.  To address these problems, Yitzhak Teutsch's book The Cyprus Detention Camps: Th ..read more

Some people are good at what they do, some are enthusiastic about their work. This guest brings both to bear in his exploration of the ancient past. Today we are privileged to talk with a distinguished figure in the world of archeology whose enthusiasm doesn’t quit. Professor. Aren Maeir is not only an accomplished archaeologist, but he is also a captivating storyteller who brings the past to life through his discoveries. Professor Aren M. Maeir is Director of the Tel es Safi/Gath Archeological Project in Israel. He is an expert in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology, with ..read more

American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel’s existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinians. These now‑forgotten voices, which include an aid‑worker‑turned‑academic with Palestinian Sephardic roots, a former Yiddish journalist, anti‑Zionist Reform rabbis, and young left‑wing Zionist activists, felt drawn to support Palestinian rights by their understanding of Jewish history, identity, and ethics. They sometimes ..read more

October 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that shaped the modern Middle East. The War was a trauma for Israel, a dangerous superpower showdown, and, following the oil embargo, a pivotal reordering of the global economic order. The Jewish State came shockingly close to defeat. A panicky cabinet meeting debated the use of nuclear weapons. After the war, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned in disgrace, and a 9/11-style commission investigated the "debacle." But, argues Uri Kaufman in Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Mid ..read more