Browsing by Subject "Israel"
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Item The Arab street : a photographic exploration(2009-12) Cheney, Clifford Sidney; Darling, Dennis Carlyle; Reed, EllisJournalists use the term Arab Street to describe what they often imply is a volatile Arabic public opinion. This photo story travels through four Arab areas or Jordan, Qatar, Israel/Palestine and Egypt in order to show the diversity and complexity of each. The media’s tendency to lump all Arabs into one political block is detrimental to a true sense of cultural understanding that is required for peace.Item Behavioral ecology and conservation of large mammals: historical distribution, reintroduction and the effects of fragmented habitat(2009-05-15) Gilad, OranitConservation biologists have used reintroduction as a method to reestablish extirpated species in their native habitat. Three important aspects of a successful reintroduction effort include: (1) a habitat suitability study of the reintroduction area, including effects of migration corridors; (2) identification of possible predators of the reintroduced species; and (3) a post-reintroduction assessment including an evaluation of the species' population dynamics. In this study I examine the suitability of Guadalupe Mountains National Park (GUMO) as a reintroduction area for desert bighorn sheep. The study used landscape metrics to compare GUMO to a nearby mountain range that is currently supporting an estimated population of 400 bighorn sheep. This study identified migration corridors for bighorns throughout the region and evaluated mountain lion (a potential predator of bighorn sheep) numbers either residing in or passing through the park between the years 1997 to 2004. Results on the studies in GUMO revealed 15,884 ha of suitable habitat for bighorn sheep and provided evidence of migration routes between GUMO and neighboring mountain ranges. In terms of potential predators, a minimum of 32 resident and/or transient mountain lions occurred in GUMO over a seven year period, and a minimum of 15 cats used the park in 2002. Based on estimates of individual home range of males and females, GUMO should be able to support four to five individuals. The genetic data indicates a high number of transients or perhaps an unstable population of mountain lions that may be the result of intense hunting pressure of cats in Texas. Finally, my study simulates parameters of the population dynamics of a different species, the Arabian oryx that was reintroduced as three separate populations to the Israeli Negev between 1998 and 2005. I simulated population growth and the effect of migration corridors on species persistence. Results suggest that migration corridors are essential for a self-sustaining viable metapopulation under current natality rates. In the event that natality rates increase (as was evident in a reintroduced population of Arabian oryx in Oman), metapopulation can reach viable size with only two of the release sites (open, flat terrain) connected by migration corridors.Item Behind the Linguistic Landscape of Israel/Palestine : exploring the visual implications of expansionist policies(2014-05) Carey, Shaylyn Theresa; Brustad, KristenThe concept of the Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new and developing field, but it is already proving to illuminate significant trends in sociocultural boundaries and linguistic identities within heterogeneous areas. By examining types of signage displayed in public urban spaces such as street signs, billboards, advertisements, scholars have gained insight into the inter and intra-group relations that have manifested as a result of the present top-down and bottom-up language ideologies. This paper will apply LL theory to the current situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories through a discussion of the various policies that have shaped the Linguistic Landscape. It will begin by examining the Hebraicization of the toponymy after the creation of Israel, then discuss the conflict over the linguistic landscape, which can be seen in several photographs where the Arabic script has been marked out or covered. Moving forward, this work will address the grammatical errors on Arabic language signs, which reflect the low priority of Arabic education in Israel. Finally, this project will expand upon the LL framework by looking at the economic relationship between Israel and the Palestinian territories and how it is reflected in public places, such as supermarkets, which display an overwhelming presence of Hebrew. Through the use of photographic evidence of the LL from the region, which shows the prevalence of Hebrew place names, Israeli economic goods, and negative attitudes towards the use of Arabic on signage, this paper will take a multidisciplinary approach at examining the history and policies that shape the language used in public urban spaces. The relationship between the state and the Linguistic Landscape sheds light on the power dynamics of a multilingual space. As Hebrew is given preferential treatment, despite the official status of both Arabic and Hebrew, Israel continues to dominate the social space with the use of Hebrew in order to assert their claims to the land. In addition to investigating the power dynamics that are reflected on visual displays of language in this region, this work serves as a meaningful contribution to the Linguistic Landscape by expanding its methodology and units of analysis.Item Border fiction : fracture and contestation in post-Oslo Palestinian culture(2013-12) Paul, William Andrew; El-Ariss, Tarek; Grumberg, KarenThis dissertation delves into a body of Palestinian literature, film, and art from the past two decades in order theorize the relationship between borders and their representations. In Israel and Palestine, a region in which negotiating borders has become a way of life, I explore the ways in which ubiquitous boundaries have pervaded cultural production through a process that I term “bordering.” I draw on theoretical contributions from the fields of architecture, geography, anthropology, as well as literature and film studies to develop a conceptual framework for examining the ways in which authors, artists, and filmmakers engage with borders as a space to articulate possibilities of encounter, contestation, and transgression. I argue that in these works, the proliferation of borders has called into question the Palestinian cultural and political consensus that created a shared set of narratives, symbols, and places in Palestinian cultural production until the last decade of the 20th century. In its place has emerged a fragmented body of works that create what Jacques Rancière terms “dissensus,” or a disruption of a cultural, aesthetic, disciplinary, and spatial order. Read together, they constitute what I term a “border aesthetic,” in which literature, film, and art produce new types of spaces, narratives, and texts through the ruptures and fractures of the border. I trace the emergence of this aesthetic and the new genres and forms that distinguish it from earlier Palestinian literary, political, and intellectual projects through analyses of the works of Elia Suleiman, Sayed Kashua, Raba’i al-Madhoun, Emily Jacir, Yazid Anani, and Inass Yassin. In their attempts to grapple artistically with the region’s borders, these authors, directors, and artists create new codes, narratives, vernaculars, and spaces that reflect the fragmentation wrought by pervasive boundaries. These works, fluent in multiple mediums, genres, and languages, reveal both the possibilities and the limits of this aesthetic, as they seek to contest borders but nevertheless remain bound by them.Item Digging through time: psychogeographies of occupation(2015-12) Simblist, Noah Leon; Reynolds, Ann Morris; El-Ariss, Tarek; Mulder, Stephennie; Di-Capua, Yoav; Flaherty, GeorgeThis dissertation is about the relationship between contemporary art and politics in the case of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Specifically, I look at the ways that artists have dealt with the history of this region and its impact on the present, using four moments as the subject of the following chapters: ancient Palestine, the Holocaust, The nakba, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The historiographical impulse has a particular resonance for artists making work about the Middle East, a political space where competing historical narratives are the basis for disagreements about sovereignty. I focus on works by Avi Mograbi, Gilad Efrat, Ayreen Anastas, Amir Yatziv, Yael Bartana, Omer Fast, Khaled Hourani, Dor Guez, Campus in Camps, and Akram Zaatari. A number of patterns emerge when we look at how these artists approach history. One is the tendency for artists to act like historians. As a subset of this tendency is the archival impulse, wherein artists use found photographs, film or documents to intervene in normative representations of history. Another is for artists to act like archaeologists, digging up repressed histories. Another is to commemorate a traumatic event in a way that rejects traditional forms of memorialization such as monuments. At the core of each chapter are examples of artistic practices that use conversation as a medium. I analyze these conversations about history as a dialogical practice and argue that this methodology offers a uniquely productive opportunity to work through the ideologies embedded within the psychogeographies of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Within these conversations and other aesthetic structures, I argue that these artists emphasize the all too common challenge in producing new forms of civic imagination – the tendency to address historical trauma though repetition compulsion and melancholia. They react to this challenge by engaging collective memory, producing counter-memories and, in some cases, produce counterpublics.Item Ecstatic feedback : toward an ethics of audition in the contemporary literary arts of the Mediterranean(2014-12) Raizen, Michal; Grumberg, Karen; El-Ariss, Tarek; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Seeman, Sonia; Atwood, BlakeEcstatic Feedback explores narrative and thematic engagements with the concept of “audition” in works from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Morocco. My use of the term audition encompasses the act of listening, the trials and tribulations of hearing, and the performative aspects of lending an ear. The locale of Ecstatic Feedback is the contemporary Mediterranean, a designation that reflects both the geographical and linguistic orientation of the works discussed and the emergent disciplinary interest in Mediterranean Studies. The regional specificity of this project is framed by my discussion of ṭarab, a musical phenomenon akin to ecstasy. I argue that ṭarab, as a musical form with a culturally-specific contextual base and a sui generis communicative mode capable of producing context, points to an acoustic geography that predates current sociopolitical mappings of the Mediterranean. In its literary and cinematic iterations, ṭarab presents a challenge to compartmentalized geopolitical and cultural visions of a Mediterranean structured around divisions such as secular/sacred, premodern/modern, or Mashriq/Maghreb. The works discussed in Ecstatic Feedback use ṭarab as a narrative structure, casting it at the same time as a way of rethinking the historical traumas of the twentieth and twenty-first century Mediterranean. Emile Habibi’s vignettes The Sextet of the Six Days (1968); Hoda Barakat’s novel Disciples of Passion (1993) and her series of essays The Stranger’s Letters (2004); Eran Kolirin’s film The Band’s Visit (2007); and Elia Suleiman’s film The Time That Remains (2009) all make explicit references to the world of ṭarab and its practitioners. Edmond El Maleh’s A Thousand Years, One Day (1986) situates ṭarab more abstractly, as a concept with tremendous performative and communicative potential in both its popular and mystical iterations. With a focus on Arab Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and exiles of the Lebanese Civil War, my project attends to the processes that underwrite a literary and cinematic intervention into the regional soundscape, with its attendant silences and elisions. By foregrounding instances of ṭarab and exploring the intersubjectivity inherent in the dynamic between muṭrib (a performer who elicits ṭarab) and listener, these diverse texts combine to highlight a line of cultural-regional poetics based on audition.Item Impartial allies : American policy in Palestine during the Truman administration(2015-05) Stewart, James Clyde; Suri, Jeremi; Di-Capua, YoavAmerican policy toward Palestine during the Truman administration was influenced by a number of factors, but none carried greater weight than the unfolding cold war. Because the Middle East carried so much strategic weight, American leaders were determined to ensure that the entire region remained allied with the United States. As a result, the Truman administration strove to maintain good relations with both Arabs and Israelis throughout the period. American policy did not, as many allege, favor Israel, but in fact pursued the middle-of-the-road.Item The influence of religion on the character and conduct of the Israel Defense Forces : a review of selected works(2010-12) Chernick, Erica Susan; Pedahzur, Ami; Weinreb, AlexIn light of an ever growing gap between Israel’s religious and secular communities, it is perhaps inevitable that the phenomenon would come to capture the interest of Israel-oriented scholars. Yet efforts to address the extent to which religion affects the nature and operations of the Israeli army and the degree to which that influence is advantageous – or perhaps detrimental – have been far from comprehensive. A manifestation of the religious-secular conflict, the religious-military cleavage within Israeli society has long been at the heart of Israel-focused research. Scholars have remained intrigued by the conflicts that arise when a soldier’s religious background is at odds with the inflexibility of army life. Many researchers have sought to measure the degree to which religion affects army cohesion and success in war, and determine whether or not religious influence on the State’s force is largely harmless or a looming threat. While scholars of both camps have posited credible theories crafted out of sound analyses, a review of selected scholarship on the subject suggests that the influence of religion on the Israeli military is benign. Opponents of religious influence on the military have failed to appreciate the benefits of integrating devout troops into the force and the successes of mediating mechanisms that have become instrumental to the IDF. Such mediators may have been implemented in an effort to accommodate religious soldiers, but the entire force has stood to benefit.Item Iranian-Israeli relations in light of the Iranian Revolution(2010-12) Vessali, Behrang Vameghi; Aghaie, Kamran Scot; Pedahzur, AmiThis thesis considers the transformation of Iranian-Israeli ties following the 1979 Iranian Revolution from a Western-allied relationship to a covert, scandalous relationship, specifically in the context of the Iran-Iraq War. I also look at the Iranian and Israeli narratives and compare the religious, historical, ideological and psycho-political underpinnings that reveal significant similarities between these two superficially diametrically opposed states, and ultimately shaped the complex and misunderstood relationship between the two countries.Item Palestine Media Watch and the U.S. news media : strategies for change and resistance(2010-05) Handley, Robert Lyle; Reese, Stephen D.; Jensen, Robert; Harp, Dustin; Wilkins, Karin; Henry, ClementToward the start of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, activists formed a media watchdog group called Palestine Media Watch (PMW) to challenge U.S. news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tired of coverage that blamed the conflict on Palestinian terrorism, PMW monitored news coverage, met with newsworkers, and bombarded news organizations with complaints in an attempt to root the conflict’s cause in Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. I study PMW’s efforts to produce change in coverage, and examine its campaigns’ effects. Most critical research examines the news system’s production of “propaganda” and news models suggest that media monitoring is one mechanism through which an entire “ideological air” is supported. “Guardian watchdogs,” like the Israel lobby, guard the ideological boundaries around news content that are erected by others. This study considers PMW’s efforts in terms articulated by the dialogic and dialectical models, which gives agency to dissident movements and requires study of the strategic interactions between media and movements to understand framing struggles. These models suggest that “dissident watchdogs,” like PMW, can affect news coverage. What is not clear is the extent to which dissident watchdogs can affect news content when they can make appeals that resonate with professional journalism but that do not resonate with the country’s ideological air. I examine PMW’s strategies to produce content changes between 2000 and 2004, detail the group’s interactions with newsworkers, and document the outcomes of those interactions to understand the struggle to affect media framing. The watchdog, when it systematically monitored coverage and individually critiqued news staff, produced substantive changes in content and practice but these were limited in number. When the watchdog bombarded news organizations with complaints it was able to produce several superficial changes, but these changes resulted in no meaningful impact on the news frame. These findings indicate that the dominant narrative is incorporative enough to accommodate “journalistically useful” points without resulting in a fundamental or substantive change in the frames that inform newswork. Thus, the emergence of dissident media monitors to “neutralize” guardian monitors is only one step toward affecting the entire “ideological air” that informs newswork of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues.Item Un-deterring fences, why is Gaza still attacking?!(2011-08) El Nakhala, Doaa' Hamdi; Pedahzur, Ami; Gavrilis, GeorgeMany contemporary states and historic political entities walled their borders stressing the idea that these barriers would protect their homelands from external threats and thus, achieve security. Although this security argument has prevailed, the political science literature fails to offer a systematic empirical examination of the relationship between barriers and cross-border threats. This research attempts to bridge this gap by answering the question: What are the actual security outcomes of physical barriers on borders? And thus, under what conditions do barriers succeed/fail to achieve security? This paper posits that, in some cases, building barriers on borders to stop non-state actors’ attacks escalate conflict. It demonstrates that when militants have supply institutions, they will manage to increase their attacks and shift to new tactics despite the barrier. It also studies the Israeli Gaza Strip Fence and offers an analysis based on patterns of the relationships between features of the barrier and the Gaza attacks. these patterns are derived from a quantitative dataset built by the researcher and are also supplemented by qualitative data about the case.Item Zionism and Jewish tourism in Israel(2006-05) Israel, Kinneret; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This thesis considers tourism in terms of the disparate dynamics of self and Other that are residual of, as well as different from, previous colonial discourses through connections between histories of Zionist travel and tourism in early twentieth century Palestine and a specific case of contemporary ethno-national tourism - the Birthright tour, which is designed exclusively for Jewish youth to visit Israel. In Chapter 1, I will introduce a history of modern tourist development in Palestine and its relationship to Zionist state building and Israeli statehood after 1948. In Chapter 2, I will analyze the rhetoric of the Birthright tour. My discussion of the Birthright tour will lead me to address questions of ethnicity and citizenship in relation to language, landscape, and monuments. In Chapter 3, I will perform a semiotic reading of the two most emblematic national sites in Israel that are visited by the Birthright tourist - Masada and the Kotel (Wailing Wall or Western Wall).