Israel Studies An Anthology : Contributors

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).

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.

AICE 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.

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 legal historian; his areas of research are: gender and Judaism; religion and politics; and, international public law. Fuchs formerly was a visiting professor at Tulane University and the University of Calgary. He is currently a research fellow at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and teaches in Hebrew College. He has a forthcoming book, "Women’s Torah Study: Orthodox Religious Education and Modernity." with Routledge press. Fuchs 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.

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 Professor at the Lauder School of Government, Policy and Diplomacy of the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya (IDC), specializing in issues related to international conflicts, current political issues and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Professor Golan came to the IDC from a long career at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where, as Darwin Professor of Soviet and East European Studies, she served as chair of the Department of Political Science, chair of the Lafer Center for Women's Studies, and chair of the Mayrock Center for East European and Eurasian Studies. At the IDC she founded and heads the Graduate Specialization in Diplomacy and Conflict Studies as well as the MA Program in Government. Professor Golan has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and at the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC as well as the Rand Corporation, University of California, Berkeley and UCLA, Cornell, Wellesley College, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London. She was an international fellow of the Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Women's Studies Program, both of Brandeis University; she has been a MacArthur Foundation and a Ford Foundation Fellow.

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.

Professor Aviva Halamish, head of Modern History Studies at the Open University of Israel, authored and edited about a dozen books and scores of articles on the history of Zionism, Israel, the Kibbutz movement, Jewish immigration in the 20th century, illegal Jewish immigration to Mandate-era Palestine and historical biography. Among her books: The Exodus Affair: Holocaust Survivors and the Struggle for Palestine;Jerusalem in the Period of the British Mandate [Hebrew and Russian]. Her book B'Merutz Kaful Neged ha-Zman [A Dual Race against Time: Zionist Immigration Policy in the 1930s, Hebrew] won the Association for Israel Studies Annual Shapiro Award for Best Book in Israel Studies during the year 2006 as well as the Hecht Prize of the Herzl Institute, University of Haifa, for a research book in History of Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel, 2008. Another book, Me'ir Ya'ari: Biographya Kibbutzit [Meir Ya'ari: Collective Biography] won the Yitzhak Ben Zvi Award for research book in the History of Eretz Yisrael, 2010.

Raphael Israeli is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A graduate of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in History and Arabic Literature, he received his PhD in Chinese and Islamic History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. Israeli has written 30 books and some 100 scholarly articles in the fields of Islamic radicalism, Islamic terrorism, the Modern Middle East, Islam in China and Asia and the Opening of China by the French. His books include The Iraq War: Hidden Agendas and Babylonian Intrigue and Living with Islam: The Sources of Fundamentalist Islam. His most recent book (2012) is The Oslo Process: The Euphoria of Failure.

Aharon Klieman is emeritus professor of political science at Tel-Aviv University, founding director of the Abba Eban Graduate Program in Diplomacy and former holder of the Dr. Nahum Goldmann Chair in Diplomatic Studies. Presently he is senior editor of The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, and chair of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Geopolitics.

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).

Dr. Anat Maor is a professor in the fields of Israeli politics, social and economic policies and women in society. Dr. Maor served as a commander in the Israel Defense Forces and was elected as a member of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, from 1992 to 2003. In the Knesset, Dr. Maor chaired the Sub Committee of Women at Work & Economy and also served on the Committees for Science and Technology, Education, Status of Women, Labour and Social Welfare. Dr. Maor is currently a lecturer at the Open University in Ra'anana and at the Academic College in Ruppin. She has written five books and has attended twelve academic conferences in countries outside of Israel.

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.

Dr. Alec Mishory, born in Tel Aviv, is an art historian and a Cultural Studies scholar. He received his PhD degree in Art History from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In 2009-2011, he was a Schusterman Visiting Israeli professor at Rice University (Houston, Texas) and at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His publications focus on Jewish-Israeli visual symbolism; two of his recent books are: The Israeli Art Dield 1948-1949, Lo and Behold: Zionist Visual Symbols in Israeli Culture and Joseph Budko and H. N. Bialik's Complete Works Edition of 1923, Modern Hebrew Art and Poetry in Harmony. For seven years Mishory served as the art critic of Haaretz, Israel's leading newspaper. He has curated art exhibits in museums and galleries throughout Israel, most recently Visual Israeliness (2007) and 1948: Hebrew Jewish Palestine-Israeli Art Leading to the Future (Museum of Art, 2008), "Window to Reality":, Israeli Homages to Italian Renaissance Art (2012). Mishory's publications deal extensively with the origins of Israeli art and its links with Jewish themes and Zionist utopias. The common theme underlying his several research projects is modern Judaism's visual contributions to the overall modern Hebrew renaissance phenomenon.

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 a professor of Middle East, Israel and Islamic Studies. He chairs the Department of Land-of-Israel Studies at Ashkelon Academic College and is a senior researcher at both the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and the Harry S. Truman Institute for Peace Research of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor Reiter was a visiting scholar to Oxford University - St. Antony's College (2001), The Middle East Institute - Washington D.C. (2003), Sydney University (2003-4). In addition, he was a Schusterman Fellow teaching at the University of Minnesota during the academic year 2008-9 (Political Science and Jewish Studies). Between 1978-1987 Reiter served as deputy advisor on Arab Affairs for three Israeli Prime Ministers (Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres). In 2006 he advised the Israel Council for National Security regarding the policy of integrating the Arab minority. Professor Reiter is an expert on conflict resolution in holy places, the Arab minority in Israel, Middle East and Israel politics and Islamic law. He is active in Jewish-Arab dialogue and track two discussions between Israelis and Palestinians.

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.

Prof. Gerald Steinberg is president of NGO Monitor and professor of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University. His research interests include international relations, Middle East diplomacy and security, the politics of human rights and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Israeli politics and arms control. He works with a number of international organizations (NATO, UN University, OSCE, SIPRI); participates in track-two workshops and in the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism ICCA; and is the founder of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar Ilan University. Recent academic publications include "NGOs, Human Rights, and Political Warfare in the Arab-Israel Conflict"; "Europe's Failed Middle East Policies"; "The UN, the ICJ and the Separation Barrier: War by Other Means" (Israel Law Review); and Best Practices for Human Rights and Humanitarian NGOs, (co-author), Nijhoff, Leiden, 2012. He is also completing research examining the credibility of human rights organizations during the 2006 Lebanon war, under the auspices of the Israel Science Foundation. His op-ed columns have been published in Wall St. Journal (Europe), Financial Times, Ha'aretz, International Herald Tribune, Jerusalem Post, and other publications. He has appeared as a commentator on the BBC, CBC. CNN, and NPR.

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.

Robert Solomon Wistrich holds the Neuberger chair for Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He was recently awarded for Lifetime Achievement by the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (The JSA). He is the author and editor of 29 books, several of which have won international awards. These include Socialism and the Jews (Oxford University Press, 1985) which received the American Jewish Committee award, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (OUP, 1991) which won the Austrian State Prize for Danubian History and Antisemitism, the Longest Hatred (Pantheon, 1992) which received the H.H. Wingate Prize for non-fiction in the UK. It was also the basis for the PBS film documentary which Professor Wistrich scripted and co-edited. Among his recent books are: Hitler and the Holocaust (Random House, 2001) and the co-edited volume Nietzsche. Godfather of fascism? (Princeton, 2002). Between 1999 and 2001 Professor Wistrich was one of six scholars who were appointed to an international Catholic-Jewish historical commission to examine the wartime record of Pope Pius the XII. In June 2003, he initiated and acted as Chief Historical Advisor for a BBC film documentary on contemporary Muslim antisemitism, entitled "Blaming the Jews". Prof. Wistrich's newest book entitled "From Ambivalence to Betrayal. The Left, the Jews and Israel," will be published by the University of Nebraska Press at the end of April 2012.

Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida was born in Kishinev, Moldova and made Aliyah to Israel in 1974. After completing her M.A. in sociology, Aviva travelled in 1997 to the U.S. for a doctoral program at the City University of New York. Aviva majored in sociology of immigration and immigrants and was part of a research team in the subject of integration of immigrant offspring (second generation) in American society. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the integration of immigrant offspring in the New York labor market. In addition, she researched the subject of the Jewish identity of Russian-speaking immigrants in the U.S. Aviva published several articles and upon graduating taught at the Sociology Department of Brooklyn College. Upon returning to Israel, Aviva received the status of a returning scientist and joined the Institute for Immigration and Social Integration at the Ruppin Academic Center as a lecturer and researcher. Dr. Zeltzer-Zubida is currently Director of Information, Planning and Evaluation at the Aliyah and Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency.

Hani Zubida was born in Baghdad Iraq and raised in Israel. Hani completed his BA at Tel Aviv University majoring in Political Science and Sociology. He then worked as a statistical analyst for three years, mainly concentrating on the Israeli society and electoral system. Later on, he returned to his MA studies at Tel Aviv University, at the Political Science Program. Hani has defended his Ph.D. in the Politics Department at NYU (May. 2006) titled: "A Comparative Framework of Split-Voting: Testing the Cases of United States and French National Elections." NYU is where he also earned his MA (September, 2000) titled: "The Israeli Political Continuum: Change and Continuity." For which he won the Israeli Political Science Association, best MA dissertation award, for 2002. He is the co-author of two publications, recipient of several grants and prizes (see below), and has taught in various Universities both in Israel and the US. Currently, Hani is teaching and researching extensively in the areas of comparative politics, methodology and voting behavior. More specifically, he specializes in the Immigration, Working Migration Identity and General Identity, Israeli electoral system, social-mobility in Israeli society, Israeli democracy, its' socio-economic and political realms, the Middle East peace process and voting behavior theories and analysis.