Arab and Jewish Questions

Bashir Bashir is associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication at the Open University of Israel and a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He is coeditor of The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies (2008) and The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History (Columbia, 2018).Leila Farsakh is associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her books include Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land, and Occupation, second edition (2012).

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Three Questions That Make One, by Bashir Bashir and Leila FarsakhPart I. Interrogating Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Colonialism1. Jackals and Arabs: Once More on the German-Jewish Dialogue, by Gil Anidjar2. An Emblematic Embrace: New Europe, the Jewish State, and the Palestinian Question, by Brian Klug3. Palestine in Algeria: The Emergence of an Arab-Islamic Question in the Interwar Period, by Amal GhazalPart II. Beyond the Binary Division Between “Jews” and “Arabs”: Revisiting National Constructs4. On Orientalist Genealogies: The Split Arab/Jew Figure Revisited, by Ella Shohat5. Returning to the Question of Europe: From the Standpoint of the Defeated, by Hakem Al-Rustom6. Between Shared Homeland to National Home: The Balfour Declaration from a Native Sephardic Perspective, by Yuval Evri and Hillel Cohen7. Toward a Field of Israel/Palestine Studies, by Derek PenslarPart III. Stubborn Realities and Alternative Visions for Palestine/Israel8. Apocalypse/Emnity/Dialogue: Negotiating the Depths, by Jacqueline Rose9. Competing Marxisms, Cessation of (Settler) Colonialism, and the One-State Solution in Israel-Palestine, by Moshe Behar10. Dialectic of the National Identities in Palestinian Society and Israeli Society: Nationalism and Binationalism, by Maram MasarwiBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex

These thoughtful essays help us to understand how the destruction of ways of life (and of life itself) by pan-Arabism and Zionism—each claiming to assist the rebirth of a victimized people—and how the self-definition of a “new Europe” after the Holocaust, by repressing the memory of its murderous colonial history, has helped to shape our menacing present. The Arab and Jewish Questions is essential reading for all who wish to think productively about a human future beyond the nation-state, the modern collectivity whose ability to generate hatred toward “enemies” is not unique but whose power to bring about catastrophe is.