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Our Fathom Highlight this week features an in-depth survey of why the Oslo Accords failed to deliver on their promise of a bright economic future for the Palestinians and what lessons can be learned for today’s efforts to strike an ‘economic peace’, from former senior economic advisor to the Palestinian Authority Dr. Mohammed Samhouri.
In addition we are running five pieces on the controversy about the Summer 2019 issue of Israel Studies entitled Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict. Many have welcomed a bracing critique of some too-easily accepted anti-Zionist orthodoxies. Others have accused the editors of seeking to intimidate Israel’s critics. Cary Nelson’s review of Word Crimes, published in May, argued that the attacks were ‘unfounded and unwarranted’ and ‘the attempt to slander its editors deplorable’. Gershon Shafir responds sharply to Nelson, claiming that Word Crimes represents an attempt to limit academic freedom, and must be understood within the current Israeli context in which ‘academic and artistic freedom are besieged’. Three responses to Shafir’s critique follow. Cary Nelson and Paula A. Treichler forcefully reject what they see as Shafir’s ‘manufactured outrage that the issue editors aim to impose arrest and actual imprisonment on their academic opponents’. Ilan Troen, the co-editor of Israel Studies, argues that while Shafir is correct to be vigilant about academic freedom, Word Crimes was the very opposite of academic suppression, and actually opened debate up. A guest editor of Word Crimes, Donna Robinson Divine argues that the title was ‘intended to be read as a metaphor, not as an accusation of criminal behaviour’ and invites Shafir and others to debate the substantive claims of the essays.
Our Image of the week is violent protests instigated by the shooting of 19-year-old Ethiopian Israeli Solomon Tekah by an off-duty police officer, Tel Aviv, 2 July.
Our Voice of the week is Jerusalem Post columnist Ruthie Blum, Meretz party member Yariv Oppenheimer and, from Ehud Barak’s new party Israel Democratic Party, candidate Yair Fink, who discuss the Bahrain conference, the Trump Peace Plan, US-Israel ties and whether Israeli policies are at odds with Democrat and liberal values.
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