Quick Updates, New "Call For Papers"
Try to keep up with the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism because so much is happening ...!
A short update as I work through backlog of scholarship that members are sending me, as ICSA becomes the one-stop shop for all things antizionology!
(1) NEW:
Call for Panelists/Papers
For an upcoming conference (November) ICSA would like to assemble a panel on the status and impact of antizionism on academic Middle East Studies in America today, broadly construed. What is the state of Middle East Studies today with respect to antizionism? How did it get that way, by way of theory, by way of personalities, by way of external funding, etc.? Has it become too corrupted by activism, or is that concern overblown? Is Edward Said still relevant to the issue? If one considers the discipline broken, or at least less than ideal, any ideas for repairing it? Think of the panel as a kind of 25th anniversary follow-up to Martin Kramer’s book, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) (but your paper need not assume your familiarity with the book). If you’d like to propose a paper, or suggest someone I might invite to propose a paper, please get in touch. (Note: our primary interest is America, but we are open to hearing proposals about the UK/Europe/Australia as well.)
ICSA will support those whose papers are accepted.
(2) Next up in the 6-part webinar series, “Antizionism: The History of an Ideology” (graciously sponsored by the Chai Mitzvah Scholars Circle)
Dr. Naya Lekht
“The Assembly Line of Antizionism: Soviet Roots of Today’s Progressive Antizionism”
Tuesday, March 24, 7-8 PM Eastern time
Register here: https://www.chaimitzvah.org/scholars-circle-overview/registration-for-scholars-circle-virtual-live-lectures/.
And please spread the word!
Those who pre-register will have access to a recording afterward if they cannot make it live.
(3) Don’t forget previous “Calls for Papers” for the upcoming ASMEA conference and for the forthcoming inaugural journal of ICSA … (Details in previous newsletters, to be repeated in near future newsletters…)
(4) A couple of quick, interesting resources
(i) 1968 Poland offers a very interesting case study for the “antizionism v antisemitism” debate. In a place where “antisemitism” was apparently illegal and openly ostensibly condemned, there was no compunction about waging an “antizionist” campaign against the local Jews, driving out many. The playbook is simple, and well worn from the Soviets onward, and very possibly repeating itself today in the United States: Make Israel/Zionism toxic, then accuse your local Jews of being Zionists so they become toxic too, then persecute those Jews in the name of “justice.”
Here is a short video on the affair recently making the rounds:
(ii) Pioneer and true hero of antisemitism studies Alvin Rosenfeld has a valuable new piece out in Commentary on the pornographic nature of today’s (antizionist) antisemitism, well worth reading: https://www.commentary.org/articles/alvin-rosenfeld/antisemitism-pornography-violence/.
Elder of Ziyon’s gloss on the piece is useful and particularly relevant to ICSA, as he argues that if we ever hope to stop the growing scourge of antizionism, we have to reverse the economics of it: the cost of becoming an open antizionist must exceed the benefits. Case studies of people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens make the point, but it’s true for many others: it’s simply profitable to turn against the Jews, and the first and primary way of doing that is to become antizionist. I believe that ICSA’s mission, which includes exposing the sordid origins and nature of antizionism through scholarship, is an important part of that task.
Read it here: https://substack.com/@elderofziyon/p-190996756
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OK, that’s it for now.
Remember, we need teams of scholars producing reams of scholarship on antizionism.
We need ICSA.
AP