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From Middletown to the Middle East

~ Reflections on travel and teaching

From Middletown to the Middle East

Tag Archives: nationalism

Crossing borders in the northern Balkans

01 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by tgilheany in Uncategorized

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borders, Croatia, European Union, Italy, nationalism, Slovenia

20130801-181301.jpgNo longer needed: checkpoint building between Italy and Slovenia

As we drove from one part of Slovenia to another, we crossed briefly through a slice of Italy. The border is marked by a sign and several abandoned checkpoint buildings. For those not used to thinking historically, this may seem like old news – after all, the EU has been a fact for a while, and recently has been more criticized than praised. Just 70 years ago, however, Italy was running brutal concentration camps in Slovenia. This open border without occupation is both unprecedented and a great boon for the well-being of all in the region.

Meanwhile, Croatia has recently been admitted to the European Union, though it has not yet become a member of the “Schengen” customs union, as Slovenia has. Thus the crossing between the two requires a (fairly gestural) stop, which will disappear in 2015 or so, when Croatia is admitted to Schengen. While a young Croatian I spoke with is worried that EU membership will turn them into Greece, again my bias is that less nationalism is better.

20130801-225019.jpgThe EU circle of stars is the latest flag to fly over Zadar

Reinforcing my belief in the need to transcend nationalism are the various stories of the siege of Zadar by Serb forces in the 1991-95 war. It is strange to live in and walk these streets and imagine this beautiful seaside town without electricity or sufficient food and medical supplies, intermittently shelled.

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One reason to study the Ottoman Empire

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by tgilheany in NEH Seminar

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nationalism, Ottoman history, Palestinian

20130708-211552.jpg

One of our professors, Dana Sajdi, a Palestinian-Jordanian, told a fascinating story today about her grandfather. He and her parents had difficulty understanding each other, because her parents were committed Pan-Arabists. Her grandfather, however, saw himself in a much more cosmopolitan light. He even continued to wear the fez, which her parents seemed to think was a little backward. Through her studies, however, Professor Sajdi has begun to interpret the Ottoman Empire as in some senses a critique of nationalism and has more sympathy with her grandfather’s identity as an Ottoman subject. Her father remains very critical of the “Turkish occupation” as he conceives of it, but Professor Sajdi argues that, while not romanticizing the empire, its characteristics in its last years is not how it would have been experienced across its history.

As she mentioned later in reference to Andalusian Spain, one can think of Ottoman history at times as a kind of convivencia, though she does note that one can overdo that reading both in the Ottoman and in the Spanish contexts.

This strikes me as an interesting question for students of the Middle East – to what extent can the Ottoman Empire be read as an anti- or post-nationalist model?

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Two teachings and a thought after Yad VaShem

18 Friday May 2012

Posted by tgilheany in Uncategorized

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14th Amendment, fear, Holocaust, nationalism, United Nations, United Nations Charter, Yad VaShem

A monument and a memorial

I listened to two different tour leaders at the exit to Yad VaShem, the Holocaust Museum, summarize their experience to their groups. The first, speaking to a group of religious girls, argued that really the Holocaust wasn’t perpetrated by Nazis only, but by all anti-Semites. She continued by noting that religious Jews were the primary target. She listed the typical religious dress (in whch the girls were currently attired), and then said that those who wore it “were picked out first.” “You need to know this!” she practically shouted. Her core message: as religious Jews, you are still the primary target of powerful anti-Semites.

The second guide was speaking to a group of American Jewish teens. First he showed them a view in which one could see new residential buildings being constructed. “This gives me hope. We just saw all that destruction and here you see building.” Later he said, “You are citizens of the most powerful government force since the Roman Empire” he said to them. He argued that they must go back home and do everything they can to support the state of Israel.

I heard two messages: you are always potential victims, and you must support Israel. More universal lessons, however, occurred to me. For example, I thought of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The museum also brought to mind the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations: “We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained…have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.”

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Alternatives to the two-state solution?

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by tgilheany in Fulbright project

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ethno-nationalism, israeli-palestinian conflict, nationalism, two-state solution

A street sign only in Arabic in the old city of Akko, Israel. What structures can protect the cultural interests of groups other than one in power?

I’m sitting in on a course at Hebrew University called “Binationalism in Israel/Palestine.” Professor Bashir Bashir, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, wants to consider “out of the box” ways to settle the conflict. As he said in the first class, he wants to look at non-racist alternatives to the two-state solution.

The initial readings reveal some of the theoretic structure underlying his thinking. Professor Chaim Gans, a legal theorist at Tel Aviv U, argues for “liberal cultural nationalism at the sub-state level.” “Cultural nationalism” is itself an interesting idea, one that I had not encountered before. It’s basically renaming ethno-nationalism and arguing that it is not all bad from the liberal perspective. It points out that people gain great meaning from culture, even particularistic culture, and argues that they be able to practice their culture and pass it down. Many caveats follow, but the central idea is that not everyone who wants to maintain their culture is necessarily going to turn into the German romantics and then into the Nazis. Gans contrasts cultural nationalism with what he calls “statist nationalism,” in which cultural homogeneity exists to support the goals and stability of the state, not the other way around. Both nationalisms contrast with the pure liberal conception, with the state existing to defend the rights of the individual, not cultures.

An Israeli example might be the government allowing the residents of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood (Mea She’arim) to close the neighborhood’s streets to traffic on Shabbat. An American (and many secular Israelis) might respond “They can’t do that; it is my right as an individual to drive where and when I want. They can practice their culture in private spaces.” But a defender of cultural nationalism would respond, “We increase human happiness by letting the state support some forms of particularistic culture.”

So where is this heading in terms of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? I think Professor Bashir wants to imagine governing structures that carve out spaces for various forms of Palestinian culture and various forms of Israeli culture to flourish, and not saying that those spaces need to overlap exactly with a Palestinian state and an Israeli state. My biggest question, of course, is trust. Because of the history of anti-Semitism, most Jews are skeptical of the claim that Jewish cultural interests will be protected by anyone but Jews. Because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the behavior of successive Israeli governments, most Palestinians are skeptical that Israeli Jews will protect Palestinian cultural interests. I’ll be interested to hear how Professor Bashir suggests addressing this problem.

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Recent posts…

  • Jericho – my good and bad calls
  • Evidence of support – plaques but little else
  • Skirting Jerusalem
  • Ibrahimi mosque/Machpelech cave
  • Dr. Hasan

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