פרסומים

A Jewish weapons manufacturer during the American Civil War, a Jewish-Canadian chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Board, and Jewish-Argentine guerrilla fighters—these are some of the individuals discussed in this first-of-its-kind volume. It brings together some of the best new works on armed Jews in the Americas. Links between Jews and their ties to weapons are addressed through multiple cultural, political, social, and ideological contexts, thus breaking down longstanding, stilted myths in many societies about Jews and weaponry. Anti-Semitism and Jewish self-defense, Jewish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and Jewish-American gangsters as ethnic heroes form part of the little-researched topic of Jews and arms in the Americas.

This volume provides insight into the situation regarding freedom of expression
and the media across Europe today. Renowned European scholars and
practitioners in the field analyze specific problems and threats that the media,
in general, and journalists, in particular, face in Europe, as well as in selected
countries (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey, Malta, and Austria). In addition,
the book provides an overview of how technology-driven changes affect the
ways news is being made, found, delivered, and funded, and examines the
implications for media pluralism. It also takes a ground-breaking look at the
growing role of the media in managing security crises. The book as a whole is
inspired by the fundamental view still vital to democracies that the role of the
press is “to serve the governed, not the governors.”

Against the background of the EU’s multifaceted crisis, i.e. financial and refugee crises, the growing security threat, Brexit, the deterioration of state of law in some member states, the growing gap between citizens and political elites, the political radicalization of an increasing number of citizens, etc. this book purports to reassess the social, legal, economic and moral dimensions of solidarity in the EU. The discussion on the challenges solidarity as the leading principle of EU integration currently faces focuses on fundamental questions vis-à-vis EU integration such as: are the EU’s integration and crisis management capacities already exhausted, has European integration reached its limits or will the EU be finally in the position to fully put into practice and further enhance solidarity, and hence, integration?
The book brings together the contributions of the following internationally renowned scholars and experts in the field: Alfred Tovias, Professor Emeritus, Department of International Relations, Hebrew University, Alberto Spektorowski, Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University and Karen Umansky, PhD candidate in the Department of Public Policy at Tel Aviv University, Christal Morehouse, Senior Program Officer of the Open Society Foundation and Yann-Sven Rittelmeyer, policy analyst at the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels, Denis MacShane, Europe minister as well as deputy foreign secretary in Tony Blair’s government, Deniz Senol Sert, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, Ozyegin University, Istanbul and Fulya Felicity Türkmen, Assistant at Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Hartwig Hummel, Professor of European Politics and International Relations at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, Kyriakos Filinis, postdoctoral  research fellow at the Crisis Observatory of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), Vassilis Kappis, Lecturer at the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies of the University of Buckingham, United Kingdom.

The New Ethnic Studies in Latin America aims at going beyond and against much of Jewish Latin American historiography, situating Jewish-Latin Americans in the larger multi-ethnic context of their countries. Senior and junior scholars from various countries joined together to challenge commonly held assumptions, accepted ideas, and stable categories about ethnicity in Latin America in general and Jewish experiences on this continent in particular.

This volume brings to the discussions on Jewish life in Latin America less heard voices of women, non-affiliated Jews, and intellectuals. Community institutions are not at center stage, conflicts and tensions are brought to the fore, and a multitude of voices pushes aside images of homogeneity. Authors in this tome look at Jews’ multiple homelands: their country of birth, their country of residence, and their imagined homeland of Zion.

The Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East have increasingly become a primary focus of interest both in Europe as well as in the global arena. Recent developments in the field of energy following the discovery of significant hydrocarbon reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean have bolstered the importance of this sub-region as a factor to be reckoned with in terms of a new balance of power in the Middle East. Against this background, the volume at hand analyzes the conditions under which energy reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean could serve to boost cooperation and peace or, on the contrary, would further complicate existing conflicts. Special emphasis is placed on the significance of these developments for European energy security and the effect on the relationship of the countries of this region to the European Union.
This volume brings together the contributions of internationally renowned scholars and experts in the field: Thanos Dokos, Director-General of ELIAMEP in Athens; Ariel Ezrahi, Energy Adviser at the Office of the Quartet Representative (OQR); Tony Blair; Sergio Matalucci, journalist at Natural Gas Europe; Jörn Richert, Professor for Energy Governance at the University of St. Gallen; Simone Tagliapietra, from the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel; Igor Taranic, Researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels; Theodoros Tsakiris, Assistant Professor at the University of Nicosia and member of the Board of Directors of the Cyprus Hydrocarbon Company; Shaul Zemach, former Director General of the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources. 
Angelos Giannakopoulos is based at Dortmund University and is currently a Heinrich Heine Visiting Professor and DAAD Lecturer in European Studies at Tel Aviv University. He is internationally active in teaching and research and has headed two major EU-funded projects on corruption and citizenship in Europe. He has been a visiting professor and research fellow at several universities and research institutions in the USA, Japan, Turkey, Hungary, and Cyprus. He has published many books and articles on various fields of European integration, sociology of culture and knowledge, anti-corruption, citizens’ empowerment, etc.

The study of China, Chinese literature, language, philosophy, history, geography and culture at Tel Aviv University is most impressive. It is conducted at the Department of East Asian Studies, the Confucius Institute, the faculty of Business Administration and at various other departments.

Many of our students go to China annually to improve their knowledge of this unique country and its people and an increased number of Chinese scholars come to the University regularly and are being exposed to a variety of disciplines taught and researched here, be it nanotechnology, engineering, medicine, the Hebrew language, Jewish culture, conflict resolution etc. But, as the present study shows, the various aspects related to Sino-Israeli relations are manifold and encompass a wide range of issues in additionto the mere academic. Indeed, the two countries are at the beginning of a newera of prolific and fruitful relations, relations between two of the greatest old civilizations.

I should like to thank my colleagues at the Confucius Institute, the Department of East Asian Studies, The S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies (SDAC) and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) for affording me the opportunity to pursue my research in their most congenial company. I am also indebted to Prof. Raanan Rein, the Director of SDAC, who carefully read the manuscript and suggested useful corrections and additions, to my research assistant Ms. Or Biron for her professional work and help and to Mrs. Shulamit Berman for reading and editing the manuscript.

This is a new and updated edition of an earlier version entitled, Sino-Israeli Relations: Current Reality and Future Prospects, published by the INSS in 2009.

Aron Shai
 

Is it possible to speak of western racism before the eighteenth century? The term 'racism' is normally only associated with theories, which first appeared in the eighteenth century, about inherent biological differences that made one group superior to another. Here, however, leading historians argue that racism can be traced back to the attitudes of the ancient Greeks to their Persian enemies and that it was adopted, adjusted and re-formulated by Europeans right through until the dawn of the Enlightenment.

From Greek teachings on environmental determinism and heredity, through medieval concepts of physiognomy, down to the crystallization of attitudes to Indians, Blacks, Jews and Gypsies in the early modern era, they analyse the various routes by which racist ideas travelled before maturing into murderous ideologies in the modern western world. In so doing this book offers a major reassessment of the place of racism in pre-modern European thought.

This volume compares the Spanish and Latin American “double transitions” to liberal democracy and an open-market economy. Spain’s transitions in the 1960s–1980s have become the paradigmatic case of successful institutional transformation, and thus the standard for the evaluation of the economic and political change in Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.

Even though most Latin American countries have transformed their economies and polities in recent decades, and the outcomes of this transformation have been variable, few of these countries have so far established solid liberal democracies and dynamic open economies. The essays in this book, written by distinguished specialists, examine the different trajectories in Spain and several nations in Latin America, and seek to explain the different outcomes. In the large recent literature on transitions, this is the first systematic comparison between Spain and the Latin American cases.

Según un sondeo realizado en 1992 en Argentina, árabes y judíos eran considerados como los grupos menos integrados en la vida del país por un tercio de los entrevistados, mientras que para un porcentaje aún mayor constituían un pueblo separado. Estas respuestas reflejan la persistencia de estereotipos sobre estos dos grupos de inmigrantes semitas, no sólo en Argentina sino en todo el continente.

Las primeras representaciones de árabes y judíos en Iberoamérica fueron anteriores a la llegada de inmigrantes de ese origen, algunas basadas en antiguas obras literarias e históricas de España, de modo que existían ya imágenes ampliamente difundidas sobre estas comunidades antes de que comenzaran a llegar desde África del Nor te, el moribundo Imperio Otomano o la Europa oriental al continente. Las Américas –Nor te y Sur– parecían prometer prosperidad y un futuro mejor, convir tiéndose así en el hogar de cientos de miles de árabes y judíos, la mayor par te llegados entre 1870 y 1930.

Con este volumen y con el seminario que le sir vió de base, la Fundación Tres Culturas ha querido contribuir a subsanar la relativamente poca atención que se ha prestado al estudio de los distintos aspectos de la experiencia semita en Iberoamérica. Sin obviar la existencia de tensiones entre unos y otros, también es cier to que, por lo menos en la primera mitad del siglo XX, antes del establecimiento del Estado de Israel, estas comunidades compar tieron vivencias similares y, en muchos casos, tuvieron intereses comunes ante sociedades receptoras en las que su posición no estaba claramente definida.