新政府·新经济·"新新加坡"--2001年的新加坡

2001年,对于新加坡来说,是真正迈入新世纪的新起点.11月23日,吴作栋总理和李显龙副总理领导的内阁宣誓就职,标志着新加坡新一届政府正式成立.新领导层将拟定和实施新的经济发展战略和政策,决心把新加坡打造成一个创新的国家--一个适应新世纪发展和新国际政治经济环境的"新新加坡".     

Alternative narratives and collective memories: Israel's New Historians and the use of historical context

Abstract

The article presents a new overview on economic transition in Egypt, emphasizing the role of culture in shaping its recent economic history. Since partial independence, and culminating in the heyday of the Nasserite regime, ‘economic nationalism’ became a predominant national identity mark and a concept central to a local sense of authenticity. The article discusses the meaning of economic nationalism and why it turned such a powerful symbol of Egyptianness. The prevalence of this idea slowed down a transformation to an alternative economic regime when the development effort associated with economic nationalism partially failed. Instead, a huge and unregulated (‘hidden’) economy emerged, together with a corollary local consumer society. Fiercely resisted in a public discourse captivated by an older economic imagination, both have still shaped the Egyptian economy ever since.     

Assessing Israel's Motives In Annexing the Jordan Valley

This article analyzes Israel's motives in annexing the Jordan Valley—a plan that, if approved, will eliminate any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state, even on a small part of historic Palestine. This promises to be one of the most critical strategic turning points in the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The analysis reveals that the Israeli annexation decision, even if postponed, has become a reality imposed by Israel on the international community, insinuated into formal and official government announcements and declarations. In addition, the article highlights the danger of imposing Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley since it carries with it a threat to regional stability. As part of this examination, the study traces the development of the positions of successive Israeli governments toward the issue of annexing this region, from 1967 through the dissolution of the Netanyahu government in 2021.     

Israel's Middle Eastern Jewish Intellectuals: Identity and Discourse

The intellectual movement HaKeshet HaDemokratit HaMizrahit (The Eastern Democratic Rainbow) was established in 1996 by second and third generation Middle Eastern and North African Jewish immigrants who are faculty members, graduate students, actors, artists, educators, businessmen and women, and media workers. These self-identified Mizrahi Israeli intellectuals aimed to initiate new debates in Israeli society with their criticism of Zionist narrative and policies by applying post-colonial theory to expose the construction of social categorisation among Jewish Israelis. In their discursive contribution they addressed several issues of historical and contemporary inequality between groups of Israeli citizens. By examining the motivation behind this intellectual activism, the present article asks what the Mizrahi identity means to people labelled as Mizrahim and why it is important.     

Massacre of the Doves?: Interpreting Israel's 2003 Elections

This article argues that Israel's 2003 elections are best understood as a deeper embedding of neoliberalism in the Israeli polity. It is argued that the most accurate characterization of the elections is as an articulation of Polanyi's Phase I of the double-movement. The argument is developed in four stages. First, the Israeli elections are understood as a local reaction to the multilayered processes of globalization. The Israeli state and its elections are located in the neoliberal ideology which underwrites the phenomenon broadly defined as globalization. Second, the election results are reviewed. Third, the dominant interpretations of the elections are critically examined. Specifically, representations of the elections as a defeat of the parties of peace and as a rebuke of Sephardim/ultra-Orthodox influence in Israeli government are interrogated. Fourth, the coalition negotiations of February 2003, the constitution of Israel's 30^th government and some of the initiatives undertaken by Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are explicated through deployment of Polanyi's double-movement framework.     

A Unique Denial: Israel's Foreign Policy and the Armenian Genocide

This article focuses on the Israeli politicization of the Armenian genocide from the perspective of foreign policy. Since the early 1980s Israel's official position has been to not recognize the Armenian genocide. The issue of recognition came to the surface in 1982 after Turkey put pressure on Israel to cancel a Holocaust and genocide conference. This article shows that Israel agreed to pressure the conference organizers to cancel the conference in order to secure protection for Jews fleeing Iran and Syria through the Turkish border. This article also explores the role of informal ambassadors in shaping Israel's position on this issue. Using recently declassified archival documents and oral interviews with key Israeli stakeholders, this is the first investigation into the role of informal ambassadors, specifically the Jewish minority in Turkey, and the American Jewish pro-Israeli lobby. The article also addresses a secondary incentive for Israel's refusal to recognize the genocide: ethnic competition between Jews and Armenians as victims of genocide.     

Israel's Exit from Africa, 1973: The Road to Diplomatic Isolation

In 1973 25 Black African states severed diplomatic relations with Israel. This article examines the motives that brought the African countries to shun Israel and the manner in which the Israelis attempted to cope with their growing ‘pariahtude’. The African states sought to achieve unity on their continent, avoid their own isolation, and advance the international norms that they espoused. The Black African countries claimed that no hostility attended their decisions to break ties with Israel. Yet, as this article demonstrates, their imposition of a quarantine on Israel was an act of indirect violence. By early 1974 officials of the Israeli Foreign Ministry attempted a reformulation of policy toward Black Africa but could ameliorate in no effective manner the isolation imposed upon their country.