The Assassination of King Abdallah: The First Political Assassination in Jordan: Did It Truly Threaten the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan?

King Abdallah was assassinated as a result of his relationship with Arab leaders. The opposition included three leaders: the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Huseini, King Faruq and Ibn Saud. Jordanian intelligence knew about the conspiracy and warned King Abdallah, but he decided to visit Jerusalem as originally planned and there he was assassinated. After the assassination on 20 July 1951, the Jordanian government was faced with two dangers that threatened the Hashemite regime in Jordan. The first, a Palestinian rebellion the purpose of which was the replacement of the Hashemite regime with a Palestinian one; the second an invasion of Jordan by either Syria or Saudi Arabia or both countries together, and their possible control of it. However, the dangers turned out to be neither tangible nor serious and the Hashemite regime remained in power.     

Fiscal Distress in Local Authorities in Israel: the Convened Committee as a Method and a Solution

This study addresses fiscal distress in local authorities in Israel and around the world, and provides an in-depth analysis of the city of Bnei Brak from 1994 to 2003. When the city of Bnei Brak grappled unsuccessfully with fiscal distress, the Ministry of the Interior appointed a Convened Committee (CC; Va'adah Kruah) to handle the crisis. This study explores the methods and solution used by the government to extricate the authority from bankruptcy, while examining the sources and repercussions of this decision. The findings show that the CC solution was borne of necessity, due to the gravity of the financial crisis and the fact that the government had no other way of bailing out the city. However, the situation in Bnei Brak did not improve even after the CC was appointed, which challenges the very efficacy of the solution. This forms the basis for a discussion of the complexities of resolving the fiscal distress of localities in Israel.     

The Heralds of Opposition to Perestroyka

A review and analysis is presented of substantive material published in the journals Nash sovremennik and Mohdaya gvardiya from Gorbachev's advent to power through roughly October 1989. The size of the journals' circulations is noted to assess the influence of writers who are in the vanguard of opposition to perestroyka. The article includes a section devoted to the tradition of Russian “thick journals.” It concludes by examining the popularity and power of Russian nationalism in relation to peresiroyka and the nature of the opposition to it as reflected in both journals. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Number: 052.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Lesser Evil Dilemma for</Emphasis> Sparing Civilians

The rule I call ‘Civilian Immunity’ – the rule that prohibits targeting civilians in war – is the heart of the accepted jus in bello code. It prohibits targeting (viz., intentionally killing) civilians in a wide variety of war circumstances. Seth Lazar's brilliant book, Sparing Civilians, attempts to defend Civilian Immunity. In this essay I show, first, that his ‘Risky-Killing based argument’ fails to provide civilians with the robust protection Sparing Civilians promises. I argue, secondly, that the moral framework that Sparing Civilians employs, a moral framework that centralizes the Deontological Clause (stating that one's intentional killing is worse than enabling others to kill), leaves the immunity of civilians against Leaders unexplained.     

Higher Education and Sociopolitical Transformation in Jordan

Jordan's policy of higher education since the 1970s has entailed a major socio-economic transformation with vital political ramifications. A nonofficial and un-transparent affirmative action policy in the universities including admission quotas, scholarships, tuition fees and nominations of faculty members, in addition to decentralization of academic institutions, overbalanced the rate of the tribal Transjordanian community of the rural periphery at the expense of the Palestinians, who mostly reside in the urban centre. The proportion of Jordanians of Palestinian extraction among students and faculty members had been decreasing since the early 1970s, from about 95% to less then 50%, whereas they consist of over half of the population. Higher education became another area of Transjordanian dominance in addition to the civil service, the army and the polity. The rapid process of academization among the tribal populations resulted in their social and economic mobilization, both in the public sector and in lucrative positions in the Gulf States.     

The Impact of Russian Terrorism in Kishinev on the Zionist Movement and the Jewish Intelligentsia

The explosion of terror which took place in the Bessarabian capital in April 1903 and which has since become known as the Kishinev Pogrom had a profound impact on all of Russian Jewry. But as far as the Zionist movement is concerned, and in opposition to what is generally believed about the Pogrom's central role in the history of Zionism, the Pogrom did not lead to any changes in the activities undertaken by the Zionists or in the ideology which they espoused. It was rather that the Pogrom triggered certain phenomena already present in Zionism during the preceding few years.