National security affairs analystEhud Eilam examines the strategy of containment in the Middle East as it is currently pursued. For the United States, containment is a way to avoid war with Iran and ...thwart its nuclear weapons program. For Israel it has been a way to prevent a confrontation with the Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In other cases containment is meant to weaken a foe without starting a war, as Israel did by bombing shipments of weapons to Hezbollah. Containment was also part of the war in Syria—because the West lacked the ability to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, though it cost the civilian population there dearly. Egypt has been trying to contain both its enormous economic hardships and ISIS, primarily in the Sinai Peninsula. Ultimately Eilam provides important and timely insights into the Middle East’s perennially fluid and volatile political environment. His insights and analyses will be of interest not least in the corridors of power both here and abroad.  
In Pillars of Salt, Lianne Merkur offers an account of early 21st century immigration as experienced by Israelis in Berlin and Toronto, who simultaneously explore a sense of belonging balanced ...between new home and homeland, examined through self-expression exercises.
Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in ...the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus's arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul's explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of thedesaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to "Indian Jews," and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of "secret Jews," and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial "seventh heaven," which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer.The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans's ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.
In Migration Journeys to Israel, psychologist/anthropologist Gadi BenEzer examines the neglected subject of journeys of migrants and refugees, focusing on the experience and meaning of such journeys ...for Jews migrating to Israel from around the world during the 20th century.
This book is the most comprehensive study to date of Israel’s national security. It combines an exhaustive analysis of the military, diplomatic, demographic, and societal challenges Israel faces, ...with the responses it has developed, to present a detailed proposal for an overall new national security strategy, the first such proposal ever published on Israel. The book argues that Israel’s national security strategy has been highly successful, that Israel can manage the major military threats that remain, and that delegitimization, the Palestinian issue, and demography are the greatest challenges Israel faces today. It thus proposes a more long-term approach, with greater emphasis on restraint, defense, and diplomacy, and in which resolving the Palestinian issue, ensuring Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, preventing Iran from going nuclear, maintaining the “special relationship” with the United States, and preserving the resolve of Israeli society are the primary objectives.
S obzirom na razmjerno nepovoljan geostrateški položaj u odnosu na okolne i često neprijateljske zemlje, izraelska vanjska politika uglavnom je uvjetovana dinamičnim zbivanjima u regiji. Dinamika se ...ogleda u nekoliko vojnih invazija na Izrael, pobunama palestinskog stanovništva, mnogobrojnim terorističkim napadima i čestim uzvraćanjima izraelskih snaga radi dostizanja zadovoljavajućega sigurnosnog stanja. U tom kontekstu, službeni Tel Aviv često je prisiljen pronaći ravnotežu između praktičnih vojno-obrambenih i sigurnosnih potreba te reputacije Izraela u međunarodnoj zajednici, uz prilagodbu realnostima svojega neposrednoga geopolitičkog okruženja. Izrael je tijekom „Šestodnevnog rata“ u lipnju 1967. okupirao veći dio Golanske visoravni. Taj je događaj u idućim desetljećima generirao s jedne strane pojačanu sigurnost sjevernih granica države s obzirom na iznimnu geostratešku vrijednost regije, a s druge negodovanje dijela međunarodne zajednice, osobito nakon 1981. kad je donesen zakon o proširenju jurisdikcije Države Izrael na taj okupirani prostor. Kontrola nad ovom regijom znatno je utjecala na geostrateški položaj Izraela, ali i stvorila geopolitički kompleksnu situaciju, osobito u kontekstu odnosa sa susjednom Sirijom. U radu se, uz geografski prikaz Golanske visoravni i historijsko-geografske aspekte, analiziraju geostrateške odrednice izraelske okupacije visoravni, kao i geopolitičke perspektive toga područja.
The Late Bronze Age in the Levant is a period of much interest to archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars. This is a period with intense international relations, rich in ancient sources, ...which provide historical data for the period, and is a crucial formative period for the peoples and cultures who play central roles in the Hebrew Bible. Recent archaeological research in Israel and surrounding countries has provided new, exciting, and in some cases, groundbreaking finds, interpretations and understanding of this period. The fourteen papers in this volume represent the proceedings of a conference held at Bar-Ilan University in 2014 (with the additional of several invited papers not presented at the conference), which provide both overviews of Late Bronze Age finds from several important sites in Israel and surrounding countries, as well as several synthetic studies on the various issues relating to the period. These papers, by and large, represent a broad view of cuttting edge research in the archaeology of the ancient Levant in general, and on the Late Bronze Age specifically.
In this sharply argued volume, Orit Rozin reveals the flaws in the conventional account of Israeli society in the 1950s, which portrayed the Israeli public as committed to a collectivist ideology. In ...fact, major sectors of Israeli society espoused individualism and rejected the state-imposed collectivist ideology. Rozin draws on archival, legal, and media sources to analyze the attitudes of black-market profiteers, politicians and judges, middle-class homemakers, and immigrants living in transit camps and rural settlements. Part of a refreshing trend in recent Israeli historiography to study the voices, emotions, and ideas of ordinary people, Rozin's book provides an important corrective to much extant scholarly literature on Israel's early years.
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