Note from the Editors of Israel Studies
- Note from the Editors of Israel Studies
Israel Studies has published approximately 500 different individual authors on the wide range of topics that constitute the new field of Israel Studies. We take special care to ensure a variety of subjects that may interest our readers together with a diversity of views. That is amply demonstrated in this special issue that is devoted to presenting perspectives of Israeli and Palestinian scholars on subjects that are treated from contradictory points of view.
This project was brought to us by the editors who had previously produced a book on the same subject, Shared Histories (2005). Paul Scham, Benjamin Pogrund, and As’ad Ghanem have long engaged in ensuring that the sides to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict would be heard. This special issue is an extension of their earlier project.
Their challenge is a difficult one, as is ours as editors of a journal that attempts to reflect the best of scholarship without reference to political views. It should be noticed that most the subjects have paired readings, one by an Israeli and one by a Palestinian. That goal was not achieved throughout this special issue. Unfortunately, several Palestinian authors who participated in the original conference did not permit the publication of their contributions here. Whatever their reasons, their absence indicates the immense challenge the editors of this volume faced in realizing their most worthy goal.
We trust that the reader will profit from what is achieved here and join us in congratulating Scham, Pogrund and Ghanem for bringing their concerns for mutual understanding to such a useful conclusion. [End Page v]
Ilan Troen is Stoll Family Professor of Israel Studies at Brandeis University and Director of its Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and founding editor of Israel Studies. His recent publications include: Tel-Aviv at 100; Visions, Designs and Actualities, co-edited with Maoz Azaryahu (Bloomington, IN, 2012); Jews and Muslims in the Arab World; Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined, co-authored with Jacob Lassner (Lanham, MD, 2007); Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement (Yale, 2003).
