From Empathy to Denial is the first comprehensive study of the broad range of Arab responses to the Holocaust based on years of painstaking historical research. The book explores how Holocaust representations developed after the Second World War by analyzing themes, and case studies, spanning a period of almost seventy years. It shows how these perceptions evolved in the shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This study examines the concept of United Nations peacekeeping operations and their execution in Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia from 1988 to 1995. The research is anchored primarily in United Nations documents, which were produced following the diplomatic discussions that took place in the organization on the subject of peacekeeping in general and in the cases of Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia in particular This research demonstrates, using the records of diplomatic discourse at the United Nations, that although there was an attempt to change the concept of peacekeeping operations, it eventually failed. The best explanation for this outcome is that international politics at the United Nations – at least as it concerns peacekeeping operations – is still conducted according to the principles of each state’s realpolitik. The states formed their stance on a case by case basis, while calculating power relations in order to advance their own national interests. Therefore their position on each topic did not necessarily match the declared position of any particular political alliance. Furthermore, many multi-functional operations were still executed in accordance with the traditional concept. The main objective of these operations was international mediation between belligerent sides in order to form sovereign governments and to deploy a 'peacekeeping force' in accordance with the traditional principles of international and local consent, impartiality and the non-use of force. Traditional objectives were preferred over new objectives such as democratization, human rights, and economic development.

The book sheds light on one of the most interesting episodes in the history of Israel's foreign policy. Since the Sinai war (1956), France was a friend and ally to Israel. She provided State-of-the-art weapons to help maintain the balance of power against the Arab States, gave essential political support and economic assistance, and assisted in building a nuclear reactor in Dimona. Charles De Gaulle's return to power in France in 1958, during the war in Algeria, challenged the Israeli leadership. In light of the French President's determination to renew France's influence in the Arab world- would Israel succeed in preserving the Friendship with France? The book deals with the efforts of statesmen, politicians and Israeli officials to achieve this goal. Also De Gaulle's uncompromising policy to obtain the status of a powerful France and its impact on his views on the State of Israel are discussed. The book sheds light on a mystery that plagued many commentators and still remains largely unsolved: why De Gaulle decided to turn a cold shoulder towards Israel in May 1967, when it was facing one of the toughest challenges ever, and why the hesitant policies towards Israel increased after the victory in the six day war.

The four volume series of the History of the Hebrew University Project is devoted to the development of the idea and of its implementation during the pre-state period. The previous three volumes expanded in a great number of scholarly articles on the complex stories which made up this history from a great variety of aspects – scientific and academic, political and organizational, economic and social. The present volume, the last part of the project, seeks to focus on the individuals, the personalities of the people who made the university become a reality; those who struggled for its foundation, and the pioneering scholars and scientists who laid the basis and shaped the Hebrew University. It opens a window for the wider public to become familiar with the story of the Hebrew University without the need to penetrate into the complexity of scientific and other issues dealt with in previous volumes. The story of the university is the story of the enormous efforts involved in bringing prominent scholars and scientists to Eretz Israel, then a remote and marginal corner in the Middle East. These efforts were accompanied with debates of principle and personal controversies within and outside of the university about academic and national considerations. Despite all difficulties, criticisms and doubts, the founders of the university succeeded in building an institution of intellectual excellence that would become a pillar in the project of Jewish national renaissance and prepared the basis for the Hebrew University academic leadership in Israel and in the Jewish world for many years to come.

This play is a love story in the shape of a parody. The god Jupiter, father of the gods and humans, a relentless womanizer who never grew up and has a never ending stock of passion. He desired the wife of the warlord Amphitruo who left the city to fight in a war. Jupiter takes Amphitruos' shape and makes love to his wife. When Amphitruo comes back from battle then starts a comedy of mistakes which ends in Amphitruos' wife giving birth to two sons - one for each man.

The Jewish Community of Cuba: Memory and History combines the fruits of academic research with the personal reminiscences of protagonists, creating a collective narrative of Cuban Jews, particularly those who migrated to Miami, on their historical experience prior to the Castro revolution. Through childhood memories in small towns in Poland and Turkey, the reader discovers the circumstances that motivated the migration of Jews to Cuba, and is acquainted with the difficult trajectory of their adaptation to a new environment. The book recounts the version of Cuban Jews to the tragic voyage of the SS St. Louis, but at the same time it points out the destiny of thousands of Jewish refugees who had found in Cuba a shelter from the Nazi inferno. The book describes the rich and colorful Jewish institutional life that covered all the social and cultural aspects. Protagonists, however, were not part of a uniform and homogenous community, as reflected in their testimonies on social and cultural life, political divisions and internal conflicts. The reader will find new oral documentation on the attitude of Cuban politicians towards the establishment of the State of Israel, and on the participation of young Cuban Jews in its War of Independence. The last chapter brings the memory of the lost Cuban paradise. Oral histories reflect the communal flourishing of the 1950s, the economic prosperity, the professional and social achievements but also the trauma of the Castro revolution, that motivated their second exodus. Though interviewees tend to idealize the pre-Castro era, their testimonies reflect the problematic of their marginality in the Cuban society, and the dilemma of dual identity that confronted the second generation.

This book focuses on a perspective that relatively has been neglected from of study on the history of Polish Jewry: The aspect of coexistence between Jews and Poles, their common history and multicultural influences. The articles in this collection present the complexity of the Polish-Jewish encounter throughout the ages. They examine the various directions that have developed in the study of Polish-Jewish relations since the renewed dialogue between Polish researchers and scholars from the West restarted in the 1990's.

The book The Israeli Sovereign: The Novel and the Discourse 1967 – 1973 explores Israeli sovereignty, nationality and space as represented and constructed in a range of Israeli novels published between 1967 and 1973, in their historical and geographical context and in light of the public discourse between the 1967 and 1973 wars. The research aims to characterize the Israeli sovereign subject and Israeli space represented and constructed in literature, in the context of the public discourse of the period. Some of the questions the study deals with are: What kind of Israeli subject emerges from the novels of the period? What kind of Israeli space is created in these texts? What is the relation between that space and the various points of view that were prominent in Israeli discourse at the time? These issues and others are discussed in light of the historical spatial situation of occupation and massive territorial expansion.

The book in English can be purchased here . This book is an invitation to an anthropological journey to the politics developed around the professional therapy of PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Through four years' fieldwork (2004-2008) at two nongovernmental organizations — NATAL ("Israeli Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War") and the ITC ("Israel Trauma Coalition") — the chapters of the book examines how clinical questions of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the disorder intersect with collective markers of group identity and with political questions of ethno-national power-relations within the framework of the Israeli nation-state. How Israeli experts and their donors (most of them from Jewish-American federations) negotiating mental suffering against one bio-medical category, PTSD, but in relation to different military and political situations, from the uprising of the Second Intifada (October 2000), to the "Disengagement Plan" (August 2005) until the Second Lebanon War (July 2006)? Which symbolic struggles do therapists engage in over the meaning of trauma and its social boundaries within this highly politicized context? What practical agreements have been reached regarding aid interventions and the allocation of resources within deep religious, ethnic and demographic stratification, from Jewish-Israeli citizens who exposed to Palestinian terror attacks in the center of the country, many of them first and second generations of immigrants from East-Europe ('Ashkenazim') to the ongoing threat of rocket fire against Jewish-Israeli citizens who lived in the South of the country, many of them first and second generations of immigrants from North-Africa ('Mizrachim') and later from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia ?

The historian Willy Cohn kept a diary from his youth till his death in 1941. The book contains the entries written from 1933 till 1941, which had been hidden in Berlin by family members. This is a comprehensive document containing deep, serious descriptions. The diary was written from a subjective point of view, but also from the point of view of a professional historian. Cohn described the initial shock felt when the Nazis came into power, and the deep disappointment with the disappearance of the humanistic and democratic values he believed in which collapsed right in front of his eyes, as well as the move of many acquaintances to ‘the other side’. This reality created an ongoing conflict with the German patriotism which was part of his personality and became empowered even more during his military service in World War I . The diary includes much documentation of the Jewish community’s life: the efforts made and actions taken in dealing with the economic collapse which resulted from Nazi policy; the serious debate between the Orthodox and the Liberals, between Zionists and non-Zionists, regarding the objectives of the community youth's education; the cultural renaissance which took place within German-Jewish society in the first years of the Nazi regime, which Cohn was a part of by lecturing in his town and in many other communities on topics of Jewish history and Zionism. The stronghold which tightened around the Jewish community after the November 1938 pogrom (Kristallnacht), the isolation which was even more hurtful than the life-threatening economic hardship, the relationships between Jews and non-Jews during these times of crisis, the hope that the German people still has positive forces which will overcome evil, and the desperate efforts to leave Germany and immigrate to Israel – all these are expressed in a unique manner in the diary .

A collection of war stratagems selected from ancient historians, arranged according to their content in four books, with an introduction and a commentary, and an appendix of selected passages from the books of Julius Caesar and Livius. Frontinus, an outstandingly talented man, made his name and career under five Roman emperors (1st and 2nd century AD), he fought with distinction in Britania, was a senator, managed provision of water for Rome, was a writer and intellectual. He wrote several books, but only two of them survived entirely, The Aqueducts of Rome and The Stratagems , a sequel to his technical book on warfare that was lost. In the preface to Stratagems he writes: 'I feel obliged, in order to complete the task, to summarize excelent operations of generals, examples of wisdom and foresight, to serve and foster the generals' power to conceive and execute stratagems of their own, and not to fear their result , if they could be compared with achievements already successful. Introduced, translated from Latin and annonated by Prof. Dwora Gilula.

This book deals with the social history of workers in Ofakim, since the time of its founding (1955) and up to the partial closing of its biggest factory in 1981. The book traces the development of a new town in the middle of the desert, from the decision to establish and populate the town, to the harsh social and economic vacuum faced by the new inhabitants, and on to the shaping of the local labor market. With industrialization, Ofakim became permanently characterized as a place where labor was a matter of national priority, often lacking a solid economic rationale. The state 'guaranteed' the residents full employment, and therefore came to be perceived as responsible for their social and economic degradation. The book describes the dynamics of the relationships of the town's residents with each other and with the outside: encounters with bureaucrats, capitalists and factory managers; the relationship between local workers and workers from the Gaza strip; and the relationship between groups within the town, such as men and women. Through their emergence and reshaping, these relationships gave rise to social boundaries that influenced the status of workers in the labor market and beyond. The book also sets forth a collective biography of residents and local leadership coming together to create a community for themselves. This project was at times limited and shaped by decisions and actions of national leaders and external institutions, but ultimately this local community came to provide the people of Ofakim with a sense of pride and belonging. This discussion highlights the tight interrelationships between community, labor and the economy. The last part of the book tells the story of labor struggles waged by local workers against the closing of factories, which may be termed 'closure strikes'. It describes the unfolding of a closure strike, and the factors that influence it by way of a comparative analysis. This form of workers' protest illustrates the power of communities, with their internal coherence, to provide solidarity for the workers. This leads to a discussion of economically-motivated popular protests and the struggle of Israeli citizens against economic liberalization.