Tel Aviv Review

Prof. Meir Zamir, Middle East scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is the author of the newly published The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948. He talks to host Gilad Halpern about efforts of British intelligence officials, sometimes unbeknown to their government, to "advance" British interests in the Middle East at the expense of the new order that was shaping the region in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Song: Eatliz - Sunshine

Dr. Moshe Berent, a political scientist at the Open University, is the author of the recently published A Nation Like All Nations: Towards the the Establishment of an Israeli Republic. He reviews with host Gilad Halpern the marginal role that republicanism played in Zionist thought, and highlights its tensions with the idea of a Jewish state.

Dr. Hilla Dayan, a sociologist at Amsterdam University College in the Netherlands, is working to lay the theoretical and institutional foundations for the establishment of a new academic discipline, 'Occupation Studies' - in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course. She tells host Gilad Halpern what needs this discipline is designed to address, and what analytic void it's intended to fill, inside Israeli academia and beyond. Song: Shlomi Shaban & Chava Alberstein - Targil BeHit'orerut

Dr. Adam Rovner, an Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver in the United States, recently had his book In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands before Israel published by New York University Press. Dr. Rovner speaks to host Gilad Halpern about the step-siblings of Zionism – six different attempts to establish a Jewish political entity in the 19th and 20th centuries – and why they all failed. Song: LessAcrobats - Time

Dr. Noa Lavie, a sociologist at the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College, specializes in the impact of television on society, in Israel and beyond. She discusses with host Gilad Halpern her most recent research about reality television - how it's been shaped by forces like capitalism and art. Song: Riff Cohen - Helas

Noga Kadman, an Israeli researcher and tour guide, recently had her book, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948, published in English by Indiana University Press. Kadman sits down with host Gilad Halpern and traces the ruins of hundreds of Arab-Palestinian villages in the current physical landscape, and tries to place them in the discursive or ideological landscape of contemporary Israel. Song: Tislam - Hatzavim Porchim

Prof. Yosef Toby, professor emeritus of Medieval Hebrew poetry at the University of Haifa, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the cultural golden age of Tunisian Jews, and their being torn between European acculturation and cultural conservatism.

Professor Meron Medzini, a Japanologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem but also, perhaps surprisingly, a biographer of Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel between 1969-1974 - our very own Iron Lady. Professor Medzini's mother was a childhood friend of Meir, and Medzini served as her press secretary. His book is the work of a political scientist but is riddled with personal anecdotes that shed light into the virtually most prominent woman in the history of Zionism.

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, author of numerous books including, very recently, Lincoln and the Jews: A history, which he co-edited with Benjamin Shapell. The book, which was published by St Martin's Press, recounts the relationship of the 16th president of the United States with a then still small and relatively uninfluential ethnic group, based on hundreds of archival items, some of them newly unveiled.

Dr. Gabriel Noah Brahm, associate professor of English at Northern Michigan University, is probably best known for co-editing the comprehensive The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel. Today he talks to host Gilad Halpern about his forthcoming book, which dissects the theoretical underpinnings of the writing of Israel-bashers in academia around the world.

Prof. Alon Confino, a historian at the University of Virginia and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, recently had his book A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide published in English by Yale University Press. Prof. Confino talks to host Gilad Halpern about the Nazi desire to remove the Jews not only from the present and the future, but also from the past.

Dr. Stefan Ihrig, a historian and post-doctoral fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, recently had his book Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination published in English by Harvard University Press. Dr. Ihrig tells host Gilad Halpern how rising Turkish nationalism in the wake of WWI served as valuable inspiration for the Nazis in the early Weimar years and beyond.

Dr. Paul Shrell-Fox, a rabbi and psychologist at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, tries to answer the question that's been troubling us for centuries. He explains to host Gilad Halpern how the Jewish intellect has developed over the years.

Dr. Michal Segal Arnold, a lawyer and political scientist, wrote her PhD thesis at the University of Pennsylvania about the American Indian Movement, a Native American pressure group. She explains to host Gilad Halpern how she lived for a year as the only non-Indian in Reservation Prairie Island in south-east Minnesota.

Omri Grinberg, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, tells host Gilad Halpern about his research that focuses on the ethnography of the so-called Palestinian "children of the junction" – teenage boys from the West Bank who slip into Israel to work as peddlers.

Dr. Liora Halperin, assistant professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, author of Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism and Language Diversity in Palestine 1920-1948, tells host Gilad Halpern about the ideological as well as the practical aspects of the inculcation of the Hebrew language in pre-state Israel.

Dr. Amira Halperin, a communications scholar who has recently completed her PhD thesis at the University of Westminster, UK, is the first ever Israeli researcher to study the UK Palestinian diaspora. She discusses this community's use of new media with host Gilad Halpern.  

Jeffrey Herf, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Maryland, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the attitude of East Germany and the West German radical left towards Israel between 1967-1989, against the backdrop of the memory of the Holocaust as well as the Cold War.

Prof. Yosef Salmon, a Jewish history professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is the author of Do Not Provoke Providence: Orthodoxy In The Grip Of Nationalism, which was recently published in English by Academic Studies Press. He explores the history of the relationship between Zionism and Judaism with host Gilad Halpern.

Dr. Edna Barromi Perlman, a photography scholar and professor at the University of Haifa, speaks to host Gilad Halpern about the landscape photography in Palestine/Eretz Israel/the Holy Land, and how it became, just like anything else in the history of this place, an effective political and ideological tool.