the global divide flashcards

Cumulative Review of readings and main themes✌️

Introduction to the divide (Themes, Articles, & Talking Points)

• What is the Hague group?

• Singapore and Ukraine’s stance on Gaza?

• What’s the Double Standard about?

The Hague Group: South Africa, genocide conventions, filed case in 2023.

Singapore: Supports Gaza, ready to use his country to help bring peace

Ukraine: Zelensky has not publicly defended Gaza

Idea of the Double Standard

• 59% of the Global South has now led or backed international legal action against Israel.

A short history of the Israel-Palestine conflict (Readings, Themes, & Points)

• Edward Said’s take on this?

• Antisemitism vs Zionism

• Nov 1947

• War of 1967

• Post 1973 war with —— accords of _____

• Intifada and second intifada

• Israel withdrew from Gaza strip In ____

• What happened in 2006 & 2007

• What was the point behind the “False Messiah”?

Antisemitism and western guilt around the holocaust

Edward Said on Palestine: Persistance of orientalism, can’t justify one injustice with another, “denial of Palestinian existence,” zionism don’t get critiqued bc it is framed as necessary. Orientalism in the sense that Palestinians are portrayed as unorganized and then the eat is seen as incapable of self rule. “Unchallenged hegemony”

Palestinians see Zionism as settler colonialism

Nov 1947, UN general assembly split mandate Palestine into 2, and even though 2/3 of population were arab, 56% of land went to the Jews.

When the Israelis won the June 1967 war against most arab countries, they gained the respect of the United states.

UN security Council resolution 242: Israel should withdraw from the “territories”, no mention of Palestine

Post 1973 war, Camp David Accords 1978: Egypt officially recognized Israel. Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

Intifada (1987) mass uprising and protest. lasted for years. Ahmed Yassin formed Hamas in response to Israel’s suppression- not affiliated with PLO.

The second intifada of 2000

2004: Israel withdrew from Gaza strip bc it was impoverished and then they sealed it in a wall.

2007: Dov Weissglas, senior advisor to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explained, the policy was “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Abraham Accords: Strengthened ties between Israel and UAE, trying to erase the question of Palestine

“False Messiah” Reading: Zionism promised safety but relied on military strength + territorial control THEREFORE it actually cant deliver long-term justice or peace.

Walter Laqueur’s 13 Theses

• 1 out of 3 articles I’ll discuss in detail

Laqueur argues that Zionism was a historically contingent, imperfect response to antisemitism that succeeded in creating a state but could not resolve the deeper political and social conflicts it produced.

1. Zionism is a response to antisemitism

2. Antisemitism is unpredictable and not always logic and up-front

3. Zionism rejects assimilation but ironically came from European assimilation

4. Zionism only had real chance after WWI, when nationalism spread globally.

5. Weak movement but big outcome. Zionism had little money or power so success relied on diplomacy and figures like Weizmann

6. State came “too late” for its original purpose, aka after the holocaust

7. Early Zionists didn’t fully plan for a state; that idea became central later.

8. Conflict with Arabs was inevitable because Large-scale Jewish settlement meant major change → conflict couldn’t be avoided.

9. Zionism was rushed; narrow historical windows (Balfour Declaration, 1947 UN vote)

10. Zionism seen as colonial from Arab view

11. Its criticism: From left and liberals: it’s outdated; assimilation should replace nationalism.

12. Structural weakness because most Jews never moved to Israel; assimilation continued elsewhere.

13. Partial success: Zionism succeeded in creating a state, but not in fully solving insecurity or conflict.

Dates (and the concept behind these events) part 1

• When was the state of israel founded?

• Balfour Declaration?

• Sykes Picot Agreement?

• Arab Revolt?

• Arab-Israel War

• Catastrophe Day

• June_____ war

• October ___ war between Israel and Egypt

• First intifada & Birth of Hamas

• Oslo Accords

• When does Hamas win the election?

State of Israel founded by David Ben Gurion: 1948

Balfour Declaration: 1917

Sykes-Picot Agreement: 1916

Arab revolt: 1936-1939

1948 Arab-Israel War

May 15: Catastrophe Day for the Palestinians

June 1967 war: Israel attached Egypt and Syria bc of false soviet info. THE turning point.

October 1973 War: Egypt attacked Israel. Diplomacy was needed- led to Oslo Accords.

Intifada & birth of Hamas: 1987.

Oslo Accords and DOP: 1993-1995

2006: Hamas wins the election

Names: Hertzl and Jabotinsky

Prominent leader of zionist movement: Theodor Herzl. Founded World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann was his successor.

Jabotinsky: Founder of Revisionist Zionism. Strongly believed in a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, created the Iron wall

Lecture Points: Broken Triangle & British White Paper

the broken triangle: Christianity, Judaism, Islam —> can’t be balanced w/o conflict.

British White Paper of 1939: favored arab rights, including limits on jewish immigrants and land rights. didn’t last long tho.

Civilization, Modernization, and its discontents

Idea of colonization

Howard Zinn

2 features o the Zionist Movement under Hertzl

Chaim Weizmann’s role to balfour declaration

Iron Wall and Avi Shlaim’s take

Basically, the idea of colonization and settler colonialism —> trail of tears. We’re still erasing american native history in current times, which makes it more natural for our government to support Israel doing the same.

• Still the idea of Edward Said’s orient.

Howard Zinn; Colonization = violence + exploitation (not “discovery”). Basically a Columbus hater. Systematic destruction of the Arawak population. idea of narration: Traditional history is told from the “heroes” so it downplays or buries violence

Former penn sen. Santorum’s awful comment about “We birthed a nation from nothing”

2 features of the Zionist Movement under Herzl: the nonrecognition of a Palestinian national entity and the quest for an alliance with a great power external to the Middle East.

Chaim Wizman was the key player in Zionist movement and Britain. Good lobbying skills. fixed the dispute between practical and political zionists. APPEALED TO BRITISH IDEALISM. Led to Balfour Declaration.

What is the Iron Wall: describes Israeli strategy: Strong military deterrence, Security-first approach, Negotiations only after control is secure. Through Avi Shalim’s reading, it is clear that it did not fully work out for jabotinsky because there was the state of israel AND the state of palestine

British Policy, The Balfour Declaration and Israel/Palestine

Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points

Avi Shlai’s take on the Balfour Declaration

Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points looked promising at first because of the idea of “self determination” but it didn’t actually apply to the arab countries.

Avi Shalim’s Balfour Declaration: Arthur Balfour, Britain’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, 67 word statement, favoring the establishment of a jewish state. Palestine as a twice promised land. Stein believed that the work of zionists led to the declaration, verete thought it was because of the pragmatists (practical) motivated by British imperial interests in the middle east.

• Its greatest contradiction was supporting the right to national self-determination of a minority of the inhabitants of Palestine while implicitly denying it to the majority.

• Shlaim sees the Balfour Declaration as a fundamentally unequal and contradictory policy that advanced Zionist state-building while sidelining Palestinian self-determination, making conflict almost inevitable.

Christian Zionism & Western Cultural Identity

what is terra nullis

Lord Shaftesbury and Charles Churchill

Idea of religion and geopolitics? discuss.

Who was the founder of CUFI

• Christians, the ‘return’ of the exiled was an act of religious

  redemption

• The Christian, and later Jewish, depiction of Palestine as terra nullius, a land no one owned, was similar to other settler-colonial projects. But it has a special affinity with the American settler-colonial project because the settlement of North America was also derived from readings of the Bible and from the idea of pilgrimage to a holy land or to a new Jerusalem

• Lord Shaftesbury and Charles Churchill —> A country without a nation is in need of a national without a country

• Religious vs geopolitical ambitions

Pastor John Hagee, Founder and National Chairman, CUFI

Anti-semitism & Legacy of the Holocaust

How did Kaplan aruge taht holocaust was a political narrative

Holocaust wasn’t always central b/c U.S. and Britain refused many Jewish refugees during WWII

It is a political narrative

Kaplan argues that in the U.S., the Holocaust was reframed not just as a past event, but as a constant future threat to Israel, and this idea has been used to justify strong American support for Israel and its military actions.

Lobbying vs Strategic Motivation

• What did dennis ross argue

• Dox waxman’s argument

Dennis Ross —> Lobbying side isn’t as strong as politics of the rest of the middle east

• The Saudis and others base their ties to the United States on their needs and priorities and not our relationship with Israel.

• George Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq.

Dox Waxman: “The US- Israeli relationship is more a love affair than simply a marriage of convenience”

Decolonization, Self Determination

Tod Shepard’s take on Decolonization and idea of Algeria and India, and third world?

Wilson’s 14 points

What are the two problems that ameie cesere talks about

Tod Shepard:

Post ww2, there was a wave of decolonization (ghana, indonesia, etc). Idea of nationalism was very powerful. Independence movements get tied to U.S. vs Soviet rivalry, were US judt didn’t want the soviet union getting access to the free countries.

• He spends a lot of time with Algeria as the case study because it was a violent form of freedom.

• BUT even thought they were free, the state was politically divided, not unified

• FLN was violent towards its own citizens to assert control in order to defeat french powers.

• India and Indonesia were used as models of decolonization

• The cynical idea behind naming countries as “third world” or any world.

Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points

• He was more so talking about industrialized countries and did not support egypt or indochina

• 1919 Egyptian Revolution

Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism —> colonists were always self centers and around economic exploitation. His book was called “a declaration of war on colonialism.” There are two problems

• Problem of Proletariat

  • Refers to marxist theory

  • said that capitalism would always disintegrate into Nazism

• Colonial problem

  • Hypocrisy of colonization —> they want to rid the country of savages by acting as the savages

• He argues that there was important racial construction: racism, barbarism and colonialism, it was a form of dehumanization that results from Europe’s racism against Black Populations

• Soviet Union as a counterexample to Western colonialism, highlighting its anti-racist and anti-colonial stance, but he is not fully endorsing it as an ideal system.

Palestine Solidarity in the Arab Islamic World

What is the arab view according to Telhami

Who was Gamal Abdel nassar and what did he have to say about palestine

Telhami: “prism of pain” for all arabs bc of collective experiences with western violence and colonization and control. Studies show that as much as it bothered the middle east countries, it wasn’t as high on their list of priorities. They were more focused on economics. Idea of desensitization and feeling of helplessness.

• Even past the Iraq war, arabs were conscious of the fact that palestinians continue to go through this struggle.

• “Arab Prism of Evaluation” —> they support a 2 state solution bc they don’t see a better alternative

• Egyptian public is split between maintaining the treaty and canceling it.

• Arabs see Israeli power as largely deriving from American power with their “mutual” interests.

Gamal Abdel Nasser: pm of Egypt from 1956-1970, post suez crisis

• In January 1956 Nasser announced the promulgation of a constitution under which Egypt became a socialist Arab state with a one-party political system and with Islam as the official religion.

• All nations go through an independence movement

• THEN there’s the building of a civil service, moving toward equality

• Egypt has a responsibility to the Arab world, commitment to Africa, commitment to islam though he becomes more secular later on

• the role of searching for a hero —> needs to be centered around responsibility and not just image.

More Palestine Solidarity

Who was khomeini and his thoughts?

Ali Shariati?

• Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1979

• Calls Israel a “germ of corruption”

• “Jews are distinct from Zionists”—> wants to allow jews to live in Iran

• Wants to separate jewish community from zionism

• Israel won’t perpetrate crimes without America’s permission —> are we sure about that?? increase of lobby efforts in the 2000s

Ali Shariati was an Iranian thinker who blended Islam with anti-colonial and revolutionary ideas, helping shape the intellectual groundwork for the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Shariati viewed Palestine as a central symbol of global anti-colonial struggle and saw Zionism as part of a broader system of Western domination, using religious and political language to call for resistance rather than compromise.

Latife Reda argues that khomeini’s stance on Palestine and Israel was not just ideological—it was a calculated strategy to build political legitimacy, unify support, and position Iran as a powerful leader in regional politics.

South Africa & Apartheid

Patricia de Lille said that Palestinian struggle is worse.

The support Palestine bc they went through this too. One thing they mention they’re doing now is BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) so boycotting Israeli products.