![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article provides an overview and theorization of the “Alternative Peace Movement” (APM), a transnational education and advocacy network based in the West Bank. Emerging in the troubled context of current Israel-diaspora relations and US campus politics, the APM promotes a syncretic Jewish identity narrative and boundary-crossing political programme. Drawing on a content and discourse analysis of the movement’s online documentation, as well as interviews with movement leaders, participants, and allies, the article outlines the APM’s infrastructure and discourse, and provides an historical backdrop and set of theoretical tools for rendering comprehensible the movement’s seeming contradictions and incoherencies. It describes the APM as a case study in “primordialist universalism,” a political orientation that aims to pursue civic and human rights of a universal character by inhabiting a “hard” ethnonational subjectivity and discursive frame. The concept of primordialist universalism offers social scientists a tool for making sense of hybrid social phenomena that confound traditional categories of political analysis.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Matthew Berkman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Notes
1 As of publication, http://newzionistvision.org was offline, but an archived version is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20170919141018/http://newzionistvision.org/, accessed 17 November 2017.
2 Adopting this nomenclature does not imply an endorsement of the movement’s conception of “peace” any more than reference to “the peace process” or “the Israeli peace camp” suggests an endorsement of the objectives of those projects. I retain the label “Alternative Peace Movement” because it sheds light on the self-image of the movement’s architects and participants. I remain agnostic on the question of whether the activities of the APM are conducive to Israeli-Palestinian “peace,” though I later attempt to draw out their political implications. My interest is strictly in theorizing the movement as a discursive and sociopolitical phenomenon, not in evaluating it from a normative standpoint. For scholarly treatments of the Israeli peace movement to which the APM views itself as an “alternative,” see Hermann (Citation2009) and Omer (Citation2013).
3 Most interviews were conducted by email using two fixed sets of open-ended survey questions, one for APM activists and one for student program participants, that probed the interviewee’s relationship to APM institutions and understanding of concepts derived from my content analysis of the APM’s online materials. Follow-up questions were sent if necessary.
4 Smith (Citation2003):
I define a group as a political people or community when it is a potential adversary of other forms of human association, because its proponents are generally understood to assert that its obligations legitimately trump many of the demands made on its members in the name of other associations. (20)
5 For an overview of recent literature on technology and social movements, see Garrett (Citation2006).
6 LAVI’s Facebook page, image post, 14 September 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/278549625642520/photos/a.305341522963330.1073741828.278549625642520/657275174436628/
7 LAVI’s Facebook page, article post, 24 May 2016, accessed 12 December 2016, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=606147076216105&id=278549625642520
8 “LAVI Programs in Israel.” LAVI, accessed 12 December 2016, https://www.lavi-israel.org/in-israel; for more on American-born olim and Zionist romanticism, see Hirschhorn (Citation2017).
9 For more on the settlement movement, see Lustick (Citation1988); Eldar and Zertal (Citation2009); Taub (Citation2011); and Hirschhorn (Citation2017).
10 “About Kumah and ‘Building Israel Together.’” Kumah, accessed 5 August 2017, http://www.kumah.org/about.
11 For an overview of Zionist adaptations of U.S. counter-cultural discourse, see Staub (Citation2004b), chapter 6; for key documents, see Staub (Citation2004a).
12 Compare the logo on LAVI’s website, https://www.lavi-israel.org/, accessed 4 August 2017, to the insignia on the Zionist Freedom Alliance’s website, archived by the Internet Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20120216202559/http://zionistfreedom.org:80/, accessed 4 August 2017.
13 For the UN definition, see “Indigenous Peoples at the UN.” United Nations Division for Social Policy and Development, Indigenous Peoples, accessed 12 November 2016, https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/about-us.html. Notably, the working definition specifies that indigenous people “form at present non-dominant sectors of society.”
14 LAVI’s Facebook page, text post, 18 July 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/278549625642520/photos/a.305341522963330.1073741828.278549625642520/629868330510646/.
15 For a somewhat partisan overview of the settler-colonial discourse in academe, see Troen (Citation2007).
16 LAVI’s Facebook page, text post, 5 August 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=638029746361171&id=278549625642520.
17 For a blog post authored by an ANZV activist arguing that “Ashkenazi Jews are not genetically white,” see Hershkoviz (Citation2014). For a critical discussion of the contemporary discourse of Jewish genetics, see Abu El-Haj (Citation2014).
18 LAVI’s Facebook page, photo post, 16 June 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/278549625642520/photos/a.305341522963330.1073741828.278549625642520/615680025262810.
19 Email exchange between the author and a Jewish Voice for Peace staff member, 21 June 2017.
20 See “Open Hillel History: An Overview.” Open Hillel, accessed 17 November 2017, www.openhillel.org/history/. For Hillel International’s “Standards of Partnership,” see “Hillel Israel Guidelines.” Hillel International, accessed 17 November 2017, www.hillel.org/jewish/hillel-israel/hillel-israel-guidelines.
22 New Zionist Vision’s Facebook page, article post, 24 November 2014, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/newzionistvision/posts/722703101152724
23 New Zionist Vision’s Facebook page, article post, 12 July 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/newzionistvision/posts/1026731494083215.
24 Inter alia, New Zionist Vision's Facebook page, article post, 26 July 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/newzionistvision/posts/1035549199868111
25 New Zionist Vision's Facebook page, article post, 14 February 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/newzionistvision/posts/938053012951064
26 Yehuda HaKohen’s Facebook page, text post, 4 August 2015, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/yehuda.hakohen/posts/10153521863359241.
27 LAVI's Facebook page, text post, 5 August 2016, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=638029746361171&id=278549625642520
28 Alternative Action’s Facebook page, text post, 15 June 2015, accessed 17 November 2017, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=859932704113034&id=175752622531049.