D.
Remba
Gidon Doni Remba is a political analyst, commentator and writer on the ethics and politics of the Arab-Israel conflict, and President of Chicago Peace Now, the local affiliate of Americans for Peace Now, which supports Israel's largest peace group, Shalom Achshav. His essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Nation, the Jerusalem Report, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Forward, Tikkun: A Bi-Monthly Critique of Jewish Politics, Culture and Society, the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Chicago Jewish News, JUF News and other periodicals. With Mark Rosenblum, Founder and Policy Director of Americans for Peace Now, he is currently co-authoring an anthology titled From Gaza to Jerusalem: A New Road to Middle East Peace? A second volume, From Oslo to Intifada and Beyond: The Elusive Peace, is also forthcoming.
His work on behalf of Peace Now has garnered media coverage in many publications, including the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Reader, the Jerusalem Post, and the Forward. He has appeared as a guest in various media discussing peacemaking and the Middle East, such as The Milt Rosenberg Show/WGN Radio, WLS Radio, and the National Public Radio programs All Things Considered and Worldview.
Mr. Remba served as Senior Foreign Press Editor and Translator in the Israel Prime Minister's Office from 1977-1978 during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process. He translated the Knesset speeches of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, and Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, as well as Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and other Israeli leaders for the foreign press during the period from Egyptian President Sadat's visit to Jerusalem until the Camp David Peace Accords. He co-translated Sadat's Knesset speech into English for the world press.
Mr. Remba's recent writing on Israel and the Middle East is archived on his blog, http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/ His publications include such essays as:
- "On Arafat and the Peace Process" (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 24, 2004)
- "Follow 'West Wing' Script on Mideast Peace" (with Mark Rosenblum)
- "Israel and the New Anti-Semitism: An Exchange"
- "Why Oslo Failed: From Camp David to Intifada"
- "Crimes Against Humanity: The Wonderland of Peacemakers and War Criminals"
- "Mideast Forgiveness"
- "Jewish Ethics and the Palestinian-Israeli Problem"
- "In Defense of Barak: Why Israel Isn't Bosnia"
- "Benvenisti on Israel's Elusive Peace"
- "The Canard of Democratic Peace"
Major new essays, pending publication, include:
- Progressive Jewish Perspectives on Divestment from Israel, April 17, 2005
- Myths and Facts About the Palestinian Conflict: A Guide to the Perplexed (with Mark Rosenblum):
- Settlements and Disengagement from the West Bank and Gaza
- The Failure of the Road Map and Empowering Palestinian Moderates
- How Israel's Settlements Dilemma Arose
- Summary and Key Points of the Geneva Initiative (with Marc Swetlitz)
- "The Intifada, War Crimes and Unjust Wars"
- "Yes to US Intervention, No to Imposed Solutions: Reflections on the Second Anniversary of the Collapse of Oslo and the Outbreak of the Intifada"
- "What is Zionism? A Peace Now Vision" (abridged from "We Are All Post-Zionists Now: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State")
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the Roadmap to Palestinian-Israeli Peace, May 7, 2003
- His views on media coverage of the Palestinian-Israel conflict were highlighted in a story in the Chicago Reader ("Trib vs. Tribe").
- He wrote "A Response to the Campaign Against Palestinian Peace Advocate Sari Nusseibeh: An Americans for Peace Now White Paper," which was discussed in the Jerusalem Post (see Jerusalem Post, "Nusseibeh US Tour Sparks Controversy") and the Forward.
- Presbyterians Against Israel, January 28, 2005
- Family matter: Charity begins at home, Dec. 10-16, 2004
- Target Hamas: Chicago Jews React to Rantisi Killing, April 23, 2004
- Geneva's Tough Puffs, Dec. 26, 2003
- Geneva in Chicago, Dec. 12, 2003
- Cover Story: The Intifada at 2, Midwest Perspectives on Mideast, September 27, 2002
- Standing With Israel, Dissenting From Sharon, with Samuel Fleischacker, May 10, 2002
- Cover Story: PEACE NOW? Why Mark Rosenblum and Doni Remba Still Have Hope, November 30, 2001
- Bringing message of peace to Chicago: A Profile of Doni Remba, November 30, 2001
- Cover Story: War on Terror: Is the United States pressuring Israel too much? November 2, 2001
Mr. Remba, born in New York, lived in Israel on a kibbutz in 1969 and in Jerusalem from 1974-1978. His education includes Jewish studies at Clark University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He received his B.A. with honors in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has completed his Ph.D. coursework, with a specialty in ethics and political philosophy, at the University of Chicago. He has lectured widely on Israel and the Middle East around the country, most recently at the University of Texas, the University of Iowa, the University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago, Northwestern, DePaul and Loyola universities, and in synagogues and churches in the Chicago area.
ADDITIONAL ESSAYS
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Fleischacker
Samuel Fleischacker has been active in support groups for the Israeli peace movement
since 1982. He spent the first eight months of that year at a yeshiva in
Jerusalem; in the fall, he founded a group entitled "Builders of
Peace" in New Haven, after the Sabra and Shatila massacres. A year
later, this became the first Friends of Peace Now chapter in that city.
Fleischacker also worked with the Philadelphia chapter of Peace Now in
1988-9, and in 2001, he co-founded, with Doni Remba, a revived Chicago Peace
Now. He has published articles on both political and religious dimensions
of the Middle East conflict in New Outlook, the Guardian, and the
Jerusalem Report. He has also spoken both on the importance of the peace movement,
and of a continued Jewish commitment to Zionism, in Philadelphia, Williamstown
and Pittsfield, Mass, Chicago, and Gary, Indiana.
Professionally, Fleischacker is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois,
Chicago (UIC). He studied at Yale University, receiving his Ph.D. in
1989, and taught at Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Williams College before coming to
UIC. He works in moral and political philosophy, the history of
philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion. Among the issues
that have particularly interested him are the moral status of culture, and the
nature and history of liberalism. His publications include The Ethics
Of Culture (Cornell, 1994), A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and
Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith (Princeton, 1999), and Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion (Princeton,
forthcoming). Professor Fleischacker has been a Fellow of the University
Center for Human Values at Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Study in the
Humanities at Edinburgh University, and the Institute for the Humanities at
UIC. At Williams College, he was a Faculty Advisor to Jewish students
for several years, and at UIC, he teaches a course on Jewish philosophy, and
serves on the Jewish Studies Committee and the Hillel Board.
In addition to talks on Israel, he has spoken on a variety of rabbinic texts and
philosophical issues in Judaism, at synagogues in Massachussetts, Connecticut,
and Chicago.
Recent publications of interest include:
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Tachau
Frank Tachau is Professor of Political Science (Emeritus) at the University of Illinois at Chicago,
where he has been on the faculty since 1968. He was Chairman of the Department of Political Science
for eight years, and Acting Coordinator of Jewish Studies (1999-2000). He was Visiting Professor at
the University of Chicago; Lady Davis Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and
several leading universities in Turkey, as well as the University of British Columbia in Vancouver,
Canada.
Professor Tachau has published several books and many articles on the politics of Israel and the Middle East.
Among these are: "The Knesset and the Peace Process," (Israel Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2 [Winter 1995]),
based on personal interviews with more than half the members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) ;
"The Islamic World, Israel, and the United States," in C.K. Pullapilly, ed.,
Islam in the Contemporary World. Notre Dame, IN: Cross Roads Books, 1980;
"German Jewish Emigrés in Turkey," in A. Levy, ed., Sharing History:
Jews, Turks, and Ottomans (forthcoming). He is the author of Turkey:
The Politics of Authority, Democracy, and Development (1984), and editor of
Political Parties in the Middle East and North Africa (1994).
He received the Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD degrees at the University of Chicago, and was a member of the
faculty of Rutgers University and Purdue University before joining the University of Illinois.
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Mark Tessler is Samuel J. Eldersveld Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Prior to coming to the University of Michigan in 2001, he was Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at the University of Arizona. CMES is a U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center. Tessler received his BA from Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University, having previously studied at the University of Tunis and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has subsequently spent six additional years in the Middle East, conducting research in Tunisia, Morocco, Israel, Egypt, and the West Bank. He is one of the very few American scholars to have studied and lived for extended periods in both the Arab world and Israel. He has also spent several years in Sub-Saharan Africa. Tessler is the author or coauthor of eleven books and approximately 100 scholarly articles. His most recent books include: Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics (1999); Democracy and Its Limits: Lessons from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia (1999); Democracy, War and Peace in the Middle East (1995); and A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (1994). Professor Tessler's books have won several national awards. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict was named a "Notable Book of 1994" by the New York Times. Tessler is one of a handful of American scholars collecting and analyzing public opinion data from the Arab world. His current research, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the U.S. State Department, deals with the attitudes of ordinary men and women toward issues of international relations, democracy and governance, religion, and gender. Recent reports of his public opinion research appear in Comparative Politics, World Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly. Among Tessler¹s professional contributions are service as President of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) located at the Smithsonian Institution; as a founding and Steering Committee member of the Palestinian American Research Center, another CAORC facility; and as editor of the Indiana University Press series on the Middle East, which is one of the country's leading scholarly book series in the field. He is also one of the founders and a past president of the Association for Israel Studies, a large international scholarly society. Tessler has consulted for the World Bank, USAID, USIA, and many other public and private agencies in both the U.S. and the Middle East.
SELECTED PUBLICATONS
A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Also a featured selection of the History Book Club, listed as a "Notable Book of 1994" by the New York Times, and named a "1994 National Jewish Honor Book" by the National Jewish Book Council.
"Palestinian Attitudes Toward Democracy and Its Compatibility with Islam: Evidence from Public Opinion Research in the West Bank and Gaza" (coauthor). Arab Studies Quarterly (forthcoming).
"Islam and Democracy in the Middle East: The Impact of Religious Orientations on Attitudes Toward Democracy in Four Arab Countries." Comparative Politics 34 (April 2002): 337-354.
"The Political Economy of Attitudes Toward Peace Among Palestinians and Israelis" (coauthor). Journal of Conflict Resolution (March 2002): 260-285.
"Palestinian Political Attitudes: An Analysis of Survey Data from the West Bank and Gaza" (coauthor). Israel Studies 4 (Spring 1999): 22-43.
Democracy and its Limits: Lessons from Latin American, Asia, and the Middle East (coeditor and contributor). Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1999.
Democracy, War, and Peace in the Middle East (coeditor and contributor). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
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Dowty
Alan Dowty is Professor of Political Science, and Fellow
at the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies, at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught
since 1975. Before that, he was on the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for 12 years, during
which time he also served as Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations
and Chairman of the Department of International Relations.
Professor Dowty is a graduate of Shimer College and the University of Chicago, where he received his
Ph.D. in 1963. He has published numerous works on international relations, and especially on U. S. foreign
policy and Middle Eastern politics. Among his books are The Limits
of American Isolation (New York
University Press, 1971), Middle East Crisis
(University of California Press, 1984), which won the
Quincy Wright Award of the International Studies Association,
Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement (Yale University Press, 1987),
which was written as a Twentieth Century Fund
Report, and The Jewish State: A Century Later
(University of California Press, 1998), described by
the Times Literary Supplement as "a careful, balanced,
and often highly insightful analysis of the making and workings of Israeli democracy."
He has also published over 130 scholarly and popular articles and reviews in such journals as American
Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly,
International Security, World Affairs, Public Affairs Quarterly,
Third World Quarterly, Current History, Middle East Review,
Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, and Commentary.
Professor Dowty also has an active public career as a consultant and commentator on
Middle East policy issues, on which he has testified before Congressional committees.
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Availability: Weekends only
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Brinker
Menahem Brinker is the preeminent ideological founder of the Israeli peace movement, a
professor of philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University and the University of Chicago, and
the author of six books on esthetics, philosophy, and literature. His commitment to peace was born
out of his personal experiences serving in the Six Day War, in addition to his service in the IDF
from 1953-1955 and during the Yom Kippur War. Following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, a new
right-wing movement emerged in Israel that was committed to holding onto the West Bank and Gaza at
any cost. To counteract this development, in 1969, Professor Brinker drafted the Founding Manifesto
of the Israeli Movement for Peace and Security—a movement that served as the main pro-peace opposition
to the new right-wing until the founding of Peace Now in 1978. His intellectual leadership of the
peace camp was further solidified in 1973 when he became the Founding Editor of the monthly journal
Emda, a publication that served as a sounding board for pro-peace ideas and whose contributors and
readers crossed party lines. In the years that followed, Emda and Brinker had a substantial impact
on the peace movement in terms of articulating policy and clarifying values, which in turn contributed
to the broader national discourse. In 1978, Professor Brinker decided to devote himself to his
academic career. Since that time, he has lectured throughout the world and taught at the
university level in Israel and abroad, while remaining a key member of the Peace Now Jerusalem
branch.
Availability: Limited
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