Tag Archives: Israel

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An Interview with Dr. Michael S. Neiberg

Michael S. Neiberg, Chair of War Studies at the U.S. Army War College and Professor of History in their Department of National Security and Strategy, is a leading military historian of the World War I era. He has authored or edited eighteen books on modern military history, with many of them having been translated into various foreign languages, including Polish, Turkish, German, and Chinese. Moreover, his books have won a number of impressive awards, to include the Harry S. Truman Prize, the Madigan Award, the Tomlinson Prize, the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, and various other honors. He serves on a number of editorial or advisory boards for various publishing projects, museums, and research centers, and has provided commentary in articles or television and radio appearances for a variety of media organizations in the U.S. and Europe, including PBS, National Geographic, France 24 Radio, Belgian National Radio, the Los Angeles Times, and others. He is, by all accounts, a leading intellectual voice on matters of modern warfare.  Continue reading →

Nine Days in the West Bank: The Issue of Israel’s Settlements

Above Image: Taken on the day I visited the Al Jalazoun Refugee Camp, which houses about 15,000 refugees. It is one of 19 such camps in the West Bank.The camp is right on the edge of an Israeli settlement. This picture gives a sense of how close they are, as the fenced wall to the right in the foreground is the wall of a refugee school for boys, while the Israeli settlement homes are in the background. Unsurprisingly, it is often a site of hostilities.

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I recently had the opportunity (along with four other U.S. academics) to participate in an Education and Cultural Exchange Mission to the West Bank and Israel from July 22-30. The trip was made possible by the efforts of a colleague, Dr. Justin Bateh, a Palestinian-American born in the U.S., that I got to know while at a conference in Chicago, who connected me with the the program through the American Federation of Ramallah-Palestine. The purpose of the trip was to gain first hand experience with some of the key issues that influence Israeli-Palestinian relations and current conditions in the West Bank as they relate to Israeli (and sometimes U.S.) policy.  

It was an extraordinarily eye-opening experience, that included meetings with the Mayors of Ramallah, Bethlehem, and other smaller towns, the Palestinian Authority’s Minister of Education, the leaders of important NGOs working in the region, various Palestinian university officials and professors, and a member of the Israeli Knesset (Israel’s unicameral parliament). In addition to all of the famed holy sites, we also visited a refugee camp, a Bedouin community, some of the more troubled towns like Hebron, and interacted with everyday Palestinians who, of course, had a lot to tell us about their experiences. Continue reading →

My Sabbatical: The Year in Review

Image above: Standing on the walls of Acre (“Akko”) in northern Israel, July 2016.

Over the next week or two, I will be turning my thoughts to the coming semester, with classes starting soon. I am happy to be getting back to teaching, as I generally enjoy it very much (my occasional complaints on Facebook aside), but I am also grateful to Florida State College at Jacksonville for granting me a twelve-month sabbatical over the past year, which I have tried to make as productive as possible. While many academics are familiar with the sabbatical process, I have learned few of my friends outside academia, or even many graduate students, understand it. Since I also assume I will need to account for my time spent during the sabbatical during a future evaluation for the college, I want to reflect here on the topic, how it works, and what I was able to accomplish as a result of it. Particularly in light of some of the good spirited teasing I have received from old friends (non-academics) worried about how their tax dollars were being spent as a result.

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