The Civil War in Algeria is entering its eighth year and, despite a recent decrease in intensity, shows no sign of ending. Just when it appears that the armed Islamist groups are on the verge of defeat, another horrendous massacre occurs, reminding all that the conflict is far from resolution. One of the particularities of the Algerian war is that so little has been known about it, about the protagonists, the attitude of the population, how the conflict has played out across the country, and even what exactly is being fought over. This has been largely due to restrictions on freely moving around the country—and, for foreign inquirers, entering Algeria itself—interviewing eyewitnesses to the violence, and speaking to the full range of regime opposition. And then there has been the inhospitality of the armed groups. One consequence has been a dearth of good, first-hand empirical data upon which analysis could be based.

Yaron Ezrahi, Robert Littell, Shimon Peres, and Myron J. Aronoff offer varying assessments of cultural, historical, and political aspects of Labor Zionism. They differ in purpose and tone. Aronoff’s scholarly analysis offers an anthropological approach to political processes and procedures in the Labor Party, brilliantly depicted as symbolic actions that often stifle rather than inspire a genuine and democratic debate. Broader in scope, Ezrahi’s cultural critique of Labor Zionist ideology focuses on its failure to recognize individualism as an integral part of a democratic framework. And Robert Littell provides a historical overview of Labor governments, based on detailed interviews with Shimon Peres, a party leader who looks forward as he looks back on his political career and Israel’s challenges and achievements.

A New Academic fashion in the disciplines of history, anthropology, and cultural criticism is to “foreground” authors in works of scholarship. But it is not in imitation of what is currently fashionable that I have chosen to make my address autobiographical. I am a historian who enjoys writing narrative history and who elsewhere has argued that the narrative remains as valuable and as legitimate in modern scholarship as theory. So here I wish to tell a story that may hold some lessons for those scholars who seek freedom from the constraints imposed both by the norms of Middle Eastern societies and by the rules of the western academy. In our post-modern, post-structural, post-colonial world, all the certitudes have been shaken, and the narrative might well be the only kind of story that we can relate to with any kind of authority.

Among The Wide range of issues analyzed by Arab scholars, there is a significant interest in the political economy of the Middle East. The impact of globalization on national sovereignty is a particularly strong concern, which is addressed in four studies that were published in Beirut in 1997.

The Dissolution of the Soviet Union has inspired a growing awareness of the dynamic cultures of Central Asia accompanied by an expanding catalogue of resources for use in teaching and research. Among these resources are an abundance of excellent recordings of Central Asian music available on compact disc. This review serves as an introductory guide to recordings of Central Asian music that will enrich personal collections, serve as excellent teaching materials, and enhance possibilities for research. The CDs recommended here are anthologies that have been chosen for the artistic quality of the recorded performances, broad and representative coverage of relevant musical genres, and above all for the reliable commentary that accompanies these productions.

When The Jubilee year of the founding of the State of Israel arrived, the market was flooded with books, periodicals, special issues, TV documentaries and albums marking the 50th anniversary. As expected, some of these products stimulated sharp controversies, as a part of recent debates over Israeli historiography, collective memory, and identity. Perhaps the most controversy was focused on the Channel One (public TV) series titled “Tkuma” (“Revival”). Contrary to expectations, the series presented the Israeli past a little bit more courageously and less canonically than the usual conservative Zionist version. It was by no means a “revisionist” history, but for the first time the general public was exposed to a more balanced and less mythical version of Israel’s history. The uprooting and expulsion of the Palestinians during the 1948 war and their transformation into a refugee camp society were briefly mentioned with some empathy. Clips from the well-known Syrian reconstruction of the massacre in Kafr Qassem were aired. In the segment on Palestinian armed struggle use was made of films from the PLO archives (captured by the Israeli secret services during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon). The discrimination and peripheralization of the immigrants from Arab countries and their violent reactions (the Wadi Salib riots and the Black Panthers’ demonstrations) were not blurred. In general, alongside the state’s great economic, cultural, and military achievements, some of the shadows were remembered as well, such as Ben-Gurion’s one-man leadership and Golda Meir’s refusal to make any territorial concessions in exchange for security arrangements (peace?). Even the inevitability of the 1967 and 1973 wars was questioned. The series was heavily attacked and accused of being anti-Zionist, especially by the right-wing establishment. The Minister of Communication, Limor Livnat, who is in charge of public broadcasting, tried to “supervise” the series and especially the segment on the PLO; however, she withdrew when she was accused of censorship.

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona hosted the first multi-language conference in April 1998, which brought together innovative teachers of Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish to share new technologies, instructional strategies, and materials. The organizers, Karen Galindo and Amy Newhall, assumed that teachers of these less commonly taught languages faced similar challenges and that exchange among them could be mutually beneficial. This report summarizes selected presentations.

The Failure to Implement the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres thwarted Kurdish hopes for their own state, but it did not write the Kurds out of history. From Sheikh Said’s rebellion against the Turks in 1925 to the legendary Mulla Mustafa Barzani and his son Massud, Kurds have grabbed the occasional headline and challenged central authorities more or less continually throughout the 20th century. Conversely, and in less chronicled fashion, they have also played powerful roles in consolidating state rule. Only after the Gulf War in 1991, however, did Kurds begin receiving sustained western attention and, in the last three years in particular, a new flood of articles and books by academics and journalists has swelled periodicals and library shelves. The Middle East Studies Association’s annual conferences from 1995 to 1997 all featured panels devoted to Kurds and Kurdish politics; at the MESA conference in San Francisco last December, papers concerning Kurds were also presented on thematic panels dealing with such diverse subjects as nationalism in the Middle East and youth in Turkey.

Since The Early 1980s, a vast literature has developed on Islamism, a phenomenon that can be defined as “the recourse to the vocabulary of Islam, used in the postcolonial period to express within the state, or more often against it, an alternative political program that uses the heritage of the West as a foil, but allows nevertheless the re-appropriation of its principal references”. Its intellectual roots and the socio-economic reasons for its emergence are now examined in detail by scholars. Those studies have also illuminated the diversity of Islamism across the Middle East, thereby de-homogenizing an object too often thought of as monolithic.