Weekend long read

Our weekly round-up of Middle East related background reading.

1) At the JCPA Yoni Ben Menachem discusses Hamas’ attack tunnels.

“According to Hamas sources, despite a noticeable improvement in the IDF’s technological capability to locate the tunnels, and in spite of the giant, deep land barrier that Israel has built around Gaza to stop the penetration of attack tunnels, the military wing of Hamas has not finished building these tunnels and is continuing to invest millions of dollars into their construction.

This raises the question of what logic is behind all of this. Why does Hamas continue to invest so many resources into this project, as it is clear that Israel is managing to deal with it successfully and even to defeat it?”

2) A report titled “Representing the People or the Regime? Iranian Clerics and the Ongoing Erosion of their Status” by Raz Zimmt appears at the INSS.

“Recently published testimonies by Iranian clerics reflect their concern over the ongoing erosion of their public status, and offer a glimpse into the population’s growing alienation from them. Although this is not a new phenomenon, coverage of the issue in the Iranian media attests to its dimensions and the increased awareness within the religious establishment of its possible implications. As the Islamic Revolution approaches its fortieth anniversary, religion’s influence on Iranian society is waning and public confidence in the country’s clerical institutions continues to decline. In light of the intensifying economic crisis and the Islamic Republic’s failure to address adequately the hardships faced by Iran’s citizens, the clerics associated with the regime are perceived as largely responsible for its failings. The ongoing erosion of their status threatens to undermine the very legitimacy of the regime and to make it difficult for the Islamic Republic to ensure the continuation of “the rule of jurisprudence,” especially when Ali Khamenei will no longer be the Supreme Leader.”

3) The Fathom journal carries an interview with Lynn Julius about her new book.

“It all ended in the space of a generation. Some 850,000 Jews fled 10 Arab countries; most found refuge in Israel, where over half the Jewish population has roots in Arab or Muslim lands. Israel organised unprecedented airlifts and rescue operations. A greater number of Jews were displaced than Palestinian Arabs from Israel, and it was the largest exodus of non-Muslims from the Middle East until the mass flight of Christians from Iraq after 2003.

However, the plight and dispossession of the Jewish refugees remains an unresolved and unrecognised injustice. Age-old communities are now extinct and only some 4,000 Jews remain in the Arab world. So, with the exception of Morocco, the physical presence of the Jews has been wiped out almost completely from the Middle East and North Africa outside Israel. Memory was also erased; the younger generation often had no idea that Jews ever lived in their lands.”

4) At the NYT Matti Friedman takes a nostalgic look at a train line in Israel.

“An early account of the train was written by Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, who rode it in 1898 from the port of Jaffa, adjacent to modern-day Tel Aviv. At the time, the train was the only one in this remote and impoverished corner of the Ottoman Empire. Herzl, a Vienna journalist who’d come part of the way east on the luxurious Orient Express, thought it was awful. “It took an hour merely to leave the Jaffa station,” he wrote. “Sitting in the cramped, crowded, burning-hot compartment was pure torture.” One day, Herzl thought, there would be a modern Jewish state here, and a wonderful network of electric rails.” 

 

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