Technical Analyses of Necib El-Kilani’s Novel “Ramadan Habîbî”

Najib el-Kîlânî, who lived in Egypt from 1931 to 1995, is one of the important figures in Islamic literature. He dabbled in literature when he was young and wrote about a hundred works. The period he lived and the countries he visited gave him the opportunity to get to know the problems faced by the Islamic society. The author depicted these problems that he witnessed in his works. Najib el-Kîlânî, who focuses on the social, political, economic and religious problems of the Muslim community in his literary works, deals with 1973 Egypt-Israel war in his novel “Ramazan Habîbî” that is the focal point of our research. The novel is about the expansionist policy of the Jews, the unjust oppression they faced and the struggle of the Egyptian people against America's hypocrisy. In the novel, the struggle of the Egyptian people against Israel for the liberation of the Sinai Desert and the Suez Canal, the occupied lands, is told. It is about the war between the Arabs and Israel in 1973, known as the Ramazan War (Yom Kippur War). It relates the overnight seizure of the “Bar-Lev Line”, which Israel says is impassable. In this study, Najib el-Kîlânî’s novel “Ramazan Habîbî” will be examined technically and thematically within the framework of issues such as the cultural corruption experienced by the Arab society, their approach to Zionism and the problem of the sense of belonging for their homeland.

From “Shock and Awe” to Asymmetric Warfare in Modern Military Warfare

This study aims to present the strategies from “Shock and Awe” to asymmetric warfare in modern military warfare. The main points in the article are: Introduction: The lessons of a war - The Yom Kippur War; In the years before the Yom Kippur War; After the Yom Kippur War, the American military understood that it had to focus on mobile and rapid warfare against regular armies, an issue that had been neglected over the past decade; The “Shock and Awe” battle strategy. In conclusion: a very important element for coping with asymmetric warfare is the psychological strength of the civilian population. As stated, one of the ways of warfare of the weak side against the strong side is the marking the psychological sensitivity of the civilian population of the strong side as a target. A psychological attack on the civilian population can manifest itself in the launching of missiles at it, the control of its information, the multiplicity of casualties of its soldiers and the sowing of a sense of frustration in it due to prolonged confrontation.

Ontological security as temporal security? The role of ‘significant historical others’ in world politics

This article explores the link between collective memory and state behaviour in international relations. In that regard, it develops a new concept entitled ‘temporal security’. Building on the existing ontological security literature, it extends a temporal understanding to its underlying identity concept. Countries are now assumed to be temporal-security seekers vis-a-vis a ‘significant historical other’ from their past. Decision makers thus enter into a self-reflective conversation with their country’s ‘collective memory’ when choosing courses of action. Contrasted with existing physical-security and ontological security explanations for state behaviour, the explanatory potential of the temporal-security approach is in a second step illustrated by the empirical case of West Germany and Austria, two former Nazi perpetrator states, and their respective assignments of support during conflict in the Middle East. Through a comparative, qualitative discourse analysis of historical documents during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War and oil crisis of 1973, the empirical study finds that West Germany and Austria adopted different courses of action in their international politics, because they looked to Nazi Germany as their significant historical other.

THE MIDDLE EAST IN YUGOSLAVIA’S FOREIGN POLICY STRATEGY IN THE 1970s

The main purpose of this article is to present the most important conditions and variables characterizing the role of the Middle East in Yugoslavia’s foreign policy strategy in the 1970s, based on available literature and documentation. I also intend to analyze the conditions that contributed to intensifying Yugoslavia’s position in the region and led to a decrease in Yugoslavia’s importance in the Middle East in the second half of the decade. Firstly, I will describe Yugoslavia’s relations with the countries of the Middle East in 1970–1973, especially with Egypt, where Gamal Abdel Nasser, after his death, was succeeded by the country’s Vice President, Anwar Al-Sadat. It will also be important to shed light on the Yugoslav Government’s stance regarding the Middle East conflict from the point of view of the situation in Europe. Next, I will present the significance of the Yom Kippur War for Yugoslavia’s foreign policy and its implications for Belgrade’s relations with Cairo and Tel-Aviv. Moreover, it will be extremely important to explain why Yugoslavia’s importance in the Middle East gradually diminished as of the middle of the decade. In addition, I will address the issue of Yugoslav President Josip Broz-Tito’s position toward the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the fading of Yugoslavia’s interest in the region following Tito’s death and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the summary, I want to note that the period under analysis in Yugoslav-Middle Eastern relations was decisive for the country’s foreign policy and its internal situation, as Yugoslavia never again played a significant role in the Arab world.

On the Political Nature of “Market Dominance” in the Energy Sector (1973 Crisis)

The article attempts to analyze the oil crisis of 1973 from the perspective of changes in the world financial system’s functioning. The author takes as the starting point of the crisis not the “oil embargo” of the Arab countries in response to the Yom Kippur War, but Richard Nixon’s decree of 1971 on the rejection of the gold fixing the dollar (Nixon Shock). The result was a transformation of the mechanisms and principles of the Bretton Woods system. According to the author, the economy and the socio-political model of the Western countries, subsequently (after the collapse of the socialist camp) of the whole world, underwent a transformation. The article’s relevance is due to the fundamental similarity of the parameters and characteristics of the world economy’s current crisis with the crisis of 1973, which gives the author reason to consider the current crisis a relapse. The author proves that the current global crisis is caused by the shortcomings and costs of the socio-economic model formed in 1973 On the agenda are the same questions and problems that were not answered 50 years ago.

Memory as State Behaviour

This chapter shows how collective memory channels a country’s international behaviour. To that end, it first lays out the nexus between memory and state behaviour put forward by the temporal security concept. It then goes on to distinguish it from international relations’ classical realist and ontological security approaches and their predictions on state behaviour. To keep their temporal security intact, countries are assumed to enter into an ‘in-between-time’ conversation with their ‘significant historical others’. Through the emotional trigger of shame, policymakers avoid potential disconnects with their country’s ‘narrated self in the past’, thus bringing their courses of action in line with collective memory. To illustrate this process, the empirical case study looks at the reaction of West Germany and Austria to two wars in the Middle East. It contrasts their support for either of the warring parties during the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War and international oil crisis of 1973. The qualitative analysis demonstrates that West Germany and Austria’s different collective memories of the Nazi legacy channelled their behaviour along diverse reasonings to support either the Israeli or the Arab side.

Paying Attention to the Children

This chapter reviews some of the findings of a multi-cohort longitudinal study spanning over three decades, focusing on the secondary post-traumatic stress symptoms among adult offspring of Israeli former prisoners of war (POWs) whose fathers were captured by the Egyptians and Syrians during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The effects of captivity on the ex-POWs’ mental health and parenting as well as its consequential effects on their offspring are examined in the veterans (fathers), their wives (mothers), and their offspring. The chapter discusses offspring characteristics that may render them vulnerable or resilient: (1) gender; (2) the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism; and (3) differentiation of self. Findings include the strong intergenerational effects of trauma, particularly on sons; very late–onset results of PTSD in the fathers; the possible mediating effects of parental PTSD; and the role of the offspring’s genetic and personality characteristics.