Romanticizing the Land: Agriculturally Imagined Communities in Palestine-Israel

This paper argues that images, and specifically agricultural images, play a significant role in the imaginings of the Israeli and Palestinian communities. Agriculture has symbolic and material value among Palestinians and Israelis, and contributes to identities and land claims made by Zionist and Palestinian organizations. Anderson’s discussion of nation building emphasizes the primacy of print in the imagination of a community; this paper highlights non-textual elements of nation building via case studies of the creation and dissemination of propaganda posters by the Jewish National Fund and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A survey of propagandistic agricultural images reveals the shared symbols used by Palestinians and Israelis in forging identities and exclusive claims to land. Despite being common symbols from a shared past, agricultural images are crucial in creating and perpetuating a divide between Israelis and Palestinians, and in arguing for organic links between each group and the land of Palestine-Israel.

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Illumine is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary graduate journal produced by graduate students at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria.

The Notion of Subhuman Identity in the War on Terror

Foreign policies in the global political arena continue to demonstrate the consequential after-effects of the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001. Propagations of a “terrorist threat” are strategically used by Western political actors to achieve a multiplicity of ends. In some cases, these ends supersede accepted international precedents, both in the realms of international law and convention. In particular, United States President George W. Bush’s War on Terror, and President Barak Obama’s continuing drone operations in the Middle East exemplify instances of political transcendence. Through the strategic enactment of ambiguous laws and through intimate utilizations of notions of “state sovereignty” and “national self-defense,” the American Government has gained unprecedented authority in the treatment of suspected terrorists. This article examines the legal, theoretical, and ethical elements of the War on Terror and the American drone operation in the Middle East to illustrate the exceptionalness of Al-Qaeda and Taliban combatants in American legal understanding.

Embracing the Divine: Devotional Zeal and Mystical “Humanation” in Rembrandt’s Annunciation Sketch

Rembrandt’s 17th–century sketches of radical religious transformation illuminate the inner workings of spiritual conviction and reveal the religious tone of Rembrandt’s society. But they also privilege psychology over narrative, and use emotionally charged gestures to elucidate human responses to divine presence. In particular, Rembrandt develops the symbol of the divine touch, which I argue parallels the 17th–century Dutch absorption in debates about the workings of God’s grace. The symbolic physical closeness that characterises Rembrandt’s Old and New Testament subjects is grounded in the Reformation emphasis on personally knowing a magnanimous God, which is in turn rooted in concepts of the mystical marriage between God and “saved humanity,” themes that underlie Rembrandt’s unusual <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Annunciation</span> sketch.

Idealism “Must Not Blind Us”: British Legislators and the Palestine Mandate, 1929-1934

In Mandate Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s, the British sought to establish a legal system for the new political entity. This task was fraught with difficulty, as the British soon discovered. Events in Palestine often occurred in such an extreme manner that the British officials could not establish control. As a result of the failure of the legal system to address the new realities on the ground, these officials were often in a position where all they could do was respond to emergencies, as was the case following the Arab Revolt in August of 1929. Despite the fact that much of what occurred on the ground in Mandate Palestine, particularly with regard to land transactions and dispossessions, often occurred outside of British control, officials were acutely aware of the realities facing the Arab agricultural cultivators being threatened with dispossession. The difficulty the British had in suppressing the violence drew attention to their lack of authority over the land question that was creating tensions between the Arab and the Jewish populations. In examining minute sheets of the Colonial Office and correspondence between British officials, it becomes clear that these officials were aware of the impossibility of resolving the contradiction inherent in their position. This paper seeks to examine British responses immediately following the 1929 Revolt to show that the British accurately perceived the problems as they existed on the ground in Palestine but were unable to take actions against them. This will demonstrate the extent to which the failures of the Mandate, with regard to preventing dispossessions, was a failure of the legal system as a whole rather than the result of any individual shortcomings of the officials in control of the territory.

Turkey Post 1980 Coup D’etat: the Rise, the Fall, and the Emergence of Political Islam

While it has often been perceived that Kemalist Turkey succeeded in firmly establishing secularization, the Islamist movement that followed the 1980 military intervention questioned the fundamental principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk by embracing Islamic identity and Islamic values in the social and public sphere. This paper will examine the rise, the fall, and the emergence of political Islam in Turkey following the 1980 coup d’état. Following the military intervention of 1980, the level of Islamic activism rose due to state policies during the 1980s and 1990s. It can be observed that the consequences of the Islamic tolerance during the 1980s and 1990s led to the rise and the fall of the Islamic leaning Welfare Party of Necmettin Erbakan. This paper will also explain how the Justice and Development Party (AKP) differed its policies from the Welfare Party, by blending a moderate Islamic identity with a pro-Western mentality, to achieve support and stability for Islamist politics.