An Introduction to the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Week I: Theodore Herzl

I’m sending this to everyone because even those of you who aren’t participating in the class will, I’m sure, be keen to follow along.

An Important Administrative Announcement

As I explained, you’re my test subjects for teaching this kind of class. I regret to say that I’ve already made my first mistake. It seems that many of you never received the confirmation email, the reading assignment for this week, or the Zoom link for our first meeting. Clearly I missed a tranche of your emails: I just didn’t realize so many people would sign up! I still can’t find them.

Our reader Connor Gibson had an excellent suggestion:

I noticed that thus far, you have been managing the Middle East 101 registration process on an individual basis—each prospective participant emails you or leaves a comment in one of your posts asking to be added to the class. This seems like a significant amount of tedious work for you—sifting through all of those emails and comments must be a nightmare.

An alternative way to manage course signups (one that would be far less time-intensive for you) would be to create a Google Form to collect the information you desire (names, emails, etc) and put that link in your posts, comment replies, etc. The form automatically puts responses into a tidy spreadsheet. …

When I read that, I thought, “Damn. Obviously I should have done that. But how can I ask everyone to sign up all over again? I’ll look like an idiot.”

But since I’m still hearing from people who say they sent me an email but didn’t receive a response, I figure the train has already left Not-Looking-Like-an-Idiot Station. I hereby admit my mistake, plead for your forgiveness, and ask you all, even those who’ve already signed up, to sign up again using this form.

➡️ ➡️ ➡️ PLEASE SIGN UP FOR MIDDLE EAST 101 HERE.⬅️⬅️⬅️

As you see, you can still sign up even if you haven’t so far, and you may continue to sign up until November 1. Because so many of you only received the reading on Thursday or yesterday, or haven’t yet received it at all, we’ll discuss this week’s reading twice—tomorrow, for those of you who’ve already had a chance to read it, and later in the week, at a date and time to be determined once everyone has signed up. Those of you who’ve done the reading but aren’t able to attend tomorrow’s discussion will of course also be welcome to join the second session.

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Before Herzl

Separately, I’ll open a dedicated forum in the Chat for the discussion of this week’s reading. I’ll send next week’s reading to you on Monday.

As those of you who received the reading know, we’re beginning this story with Theodore Herzl—particularly, I’ve assigned Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage, commonly translated as The Jewish State: Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question.