Abrahamian's book, which began as a study on the social bases of the communist Tudeh Party, is unique in its detailed and in-depth coverage of a very important period of modern Iranian politics: the social upheaval and political struggles during 1941-1953.
Roberto Sussman fails seriously to come to grips with Israel Shahak's justified, if painful, challenge directed at Jewish socialists: they have been largely silent about Jewish racism and utterly failing to combat it.
Book Review: Simon Taggart's little book (79 pages) deserves notice as perhaps the first book dealing with the trade-union movement in the West Bank.
Review of two books reflecting left-wing zionism's approach to Israel's wars.
A group of leftist Turkish intellectuals and activists agreed to impart to us in Khamsin some of their knowledge concerning their country. At our request, they later agreed to put together this special issue of Khamsin, wholly devoted to Turkey.
After having strived, since the foundation of the republic in 1923, to become a fully integrated member of the Western world, the Turkish state is once again turning its face to the Middle East. In short, the coup of 12 September 1980 represents a radical rupture with the earlier tendencies of capitalist development in Turkey.
Analysis on the role of Kemalism ‒ a specific form of Turkish nationalism ‒ in overseeing the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, demonstrating its reactionary nature in annexing Kurdistan and repressing its own working class.
This article examined the extent and nature of women's oppression in Turkey, the attempts of secular-nationalist movements to improve women's conditions and outlining the possible shape of a future feminist movement in the country.
Historical survey of the Turkish left and workers' movement, focusing particularly on the 1960s-70s and the slide into guerrilla warfare, looking both at the strengths and fatal weaknesses of the two interconnected movements.
Since the end of the Second World War Turkey has been firmly in the orbit of the Western alliance though in the past decade a number of events have occurred which have strained the relationship with the West. At present Turkey is surrounded by actual or potential conflicts with Greece, Cyprus, Syria, the Soviet Union, and to the east Iran and Iraq – both with dissatisfied Kurdish minorities.
The articles in this anthology were first published in the journal Khamsin 1976 – 1983.
There is hardly a problem of contemporary society and politics that does not possess a particularly severe form in the Middle East. Nevertheless, in all the various countries, there have always been people who have challenged the status quo with the vision of a future that, however distant and elusive, nonetheless contains some hope. The journal Khamsin was founded in 1975 by a small group of such people.
The state of Israel was built in struggle against the Orient; but once it had been built, about half its (Jewish) people were offspring of that same Orient. Neither the Zionist movement nor the state of Israel has ever been able to resolve that contradiction.
Articles about women in the Middle East inevitably touch on many facets of social, political, and economic life in the countries concerned, and will tell us as much about the nature of Zionism and the Arab societies as they do about women themselves.
The two articles in this section, written nearly seven years apart in time, share common concerns, seek to call attention to the Lebanese, as opposed to international or inter-Arab, components of the crisis and the war. Both refuse to endorse any of the warring sides, or to countenance their behaviour.
Khamsin 8 was entirely devoted to the 'Politics of Religion in the Middle East'. All the articles in this section are taken from that attempt to take up what the issue's editorial called 'the sadly neglected twin tasks of confrontation with Islam and Judaism'.
Whatever may be said about Hammami's political views on particular points, there is no denying the non-sectarianism of his attitude to the Israeli Jewish population: he recognizes that they constitute a nationality just as much as the Palestinian Arabs, and that they, too, are entitled to national right in Palestine. To hear a Palestinian spokesman say this was not necessarily congenial to fanatics on both sides.
The present issue of Khamsin goes to the press almost exactly one year after Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The central theme of the issue is not a description of the war events themselves, but their broader context.
In the minds of Begin and Sharon the Lebanon war is an opening move in the one-front strategy. The aim of this strategy is to build around a greater Israel a zone of direct Israel presence and influence. A zone of pax Hebraica.
Will the election of Amin Gemayel as president of 'all of Lebanon' finally put an end to the ghastly pageant of civil war in that country? Many Lebanese hope so, but their desires are as mangled and bewildering as were their heroes of yesterday – or their martyrs