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Persistence of Jewish-Muslim Reconciliatory Activism in the Face of Threats and “Terrorism” (Real and Perceived) from All Si

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Persistence of Jewish-Muslim Reconciliatory Activism in the Face of Threats and “Terrorism” (Real and Perceived) from All Si Persistence of Jewish-Muslim Reconciliatory Activism in the Face of Threats and “Terrorism” (Real and Perceived) From All Sides Micah B.D.C. Naziri ORCID Scholar ID# 0000-0001-9035-1178 A Dissertation Submitted to the PhD in Leadership and Change Program of Antioch University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2019 This dissertation has been approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Leadership and Change, Graduate School of Leadership and Change, Antioch University. Dissertation Committee • Philomena Essed, PhD, Committee Chair • Jon Wergin, PhD, Committee Member • Anne de Jong, PhD, Committee Member Copyright 2019 Micah B.D.C. Naziri All rights reserved Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep gratitude to my dissertation committee Professor Philomena Essed, Professor Jon Wergin, and Professor Anne de Jong, for their patient guidance, enthusiastic encouragement, and useful critiques of this research work. I would also like to thank Dr. Ashley Lackovich-van Gorp for her advice and assistance as a mentor in the pilot study that initially inspired this dissertation, and as a guide whenever I felt lost. I would like to further thank Professor Laurien Alexandre for inspiring so many aspects of the Hashlamah Project academically, and for helping realign the focus of this dissertation after serious threats to this work emerged. I additionally extend my thanks to Dr. Norman Dale, who has tirelessly and skillfully helped edit this work. My grateful thanks are also extended to my family for dealing with years of study, travel, writing, frustration, and more that all went into this work, and to unnamed friends and martial arts students who have assisted in travel when it was otherwise impossible. I would also like to extend my thanks to the chapter leaders and participants who were interviewed for this study, and to members of past iterations and organizations that have officially become defunct, or dissolved in name, out of necessity and prudence, while a core inner circle remains and has supported this endeavor for years. Finally, I wish to thank my grandchildren in the next generation, and their families, as well as those future activists and revolutionaries who will carry the proverbial torch in decades and centuries to come, in sha Allah, im yirtzeh Ha’Shem. It is for them and the persistence of our intergenerational and intersectional struggle that this work is ultimately dedicated. It is my hope that you find this study and its results edifying and useful towards a victorious struggle. i Abstract This dissertation concerns how Jewish-Muslim and Israel-Palestine grassroots activism can persist in the face of threats to the safety, freedom, lives, or even simply the income and employment of those engaged in acts of sustained resistance. At the heart of the study are the experiences of participants in the Hashlamah Project, an interreligious collaboration project involving Jews and Muslims. Across chapters and even nations, chapters of this organization faced similar threats and found universally applicable solutions emerging for confronting those threats and persisting in the face of them. This raised the question of whether revolutionaries and activists in general can persevere with such work in the face of this sort of menacing. The study found answers to this in determining what methods were most widely employed and which had the best results. The results of the study showed an array of widely employed methods for navigating threats in high-risk activism and persevering with such work in the face of these threats. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/. Keywords: Israel, Palestine, No State Solution, One-State Solution, Two-State Solution, Hashlamah Project, Fear, Threats, High-Risk Activism, Humiliation, Leadership, Minority Influence ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... i Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii List of TaBles ................................................................................................................................. vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Chapter I: Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 The Nature of the Conflict: Israel and Palestine or Jewish and Muslim?................................... 3 Approach ..................................................................................................................................... 5 Activist Research ........................................................................................................................ 9 High-Risk Activism .................................................................................................................. 10 What Is Terrorism in This Study?............................................................................................. 16 Background of the Research: Social Justice Finds Religion? ................................................... 17 How to Do Research or Research Methodology ...................................................................... 21 My Positionality and Vantage Point for Successfully Conducting This Research ................... 23 Epistemological Considerations ............................................................................................... 24 Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 28 Ethical Considerations .............................................................................................................. 29 The Structure of the Dissertation .............................................................................................. 29 Chapter II: Framing the Research: Integrating Relevant Theory, Research, and Practice ........... 32 Prelude: Religion as a Path Towards Reconciliation .................................................................... 32 Topical Categories of the Literature Review ............................................................................ 33 Intellectual Leadership and a Historical-Critical Reassessment of Israeli Nationalist Claims .. 35 Two States or One? ................................................................................................................... 44 Academic Distortions of the History and Modern Context of the Israel-Palestine Conflict .... 45 New Theoretical Ways to Think About Palestinian Self-Determination ................................. 48 Social Justice and Political Opposition to Israeli Ethno-Nationalism ...................................... 50 Standing Against the Apartheid State ....................................................................................... 52 Resistance Within the Context and Borders of Israeli Occupation .......................................... 54 Dialogue Groups .................................................................................................................... 61 Relational Leadership ................................................................................................................. 62 Grassroots Activism .................................................................................................................. 67 Pedagogy of Dangerous Memories ........................................................................................... 77 iii Facing Fear ............................................................................................................................... 80 Conclusion to Chapter II ........................................................................................................... 85 Chapter III: Methodology, Guiding Questions, and Research Procedures—A Study of Action Research ........................................................................................................................................ 88 Reflections on a Pilot Study...................................................................................................... 89 Methods .................................................................................................................................... 97 Emphasis on Face-to-Face Interactions .................................................................................. 101 Ethics and Positionality .......................................................................................................... 103 Conflicts of Interest ............................................................................................................. 105 Risks and Consent ................................................................................................................ 107 Logistics of the Research ........................................................................................................ 108 Interviewing Process ............................................................................................................... 110
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