(Visit Alfred G. Gerteiny in the TBE Bookstore)
In front of a crowd or in a
workshop, Alfred Gerteiny does exactly in person what Jean Ziegler, Special UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food,
Professor of Sociology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and author of L’Empire
de la Honte (editions Fayard, Paris 2006), says Professor Gerteiny does in
his book. “The Terrorist
Conjunction: The United States, The
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and al-Qā’ida is a brilliant analysis,
innovative and profoundly original, of one of the most frightful yet evasive
phenomena of our time: the devastating
acts of armed terrorists. How is it
possible to analyze in rational terms a political, military and ideological
poisoning whose roots are buried in the darkest irrationality? Professor Gerteiny has done so admirably.”
The Terrorist
Conjunction: The United States, the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and al-Qä’ida is the result of years of
introspection and analysis and was written in the hope that it might stimulate
a productive dialogue on the seminal causes of terrorism and result in a fairer
assessment of how to deal with it.
Missing from many contemporary
analyses of the causes of terrorism is any mention of the role of U.S. foreign
policy, an examination of which is seen by some critics as inherently
unpatriotic. Even less attention is paid to the role of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Alfred G. Gerteiny, who was born in Heliopolis and who has studied
the Middle East for more than four decades, does not shy away from such
controversies. In The Terrorist Conjunction, he discusses the seminal
causes of contemporary transnational terrorism, and, particularly the
grievances inherent in the persistent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A
professor whose academic career spans four decades, Professor Gerteiny examines state and anti-state forms of terrorism and
carefully distinguishes between terrorism carried out in pursuit of national
liberation by the Palestinians and the theologically driven jihadism that feeds
on it.
He considers anti-Western
Islämism as being reactive to a U.S. Middle East policy inordinately influenced
by the Zionist lobby. He reflects on Muslim and Islāmist worldviews and
assesses the U.S. reaction to terrorism after 9/11, including the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
In Gerteiny's view, Israel's
unchecked expansionism at the expense of Palestine and its suffocating grip
over its population, carried out under the cover of U.S. protection, constitute
ethnic cleansing. He believes most Muslims perceive as harbingers of an ongoing
new "crusade” the above described Israeli policy; the United States’
ill-conceived strategies in the Gulf region, Afghanistan and Iraq; and the lack
of communications with Syria and Iran. They constitute the main pernicious
elements upon which the wider-reaching, vengeful islāmist
"theopolitical" jihadism thrives.
And, ultimately they threaten the spread of democracy, the survival of
Israel in the Middle East, and peaceful coexistence with the Muslim world.
Alfred G. Gerteiny received a solid education at the French
Jesuit College in Cairo before pursuing graduate studies in Europe and the
United States. At the Institut d’Études Des Relations Internationales in Paris
he received a Diplôme d’Études Supérieures for his thesis “L’Évolution de l’Opinion
Publique des E-U. d’Amėrique, Face à La Guerre Froide en Turquie” and at
the Hague a certificate from the Academy of International Law. With specialized coursework at The Near and
Middle East Institute, Columbia University, he was awarded a Ph.D. from St.
John’s University for his dissertation “The Concept of Positive Neutralism in
Egypt.”
Dr.
Gerteiny began his academic career as an instructor at St. John’s
University. Subsequently he was for
twenty-six years a professor and sometimes chair of the Department of History
at the University of Bridgeport. For
the past decade he has been an adjunct professor of history at UCONN, Stamford.
His fields of specialization have been the Middle East, Islam and Francophone
Africa; European diplomatic history and culture; and U. S. Military history.
His special research areas and competencies include Arab Culture and History;
Arab Nationalism; Palestinian-Israeli Conflict; Terrorism; Islamic Republic of
Mauritania and adjacent Sudanic states; and Islam in West Africa. A 1965 fellow of both the Middle East
Studies Association and the African Studies Association, Dr. Gerteiny received
a senior research Fulbright fellowship to study the determinants of foreign
policy in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Other grants have been from the state of
New York to study Islamic Arts, from the National Endowment for the Humanities
to study diplomatic history, and from the U.S. Defense Department to study
Military History at West Point in order to teach ROTC college level classes for
which he received a certificate. He
also was awarded a Dana Research Grant to further his understanding of
terrorism.
Fluent in Arabic and possessing an excellent command of
French and English, Professor Gerteiny has participated in panels, seminars and
lectures at academic institutions including NYU, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, Sarah
Lawrence College, the University of Cairo, McGill University, Institut d’Études
Des Relations Internationales, Institute d’Études Juridiques, Économiques et
Sociales, Université de Tunis, Université de Rabat, Northwest Institute for
Peace and Conflict Resolution, and the Georgetown University Center for
Strategic Studies. He has been a political commentator on Africa and the
Mid-East for CBC and CBC-TV (Canada) and a member of the national screening
committee (Mid-East and North Africa) for Fulbright grants. Dr. Gerteiny has been president since 1992
of Cross-Cultural Consultants LTD of Bridgeport, CT.
Dr. Gerteiny’s Preface to The Terrorist Conjunction:
“I have, over decades of teaching and lecturing on the
Middle East and on the issue of terrorism, always stressed the inherent
conjunction of the overwhelming influence of pro-Zionist organizations—both
Jewish and Evangelical—on U.S. policies concerning the crucial conflict over
Palestine, and on the catastrophic growth of violent religious fanaticism, here
and elsewhere, particularly its confusion with legitimate patriotism and
nationalism. I have always stressed the
enormous positive social, cultural, and scientific contributions of Jews,
Christians, and Muslims to Western civilization and to global human progress;
and I never failed to underline the wide gap in perspectives on the Middle East
and on the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, between the
extremist Zionist, and the profoundly constructive and humane attitude of
liberal Jews everywhere. Similarly, I
remain unequivocally discriminating as concerns progressive Muslims and
islämist politics and obscurantism.
Even when America was still enjoying relative security
behind its oceanic shields, I argued that Washington’s blind partiality toward
an expansionist, and not always humane, Israeli state will, of necessity,
ignite vengeful terrorist reaction on American and European targets, and will
further corrupt the tenuous relations between a resurgent and misguided
militant Islāmism and the West, adding to Israel’s vulnerability, while
driving Christians and Christianity out of their original geographic cradle.
The festering enmity between Israel, the Palestinians,
and its neighbors, the unending emigration of Christians from the Middle East,
the attacks on U.S. embassies and assets, and particularly the ignominious use
of American civilian airliners in the criminal attacks on the New York World
Trade Center, and also on the Pentagon, have sadly confirmed other observers’
and my own well-founded assumptions.
It is, indeed, these unfortunate developments, and the
inordinately counter-productive, arrogant and aggressive foreign policy of
George W. Bush that have ultimately compelled me to write candidly in this
analytical book. I have done so, more
in sorrow than in anger, to stimulate a needed debate on the issue.
Indeed, I find that the American media, despite its
claim of being free, is paralyzed by an obsession with the bottom line and by
fear of economic retribution. Its
reporting and analysis of the fundamental causes of Palestinian and islämist
terrorism have failed to contribute to a fair understanding of the issues.
U.S. politicians’ hunger for funds to finance their
perpetual political campaigning and to preserve their privileges and lucrative
grip on power, coupled with ethnocentric bias and ignorance of Middle Eastern
realities, have added to the confusion.
My book—The Terrorist Conjunction: The United States, the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict, and al-Qā’ida—is the result of years of introspection and
analysis; it was written in the hope that it might stimulate a productive
dialogue on the seminal causes of terrorism and result in a fairer assessment
of how to deal with it.
My interpretations, arguments, judgments and
recommendations, indeed my candor in addressing intimidating issues relative to
the seminal causes of contemporary transnational terrorism—be it driven by
nationalism or by apocalyptic vision—will undoubtedly offend friends and readers
committed to the defense of Israel and shock many others by their political
incorrectness.
There will indubitably also be the usual detractors and
publicists who will intentionally misconstrue and manipulate my analysis and
choice of words, in order to persevere in obfuscating any challenge to the
harmful and counterproductive political status quo they cunningly
advocate.
I fully expect and welcome these reactions, for they are
intrinsic to the needed open debate called for by scholars around the world—following
the publication of Professors Mearsheimer and Walt’s probing and thoroughly
researched article, “The Israel Lobby, on March 23, 2006, in the London
Review of Books—on the significance of the pro-Zionist lobby’s ability to
affect American policy in the Middle East.
My criticism of the U.S.-Israeli policy nexus in the
Middle East is offered humbly and with good intentions; it seeks to promote a
healthier environment for reaching a just peace between two savaged peoples—the
Palestinians and Israelis—both with legitimate rights and grievances, by
exposing some of the more vexing factors in the ominous, dark cloud spreading
over relations between the Muslim world and the West.
In the final analysis I am, and
remain, the only individual responsible for the content, judgments, and
conclusions herein contained.”
Alfred G. Gerteiny
Fairfield County, Connecticut, USA
People are Saying:
Book News: © Book
News, Inc., Portland, OR
www.booknews.com
August 1, 2007
HV6431
2007-005897 978-0-275-99643-7
The terrorist conjunction; the United States, the Israel-Palestinians conflict,
and Al-Qa'ida.
Gerteiny, Alfred G.
Praeger Security International,
c2007 165 p. $39.95 Cloth
“ Sadly, one of the prime characteristics about the
debates in the United State
over terrorism and the "war on terrorism"
has been the rather successful
silencing of any discussion of the role of US foreign
policy in spurring
extremist Islamic terrorism, particularly US support
for an expansionist and
United Nations-defying Israel that is militarily
occupying and oppressing
millions of Palestinians. Thankfully, Gerteiny
(history, U. of Connecticut)
appears unafraid of these taboos, as he addresses
unqualified US support for
Israel and how it helps give rise to both Palestinian
nationalist terrorism,
aimed only at ending Israeli oppression, and Islamic
“jihadi” terrorism,
which is able to point to the US-Israeli nexus as the
spearhead of a new
crusader force in the region. He also criticizes the
hypocritical support of
the United States for dictatorships in the region
while claiming to be
supporting democracy, the illegal and disastrous
invasion of Iraq, and the
corollary failures in Afghanistan. He spends a
significant portion of the text
describing the differences between Islamist extremism
and the worldviews of
conservative popular Islam and explaining, without
condoning, the spiritual
emotions inspiring the suicide bomber.”
“If we want to understand the
roots of terrorism, especially in the Middle East, Alfred Gerteiny’s book is a
valuable analysis.”
Howard Zinn
“A refreshing new analysis of
Washington’s current Middle East “problem.”
As the title suggests, it encompasses the whole entangled spectrum of
players, including Israel. This story
of superpower hubris and self-initiated blunders is written with insight,
passion, and biting humor. Gerteiny’s
perspective, sourced from experience in the Middle East, Europe, and the United
States, is particularly valuable for American readers.”
Stanley Brush, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, University of
Bridgeport, CT
University of Panjab, Lahore,
Pakistan
“This is a lucidly written,
rigorously argued, informative and interesting piece of research examining the
relations between the U.S. and Israel and looking at the global conflict(s)
between Israel and the Palestinians on one hand and the U.S. and Al-Qā’ida
on the other. Scholars and policymakers
will benefit from the research and analysis presented here. So will anyone with a serious interest in
understanding global politics in the 21st century.”
Dr. Bulent Gokay
Reader in International Relations
School of Politics, International
Relations and
the Environment, Keele University
“Alfred Gerteiny has elegantly
woven together many strands of history and politics in his masterly analysis of
terrorism in the Middle East. For those
not yet persuaded of the complexity—and pain—of the issues, it is a
must-read. For those persuaded, it is
refreshing and instructive.”
Nita Kumar
Brown Family Professor of South
Asian History
Claremont McKenna College
“Gerteiny presents a
provocative and original explanation for terrorism focused on U.S. and Israeli
responsibilities. Terrorism, he
charges, is never one way and will continue unless its legitimate grievances
are remedied.
Don Peretz
Professor Emeritus, Binghamton
University
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