From the Publisher
“Professor Mark Tessler has pulled together in one volume the wealth of his decades-long research on the Jewish minority communities in Tunisia and Morocco, and the Arab minority in Israel, and has woven a fabric rich with insights. While focused on the 1970s and 1980s, Tessler’s analysis resonates today, as he assesses in a concluding chapter. This volume is filled with perceptive descriptions of each community; and it also places the communities within the contemporaneous regional context, in particular the impact that the Arab-Israel conflict and the rise of political Islam have had on each minority community. This is a very useful compilation of research, of interest both to the lay reader and the academic community.” (Daniel Kurtzer, Princeton University, USA, and Former U.S. ambassador to Egypt (1997-2001) and Israel (2001-2005))
“In this volume Mark Tessler revisits work he did in the last three decades of the twentieth century that focused especially on Jewish minorities in Tunisia and Morocco and the Arab minority in Israel, but was engaged as well with the shock that religious revivalism delivered to the expectations of modernization theorists. We see how a skilled, sensitive, and caring scholar, delivered on his commitment to understand the Middle East by taking seriously the opinions and attitudes of ordinary people who live there. Tessler’s career has been devoted to building bridges, not only between Jews and Muslims, and Arabs and Israelis, but also between area specialists and social scientists. Across each divide the message is the same: the world is changing, each group has more in common with the other than they prefer to think, and all would be better off living and working in mutual respect than in stigmatized disdain.” (Ian Lustick, Professor and Bess W. Heyman Chair, University of Pennsylvania, USA)
“A leading political scientist of the Middle East and North Africa, Mark Tessler compiles extensive field research and writings from the 1970s and 80s addressing Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel – issues that remain relevant today. These are not only detailed narratives of the dilemmas of important communities at critical times of transition, but they also offer penetrating scholarly insights that become much clearer when one reads them together; and the historical perspective, provides a better assessment of the utility of such notions as ‘religious minorities in non-secular states. The reader will find the volume thought-provoking, and Tessler’s own reflective assessment in the conclusion analytically engaging and helpful for thinking about the issue of minorities in the region. Worth reading.” (Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland, USA)