International Dialogue

Notes from the Editor

This year has been no less difficult than the previous one. I am back in my campus office, so in some ways there is some sort of “normalcy.” But it is not the same, and it probably will never be the same as it was pre-COVID. Yet, ID perseveres. Volume 12 looks like many past volumes, though there is one important difference—it includes an author from Iran.

This year’s volume contains the work of scholars from four continents: North and South America, Asia, and Europe. Volume 12 begins with an article submitted from Sweden. It is entitled “Structures of Loyalty: A Comparative Study of Jewish and Palestinian Evangelicals’ Acquiescence to Fundamentalist and Authoritarian Values” and is the work of Anders P. Lundberg and Kristian Steiner. This work is a qualitative comparative study of the Israeli Messianic (IM) movement and the Palestinian Evangelical (PE) movement. Their aim is to compare the prevalence of fundamentalist/authoritarian values in those two movements and to understand how a particular socio-political context—Israel and the West Bank—might affect the acquiescence to a fundamentalist/authoritarian mindset amongst the two movements. The authors use structures of loyalty in their explanation of the differences they found in their study.

The second article is by Samrand Avestan and Owen G. Mordaunt entitled “The ‘Roaring Flame’: Pursuing Thymos in Chinua Achbe’s Things Fall Apart.” The authors make use of Francis Fukuyama’s conception of thymos while they dig deep into Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. They demonstrate that Okonkwo, the famous character of the novel, rebels against the white colonists’ alleged injustice to satisfy his thymos and be “unbeatable.”

The third article is by the Swiss researcher Cécile Druey. It is a piece dealing with the difficulties in negotiations and conflict settlement in Chechnya (1995–2004). This is followed by a review essay by Edward Sankowski and Betty J. Harris, two of ID’s assistant editors, who turn their focus on Slavoj Žižek’s book Heaven in Disorder. Five book reviews follow the Sankowski and Harris review essay, including books by Louise Cummings, Michael Tomasello, and Eric Nelson, as well as a response from Eric Nelson. The volume ends with a Discussion of B’ Tselem’s policy paper “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid” by Kenneth Christie.

I thank the editors, staff, and board members for their assistance in putting together Volume 12 in the face of the pandemic. I want to thank Kathryn A. Cox Schwartz, who has served as editorial assistant since the inception of ID, and the Executive Committee of The Leonard and Shirley Goldstein Center for Human Rights for their continued financial support. I also thank Angela Brown for her continued work as administrative assistant. It was because of Angela’s suggestion that ID is becoming more integrated into Digital Commons. This will increase the journal’s readership and will allow us to track who is reading ID and it will eventually streamline the journal’s operation.

There is still a need for additional board members and editors, including an associate editor. Interested individuals should send a letter of interest and an abridged CV to rconces@unomaha.edu.

I thank all those who reviewed manuscript submissions to ID over the past months. I am grateful for their adherence to deadlines and, most importantly, their insightful comments to both editors and authors. The following list includes board members and external referees who reviewed submissions for Volume 12: