How Did Israel Achieve Victory Over The Arabs Between 1947 and 1949?

The question of how the Israelis managed such an astonishing victory over the Arab world has only recently become a contested subject within Israel itself, after the rise of the ‘new historian’ movement in the 1980s. The myths disseminated throughout Israeli history were subsequently blasted, and new causes for the success were explored, such as the disunity of the Arab states during the civil war and the invasion, also the lack of intervention of the part of the UN and the British, but most significantly, the part Israel played in the expulsion of the Palestinian population.

This essay examines in six stages the key elements at play during the two wars, which assisted the Israeli victory. It will examine the military preparedness and strategies of both the Palestinians and the Zionist in the run up to, and during the civil war. Then it will assess the influence of outside forces on the shape of the war. Lastly it will discuss the importance of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Do The Problems Of Ambiguous Symbolism And Future Uncertainty Mean That Great Powers Can Never Signal Their Type?

“States operating in a self-help world almost always act according to their own self-interest and do not subordinate their interests to the interests of other states, or to the interests of the so-called international community. The reason is simple: it pays to be selfish in a self-help world. This is true in the short term as well as in the long term, because if a state looses in the short term, it might not be around for the long haul.”

(Mearsheimer, 2001:33)

“Given this gloomy picture, the obvious question is, why are we not all dead? Or, to put it less starkly, what kinds of variables ameliorate the impact of anarchy and the security dilemma?”

(Jervis,1978:6)

At the heart of the fundamental problem of communication between states is what is known as “the Other Minds problem” (Hollis and Smith, 1990:171-6), meaning the inability of state actors to read the minds of their adversaries, therefore making it extremely difficult to trust them, or interpret their ambiguous military behaviour as anything other than threatening. This dilemma of ‘interpretation and response’ is generally referred to as ’the Security Dilemma’ within the academy (Hertz,1951:16).

Recent events in the realm of international politics, however, most significantly the lead up to and the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, has initiate a new exploration into the subject of international communication, and new possibilities for the solving of the ‘other minds’ problem, for the clarification of symbolism and the successful signalling of type, despite the inescapable problem of future uncertainty.

The Birth of the Horror Film: German Expressionism and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

“rarely before or since has a body of films exerted such a pull towards verbal paraphrase, in which epithets like ‘dark’ and ‘demonic’, ‘twisted’, ‘haunted’ and ‘tormented’ leap onto the page.”

(Elsaesser, 2000:19)

Robert Weine’s 1920 film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari is unanimously agreed to be both a prime example of German Expressionist cinema, and also a seminal horror film. However, the film is also something of an enigma, combining as it does, a mixture of gothic, psychologically motivated narrative, and Expressionist set design. The film’s influence on the horror genre can certainly be attributed to this gothic narrative, but the influence of it’s Expressionist aesthetic has to be considered far more sceptically than it has been by past theorists. The question of why the Expressionist aesthetic influenced Film Noir so strongly, and not horror, has to be asked when considering the film’s legacy as horror.

This essay will attempt to address the legacy of the film within the horror genre, from its origins in Modernism, the Expressionist influence in its scenography and perspective, and the Gothic influence in its narrative and themes, specifically those themes which have helped formulate some of the iconic elements of the horror genre, such as the monster, the male anxiety, and the notion of the ‘other’.

GINGER SNAPS: Horror, Genre and Kick-ass Feminism

“They don’t call it the curse for nothing”       (Ginger Snaps tag line)

John Fawcett’s 2000 film ‘Ginger Snaps’ is a teen-werewolf film that deals explicitly with themes of gender, deviance, transformation, violence, body-horror and the monstrous feminine in the horror genre. I am going to analyse a sequence from the film to support this claim, and believe that the penultimate scene before the finale is, in its mise-en-scene, lighting, direction etc, the most overtly ‘horror’ sequence of the film and the themes of the scene comply with my own reading of feminist themes in horror.