Though Israel possesses few na­tural re­sour­ces, it has a surfeit of  ex­perts on the Arab world. If  Israel is to survive in a hostile neighbourhood, it must know its en­emies.

By contrast, neighbouring Arab states sorely lack a corps of scholars and analysts possessing a deep and sophisticated know­­ledge of Israel.

To Hassan Barari, a professor of Mid­dle Eastern politics at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, the Arab elite’s limited un­der­standing of Israel is not only a fact of life but a national shortcoming. He expounds on this thesis in a refreshing book, Israelism: Arab Scholarship on Israel, a Critical Assessment (Ithaca Press).

“Israelism” is a word Barari coin­ed to refer to the Arab style of  writing on Israel. It is, he says, shaped by “a set of ideas and misconceptions” rooted in anti-Israel ideologies and  influenced by the Arab-Israeli dispute.

“The outcome of Israelism is the fail­ure to produce sound knowledge on Israel,” he explains. “Subordinating writing on Israel to the imperatives of the conflict has proved costly.”

Barari, a Jordanian, has not fallen into that trap. Although he is proud to be an Arab and is critical of Israel’s policies, he is open to other people and their viewpoints. He studied He­brew at the He­brew University of Jerusalem and has steeped himself  in Israeli politics, history and culture. Indeed, he describes himself as “a big fan” of the Israeli novelist Amos Oz.

Better still, he strongly believes in peace­ful coexistence and reconciliation between Israel and the Arabs.

Acknowledging his interest in study­ing the Middle East from “an even-hand­ed and unprejudiced perspective,” Barari says he was determined to “go beyond the intellectual confines of pan-Arabism and attempt to see things as they truly are.” He brings this dispassionate sensibility to Israelism, which is, as he correctly asserts, long overdue.

In his view, Israeli studies in the Arab world have never “properly ta­ken off,” not least because its practitioners have substituted “indoctrination for scholarship” and have sought to expose rather than to understand Israel. Such Arab scholars, he adds in a with­ering aside, have lacked basic skills: Hebrew language competency and significant residency in Israel.

Barari empathizes with them. As he observes, “I am aware that it is not easy for scholars to visit and stay in Israel. The problem is related to a wider issue: normalization. Many intellectuals in Egypt and Jordan were blacklisted and on some occasions kicked out of their associations for daring to visit Israel.”

In a relatively brief survey of Israeli studies in Arab countries, Barari says that Arab expertise about Israel was in very short supply when the 1948 Arab-Israeli war broke out. “The few studies that did appear were meant to mobilize [Arabs] and present Israel as a fragile so­ciety that would collapse with the first bullet,” he writes in a scathing condemnation.

He adds, “Until 1967, there were no worthy studies on Israel in the Arab world.”

Israel’s victory in the Six Day War humiliated Arabs and made them realize that their ignorance of Israel was not to their benefit.

In 1968, the Palestine Liberation Organization created the Cen­ter for Palestinian Studies in Beirut. Its objective was to publish mon­ographs on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israel.

Two years later, during the War of Attrition, Cairo University expanded its comparative government course by including material on Israel’s political sys­tem. Al-Ahram, the Egyptian daily newspaper, then established  the Cen­ter for Political and Strategic Stu­d­ies, whose purpose was to study Israeli and  Palestinian societies.

In 1977, sim­ilar academic institutions were opened in Jordan and Lebanon. After the Oslo peace talks got under way  in 1993, the University of Jordan, Ba­rari’s alma ma­ter, established an Israeli studies department. In 2000, when the second Pa­lestinian uprising erupted, the Palestinians established the Palestinian Cen­ter for Israeli Studies.

(Whether by de­sign or omission, he never tells a reader whether such institutions have sprung up in key Arab nations like Syria or Iraq.)

Although Barari sings the praise of a number of these institutions, and singles out Arab scholars who have done good work in this field, he suggests that Arab scholarship has fallen short, having  fo­cused on “elements” that reinforce the Arabs’ “perception of Israel.”

Israeli studies in the Arab world are hobbled by two misconceptions, he notes. The first one is that Israel is an “artificial entity.” The second is that Israel will inevitably disappear. As a result, Arab scholars do not, in gen­eral, bother studying Israel with sufficient rigour.

Arab scholarship thus re­mains “hostage to ideology and the per­sistence of the conflict,” which in turn leads to myths concerning Israel.

Arab journalists are also victims of this syndrome. “Writing on Israel, particularly in the press, has be­come a means to struggle or fight against Israel and mobilize the masses, rather than explaining and understanding the country.”

Yet another problem is that Arab scho­lars all too often work in non-demo­cratic environments. “Free­dom of expression… is limited,” he says. “For this reason, objective wri­ting has frequently fallen vic­tim to censorship.”

He elaborates on this important theme: “The lack of political and academic freedom and the existence of repressive authoritarian regimes, coupled with the perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, have informed writing on Israel. It has been influenced by politics and the need to make polemical rather than academic points.

“Arab scholars have not yet man­aged to match their Israeli counterparts in challenging the official and ideological narratives of the Arab re­gimes, as the ‘new historians’ did in Israel. Much of the writing is non-scholarly… and relies on collective memories and much less on critical scrutiny of the era or event.”

In addition, he says, Arab governments do not allow researchers into state archives.

In closing, Barari writes that the Arab-Israeli conflict, combined with the Arab perception that Israel is an aggres­sive state, hin­ders Arab scholars from embarking on “a process of critical reflection on Israel.”

As he puts it, “It is hard for Arab scholars to write on Israel with any kind of detachment.  De­tachment and impartiality could help [them] see things as they are.”

True enough.