Abraham Ashkenasi

Abraham "Avi" Ashkenasi (born May 14, 1934 in New York City , † March 27, 2016 in Berlin ) was an American political scientist .

Life

Ashkenasi's academic career has taken him to numerous European, American and Israeli universities in Germany. He was considered one of the most renowned political scientists with a focus on Middle East politics , ethnology , migration and minorities . He held his last professorship at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin for over 30 years . In addition, he chaired the European Migration Center (EMZ) in Berlin, an organization specializing in ethnicity and migration, and headed the department of the FU research center for labor migration, refugee movements and minority policy .

Together with Ferhad Ibrahim , he worked at the Institute for International Politics and Regional Studies of the Political Science Department at the FU (Otto Suhr Institute). His American-Jewish origins did not prevent him from criticizing Israel's nationality policy, the largely unilateral pro-Israeli image drawn by most of the US media, and nationalism , thereby overcoming the resentment of Muslim students. Most recently, he also criticized Palestinian radicalism and its often alleged connections with the Nazi regime in the years 1933–1945.

Even after his retirement from the Free University of Berlin, his expertise was still in great demand. He finds his final resting place in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf .

Ashkenasi was married to the soprano Catherine Gayer and had with her the sons David Ashkenasi (graduate physicist) and Danny Ashkenasi (composer and actor).

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Ashkenasi wrote numerous books, particularly about the Arab population of Jerusalem, most of which he published in the 1980s and 1990s, including:

Palestinian Identities and Preferences: Israel's and Jerusalem's Arabs

The book Palestinian Identities and Preferences: Israel's and Jerusalem's Arabs (1992) offers an insight into identity-finding processes in the Middle East. Ashkenasi explains the sociological structures of the ethnic conflict in the Arab regions of Israel and examines their political development before and after 1967. His focus is on the one hand on Jewish-Arab relations, on the other hand on the relations within the Palestinian community, which are in their social, economic and religious constitution as extremely fragmented.

The Future of Jerusalem

The Future of Jerusalem (only published in English) is the 11th volume in a series of sociological and political studies on the topics of ethnic groups, regions and conflicts.

The book - a compilation of different texts by various authors ( Michael Romann , Ifrak Silberman , Ephraim Ahiram , Hamad Elayan and Haviva Bar ) - examines the social, economic and ethnic conditions in Jerusalem. Ashkenasi researched for this book from 1992 to 1996 with the support of various institutes and selected a number of authors who have dealt intensively with the topic. The book analyzes the current situation in divided Jerusalem, the majority of which are Jewish, but which is also inhabited by an Arab minority . The division is understood not only as political, religious and ethnic, but also as economic. In Jerusalem itself massive conflicts take place, in view of which the challenge economic functioning remains central. In fact, economic development over the past few decades has been positive. The Israeli sector benefited from everything, the Palestinian part remained the economic loser. Nevertheless, argues Ashkenasi, the Palestinian sector of Jerusalem is more prosperous than the Arab settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank . Ashkenasi underlines the fact that the political, ethnic and religious conflicts in the region would deter potential foreign investors and, as a consequence, the economic conditions, especially in the east of Jerusalem, the Arab part of the city, could not be improved so easily. However, nationalist ideas played a far more important role than economic considerations in the minds of many representatives on both sides. Ashkenasi finally appeals that the mindset of the people in the affected region must first change before the area can be redesigned.

Perspectives in the Cyprus conflict

One of the longest and most persistent problems in contemporary international politics is the Cyprus conflict . The publication not only traces the history of the endogenous ethnic-religious conflict between the two ethnic groups of Cyprus , which have lived separately for 25 years , but also describes the exogenous divergent interests surrounding the geopolitically favorably located Mediterranean island between the United States, Great Britain, the former Soviet Union, the UN and the United the rival nationalisms of the mother countries Turkey and Greece . The contributions on important Cyprus political issues, such as the assessment of the announced EU accession or the joint activities to assess Greek and Turkish Cypriots at local political level ( Nicosia Master Plan , ethnic group discussions, etc.) also provide an up-to-date insight into the possibilities and limits of modern conflict resolution concepts using the example of the UN's longest on-site engagement.

bibliography

• Reform Party and Foreign Policy, Internal Disputes over the Foreign Policy of the SPD Berlin (1968)
• World power USA (1969)
• Nation building, nation state, integration (1972)
• Modern German nationalism (1976)
• The global refugee problem (1988)
• Nationalism and national identity (1990) ISBN 3-923446-63-2
• Palestinian identities and preferences, Israel's and Jerusalem's Arabs (1992)
• The Middle East Peace Process, A Revision (1997)
• The Future of Jerusalem (1999) ISBN 978-3-631-32216-1
• Perspectives in the Cyprus conflict (2002) ISBN 3-631-35675-7

Web links

• Literature by and about Abraham Ashkenasi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of the European Migration Center

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice: Abraham Ashkenasi. In: tagesspiegel.de. Der Tagesspiegel, April 3, 2016, accessed on April 3, 2016 .