{"id":2147,"date":"2007-07-02T16:10:36","date_gmt":"2007-07-02T21:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2147"},"modified":"2008-07-24T19:16:14","modified_gmt":"2008-07-25T00:16:14","slug":"sara-roys-censored-review-published-by-middle-east-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2147","title":{"rendered":"Sara Roy’s censored review published by Middle East Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 2<\/a><\/p>\n

BOOK REVIEW
\nHamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad<\/strong><\/a> by Matthew Levitt. Yale University Press, in cooperation with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2006. 324 pages, $26.00, hardcover.<\/p>\n

Sara Roy<\/em>
\nSenior research scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University<\/p>\n

Author\u2019s Note:
\nThis review, published here in its entirety, was originally commissioned by The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the official foreign-policy journal at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Between the time I was invited to write the review and the time I was told it would be published, over two months had passed during which I had had several exchanges, some of them difficult, with the editorial staff. However, by the end of the process the editor-in-chief, with whom I had been working, was pleased with the review, and so was I. He sent me an e-PDF of the review as it would appear in the journal (Volume 31:1 Winter 2007). The PDF version of the page proofs revealed that the editor had excerpted two relevant sentences (featured in sidebars) to highlight observations that I had offered in the review:<\/p>\n

1. \u201cWhile there can be no doubt that, since its inception, Hamas has engaged in violence and armed struggle, and has been the primary force behind the horrific suicide bombings inside Israel, Levitt\u2019s presentation reduces this increasingly complex and sophisticated organization to an insular, one-dimensional…entity dedicated solely to violence…and Israel\u2019s destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. \u201cThe ability of Hamas to reinterpret itself over time through processes of radicalization, de-radicalization, de-militarization, and re-radicalization is a pronounced and common theme in its historical evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

During a subsequent exchange the editor-in-chief wrote, \u201cThank you for your hard work as well. It\u2019s a good review.\u201d I believed that was the end of the matter. Just a few days later, I received the following e-mail message from the same editor-in-chief:<\/p>\n

Dear Ms. Roy:
\n\u2026After careful review and much consideration of the merits of your piece, we have decided that we are ultimately unable to publish your review for this edition. Your review was evaluated by several of our editors and an external editor for objectivity. Unfortunately, they disagreed with my decision to publish your review for the following reasons: despite their agreement with many of your points, all reviewers found the piece one-sided. This one-sidedness dissuaded readers from reading the piece to the end; ultimately, this last point is the most important. Although I found your arguments valuable, if readers consistently feel this way, I am unable to move forward with a piece. My apologies for the way in which this process was carried out, and for the time that you spent on editing the piece. Thank you once again for your submission and your efforts. If you would like to discuss this further, please feel free to e-mail me.<\/em><\/p>\n

In more than 20 years of writing and publishing I have never experienced such behavior or encountered what to me, at least, is so blatant a case of censorship. I am therefore extremely grateful to Anne Joyce and Stephen Magro for agreeing to publish the review in Middle East Policy. <\/p>\n

[Read the review<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 2 BOOK REVIEW Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by Matthew Levitt. Yale University Press, in cooperation with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2006. 324 pages, $26.00, hardcover. Sara … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-yD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3385,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions\/3385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}