Palestine Studies in Western Academia: Shifting a Paradigm?

The West’s support for Israel constitutes a central controversy in the Middle Eastern Studies; knowledge production about the question of Israel/Palestine in Western academia, where a pro-Israeli is the dominant one, is one significant extension of that controversy. This article starts with considering ‘fresh developments in the field’, to examine the real dimensions, and the capacity to introduce a fundamental transformation in the field of the Palestine studies in the West. Formulated within Kuhn’s theory of ‘paradigm’ and the conditions he proposes for a ‘paradigm shift’, this study analyses the way the ‘counter attack’, by those supporting the pro-Israeli paradigm, behaves towards the new challenge posed by a competing (alternative) paradigm. According to the main argument of this study, what those supporting the pro-Israeli paradigm do/say, when dealing with the alternative knowledge, might suggest that a paradigm shift, or a similar occurrence, is taking place in Western universities.

کلیدواژه ها:

Palestine Studies ، Middle East studies ، Paradigm Shift ، Palestine ، Israel