By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
While in Israel this month, we visited a former colleague of
mine, from the time when I worked as a journalist in Washington
in the 1980s.
Judith Colp Rubin, a native New Yorker and graduate of the
University of Chicago, has been a foreign correspondent in the
Middle East for various American newspapers.
She was married to Barry Rubin, who died in 2014. A former
Fulbright and Council on Foreign Relations fellow who received
his PhD from Georgetown University in Washington in 1978, he was
at first a left-wing pro-Palestinian activist.
He wrote for such publications as MERIP Reports, the Journal of
Palestine Studies, and the Communist-founded ultra-leftist
Guardian, published in New York.
He even turned up in Beirut in 1974, in the company of his
Georgetown mentor, the Palestinian professor Hisham Sharabi.
But he began to grow disillusioned with the far left and moved
to Israel in the 1990s, where he founded the Global Research in
International Affairs Center (GLORIA).
A prolific author, Rubin wrote dozens of books about the Middle
East region and the Israeli-Arab conflict, including The
Israel-Arab Reader, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle
for Democracy in the Middle East, The Truth About Syria, and
Israel: An Introduction. He also frequently wrote for the
Jerusalem Post.
Silent Revolution, published a year before his death, describes
how the Left rose to political power and cultural dominance in
the United States.
Barry and Judy co-authored several books on the Middle East,
terrorism, and America’s modern-day reputation. Their 2003 book
Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, was an in-depth look at the
life and political career of the Palestinian leader.
Hating America: A History, published in 2004, addressed various
aspects of the ways in which the U.S. has been vilified,
concentrating in general on the opinions held in European
nations.
They also co-authored Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle
East: A Documentary Reader, in 2003, and Chronologies of Modern
Terrorism, in 2008.
Judy is now the honorary president of what has been renamed the
Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs.
The current director, Jonathan Spyer, holds a Ph.D. in
International Relations from the London School of Economics and
a Master’s Degree in Middle East Politics from the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
The Center publishes two quarterly journals, the Middle East
Review of International Affairs (MERIA), and Turkish Studies.
They cover developments in the region from a wide variety of
viewpoints, including American policy, radical movements, and
minorities.
As well, it produces analyses and reporting on the Middle East
by research associates and scholars.
Quite a legacy, and one which Judy and the Center try to carry
on.
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