This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's ...political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side-where the archives are still closed-is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.
Morris stresses thejihadicharacter of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers-Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union-in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.
Within a short span of time in the course of the 1980s, the Supreme Court of Israel effected far-reaching changes in its legal doctrine and in the way it perceives its role among the state's ...branches. This book locates those changes in the context of the great historical process that took shape in Israel in the second half of the 1970s: the decline of the political, social, and cultural hegemony of the labor movement, and the renewal of the struggle over the future orientation of the country's culture. Two social groups have confronted each other at the heart of this struggle: a secular group that is aiming to strengthen Israel's ties to Western liberalism, and a religious group intent on associating Israel's culture with traditional Jewish heritage and the Halakhah. The Supreme Court — the institution most closely identified with liberalism since the establishment of the state — collaborated with the former group in its struggle against the latter. The story of the Court serves as the axis of another two stories. The first deals with the struggle over the cultural identity of the Jewish people throughout the course of modernity. The second is the story of the struggle over the cultural identity of Israeli law, which took place throughout the 20th century. In addition to the divide between secular and religious Jews, there is a national divide in Israel between Jews and Arabs. These two divides are interrelated in complex ways which shape the unique traits of Israel's multicultural condition. The book ends with a few suggestions as to how, given this condition, Israel's regime, political culture and law should be constituted in the coming decades. The suggestions borrow from the discourses of liberalism, multiculturalism, and republicanism.
Founded in 1909 as a garden suburb of the Mediterranean port of Jaffa, Tel Aviv soon became a model of Jewish self-rule and was celebrated as a jewel in the crown of Hebrew revival. Over time the ...city has transformed into a lively metropolis, renowned for its architecture and culture, openness and vitality. A young city, Tel Aviv continues to represent a fundamental idea that transcends the physical texture of the city and the everyday experiences of its residents.
Combining historical research and cultural analysis, Maoz Azaryahu explores the different myths that have been part of the vernacular and perception of the city. He relates Tel Aviv’s mythology to its physicality through buildings, streets, personal experiences, and municipal policies. With critical insight, he evaluates specific myths and their propagation in the spheres of both official and popular culture.
Azaryahu explores three distinct stages in the history of the mythic Tel Aviv: The First Hebrew City assesses Tel Aviv as Zionist vision and seed of the actual city; Non-Stop City depicts trendy, global post-Zionist Tel Aviv; and The White City describes Tel Aviv’s architectural landscape, created in the 1930s and imbued with nostalgia and local prestige. Tel Aviv: Mythography of a City will appeal to urban geographers, cultural historians, scholars of myth, and students of Israeli society and culture.
In Israel, gates, fences, and walls encircle public spaces while guards scrutinize, inspect, and interrogate. With a population constantly aware of the possibility of suicide bombings, Israel is ...defined by its culture of security.Security and Suspicionis a closely drawn ethnographic study of the way Israeli Jews experience security in their everyday lives.
Observing security concerns through an anthropological lens, Juliana Ochs investigates the relationship between perceptions of danger and the political strategies of the state. Ochs argues that everyday security practices create exceptional states of civilian alertness that perpetuate-rather than mitigate-national fear and ongoing violence. In Israeli cities, customers entering gated urban cafés open their handbags for armed security guards and parents circumnavigate feared neighborhoods to deliver their children safely to school. Suspicious objects appear to be everywhere, as Israelis internalize the state's vigilance for signs of potential suicide bombers. Fear and suspicion not only permeate political rhetoric, writes Ochs, but also condition how people see, the way they move, and the way they relate to Palestinians. Ochs reveals that in Israel everyday practices of security-in the home, on commutes to work, or in cafés and restaurants-are as much a part of conflict as soldiers and military checkpoints.
Based on intensive fieldwork in Israel during the second intifada,Security and Suspicioncharts a new approach to issues of security while contributing to our appreciation of the subtle dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This book offers a way to understand why security propagates the very fears and suspicions it is supposed to reduce.
Arabs make up approximately 20 percent of the population within Israel's borders. Until the 1970s, Arab citizens of Israel were a mostly acquiescent group, but in recent decades political activism ...has increased dramatically among members of this minority. Certain activists within this population claim that they are a national and indigenous minority dispossessed by more recent settlers from Europe. Ethnically based political organizations inside Israel are making nationalist demands and challenging the Jewish foundations of the state.Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israelinvestigates the rise of this new movement, which has important implications for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a whole. Political scientist Oded Haklai has written the first book to examine this manifestation of Palestinian nationalism in Israel. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with key figures, Haklai investigates how the debate over Arab minority rights within the Jewish state has given way to questioning the foundational principles of that state. This ground-breaking book not only explains the transitions in Palestinian Arab political activism in Israel but also presents new theoretical arguments about the relationship between states and societies. Haklai traces the source of Arab ethnonationalist mobilization to broader changes in the Israeli state, such as the decentralization of authority, an increase in political competition, intra-Jewish fragmentation, and a more liberalized economy.Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israelavoids oversimplified explanations of ethnic conflict. Haklai's carefully researched and insightful analysis covers a neglected aspect of Israeli politics and Arab life outside the West Bank and Gaza. Scholars and policy makers interested in the future of Israel and peace in the Middle East will find it especially valuable.
This highly original historical and political analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict combines the unique perspectives of two prominent segments of the Middle Eastern puzzle: Israeli Jews and the ...Palestinian citizens of Israel. Written jointly by an Israeli anthropologist and a Palestinian family therapist born weeks apart to two families from Haifa,Coffins on Our Shouldersmerges the personal and the political as it explores the various stages of the conflict, from the 1920s to the present. The authors weave vivid accounts and vignettes of family history into a sophisticated multidisciplinary analysis of the political drama that continues to unfold in the Middle East. Offering an authoritative inquiry into the traumatic events of October 2000, when thirteen Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli police during political demonstrations, the book culminates in a radical and thought-provoking blueprint for reform that few in Israel, in the Arab world, and in the West can afford to ignore.
Although the Israeli state subscribes to the principles of administrative fairness and equality for Jews and Arabs before the law, the reality looks very different. Focusing on Arab land loss inside ...Israel proper and the struggle over development resources, this study explores the interaction between Arab local authorities, their Jewish neighbors, and the agencies of the national government in regard to developing local and regional industrial areas. The author avoids reduction to simple models of binary domination, revealing instead a complex, multi-dimensional field of relations and ever-shifting lines of political maneuver and confrontation. He examines the prevailing concept of ethnic traditionalism and argues that the image of Arab traditionalism erects imaginary boundaries around the Arab localities, making government incursion disappear from view, while underpinning and rationalizing the exclusion of the Arab towns from development planning. Moreover, he shows how images of environmental protection mesh with and support such exclusion. The study includes a chronology of events, tables, maps, and photographs.
This revised paperback edition with a new epilogue brings accounts of Arab land loss and struggles for economic development up to date. The author also deals with the challenges of life and research in Israel and examines the possibilities of sharing the land as the homeland of both Jews and Palestinians.
In the 1990s, thousands of non-Jewish Latinos arrived in Israel as
undocumented immigrants. Based on his fieldwork in South America and Israel, Barak
Kalir follows these workers from their decision ...to migrate to their experiences
finding work, establishing social clubs and evangelical Christian churches, and
putting down roots in Israeli society. While the State of Israel rejected the
presence of non-Jewish migrants, many citizens accepted them. Latinos grew to favor
cultural assimilation to Israeli society. In 2005, after a large-scale deportation
campaign that drew criticism from many quarters, Israel made the historic decision
to legalize the status of some undocumented migrant families on the basis of their
cultural assimilation and identification with the State. By doing so, the author
maintains, Israel recognized the importance of practical belonging for understanding
citizenship and national identity.
In the last two decades, the study of social stereotypes and prejudice has become one of the central interests in social psychology in particular. One reflection of this growing interest is the focus ...on shared stereotypes and prejudices. The primary reason for this development is the recognition that stereotypes and prejudice play a determinative role in shaping intergroup relations. In situations of conflict, they are simultaneously outcomes of the accumulated animosity between the involved groups and also feed on the continuation of the conflict by furnishing the cognitive-affective basis for the experienced mistrust by the parties. In spite of this recognition, no systematic analysis of the stereotypes and prejudice was carried out in real situations. This book tries to rectify this by applying a general and universal conceptual framework to the study of the acquisition and development of stereotypes and prejudice in a society involved in an intractable conflict.
