ToC: Israel Studies Review 31.2 (2016)

Israel Studies Review 31.2 (2016)

Table of Contents

Articles

• The Puzzle of The University on Air: A Story of Media and Academia in Israel, 1977–2013 / Hagai Boas and Ayelet Baram-Tsabari (1–21)
• Menachem Begin’s World Travels in the 1950s: A Road to Political Legitimacy / Ofira Gruweis-Kovalsky (22–40)
• The New Economic Policy of 1962: How Israeli Economists Almost Changed the Israeli Economy / Ronen Mandelkern (41–60)
• War and Memory: The Israeli Communist Commemoration of the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1986 / Amir Locker-Biletzki (61–79)
• Israel Goes to the Polls: The Road to Elections for the Constituent Assembly, 1948–1949 / Meir Chazan (80–100)
• Westernization and Israelization within Israel’s Extreme Orthodox Haredi Society / Menachem Keren-Kratz (101–129)
• Turkish-Israeli Relations during the Cold War: The Myth of a Long ‘Special Relationship’ / Kilic Bugra Kanat (130–149)

Reviews

• Uri Ram, The Return of Martin Buber: National and Social Thought in Israel from Buber to the Neo-Buberians [in Hebrew].
• Christopher L. Schilling, Emotional State Theory: Friendship and Fear in Israeli Foreign Policy.
• Marwan Darweish and Andrew Rigby, Popular Protest in Palestine: The Uncertain Future of Unarmed Resistance.
• Erella Grassiani, Soldiering under Occupation: Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
• Assaf Meydani, The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel: Constitutional Rhetoric and State Practice.
• Yael Raviv, Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel.

ToC: Israel Affairs, 23.2 (2017)

Israel Affairs 23.2 (2017)

Table of Contents

Articles

• The rise and decline of ‘optional control’ in the IDF / Eitan Shamir (205-230)
•  ‘Spokesman-ship is a weapon’: Israeli army news management during the October 1973 war / Giora Goodman (231-252)
• The erosion of US‒Israeli relations during Obama’s second term / Robert O. Freedman (253-272)
• A ruling party in the making: Mapai in the 1948 war / Avi Bareli (273-302)
• Politics vs. trade: a Realist view on Turkish‒Israeli economic relations / Cenap Çakmak & Murat Ustaoğlu (303-323)
• Israel is too expensive for us? Political consumerism, public policy and entrepreneurship: the case of the cottage cheese boycott / Omri Shamir (324-341)
• Banking and philanthropy in pre-state Jewish Palestine: particularist Sephardic philanthropy disguised as support for the general Zionist cause / Riki Galia (342-360)
• ‘Digital soap opera’ online radio listening patterns and the digital divide / Mira Moshe, Tal Laor & Shimon Friedkin (361-384)
• The Palestinian Authority: the dangerous transition from failing entity to failing state / Kobi Michael (385-410)
• The Holocaust paradox: Holocaust denial and its use in the Arab world / Nitza Davidovitch & Nissim Dana (411-426)
• Cultural change in a kibbutz factory as an outcome of the privatization process: an Israeli case study / Yaffa Moskovich & Yuval Achouch (427-446)

Book Reviews

• Divine service? Judaism and Israel’s armed forces (447-448)
• Crossing: Suez, 1973 (448-449)
• Eye to eye (450-451)
• Defensive Shield: An Israeli Special Forces Commander on the Front Line of Counterterrorism (451-452)

New Article: Azaryahu, Battle Remains and the Formation of a Battlescape, Sha’ar HaGai

Azaryahu, Maoz. “Wrecks to Relics: Battle Remains and the Formation of a Battlescape, Sha’ar HaGai, Israel.” In Memory, Place and Identity: Commemoration and Remembrance of War and Conflict (ed. Danielle Drozdzewski, Sarah De Nardi, and Emma Waterton; Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2016).

 

 

Absract

Beyond prior knowledge about the association of the relics with history, their interpretation and evaluation in terms of memory and legacy is a matter of perspective based on particular ideological premises. Writing about his bus ride from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 1994, the travel writer Paul Theroux mentioned these relics: ‘Old-fashioned armored cars and rusty trucks had been left by the roadside as memorials to the men who had died in what the Israelis call the War of Liberation. The vehicles, so old, so clumsy, roused pity.’ To Theroux the relics ‘roused pity’. In Israeli patriotic culture they have been associated with heroic sacrifice, evoking veneration and respect. Despite their repeated relocations in the local landscape, the authenticity they exude substantially augments their symbolic capacity to conflate the historical battlefield at Bab el Wad and the contemporary battlescape at Sha’ar HaGai.

 

 

New Article: O’Connell, The ‘Lessons Learned’ Trap and the Israeli Armoured Experience

O’Connell, Damien. “The ‘Lessons Learned’ Trap and How to Avoid It: Drawing from the Israeli Armoured Experience, 1948-1973.” Journal on Baltic Security 2.1 (2016): 117-28.

 

URL: http://www.baltdefcol.org/files/files/JOBS/JOBS.02.1.pdf#page=121 (PDF)

 

Abstract

The following essay explores some of the problems with “lessons learned.” It offers a few tentative observations on the limitations and dangers of lessons. To illustrate these (but not necessarily prove them), it then looks at the experiences of the Israel Defence Forces, particularly its armoured forces, from 1948 to 1973. Finally, three recommendations discuss how military organizations might reduce the danger of lessons leading them astray.

 

 

 

Lecture: Morris, A New Look at the 1948 War (Georgetown, April 20, 2016)

The Department of Government  invites you to

The 201​6 Goldman ​Lecture

“A New Look at the 1948 War”

Benny Morris, Professor of History
Middle East Studies Department, Ben-Gurion University

Wednesday, April 20
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Copley Formal Lounge

Please RSVP by ​Monday, April 18
at the Eventbrite page

Benny Morris is Professor of History in the Middle East Studies Department at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba, Israel, where he has taught since 1997. He was born in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh and was brought up in Jerusalem and New York. He earned his BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Cambridge University. Between 1978 and 1991 he was a journalist and diplomatic correspondent at The Jerusalem Post. 

He has been a fellow at the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute and a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, St Antony’s College in Oxford and at Oxford’s Centre for Hebraic and Jewish Studies, Yarnton Manor. In addition, he has taught at the University of Florida, Dartmouth College, the University of Maryland, Munich University and Harvard University.

Professor Morris has published ten books, including The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988); The Roots of Appeasement, the British Weekly Press and Nazi Germany during the 1930s (1991); Israel’s Border Wars 1949- 1956 (1993); Righteous Victims (1999); and 1948, A History of the First Arab Israeli War (2008) – winner of the Jewish National Book Award. He is currently completing a book on Turkey’s relations with its Christian minorities, 1876-1924. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The National Interest, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, and other newspapers and journals in Europe.

Lecture: Sabbagh-Khoury, Zionist Left and the Nakbah, 1936-56 (NYU, April 11, 2016)

Areej Sabbagh-Khoury

Meyers-Taub Postdoctoral Fellow (NYU) / Fulbright Scholar

“The Zionist Left, Settler-Colonial Practices and the Nakba in Marj Ibn ‘Amer (Jezreel Valley), 1936 – 1956.”

April 11, 2016 @ 6pm
14A Washington Mews, 1st Floor

Syllabus: Greenberg, Sociology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Greenberg, Lev. “Sociology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” – Fall 2015 Syllabus.

URL: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/50b5/1f9d713efbc958e31d57775939bc70885e38.pdf (PDF)

New Book: Hever, Suddenly the Sight of War

Hever, Hannan. Suddenly, the Sight of War. Violence and Nationalism in Hebrew Poetry in the 1940s. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.

 

Suddenly, the Sight of War is a genealogy of Hebrew poetry written in pre-state Israel between the beginning of World War II and the War of Independence in 1948. In it, renowned literary scholar Hannan Hever sheds light on how the views and poetic practices of poets changed as they became aware of the extreme violence in Europe toward the Jews.

In dealing with the difficult topics of the Shoah, Natan Alterman’s 1944 publication of The Poems of the Ten Plagues proved pivotal. His work inspired the next generation of poets like Haim Guri, as well as detractors like Amir Gilboa. Suddenly, the Sight of War also explores the relations between the poetry of the struggle for national independence and the genre of war-reportage, uniquely prevalent at the time. Hever concludes his genealogy with a focus on the feminine reaction to the War of Independence showing how women writers such as Lea Goldberg and Yocheved Bat-Miryam subverted war poetry at the end of the 1940s. Through the work of these remarkable poets, we learn how a culture transcended seemingly unspeakable violence.

 

Table of Contents

Part I: Hebrew Symbolist Poetry During World War II
1. “The Real Has Become a Symbol”
2. The Dispute over War Poetry
3. Criticism of Nationalism Violence
4. Reading Nationalist Poetry Critically
5. Nationalism Anthologized
6. The Living-Dead in Joy of the Poor
7. Revence on a Nationalist Scale
8. Leah Goldberg Writes War Poetry
9. The Duality of the Symbolist Woman Poet
10. The Living-Dead and the Female Body
11. Amir Gilboa: Boy Poet

Part II: Historical Analogy and National Allegory During the Holocaust
12. A Surprising Moral Judgment
13. The Uncommon Stance of a Major Poet
14. Critical Reception
15. A Postnationalist Reading
16. A Symbol, Not an Allegory
17. Allegory in The Poems of the Plagues of Egypt versus Symbolism in Joy of the Poor
18. Allegory as a Nonhegemonic Stance
19. Alterman and the Memory of the Holocaust
20. The Father-Son Strategy
21. Blind Vengeance
22. Breaking the Cycle of Crime and Punishment
23. History of the Defeated

Part III: Symbols of Death in the National War for Independence
26. Return of the Hegemonic Symbol
27. The Living-Dead in the Independence War
28. Amir Gilboa and the Subversion of the Symbol
29. Gilboa versus the Metaphor of the Living-Dead
30. Poets as Reporters
31. Sorrow Petrified into Symbols
32. Hegemonic Strategies
33. From Reportage to Lyric
34. Women Write of Fallen Soldiers as Flesh and Blood
35. In the Service of National Subjectivity
36. Women and the Metaphor of the Living-Dead
37. Criticism of the Living-Dead Metaphor
38. The Authority and Power of Women
39. Popular versus Canonical Mourning
40. The Secrets and Power of Women

Conclusion
Index

 

HANNAN HEVER is the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at Yale University. He is the author of several books, including Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon.

 

 

 

Dissertation: Poppe, Constructions of the I in the German Poetry of Israeli Writers

Poppe, Judith. “I am writing into deserted times” – Constructions of the I in the German Poetry of the Israeli Writers Netti Boleslav and Jenny Aloni, PhD dissertation. Göttingen: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 2015 (in German).

 

URL: https://ediss.uni-goettingen.de/handle/11858/00-1735-0000-0028-86AD-7

 

Abstract

This study examines a subject that has been disregarded in literary history, namely Israeli literature written in the German language. Two authors, Jenny Aloni and Netti Boleslav, as well as their poetry, are used as paradigmatic case studies to show the relevance of this literature that crosses political and cultural borders. In the late thirties Boleslav and Aloni emigrated from Nazi-Germany and Prague to Palestine/Israel where they found a new home. They wrote poetry and prose in German until their death in the 1980s and 1990s. Their lives and works are reconstructed on the basis of documents such as diaries, letters and unpublished manuscripts that are contained in their literary estates and made public partly for the first time. From a methodological perspective, the hermeneutical analysis of the poems in their poetic value is here complemented by poststructuralist approaches of the Cultural Studies. Focusing on the construction of the “I” (the “I” in the poetry as well as the “I” of the empirical authors), this study pursues the traces of different times and places, where the literature has left its mark. The oeuvres of Aloni and Boleslav emerges at the intersections of two worlds, the German and the Israeli, and they wander between various regions and political units such as Bohemia, Nazi and post-Nazi Germany, the State of Israel and Czechoslovakia. Their poems draw from “Jewish” and “Israeli” literature, German pop culture, bucolic poetry and Zionist historiography. Until now the unique position of German Literature in Israel has been almost completely neglected. The present study fills this scholarly gap. The research combines concepts by Deleuze/Guattari and Kühne in order to coin the notion of “Kleine Zwischenliteratur”, which describes the main features of this literature. One of the main goals of the present examination is to grant this literature a more prominent place in the history of literary. Based on the results of the present thesis’ analysis it becomes apparent that notions of transdisciplinary and transnationality need to be mobilised in order to challenge the accepted categories of the discipline, enabling us to close the blind spot of the Israeli literature written in German.

 

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 22.1 (2016)

Israel Affairs, Volume 22, Issue 1, January 2016 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Articles Sixty-two years of national insurance in Israel Abraham Doron Pages: 1-19 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111632 Rethinking reverence for Stalinism in the kibbutz movement Reuven Shapira Pages: 20-44 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111640 Making war, thinking history: David Ben-Gurion, analogical reasoning and the Suez Crisis Ilai Z. Saltzman Pages: 45-68 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111638   Military power and foreign policy inaction: Israel, 1967‒1973 Moshe Gat Pages: 69-95 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111636 Arab army vs. a Jewish kibbutz: the battle for Mishmar Ha’emek, April 1948 Amiram Ezov Pages: 96-125 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111633 Lip-service to service: the Knesset debates over civic national service in Israel, 1977–2007 Etta Bick Pages: 126-149 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111630 State‒diaspora relations and bureaucratic politics: the Lavon and Pollard affairs Yitzhak Mualem Pages: 150-171 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111637 Developing Jaffa’s port, 1920‒1936 Tamir Goren Pages: 172-188 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111634 University, community, identity: Ben-Gurion University and the city of Beersheba – a political cultural analysis Yitzhak Dahan Pages: 189-210 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111631 The Palestinian/Arab Strategy to Take Over Campuses in the West – Preliminary Findings Ron Schleifer Pages: 211-235 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111639 Identity of immigrants – between majority perceptions and self-definition Sibylle Heilbrunn, Anastasia Gorodzeisky & Anya Glikman Pages: 236-247 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1111635 Book Reviews Jabotinsky: a life David Rodman Pages: 248-249 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.112095 Ethos clash in Israeli society David Rodman Pages: 250-251 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120967 Nazis, Islamists and the making of the modern Middle East David Rodman Pages: 252-254 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120968 The new American Zionism David Rodman Pages: 255-257 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120969 Rise and decline of civilizations: lessons for the Jewish people David Rodman Pages: 258-259 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1120970

New Article: Penslar, Rebels Without a Patron State: How Israel Financed the 1948 War

Penslar, Derek. “Rebels Without a Patron State: How Israel Financed the 1948 War.” In Purchasing Power. The Economics of Modern Jewish History (ed. Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015): 171-91, 316-20.

 

Extract

The Zionist project was as much a product of the era of post-1945 decolonization as it was of colonialism’s zenith in the early twentieth century. The British Empire nurtured the Jewish National Home, yet it was empire’s collapse that made possible the state of Israel’s birth. The nascent state of Israel generated a revolutionary torque akin to that which caused the overthrow of tyrannical regimes and expulsion of colonial masters throughout the world. Like other revolutionary projects of the last century, Zionism displayed hubris and cruelty, but also an unshakable faith in humanity’s capacity to re-engineer itself. Some historians of the 1948 war have described the Yishuv as a well-oiled machine that aligned its entire population into a dedicated fighting force. Not only are such explanations exaggerated, they also overlook the fact that other national liberation organizations such as the FLN or Viet Minh were highly successful at organizing the extraction of revenue and resources from the population and developing an effective fighting force. Compared with the Arab world, Israel in 1948 was indeed exceptional, and the war that secured sovereignty for Israel also brought catastrophe upon the Palestinians. When observed on a global level, however, Zionism’s resemblance to anticolonial and national liberation movements becomes apparent, not only in self-conception but also in method.

 
See: http://www.academia.edu/21075807/Rebels_Without_a_Patron_State_How_Israel_Financed_the_1948_War
 

 

New Article: Waage and Stenberg, The 1949 Armistice Negotiations between Israel and Syria

Waage, Hilde Henriksen, and Petter Stenberg . “Cementing a State of Belligerency: The 1949 Armistice Negotiations between Israel and Syria.” Middle East Journal 70.1 (2016): 69-89.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_middle_east_journal/v070/70.1.waage.html

 

Abstract

After the Arab states’ devastating defeat in the 1948 war with Israel, Syria refused to give in without a fight. Syria held on to several bridgeheads inside the former Palestine. Proving as skillful as their Israeli opponents at the game of contradictory arguments, the Syrians steadfastly refused to concede to Israel’s demands. The negotiations in 1949 eventually resulted in a demilitarized zone on the Syrian-Israeli border, and with it a state of belligerency was cemented.

 

 

 

ToC: Israel Studies 21.1 (2016; Narratives of the 1948 war)

Volume 21, Number 1, Spring 2016

Table of Contents

Representations of Israeli-Jewish — Israeli-Palestinian Memory and Historical Narratives of the 1948 War

Edited by Avraham Sela and Alon Kadish

Preface and Acknowledgements

pp. V-VI

Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Historical Narratives of the 1948 War—An Overview

pp. 1-25
Avraham Sela, Avraham Kadish

 

The 1948 Palestine War on the Small Screen: A Comparative Analysis of its Representation in Two Israeli Television Series

pp. 27-53
Bosmat Garami

 

Israel’s Publications Agency and the 1948 Palestinian Refugees

pp. 54-81
Rafi Nets-Zehngut

 

The War of Independence Exhibited: A Study of Three Israeli Museums

pp. 82-108
Offer Boord

 

Contested Urban Memoryscape Strategies and Tactics in Post-1948 Haifa

pp. 109-131
Ziva Kolodney

 

The Making of a Myth: The Story of Kfar Etzion in Religious Zionism 1948–1967

pp. 132-156
Dror Greenblum

 

Descending the Khazooq: “Working Through” the Trauma of the Nakba in Emile Habibi’s Oeuvre

pp. 157-182
Assaf Peled

 

Wa-ma Nasayna (We Have Not Forgotten): Palestinian Collective Memory and the Print Work of Abed Abdi

pp. 183-208
Tal Ben-Zvi

 

Lecture: Morris, New Perspectives on the War of 1948

THE WAR OF 1948: NEW PERSPECTIVES

Dr. Benny Morris
Professor of History, Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University

Location: Leacock Building, Room 738, McGill University
Time: November 12, 2015, 6:00 P.M.
Convener: Michelle Whiteman, Director, ISGAP Canada

New Article: Tauber, The Arab Military Force in Palestine Prior to the Invasion of the Arab Armies, 1945–1948

Tauber, Eliezer. “The Arab Military Force in Palestine Prior to the Invasion of the Arab Armies, 1945–1948.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.6 (2015): 950-85.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1044896

 

Abstract

The article examines the size, structure, composition and modi operandi of the Arab military forces which fought the Jews in the 1948 war, before the invasion of the Arab regular armies, based first and foremost on the Arab sources themselves. An attempt is made to assess the substantial reasons behind the Arab defeat in the first ‘civil war’ phase of the campaign, including a comparison of the number of combatants, which also explains the outcome.

 

 

New Book: Rodgers, Headlines from the Holy Land

Rodgers, James. Headlines from the Holy Land: Reporting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

 

 

Tied by history, politics, and faith to all corners of the globe, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fascinates and infuriates people across the world. Based on new archive research and original interviews with leading correspondents and diplomats, Headlines from the Holy Land explains why this fiercely contested region exerts such a pull over reporters: those who bring the story to the world. Despite decades of diplomacy, a just and lasting end to the conflict remains as difficult as ever to achieve. Inspired by the author’s own experience as the BBC’s correspondent in Gaza from 2002-2004, and subsequent research, this book draws on the insight of those who have spent years observing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Starting from a historical perspective, it identifies the challenges the conflict presents for contemporary journalism and diplomacy, and suggests new ways of approaching them.

 

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Rosemary Hollis
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Reporting from the Ruins: The End of the British Mandate and the Creation of the State of Israel
• 2 Six Days and Seventy-Three
• 3 Any Journalist Worth Their Salt
• 4 The Roadmap, Reporting, and Religion
• 5 Going Back Two Thousand Years All the Time
• 6 The Ambassador’s Eyes and Ears
• 7 Social Media: A Real Battleground
• 8 Holy Land
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

 

 

New Book: Gartman, Return to Zion

Gartman, Eric. Return to Zion. The History of Modern Israel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

 

 

The history of modern Israel is a story of ambition, violence, and survival. Return to Zion traces how a scattered and stateless¬ people reconstituted themselves in their traditional homeland, only to face threats by those who, during the many years of the dispersion, had come to regard the land as their home. This is a story of the “ingathering of the exiles” from Europe to an outpost on the fringes of the Ottoman Empire, of courage and perseverance, and of reinvention and tragedy.

Eric Gartman focuses on two main themes of modern Israel: reconstitution and survival. Even as new settlers built their state they faced constant challenges from hostile neighbors and divided support from foreign governments, as well as being attacked by larger armies no fewer than three times during the first twenty-five years of Israel’s history. Focusing on a land torn by turmoil, Return to Zion is the story of Israel—the fight for independence through the Israeli Independence War in 1948, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the near-collapse of the Israeli Army during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Gartman examines the roles of the leading figures of modern Israel—Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzchak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon—alongside popular perceptions of events as they unfolded in the post–World War II decades. He presents declassified CIA, White House, and U.S. State Department documents that detail America’s involvement in the 1967 and 1973 wars, as well as proof that the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was a case of mistaken identity. Return to Zion pulls together the myriad threads of this history from inside and out to create a seamless look into modern Israel’s truest self.

Eric Gartman is an intelligence analyst for the United States Department of Defense who has lived and studied in Israel and traveled extensively throughout the Middle East.

New Article: Nets-Zehngut et al, Self-Censorship in Conflicts: Israel and the 1948 Palestinian Exodus

Nets-Zehngut, Rafi, Ruthie Pliskin, and Daniel Bar-Tal. “Self-Censorship in Conflicts: Israel and the 1948 Palestinian Exodus.” Peace and Conflict 21.3 (2015): 479-99.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pac0000094

 

Abstract
The typical collective memories of societies involved in intractable conflicts play a major role in the eruption and continuation of the conflicts, whereas the positive transformation of these memories to being less self-serving promotes peacemaking. A major factor that inhibits such transformation is self-censorship. Self-censorship, practiced by members of a society’s formal institutions, inhibits the dissemination of alternative, more accurate narratives of the conflict that may change dominating biased conflict-supporting memories. Despite the importance of formal self-censorship in maintaining collective memories of conflicts, little empirical and theoretical research has examined this phenomenon. The present study addresses this omission. It examines the self-censorship practiced from 1949 to 2004 in 3 formal Israeli institutions (the National Information Center, the IDF/army, and the Ministry of Education) regarding the main historical event of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. This is done by analyzing all of these institutions’ publications produced throughout the 56-year research period and interviewing their key position holders. The results show that the institution gatekeepers practiced self-censorship for 5 reasons: garnering international support, mobilizing citizens, the impact of Zionist ideology, institutional norms, and fear of sanctions. The empirical findings are used to elicit theoretical insights, such as a definition for formal self-censorship, the difference between self-censorship practiced by gatekeepers (from formal and informal institutions) and that practiced by ordinary individuals, the 5 reasons for such self-censorship (distinguishing between 2 categories—intrinsic and extrinsic reasons), and the reasons that led the gatekeepers to admit that they had self-censored.

 

 

New Article: Gutman, Counter-Memory as Oppositional Knowledge-Production in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Gutman, Yifat. “Looking Backward to the Future. Counter-Memory as Oppositional Knowledge-Production in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.” Current Sociology (early view, online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392115584644

 

Abstract

This article examines a strategy of peace activism that gained visibility in the last decades: memory activism. Memory activists manifest a temporal shift in transnational politics: first the past, then the future. Affiliated with the globally-circulating paradigm of historical justice, memory activist groups assume that a new understanding of the past could lead to a new perception of present problems and project alternative solutions for the future. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and discourse analysis among memory activists of the 1948 war in Israel since 2001, the article examines the activist production of counter-memory during active conflict. Using Coy et al.’s typology of oppositional knowledge-production, the article shows how the largest group of memory activism in Israel produced ‘new’ information on the war, critically assessed the dominant historical narrative, offered an alternative shared narrative, and began to envision practical solutions for Palestinian refugees. However, the analysis raises additional concerns that reach beyond the scope of the typology, primarily regarding the unequal power relations that exist not only between the dominant and activist production of oppositional knowledge, but also among activists.

New Article: Golan, Resettlement of Former Arab Areas in West Jerusalem

Golan, Arnon. “The 1948 Wartime Resettlement of Former Arab Areas in West Jerusalem.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.5 (2015): 804-20.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1016872

 

Abstract

The 1948 war resulted in a sweeping spatial transformation of areas included in the bounds of the newly formed Jewish state, including that of the western Jerusalem. Arab neighbourhoods were almost totally depopulated during fighting and shortly after resettled by Jews, most of which has been war refugees from Jerusalem’s Jewish neighbourhoods or newly arrived immigrants. The effect of war on human spatial structures is in many cases abrupt and sweeping. Yet, due to the limited use of heavy weaponry by both belligerent sides, the damage to built-up structures and infrastructure systems was not inclusive. Repopulation of former Arab areas by Jews was of large scale and carried out by different local and national institutions. Yet it seems as in many cases it was personal initiatives, especially of war refugees that sought for alternative housing that had a crucial effect over the newly formed settlement pattern. One way or another, the spatial structure of Jerusalem that was formed in decades of urban dynamic development was drastically transformed after a short period of fighting between December 1947 and early 1949, that affects the spatial structure of Israel’s capital city until now.