New Book: Starr and Dubinsky, The Israeli Conflict System

Starr, Harvey, and Stanley Dubinsky, eds. The Israeli Conflict System. Analytic Approaches, Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016.

Table of Contents

Introduction : crossing disciplinary and methodological boundaries in conflict systems analysis / Harvey Starr and Stanley Dubinsky — Event Type, sub-state Actor and Temporal Dimensions of the Dissent-Repression Relationship : Evidence from the Middle East / Philip A. Schrodt and Ömür Yilmaz — Turbulence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict System : Predicting Change / G. Dale Thomas — Causes and Consequences of Unbalanced Relations in the International Politics of the Middle East, 1946-2010 / Zeev Maoz and Belgin San-Akca — Trade Networks and Conflict Processes in the Israeli Conflict System / Nadia Jilani, Ashley Murph-Schwarzer, Dona Roy, Matthew Shaffer, and Brian Warby — Trade in Conflict Zones : The Israeli Conflict System / Katherine Barbieri and Adrian R. Lewis — The Geography of Conflict : Using GIS to Analyze Israel’s External and Internal Conflict Systems / Harvey Starr, Roger Liu and G. Dale Thomas — Language, Conflict, and Conflicting Languages in Israel/Palestine / Stanley Dubinsky and William D. Davies — The Role of Holocaust Memory in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict / Andreas Musolff — An Experimental Procedure Comparing How Students in Middle Eastern and Western Democracies Cope with International Conflicts / Ranan D. Kuperman — Subjectivity in the Application of the Just War Doctrine to Collateral Damage : An Experimental Test in Israel and the US / Nehemia Geva and Belinda Bragg — Predicting Revolution and Regime Instability in the Middle East : The Uncertain Future of Arab-Israeli Relations / Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.

ToC: Hebrew Studies 56 (2015)

Below are the relevant articles for Israel Studies from the latest issue of Hebrew Studies. For a full Table of Contents,click here.

 

Innovative Designation of Diminution in the Writings of Abraham Shlonsky

pp. 231-243

Bat-Zion Yemini

Memory and History in Israeli Post-Apocalyptic Theater

pp. 245-263

Zahava Caspi

Questioning Boundaries of Language and the World: Ambivalence and Disillusionment in the Writings of Shimon Adaf

pp. 265-294

Dorit Lemberger

Hebrew Neologisms in the Writings of Anton Shammas

pp. 295-314

Adel Shakour, Abdallah Tarabeih

The Pain of Two Homelands: Immigration to Israel in Twenty-First Century Hebrew Prose Fiction

pp. 315-331

Smadar Shiffman

“Our Virgin Friends and Wives”?: Female Sexual Subjectivity in Yona Wallach’s Poetry

pp. 333-356

Amalia Ziv

New Testament Jesus in Modern Jewish Literature: A Symposium

pp. 357-358

Zev Garber

Jesus and the Pharisees through the Eyes of Two Modern Hebrew Writers: A Contrarian Perspective

pp. 359-365

Neta Stahl

A Question of Truth: Form, Structure, and Character in Der man fun Natseres

pp. 367-376

Melissa Weininger

Overtones of Isaac and Jesus in Modern Hebrew Narrative

pp. 377-384

Aryeh Wineman

The Jewish Jesus: Conversation, Not Conversion

pp. 385-392

Zev Garber

Reviews

 

Compassion and Fury: On The Fiction of A. B. Yehoshua by Gilead Morahg (review)

pp. 433-436

Yael Halevi-Wise

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Periodicals

pp. 437-456

Books Received — 2015

pp. 457-460

New Article: Stavans, If you know Amharic you can read this: Emergent Literacy in Multilingual Pre-Reading Children

Stavans, Anat. “‘If you know Amharic you can read this’: Emergent Literacy in Multilingual Pre-Reading Children.” In Crosslinguistic Influence and Crosslinguistic Interaction in Multilingual Language Learning (ed. Gessica De Angelis et al; London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015): 149-72.

Extract

The Ethiopian families, who immigrated to Israel in the early 1990s, represent an instrumental example for the study of the social and cultural integration of an immigrant community with low socio-economic status, limited schooling and non-Western oral or literate cultural traditions. Children from such backgrounds, even those born in the new country, have to cope with at least three languages to greater or lesser degrees and for different purposes in their day-to-day lives. These families are overt bilinguals with Amharic/Tigris as their home language and Hebrew as the dominant language of the host society and the language of schooling; however, they are also latent trilinguals because in addition they contend with English presence in the daily life with its influence into the local languages, its presence in all media input, its economic (local production must be marked in Hebrew, Arabic and English) and geopolitical attributes, as well as the core curricular requirement for scholastic graduation. The Ethiopian family exhibits mostly oral literacy in the home language while school requires literacy in Hebrew and in English (at times as early as first and second grades). Unlike veteran or higher SES families, most Ethiopian parents cannot afford the benefits of extracurricular enrichment programs or tutors and they rely mostly on what is available in their environment and what they as members of the community can provide for their children.

 

 

Reviews: Levy, Poetic Trespass

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

Reviews

• Irving, Sarah. “Can literature disrupt Israel’s identity?” Electronic Intifada, May 19, 2015.
• Stern, Ramon. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.3 (2015): 605-607.

New Article: Mendel, ‘Practical’ Arabic in the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, 1913-48

Mendel, Yonatan. “From German Philology to Local Usability: The Emergence of ‘Practical’ Arabic in the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa – 1913–48.” Middle Eastern Studies (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1061508

 
Abstract
This article examines the pedagogical shifts in the study of Arabic at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, the leading school for Arabic studies in the Jewish education system. Analyzing the moulding of Arabic studies in the crucial years of educational institutionalization (1913–48), it demonstrates an inevitable tension with regard to Arabic studies: between the German philological approach and the ‘practical’ approach. In light of this tension, it shows the gradual emergence of a new ‘practical’ approach in the Jewish education system in Palestine, which was not only the result of a clash between different pedagogical methods, but was propelled by another, powerful, clash: that of the heated political conflict in Palestine. Using primary sources from seven different archives, in Israel, Britain and Germany, this article reveals that the shift towards practicality was motivated by political developments and ideological shifts as much as by pedagogical considerations, and therefore has had significant ramifications for the emerging field of Arabic studies in Jewish schools in Palestine/Israel.

 

 

New Article: Isleem, Arabic-Hebrew Codeswitching in Druze Online Communication

Isleem, Martin. “Arabic-Hebrew Codeswitching: The Case of the Druze Community in Israel.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics (early view; online first)

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12091

 

 

Abstract

The study is based on Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame model to examine codeswitching between Arabic and Hebrew, two languages that share significant morphological and syntactic structures. Particularly, this study investigates Druze online communication in the form of face-to-face and written talkbacks found on local websites in Israel. The findings show that Arabic sets the morphosyntactic frame of the mixed constituents, whereas Hebrew provides at least as many morphemes as does Arabic. Combined with the fact that both languages have similarities in their morphological and syntactic structures, this may indicate that Myers-Scotton’s model falls short in its sociolinguistic application to Arabic-Hebrew codeswitching. The sociolinguistic status of the second language, Hebrew, may be far greater than its syntactical status in the Druze sociolinguistic profile.

 

New Article: Isleem, Druze Linguistic Landscape in Israel

Isleem, Martin. “Druze Linguistic Landscape in Israel: Indexicality of New Ethnolinguistic Identity Boundaries.” International Journal of Multilingualism 12.1 (2015): 13-30.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2013.868467

 

Abstract

The Druze community in Israel is a distinct religious community currently undergoing important ethnolinguistic shifts. The government’s implementation of an official policy has led to the deconstruction and reshaping of the Druze political and national identity to one that differs substantially from that of the Palestinian minority in Israel. In this study, I argue that the visibility, vitality and appreciation of Hebrew in the Druze linguistic landscape are indicative of new ethnolinguistic boundaries of the Druze identity in Israel. The fact that the Druze in Israel are dispersed throughout the Galilee and Mount Carmel area and experience varying levels of language contact as well as divergent economic relations with their Palestinian–Israeli and Jewish–Israeli neighbours, suggests that one cannot expect uniformity in the Druze linguistic markets or the processes of social, cultural and linguistic identification. This study will show that Hebrew has become a dominant component of the linguistic repertoire and social identity of the Druze in the Mount Carmel area since it has become the first choice of communication as the linguistic landscape indicates.

New Article: Prashizky & Remennick, Young Russian-Speaking Adults in Tel-Aviv

Prashizky, Anna, and Larissa Remennick. “Cultural Capital in Migration: Fishka Association of Young Russian-Speaking Adults in Tel-Aviv, Israel.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36.1 (2015): 17-34.

 
 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2014.990364

 

Abstract

Migration scholars are increasingly interested in the integration experiences and identity dilemmas of the 1.5 immigrant generation. This article examines the activities of Fishka, an association of young Russian Israelis living in Tel-Aviv and vicinity, who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union as older children or adolescents. Our empirical analysis draws upon the concepts of social and cultural capital in immigration and explores how the hybrid forms of cultural production emerge at the intersection between various tiers of Russian culture and Israeli realities that surround them. The article explores the acts of cultural translation of various activities and genres from Russian to Hebrew and vice versa. By introducing these hybrid forms of cultural capital to their native peers, the 1.5-ers take pride in their heritage, elevate the prestige of Russian culture in Israel and ultimately reinforce their feelings of belonging to the new country. Our findings highlight ethnic hierarchies (imported from the country of origin or created in Israel) that shape the practices of distinction and boundary building among young Russian Israelis.

 
 
 

New Article: Stavans, Bi-Literacy Patterns in Ethiopian Immigrant Families

Stavans, Anat. “Enabling Bi-Literacy Patterns in Ethiopian Immigrant Families in Israel: A Socio-Educational Challenge.” International Journal of Multilingualism 12.2 (2015): 178-95.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1009373

 

Abstract

This paper explores the role that languages and literacy practices play in Ethiopian immigrant families transposed to Israel as part of Israel’s family language policy, by examining parental perspectives on their respective L1 and L2 usages, in both parents’ and children’s lives, as well as by examining the home literacy provisions supporting children’s literacy development. The study profiles 67 Ethiopian immigrant families and describes the factors affecting home and school literacy patterns, assessing usage and attitude in L1 and L2 proficiency, as well as families’ literacy-driven discourse practices. The findings of this study indicate that Ethiopian parents engage in their children’s educational and social life until first grade, when they relinquish the maintenance of L1 in favour of a yet-incomplete L2. The Ethiopian case is instrumental to describe language and literacy affordances in a country that is officially trilingual, a neighbourhood that is at least quadrilingual, a home that is bilingual and a schooling system that is monolingual. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that although both Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian parents have different extended discourses and perhaps even discursive preferences, the form and function of these discourses coincide with those needed or assumed for successful development of scholastic literacy. Against this background, a need emerges to espouse a mutual respect and interaction between the two literacy traditions to enhance both children’s and parents’ literacy development.

 

New Book: Snir, Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?

Snir, Reuven. Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity? Interpellation, Exclusion, and Inessential Solidarities. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

 

In Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?: Interpellation, Exclusion, and Inessential Solidarities, Professor Reuven Snir, Dean of Humanities at Haifa University, presents a new approach to the study of Arab-Jewish identity and the subjectivities of Arabized Jews. Against the historical background of Arab-Jewish culture and in light of identity theory, Snir shows how the exclusion that the Arabized Jews had experienced, both in their mother countries and then in Israel, led to the fragmentation of their original identities and encouraged them to find refuge in inessential solidarities. Following double exclusion, intense globalization, and contemporary fluidity of identities, singularity, not identity, has become the major war cry among Arabized Jews during the last decade in our present liquid society.

Table of contents

Preface
Introduction
Chapter One: Identity: Between Creation and Recycling
Chapter Two: Arabized Jews: Historical Background
Chapter Three: Arabized Jews in Modern Times between Interpellation and Exclusion
Chapter Four: Globalization and the Search for Inessential Solidarities
Chapter Five: White Jews, Black Jews
Conclusion
Appendices
I. Iraqi-Jewish Intellectuals, Writers, and Artists
II. Sami Michael, “The Artist and the Falafel” (short story)
References
Index

Reuven Snir is a Professor of Arabic Literature and Dean of Humanities at Haifa University. He has published many books, articles, translations, and encyclopedia entries. His latest book is Baghdad – The City in Verse (Harvard University Press, 2013).

ToC: Israel Studies 20.2 (2015); Special Section: Bodies In Question

Israel Studies 20.2 (2015) Table of Contents:

 

Special Section: Bodies In Question

Wars of the Wombs: Struggles Over Abortion Policies in Israel (pp. 1-26)

Rebecca Steinfeld

Halutzah or Beauty Queen? National Images of Women in Early Israeli Society (pp. 27-52)

Julie Grimmeisen

‘Re-orient-ation’: Sport and the Transformation of the Jewish Body and Identity (pp. 53-75)

Yotam Hotam

‘Uniting the Nation’s Various Limbs into a National Body’ the Jerusalem People’s House (pp. 76-109)

Esther Grabiner

 

Articles

The Test of Maritime Sovereignty: The Establishment of the Zim National Shipping Company and the Purchase of the Kedmah, 1945–1952 (pp. 110-134)

Kobi Cohen-Hattab

Budgeting for Ultra-Orthodox Education—The Failure of Ultra-Orthodox Politics, 1996–2006 (pp. 135-162)

Hadar Lipshits

The Mizrahi Sociolect in Israel: Origins and Development (pp. 163-182)

Yehudit Henshke

Review Essay: The Theoretical Normalization of Israel in International Relations(pp. 183-189)

[Reviews  of: The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers: When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace, by Yael S. Aronoff; Why Hawks Become Doves: Shimon Peres and Foreign Policy Change in Israel by Guy Ziv]

Brent E. Sasley

 

Notes on Contributors (pp. 190-191)

Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 192-194)

New Article: Ganayim and Ibrahim, Number Processing in Arabic and Hebrew Bilinguals

Ganayim, Deia and Raphiq Ibrahim. “Number Processing in Arabic and Hebrew Bilinguals. Evidence Supporting the Compatibility Effect.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46.4 (2015): 565-78.

 

URL: http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/46/4/565

 

Abstract

In the current study, a direct assessment of the effect of presentation language and format on the compatibility effect of two-digit numbers was made by contrasting performance of Arabic/Hebrew bilinguals in a digital (Hindi digits/Arabic digits) and verbal numerical comparison task (Arabic an inverted language: units-decades and Hebrew a non-inverted language: decades-units). Our data revealed in digital presentation format a regular compatibility effect in Hindi digits and Arabic digits characterized by lower reaction-time (RT) means for compatible number pairs than incompatible ones with no difference in the RT means of participants in the two languages, Arabic language–Hindi digits as a mother tongue and Hebrew language–Arabic digits as a second language. However, in verbal presentation format, different patterns of compatibility effect were found in Arabic and Hebrew verbal numbers. In Arabic number words, a regular compatibility effect was found, while in Hebrew number words, no compatibility effect was found. This reflects the influence and modulation of the lexical-syntactic structure of the language in two-digit numbers comparison. Evidently, these differences in the compatibility effect advocate and strengthen the claim that two-digit numbers comparison is influenced by the numbers presentation format. Different modes of presentation of two-digit numbers (digital vs. verbal) can lead to different number comparison styles. The parallel model accounts for the numerical comparison in digital presentation, while for the verbal numbers presentation, a revised sequential-syntactic model is preferable.

New Book: Halperin, Babel in Zion

Halperin, Liora R. Babel in Zion. Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920-1948. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

 

 

The promotion and vernacularization of Hebrew, traditionally a language of Jewish liturgy and study, was a central accomplishment of the Zionist movement in Palestine in the years following World War I. Viewing twentieth-century history through the lens of language, author Liora Halperin questions the accepted scholarly narrative of a Zionist move away from multilingualism, demonstrating how Jews in Palestine remained connected linguistically by both preference and necessity to a world outside the boundaries of the pro-Hebrew community even as it promoted Hebrew and achieved that language’s dominance. The story of language encounters in Jewish Palestine is a fascinating tale of shifting power relationships, both locally and globally. Halperin’s absorbing study explores how a young national community was compelled to modify the dictates of Hebrew exclusivity as it negotiated its relationships with its Jewish population, Palestinian Arabs, the British, and others outside the margins of the national project and ultimately came to terms with the limitations of its hegemony in an interconnected world.

Table of Contents

Note on transliteration and translation

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Babel in Zion

Languages of Leisure in the Home, the Coffeehouse, and the Cinema

Peddlers, Traders, and the Languages of Commerce

Clerks, Translators, and the Languages of Bureaucracy

Zion in Babel: The Yishuv in Its Arabic-Speaking Context

Hebrew Education between East and West: Foreign-Language Instruction in Zionist Schools

Conclusion: The Persistence of Babel

Notes

Bibliography

Index

 

New Article: Raijman et al, Language Proficiency among Post-1990 Immigrants in Israel

Raijman, Rebeca, Moshe Semyonov, and Rona Geffen. “Language Proficiency among Post-1990 Immigrants in Israel.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (online view prior to print publication).

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2014.982523

 

Abstract

This paper focuses on the process of linguistic assimilation among post-1990 immigrants arriving in Israel under the Law of Return. We analyse levels of Hebrew proficiency among four immigrant groups (Ethiopia, Former Soviet Union [FSU], Middle Eastern and North African countries [MENA]) and countries in Europe and America [EUAM]) and by language of origin (Amharic, Russian, Spanish, English and French). The analysis is based on a data-set collected by the Central Bureau of Statistics: the post-1990 Immigrant Survey. Controlling for all relevant factors, the data reveal substantial differences across origin groups: immigrants of MENA and EUAM countries have higher probabilities of reporting the highest level of command of the language than their FSU and Ethiopian counterparts. Speakers of Spanish and French attain higher levels of Hebrew proficiency than speakers of Russian, English and Amharic. Apparently, the very existence of a large and residentially concentrated ethnic or linguistic community (as is the case for Ethiopian and FSU immigrants) becomes a potential disincentive for improving their Hebrew skills. The fact that English is a lingua franca understood and prized in Israel explains the slow process of English speakers’ language acquisition. The findings are discussed in light of existing theories of linguistic assimilation.

New Book: Levy, Poetic Trespass. Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

URL: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10389.html

 

 –

A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. In Poetic Trespass, Lital Levy brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine.

 –

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xv

Introduction: The No-Man’s-Land of Language 1

PART I. HISTORICAL VISIONS AND ELISIONS
Chapter 1. From the “Hebrew Bedouin” to “Israeli Arabic”: Arabic, Hebrew, and the Creation of Israeli Culture 21
Chapter 2. Bialik and the Sephardim: The Ethnic Encoding of Modern Hebrew Literature 60

PART II. BILINGUAL ENTANGLEMENTS
Chapter 3. Exchanging Words: Arabic Writing in Israel and the Poetics of Misunderstanding 105
Chapter 4. Palestinian Midrash: Toward a Postnational Poetics of Hebrew Verse 141

PART III. AFTERLIVES OF LANGUAGE
Chapter 5. “Along Came the Knife of Hebrew and Cut Us in Two”: Language in Mizrahi Fiction, 1964-2010 189
Chapter 6. “So You Won’t Understand a Word”: Secret Languages, Pseudo-languages, and the Presence of Absence 238
Conclusion. Bloody Hope: The Intertextual Afterword of Salman Masalha and Saul Tchernichowsky 285

Bibliography 299
Index 329

 

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New Article: Harel, A Zionist Newspaper in Damascus during the Reign of Faysal in 1920

Harel, Yaron. “Ha-Mizrah/al-Sharq: A Zionist Newspaper in Damascus during the Reign of Faysal in 1920.” Middle Eastern Studies 50.1 (2014): 129-43.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2013.863758

DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2013.863758

 

Abstract

During the span of 22 months stretching from the entry of Faysal b. Husayn into Damascus in October 1918 until his expulsion at the end of July 1920, 42 newspapers and 13 journals appeared in Syria, more than half of them in Damascus. During this time, in which the press had a critical role in expressing and shaping public opinion in Syria, it became clear to the emissaries of the Zionist institutions in Damascus that they, too, needed to turn to this medium in order to spread their message. Hence, they argued that there was a need to publish a newspaper reflecting a moderate and calming outlook that would draw Arabs and Jews nearer to and increase their understanding of the Zionist idea. The result of their activities in this area saw the founding of a bilingual, Hebrew and Arabic, newspaper, called ha-Mizrah/al-Sharq (‘The East’). An examination of the only extant copies of the three issues that were printed before the newspaper ceased publication provides us with a deeper observation into the Zionist activities in Damascus during the reign of King Faysal.

Cite: Maschiach, Self and other in Israeli children’s literature

Maschiach, Celina. "Face to Face: Self and Other in Israeli Children’s Literature." Bookbird 48,1 (2010): 23-29.

 

 

Keywords: Israel: Literature, Israel: Children and Youth, Israeli-Arab Conflict, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, סלינה משיח, Coexistence, Bilingualism