New Article: Meiton, Electrifying Jaffa

Meiton, Fredrik. “Electrifying Jaffa: Boundary-Work and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Past & Present (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtw002

 
Extract

In the summer of 1923 the Russian-born Jewish engineer Pinhas Rutenberg threw the switch at Mandate Palestine’s first electrical distribution system, lighting up a portion of Allenby Street in Tel Aviv. It was the first step in an endeavour that, according to Rutenberg, was ‘destined to become the most important instrument for the sound development of the country’. The local British government in Jerusalem agreed, as did Whitehall. Major Hubert Young of the Middle East Department predicted that ‘the successful inauguration of Mr. Rutenberg’s schemes will do more than anything else to pacify Palestine, facilitate immigration, and develop the country’. The excitement was echoed among Tel Aviv’s Jewish residents. To them, the roadside pylons could not multiply fast enough. To the Palestinians in neighbouring Jaffa, however, the grid’s expansion was a mixed blessing. The high-tension cable wound its way into town with promises of modernity and the creature comforts of civilized life, but it also signalled the encroachment of Jewish nationalism on Arab Palestine. A significant portion of the Palestinian Arab community was staunchly opposed to Rutenberg’s electrification, and a few weeks before the lights went on along Allenby Street, an angry crowd made its way through the city chanting ‘The lamp-posts of Rutenberg are the gallows of our nation’.

This article argues that electrification played a part in making Palestine an object of nationalist contention, and that properties of the technology itself had a fundamental and lasting impact on the character and strategies of both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. Far from being part of a neutral backdrop, then, the process of electricity generation and distribution was inherently political.

 

 

New Article: Goren, The Jews of Jaffa at the Time of the Arab Revolt

Goren, Tamir. “The Jews of Jaffa at the Time of the Arab Revolt: The Emergence of The Demand for Annexation.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15.2 (2016): 267-81.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2015.1090113

 

Abstract

The outbreak of the 1936 riots immediately motivated the Jews of Jaffa to sever their ties with that city in favour of annexation to Tel Aviv. This demand became one of the thorniest and most sensitive problems on the local level, and engaged the British authorities right up to the end of the Mandate. It also became a concern of the highest order for the institutions of the yishuv, bound up with the Zionist struggle as a whole. This article focuses on the origin of the problem and its treatment from 1936 to 1939. The activity of the Jewish side is studied as being in conflict with that of the British and Arab side. From the outset, a solution hardly seemed likely. As long as the authorities preferred a policy of non-involvement, the issue remained a quarrel between the Jews and the Arabs. Although this period ended without any progress towards a settlement, it produced several notable gains for the Jewish side that formed a basis for continued action towards annexation in the years to come.

 

 

 

New Article: Goren, Tel Aviv and the Question of Separation from Jaffa 1921–1936

Goren, Tamir. “Tel Aviv and the Question of Separation from Jaffa, 1921–1936.” Middle Eastern Studies (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1125340
 
Abstract

The ordinance granting Tel Aviv the status of local council was given in 1921. Immediately thereafter, the municipal council acted to amend the terms of the ordinance so as to free Tel Aviv entirely from the supervision of Jaffa municipality. Tel Aviv aimed for the status of an independent municipality, but still wished to safeguard its interests in Jaffa. Detachment from Jaffa was for long a central issue for Tel Aviv municipality. The article analyses the Jewish side’s stance on Jaffa from 1921 until the outbreak of the disturbances in 1936, when Tel Aviv detached itself almost entirely from Jaffa. In the 1920s, the importance of Jaffa for the Jews was mainly economic, but in the 1930s, the addition of the demographic dimension reflected the growing status of the Jaffa Jewish community and was decisive in increasing the Jewish influence in Jaffa.

 

 

 

New Article: Hakak, Undesirable Relationships’ between Jewish Women and Arab Men

Hakak, Yohai. “Undesirable Relationships’ between Jewish Women and Arab Men: Representation and Discourse in Contemporary Israel.” Ethnic and Racial Studies (early view; online first).

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1103877

 

Abstract

Demography has been broadly considered as a key aspect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On the Jewish side, State intervention to encourage Jewish immigration and Jewish births is well known. Much less known are the efforts to discourage inter-faith relations. These ‘problematic relationships’ between Arab men and Jewish women from low socio-economic backgrounds have become a high priority item in public discussions over the last decade. In this article I will explore the main discursive practices used in this heated debate by those opposing these relationships. ‘Moral panic’ as a theoretical framework will help me analyse the ways in which Jewish women and Arab men who engage in such relations are presented. As I will show, attempts to criminalize and vilify Arab men meet with strong opposition. Presenting Jewish women as weak and passive victims seems as a more successful strategy, especially when done by professionals from the psych-professions.

 

 

 

New Article: Weinstock, Changing Epistemologies under Conditions of Social Change in Two Arab Communities

Weinstock, Michael. “Changing Epistemologies under Conditions of Social Change in Two Arab Communities in Israel.” International Journal of Psychology 50.1 (2015): 29-36.

 
 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12130

 

Abstract

The study of epistemic thinking focuses on how people understand and coordinate objective and subjective aspects of knowing and make sense of multiple and discrepant knowledge claims. Typically described in terms of normative development, cross-cultural studies show differences in epistemic development and characteristics of epistemic thinking. This study focuses on within-culture variations of epistemic thinking, with the assumption that social change will produce changes in development. Arab society in Israel has undergone notable change over the last half century. In this cross-sectional research design, cross-generational comparison and rural–urban comparison were used as proxies for longitudinal social change. Three generations of Muslim Arab women in a village in Israel (20 adolescents, 20 mothers and 20 grandmothers) and 20 Muslim Arab adolescents from a large, mixed city in the same region responded to six dilemmas invoking epistemic thinking. Village adolescents were more subjectivist than their mothers and grandmothers. Sociodemographic characteristics representing greater exposure to diverse people and ideas accounted for generational differences. Both urban and rural adolescents tended towards subjectivist perspectives, and they did not differ. Parents’ education levels emerged as the sociodemographic variables most consistently related to epistemic thinking. Epistemic thinking mediated the relationship between generation and gender role/cross-sex relation values.

 
 
 

Dissertation: Hankins | Black Musics, African Lives, and the National Imagination in Modern Israel

Hankins, Sarah Elizabeth. Black Musics, African Lives, and the National Imagination in Modern Israel. PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 2015.

 
URL: http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/17467531

 
Abstract

“Black Musics, African Lives, and the National Imagination in Modern Israel,” explores the forms and functions of African and Afro-diasporic musics amidst heated public debate around ethnic identity and national membership. Focusing on musical-political activity among Ethiopian Israeli citizens, Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, and West African labor migrants in Tel Aviv, I examine how diverse types of musicking, from nightclub DJing and live performance to church services and protest concerts, voice African and Afro-descendent claims to civic status in a fractured urban environment. Grounded in ethnographic participant observation, the dissertation analyzes musical and political activity through the lens of “interpretive modes” that shape contemporary Israel’s national consciousness, and which influence African and Afro-descendant experiences within Israeli society. These include “Israeliyut,” or the valorization of so-called native Israeli cultural forms and histories; “Africani,” an emerging set of aesthetic and social values that integrates African and Afro-descendent subjectivities into existing frameworks of Israeli identity; and “glocali,” or the effort to reconcile local Israeli experience with aspects of globalization.

Tracing “blackness” as an ideological and aesthetic category through five decades of public discourse and popular culture, I examine the disruptions to this category precipitated by Israel’s 21st century encounter with African populations. I find that the dynamics of debate over African presence influence an array of mass-cultural processes, including post-Zionism, conceptions of ethnic “otherness,” and the splintering of Israel’s left into increasingly narrow interest groups. Contributing to the literature on continuity and change within urban-dwelling African diasporas, this dissertation is the first monograph exploring dramatic transformations of Israel’s highly consolidated national culture through in-depth ethnography with migrant groups.

 

 

New Article: Ebenstein, Changing the Cost of Children and Fertility: Evidence from the Israeli Kibbutz

Ebenstein, Avraham, Moshe Hazan, and Avi Simhon. “Changing the Cost of Children and Fertility: Evidence from the Israeli Kibbutz.” The Economic Journal (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12240

 

Abstract

Prior to 1996, Israelis in collective communities (kibbutzim) shared the costs of raising children equally. This paper examines the impact of privatizing costs of children on the fertility behaviour of young couples. Exploiting variation in parental cost sharing across kibbutzim, we estimate that lifetime fertility declined by 0.65 children. We also examine the exit decisions of members, and find that couples were most likely to leave the kibbutz if they were either higher income or lower fertility. This pattern is also observed among Israeli emigrants, in which higher educated and lower fertility couples are more likely to leave Israel.

 

New Article: Burton, Israeli Marriage Law and Identity in the Jewish State

Burton, Elise K. “An Assimilating Majority?: Israeli Marriage Law and Identity in the Jewish State.” Journal of Jewish Identities 8.1 (2015): 73-94.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_jewish_identities/v008/8.1.burton.html

 

Excerpt

The concept of assimilation in Israel, and its discursive attachment to intermarriage, is haunted by its origins in a historical context pre-dating the Israeli state, in which many Jews could hardly imagine a society in which they represented the majority culture. Israeli Jews are still inundated with collective memories of being a persecuted minority, most prominently during the Holocaust. Eli Ben Dahan, the deputy minister of Religious Affairs, explained his reference to the Malka-Mansour wedding as part of the “silent Holocaust” by claiming that Israel is the only country in the world in which “ha-peruzah ha-yehudit” (the Jewish diaspora) is increasing rather than decreasing, because in Israel there are no mixed (read: civil) marriages. Echoing the assumptions of early Zionist intellectuals such as Ruppin and Zollschan, Ben Dahan prophesied, “if we allow mixed marriages [here], we would cause the Jewish people to become diminished in Israel as well.”

But the “diaspora” logic favoring the religious marriage system is clearly counterproductive for the preservation of the Jewish people if one considers op-ed headlines like “Israel Forced Morel to Convert to Islam.” Kamir, author of this op-ed, rebukes her fellow Israelis: “The conversion of Morel to Islam is a reminder to all that have not understood: the connection between religion and state in Israel… is the same thing that pushes Jews to renounce their Jewish identity.”  In terms of the Zionist ethno-religious nationalism that underpins the social infrastructure of the Israeli state, Malka and Mansour “are not two citizens permitted to enter a marriage agreement, but [like] a bird and a fish—two species that do not intermingle.” In order to marry, Malka was thus compelled to change her identity and join her husband’s religious community. The solution, Kamir suggests, is “a little more freedom and trust in humanity, and a little less existential Holocaust anxiety,” which would allow Israeli Jews of both sexes to make decisions according to their individual conscience.

Put more bluntly, the Israeli state’s embrace of halakha to adjudicate both an individual’s “authentic” Jewish status with regard to their eligible marriage partners is, in actuality, the force that “diminishes the Jewish people” within Israel. Despite the fearmongering and racialized discourses of assimilation and intermarriage that demonize attempts to introduce civil marriage in Israel, the absence of civil marriage primarily inhibits the integration of self-identified Jews who do not satisfy the Chief Rabbinate’s definition of Jewish identity. Ultimately, Israeli discourse against intermarriage is marshaled to defend and promote the interests of small constituencies of practicing Orthodox and right-wing ethnic nationalists, whose political influence is already completely out of proportion to their representation in the Israeli population. But its effects are more far-reaching and damaging than its immediate political implications because its claims offer such a narrow reading of what it means to be authentically Jewish. As a result, Israeli citizens are compelled to interpret their Jewish identity in terms of whether they are descendants of a “truly” Jewish matriline. Jewish women additionally carry the burden of sacrificing not only their own, but also their children’s, legal Jewish identity if they choose to marry a non-Jew, thus engaging in “assimilation,” regardless of their individual relationships to Judaism and Jewishness. Zionism’s call for a Jewish nation-state, which in turn requires discrete definitions of Jewishness to implement and enforce a national legal system, has therefore precluded the possibility and acceptance of more diverse conceptualizations of authentically Jewish marriages and lives.

New Article: Acosta, The Dynamics of Israel’s Democratic Tribalism

Acosta, Benjamin. “The Dynamics of Israel’s Democratic Tribalism.” Middle East Journal 68.2 (2014): 268-86.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mei/mei/2014/00000068/00000002/art00006

 

Abstract

This article evaluates Israeli national identity and its core founding tenets of Zionism, democracy, and Judaism. For decades, demographic changes and associated cultural and ideological fluctuations have gradually pushed Israel into a national identity conflict, as multiple ethnic and sectarian identity groups have come to promote competing interpretations of the state’s purpose, political nature, and connection to territory. Continued demographic shifts, situated amid the sociopolitical dynamics of what this article will define as Israel’s “democratic tribalism,” will further test the compatibility of the constituent parts of Israeli national identity: the respective roles of Zionist ideology, democratic institutions, and the territory of the historic Jewish homeland.

 

 

New Article: Hankins, Multidimensional Israeliness and Tel Aviv’s Tachanah Merkazit

Hankins, Sarah. “Multidimensional Israeliness and Tel Aviv’s Tachanah Merkazit: Hearing Culture in a Polyphonic Transit Hub.” City & Society 25.3 (2013): 282-303.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ciso.12023/abstract

 

Abstract

Israel’s heated public debate over the socio-political implications of increasing demographic diversity plays out with special prominence in Tel Aviv, home to large minority citizen populations and a destination for foreign workers and refugees from Asia and Africa. The city’s New Central Bus Station, or tachanah merkazit, is a transit hub and commercial complex in which multiple ethnic groups enact aesthetic and cultural dimensions of Israeli urban and national identity in flux. This paper presents a sensory ethnography of the tachanah: sonic and musical expressions of “local” and “global” Israeliness are analyzed against a backdrop of near-constant motion and transit. The somatic and ideological dimensions of movement enable Jewish Israelis, minority citizens and foreigners to assimilate sounds of culture within the tachanah at deeply-felt, personal levels. The tachanah’s sonic activity is inherently political, having the potential to impact collective identity and civic reality in Tel Aviv and across Israel

Cite: Lustick, Statistical Manipulation as a Solution to Israel’s Demographic Problem

Lustick, Ian S. “What Counts is the Counting: Statistical Manipulation as a Solution to Israel’s ‘Demographic Problem’.” Middle East Journal 67.2 (2013): 185-205.

 

URL: www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mei/mei/2013/00000067/00000002/art00003

 

Abstract:

Seven years ago, heightened anxieties in Israel about an Arab threat to Israel’s Jewish majority triggered an influential campaign to change perceptions of who is winning the demographic battle. Proposals to annex 60% or more of the West Bank are based in part on its success in persuading many Israelis and others of the nonexistence of 1 to 1.5 million “missing“ Palestinians. This campaign’s estimates of Arab and Jewish population for 2004 and beyond are subjected to close scrutiny, revealing complex but systematic manipulation of data and exposing the political objectives and drastic distortions of the campaign.

Cite: Okun and Kagya, Fertility Change among Post-1989 Immigrants to Israel from the Former Soviet Union

 

Okun, Barbara S. Shlomit Kagya. “Fertility Change among Post-1989 Immigrants to Israel from the Former Soviet Union.” International Migration Review 46.4 (2012): 792–827.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imre.12001/abstract

 

 

Abstract

Research on the evolution of immigrant fertility patterns has focused on the expected reduction in fertility among immigrants from high fertility, less developed countries who arrive in relatively low-fertility developed societies. The current research considers a different context in which immigrants from the low-fertility Former Soviet Union arrive in a relatively high-fertility setting in Israel. This research context allows us to test various theories of immigrant fertility, which cannot normally be distinguished empirically. Results from Cox multivariate regressions of parity-specific progression do not support assimilation theory, which would predict an increase in fertility following migration, in this context. We interpret the very low fertility rates of the FSU immigrants in Israel, relative to all relevant comparison groups, in terms of the economic uncertainty and hardship experienced during a difficult transition period by immigrants who have high aspirations for social mobility in their destination society.