Bulletin: Israeli Palestinians and Arab Minorities in Israel

Books

Nadim N. Rouhana, Israel and its Palestinian Citizens

 

 

Articles

• Yasmin Aboud-Halabi and Michal Shamai, The Role of Parents in Defining Collective Identity of Arab Adolescents in Israel
• Muhammad Amara, Language, Identity and Conflict: Examining Collective Identity through the Labels of the Palestinians in Israel
• Asnat Dor and Hana Hallifa-Yunnis, Prolonged Coresidence: Israeli Arab Emerging Adults Who Live with Their Parents
• Sfaa Ghnadre-Naser and Eli Somer, The Nakba Experience among Internally Displaced Palestinians in Israel
• Caesar Hakim, Jenny Kurman, and Yohanan Eshel, Stereotype Threat and Stereotype Reactance: Performance of Palestinian Citizens of Israel on Achievement Tests
• Tal Meler, Palestinian-Israeli Single Mothers Accord Motherhood a New Meaning
• Kareem Nasser, Dalia Sachs, and Amalia Sa’ar, A Necessary Evil: Residential Placement of People with Intellectual Disability among the Palestinian Minority in Israel
• Paul S. Rowe, Palestinian Christian Civil Society Organizations and the Survival of the Christian Minority in Israel-Palestine
• Amalia Sa’ar, Alisa C. Lewin, and Dalit Simchai, Feminist Identifications among Jewish and Palestinian Students in Israel
• Maha Sabbah-Karkaby and Haya Stier, Education and Age at Marriage among Palestinian Women in Israel
• Maisa Totry-Fakhoury and Nurit Alfasi, Applying Complexity Theory for Analyzing Arab-Palestinian Towns in Israel
• Ghadir Zreik, David Oppenheim, and Abraham Sagi-Schwartz, Infant Attachment and Maternal Sensitivity in the Arab Minority in Israel

 

Bulletin: Education in Israel

Books

• Barry Chazan, A Philosophy of Israel Education
• Anat Even Zahav and Orit Hazzan, Risk Management of Education Systems. The Case of STEM Education in Israe
• Malka Muchnik et al, Elective Language Learning and Policy in Israel
• Miri Yemini, Internationalization and Global Citizenship. Policy and Practice in Education

Articles

• Audrey Addi-Raccah and Yael Grinshtain, Forms of Capital and Teachers’ Views of Collaboration and Threat Relations With Parents in Israeli Schools
• Audrey Addi-Raccah and Yael Grinshtain, Teachers’ capital and relations with parents: A comparison between Israeli Jewish and Arab teachers
• Orly Alaluf, Dorel Ungureanu, and Alina S. Rusu, Israeli Teachers’ Attitudes Assessment regarding Parental Involvement of Children with Special Needs
• Ayman K. Agbaria, The ‘right’ education in Israel: segregation, religious ethnonationalism, and depoliticized professionalism
• Khalid Arar and Asmahan Masry-Herzalla, Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Justice Leadership: Female Jewish and Arab School Principals in Israel
• Nimrod Aloni, Humanist Schools in the Face of Conflicting Narratives and Social Upheaval: The Case of Israel
• Iris BenDavid-Hadar, Education for All: The Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Schools
• Miri Goldratt and Eric H. Cohen, Non Formal Education: A Case Study of Personal Education in Israeli Schools
• Eyal Kaminka, Teaching about the Holocaust in Israel
• Ofer Katchergin, The Medicalizing Power of Rhetorical Images in the Israeli Learning Disabilities Field
• Adam Nir et al, School autonomy and 21st century skills in the Israeli educational system
• Iair G. Or and Elana Shohamy, English Education Policy in Israel
• Oren Shlomo, Sub-formalization in East Jerusalem Schooling
• Benzi Slakmon, Educational Technology Policy in Israel
• Tina Waldman, Efrat Harel, and Götz Schwab, Getting their feet wet: trainee EFL teachers in Germany and Israel collaborate online

Reviews

• Toni Rickenback, on Zvi Bekerman’s The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Theses

• Tamar Bulmash, iPosture: A Closer Look at the Lifestyle Practices of Jewish Israeli School Children

 

New Article: Kijek, Hebraism, Polonization, and Tarbut Schools in the Last Decade of Interwar Poland

Kijek, Kamil. “Was It Possible to Avoid ‘Hebrew Assimilation’? Hebraism, Polonization, and Tarbut Schools in the Last Decade of Interwar Poland.” Jewish Social Studies 21.2 (2016): 105-41.

 

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jewisocistud.21.2.04

 

Abstract

This article examines the problem of the chasm between Zionist ideology, Jewish cultural reality in interwar Poland, and the praxis of Zionist education of this period, manifested in the activities of the Tarbut school network. According to the Zionist idea of monocultural nationalism, the process of acculturation to which interwar Polish Jewry was subjected was conceived as assimilation, which threatened the possibility of the existence of Hebrew culture and Zionist activities in the diaspora. In this article I present reactions to acculturation (or assimilation) through the prism of the polemic of Polish- and Erets Yisrael–based ideologues and educators and through the dissonance between Tarbut educational ideology and praxis, as manifested in the Hebrew educational journal Ofakim, in other publications, and in school programs. I also analyze recollections of Tarbut pupils, their educational experiences, and accounts of how they were perceived in those schools.

 

 

 

New Article: Adwan et al, Portrayal of the Other in Schoolbooks

Adwan, Sami, Daniel Bar-Tal, and Bruce E. Wexler. “Portrayal of the Other in Palestinian and Israeli Schoolbooks: A Comparative Study.” Political Psychology 37.2 (2016): 201-17.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pops.12227

 

Abstract

The present study examined how Israelis and Palestinians present their narratives related to their conflict in school textbooks used by the state educational system and the ultraorthodox community in Israel and by all Palestinian schools in Palestinian National Territories. The focus was on how each side portrays the Other and their own group. The content analysis was based on a developed conceptual framework and standardized and manualized rating criteria with quantitative and qualitative aspects. The results showed in general that (1) dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the Other are rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books; (2) both Israeli and Palestinian books present unilateral national narratives that portray the Other as enemy, chronicle negative actions by the Other directed at the self-community, and portray the self-community in positive terms with actions aimed at self-protection and goals of peace; (3), there is lack of information about the religions, culture, economic and daily activities of the Other, or even of the existence of the Other on maps; (4) the negative bias in portrayal of the Other, the positive bias in portrayal of the self, and the absence of images and information about the Other are all statistically significantly more pronounced in Israeli Ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian books than in Israeli state books.

 

 

 

New Article: Klein & Shimoni-Hershkoviz, Privatization and Competition in the Education System

Klein, Joseph, and Lizi Shimoni-Hershkoviz. “The Contribution of Privatization and Competition in the Education System to the Development of an Informal Management Culture in Schools. A Case Study in Israel.” International Journal of Educational Management 30.4 (2016).

 

URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJEM-08-2014-0113

 

Abstract

Regulation and privatization of education systems has led to a “league standing” mentality regarding school achievements. The present study examines how school principals deal with the pressures of competition and achievements while aspiring to imbue pupils with values and a broad education. 12 high school principals were interviewed about external demands imposed on them, their educational policy and modes of operation. Publicly, school supervisors advocate a balance between core studies and education for values and enrichment. Informally they pressure principals to allocate maximal resources to preparing for high risk tests at the expense of other educational activities. School administrators and teachers, while dissatisfied with this approach, maintain a covert informal culture that concentrates mainly on external test achievements, which contrasts to their public value-rich educational vision, and undertake actions that raise educational, management and ethical questions. Placing the schools’ informal culture on the research agenda will increase institutional transparency and may contribute to a greater correspondence between school visions advocating knowledge and values, and the policy actually implemented. Raising this subject for discussion may contribute to a demand for more transparency in how schools allocate their resources. It may also help to increase the correspondence between the values and vision promulgated by schools and the educational policy they actually implement.

 

 

 

New Article: Weissman, An Historical Case Study in Jewish Women’s Education

Weissman, Debbie. “An Historical Case Study in Jewish Women’s Education: Chana Shpitzer and Maʿaleh.” Nashim 29 (2015): 21-38.
 
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/nashim.29.21
 
Abstract

This article presents two pioneering religious Jewish schools that opened their doors to girls in Jerusalem in the first decade and a half after the end of World War I and the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine. One of these schools, established by Chana Shpitzer, was exclusively for girls, while the other, Maʿaleh, was coeducational. Although both schools were Orthodox in outlook and identified with the growing Zionist movement, their approaches to Torah education for girls were quite different. I believe a comparison between these two schools offers some insights into the relative advantages and disadvantages of single-sex and mixed Jewish educational frameworks.

 

 

 

CFP: Jewish horticultural schools in Germany and their impact on Palestine / Israel

Call for Papers: Jewish horticultural and agricultural schools / training centers in Germany and their impact on horticulture, agriculture and landscape architecture in Palestine / Israel 

Place: Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem

Date: September 26, 2016

Deadline: April 30, 2016

In the course of the late 19th and early 20th century, more than 30 Jewish horticultural and agricultural training centers and schools (Hachshara) were established in Germany to train Jews from Germany and other European countries, particularly Eastern Europe. While these institutions aimed to prepare their graduates to emigrate from Germany, they also reflected the lure of the students toward the local land and landscape, a topic which was relative neglected in the emerging research field of ‘everyday history’(Alltagsgeschichte) of Jewish life in Germany. Upon arriving in Palestine, graduates of these centers were involved in establishing new settlements, led agricultural and horticultural activities, pioneered agricultural education, and practiced landscape architecture. Nevertheless, in contrast to the rich documentation of the role of the “Yekkes” in the country’s development, there is surprisingly little research on this group’s contribution to the emergence of the local landscape.

Our research explores the scopes, goals, and contribution of these German educational institutions. It documents the history of the schools and training centers, their curricula, and the actual work and life of their students. In parallel we investigate the impact of these graduates, after their arrival in Palestine, on the local landscape. We explore their landscape perceptions, their settlement projects (mainly in the Kibbutzim but not exclusively), and their contributions to the fields of agriculture, horticulture, and landscape architecture.
On September 26, 2016 we will hold a workshop in Jerusalem, organized together with the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, in order to bring together German and Israeli researchers to discuss these issues and exchange knowledge and ideas. We invite scholars of all disciplines, including but not limited to architecture, horticulture, agriculture, the humanities, and the social sciences, to send proposals for papers addressing the research topics and related issues.

Interested scholars are invited to send an abstract of 300 words and a short bio of 100 words to Sharon Gordon sharon.n.gordon@gmail.com.

We encourage scholars to send full papers or work in progress prior to the workshop, though such exchange will not be obligatory.

Due date is 30/4/2016.

New Book: Bekerman, The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Bekerman, Zvi. The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education. Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

The Promise of Integrated and Multicultural Bilingual Education presents the results of a long-term ethnographic study of the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel that offer a new educational option to two groups of Israelis–Palestinians and Jews–who have been in conflict for the last one hundred years. Their goal is to create egalitarian bilingual multicultural environments to facilitate the growth of youth who can acknowledge and respect “others” while maintaining loyalty to their respective cultural traditions. In this book, Bekerman reveals the complex school practices implemented while negotiating identity and culture in contexts of enduring conflict. Data gathered from interviews with teachers, students, parents, and state officials are presented and analyzed to explore the potential and limitations of peace education given the cultural resources, ethnic-religious affiliations, political beliefs, and historical narratives of the various interactants. The book concludes with critique of Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives that currently guide peace education, maintaining that one of the primary weaknesses of current bilingual and multicultural approaches to peace education is their failure to account for the primacy of the political framework of the nation state and the psychologized educational perspectives that guide their educational work. Change, it is argued, will only occur after these perspectives are abandoned, which entails critically reviewing present understandings of the individual, of identity and culture, and of the learning process.

 
Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1
• 1. Positioning the Author
• 2. Theoretical Perspectives
• 3. Methodology: From Theory to Implementation
• 4. Schools in Their Contexts
• Part 2
• 5. The Parents
• 6. Teachers at Their Work
• 7. The Children
• Part 3
• 8. School Routines: Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Classroom
• 9. Ceremonial Events
• 10. Conflicting National Narratives
• Part 4
• 11. The Graduates
• 12. Conclusions
• Author Index
• Subject Index

 

ZVI BEKERMAN teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as culture and identity intersect with issues of social justice, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education.

 

 

 

New Article: Hanna, Dealing with Difference in the Divided Educational Context

Hanna, Helen. “Refugee Dealing with Difference in the Divided Educational Context: Balancing Freedom of Expression and Non-Discrimination in Northern Ireland and Israel.” Compare (early view; online first).

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2015.1119649

 

Abstract

It has long been established that an effective citizenship education in a multicultural society must incorporate some exposure to a variety of views on different topics. However, the ability and willingness to deal with difference relating to controversial matters of national identity, narrative and conflict vary. This is not least the case in the ethno-nationally divided and conflict-affected jurisdictions of Northern Ireland and Israel. This article relates qualitative research conducted among students, teachers and policy-makers in these two jurisdictions that explores the area of dealing with difference within citizenship education. Using the starting point of a framework based on international law on education, the article goes on to consider how freedom of expression and non-discrimination are variously interpreted and balanced when exploring controversial issues in the classroom of a divided society.

 

 

 

New Article: Avni, Hebrew Learning Ideologies and the Reconceptualization of American Judaism

Avni, Sharon. “Hebrew Learning Ideologies and the Reconceptualization of American Judaism: Language Debates in American Jewish Schooling in the Early 20th Century.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 237 (2016): 119-37.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2015-0038

 

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Hebrew education was construed in the United States by tracing the Hebrew ideology debate of the early and mid-1900s, when dramatic changes were made to modernize Jewish schooling and its place within American society. Focusing on the Hebrew learning ideologies and educational philosophies of Samson Benderly and his followers, it examines how the Ivrit b’Ivrit movement – teaching Jewish content in Modern Hebrew – re-conceptualized Hebrew education not only as a form of language acquisition, but as a means of defining and giving shape to American Judaism for the Jewish immigrant community at that time.

 

 

 

New Article: Goren and Yemini, Teacher Perceptions at an International School and a Local Israeli School

Goren, Heela, and Miri Yemini. “Global Citizenship Education in Context: Teacher Perceptions at an International School and a Local Israeli School.” Compare (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2015.1111752
 
Abstract

We apply semi-structured interviews to conceptualise perceptions of global citizenship among teachers at an international school and teachers at a local public school in Israel, revealing discrepancies between theory and practice in global citizenship education (GCE). We find that teachers perceive global citizenship differently along three major axes: boundaries of global citizenship, practical aspects of GCE, and through the effect of Israel’s context. This study offers a comparative perspective that discerns the differing impacts of school context and student background on teacher perceptions at different kinds of schools and highlights the importance of teacher agency in GCE.

 

 

 

New Article: Fast, School Violence Policies in Israel

Fast, Idit. “Understanding Educational Policy Formation. The Case of School Violence Policies in Israel.” Sociology of Education (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038040715615923
 
Abstract

This study explores mechanisms underlying processes of educational policy formation. Previous studies have given much attention to processes of diffusion when accounting for educational policy formation. Less account has been given to the day-to-day institutional dynamics through which educational policies develop and change. Building on extensive governmental archival data, complemented with interviews and media analysis, I study the development and transformation of school violence policies in Israel. I argue that diffusion of global policy ideas and practices provides the menu of possible policies, while within-country struggles over legitimacy in the policy domain serve as a mechanism shaping which items on the menu becomes actual policy. Specifically, in the Israeli case, the interest in and action toward school violence were influenced by a global trend, but the actions of Psychological-Counseling Services (PCS) who struggled to assert their legitimacy as the authority on school violence in the Israeli Ministry of Education (MOE) shaped the adoption, rejection, and institutionalization of the specific school violence policy ideas and practices.

 

 

 

ToC: Journal of Jewish Education 81.4 (2015)

Journal of Jewish Education 81.4 (2015)

 

Editor’s Note

 

Experiencing Jewish Education: Perspectives From Learners and Leaders
Michelle Lynn-Sachs
pages 345-347

Articles

Demystifying a Black Box: A Grounded Theory of How Travel Experiences Impact the Jewish Identity Development of Jewish Emerging Adults
Scott Aaron
pages 348-376

The Guide with the Tourist Gaze: Jewish Heritage Travel to Poland
Sharon Kangisser Cohen
pages 377-397

Parshanut Through Art: The High School Student as Biblical Commentator
Matt Reingold
pages 398-412

Book Review

Jordana Silverstein, Anxious Histories (Berghahn Books, New York, NY, 2015)
Joshua King
pages 413-417

 

Miscellaneous

Editorial Board EOV

New Article: Cuhadar and Kampf, Does Conflict Content Affect Learning from Simulations?

Cuhadar, C. Esra, and Ronit Kampf. “Does Conflict Content Affect Learning from Simulations? A Cross-National Inquiry into the Israeli-Palestinian and Guatemalan Conflict Scenarios.” Negotiation and Conflict Management Research 8.4 (2015): 243-60.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ncmr.12062

Abstract

It is important to find out whether the content of a simulation has any effect on learning, whether students learn better when the simulation is about a conflict they directly experience as opposed to a conflict they have hardly heard about, and whether learning about a specific conflict changes from one identity group to another. In this article, we address these questions in a five-group experimental study, with direct parties to the conflict (Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian, and Guatemalan), third/secondary parties to the conflict (Turkish, American, and Brazilian), and distant parties to the conflict. Our results indicate that learning varies not only from one group to the other, but also with the salience of the conflict. While the simulations increase the level of knowledge about that particular conflict in almost all situations, when attitude change is concerned, the effects diversify from one group to the other.

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 21.4 (2015)

This new issue contains the following articles:

Articles
The journalist as a messiah: journalism, mass-circulation, and Theodor Herzl’s Zionist vision
Asaf Shamis
Pages: 483-499
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076188

The debate between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine (1920–48) over the re-interment of Zionist leaders
Doron Bar
Pages: 500-515
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076180

Development of information technology industries in Israel and Ireland, 2000–2010
Erez Cohen
Pages: 516-540
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076183

Israel’s nuclear amimut policy and its consequences
Ofer Israeli
Pages: 541-558
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076185

She got game?! Women, sport and society from an Israeli perspective
Yair Galily, Haim Kaufman & Ilan Tamir
Pages: 559-584
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076184

The origin of globalized anti-Zionism: A conjuncture of hatreds since the Cold War
Ernest Sternberg
Pages: 585-601
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984419

The Diaspora and the homeland: political goals in the construction of Israeli narratives to the Diaspora
Shahar Burla
Pages: 602-619
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076181

India–Israel relations: the evolving partnership
Ashok Sharma & Dov Bing
Pages: 620-632
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076189

The design of the ‘new Hebrew’ between image and reality: a portrait of the student in Eretz Yisrael at the beginning of ‘Hebrew education’ (1882–1948)
Nirit Raichel
Pages: 633-647
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076187

The evolution of Arab psychological warfare: towards ‘nonviolence’ as a political strategy
Irwin J. Mansdorf
Pages: 648-667
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076186

Militancy and religiosity in the service of national aspiration: Fatah’s formative years
Ido Zelkovitz
Pages: 668-690
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076191

Book Reviews
The historical David: the real life of an invented hero/David, king of Israel, and Caleb in biblical memory
David Rodman
Pages: 691-693
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083700

Britain’s moment in Palestine: retrospect and perspectives, 1917–48/Palestine in the Second World War: strategic plans and political dilemmas
David Rodman
Pages: 693-696
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083701

Israeli culture on the road to the Yom Kippur War
David Rodman
Pages: 696-698
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083702

The one-state condition
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Pages: 698-701
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083699

Globalising hatred: the new Antisemitism
Rusi Jaspal
Pages: 701-704
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083703

Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Rusi Jaspal
Pages: 704-707
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083704

Editorial Board
Editorial Board

Pages: ebi-ebi
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1109819

New Book: Burla and Lawrence, eds. Australia and Israel

Burla, Shahar, and Dashiel Lawrence. Australia and Israel. A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2015.

 

 

Australia and the State of Israel have maintained a cordial if at times ambiguous relationship. The two countries are geographically isolated: strategic, economic and cultural interests lie increasingly with Asia for one, and with the US and the EU for the other. But for all that divides the two states, there is also much they share. Australia played an important role in the Jewish state’s establishment in 1948, and is home to the most Zionist centered Jewish diaspora globally. Jewishness for most Australian Jews has been shaped and defined by engagement with and support for Israel. At the heart of this engagement is a small but thriving Israeli community within the larger multicultural Australia.

Australia and Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship draws attention to the important historical and contemporary nexus between this diaspora and its imagined homeland. The collection also considers the ways in which these two states mobilise national myths and share environmental challenges. In recent time relations between the two states have been tested by the illegal use of Australian passports in 2010, the mysterious death of dual national Ben Zygier, and growing disquiet within the ranks of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens over Israel’s handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. One prominent world-wide issue is the Palestinian BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) movement, which has attracted sympathy and support that has brought about substantive differences of opinion regarding its legitimacy within the Jewish Australian community. These issues demonstrate the multifaceted and complex picture of two very different nations, that nevertheless share an abiding connection.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why the Book?
Shahar Burla and Dashiel Lawrence

Part One Australia and Israel – Diasporic Relationship

1 Rewriting the Rules of Engagement: New Australian Jewish
Connections with Israel
Dashiel Lawrence

2 The Personal, the Political and the Religious: Bnei Akiva
Australia and its Relationship with Israel
Ari Lander

3 Israeli Government and Diaspora Mobilisation: The Flotilla
to Gaza and the Australian Jewry as a Case Study
Shahar Burla

4 The Place of Hebrew and Israel Education in Australian
Jewish Schools
Suzanne Rutland and Zehavit Gross

5 The Ausraeli Approach: the Diasporic Identity of Israelis
in Australia
Ran Porat

Part Two Australia and Israel – Political and Cultural Relationship

6 Overcoming Water Scarcity and Inequity in Arid Lands:
Comparing Water Management in Australia and Israel
Dominic Skinner and Stephanie Galaitsi

7 Ben Zygier’s Story and Australia–Israel Relations
Ingrid Matthews

8 A Fight Worth Having: Rudd, Gillard, Israel and the
Australian Labor Party
Alex Benjamin Burston-Chorowicz

9 An Alliance of Forgetting: National Narratives of Legitimacy
on the Occasion of Israel–Australia’s Joint Stamp Issue
Commemorating the Battle of Beersheba
Micaela Sahhar

Part Three Australia, Israel and the Boycott Divestment and
Sanction Scheme

10 The Australian Greens and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Philip Mendes

11 Academic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Implications
for Australian–Israeli Relations
Ingrid Matthews and James Arvanitakis

Conclusion: First Cousinhood, Political Unease, and the Limits
of Comparison
Fania Oz-Salzberger

The Editors and Contributors
Index

 

Shahar Burla is a research Associate at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He is the author of Political Imagination in the Diaspora: The Construction of a Pro-Israeli Narrative (2013). He has received several awards, including a President’s Fellowship for outstanding PhD student, Bar-Ilan University and the Menahem Begin Foundation academic award.

Dashiel Lawrence is a doctoral candidate at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. His research interests include Jewish diaspora–Israel contemporary relations, and Jewish critics of Israel.

 

 

New Article: Fischer, Religion and Education in Israel

Fischer, Shlomo. “The Crises of Liberal Citizenship: Religion and Education in Israel.” In Religious Education and the Challenge of Pluralism (ed. Adam B. Seligman; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 119-49.

 

 

Excerpt

The religious Zionist community is starting to understand the place of civics and citizenship within the new Israeli public discourse, and it wishes to be part of that discourse. It understand, too, that it can make its own unique communitarian or republican contribution to that discourse, but it understands two further things as well: it understands that if it entirely disregards the liberal citizenship discourse of individual human and civil rights, of tolerance and of pluralism, it will lose its ability to communicate with the larger Israeli public. Much to its chagrin, it has all ready experienced such a break in communication during the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005. It discovered then that it had no allies in the Israeli public sphere to help it prevent the evacuation of seventeen settlements in the Gaza strip. It wishes very much to reestablish lines of communication in order to prevent a reoccurrence of that event. Secondly, it understands that it cannot seriously offer a citizenship discourse for the entire community if it offers no modicum of inclusion, of membership, and of tolerance to the non-Jewish minorities of the country. Alongside its communitarian and republican orientation, and alongside its integral nationalist demands that Israel remain a Jewish country, it must find room for the other non-Jews, even the Palestinians. Hence, it seeks from within the Jewish tradition resources of tolerance and inclusion. Only time will tell whether it actually achieves a new synthesis of nationalism and democracy, and of republicanism and inclusiveness.

 

 

Reviews: Sinclair, Loving the Real Israel

Sinclair, Alex. Loving the Real Israel: An Educational Agenda for Liberal Zionism . Teaneck, NJ: Ben Yehuda Press, 2013.

 

Reviews

• Shosany, Jill. “Book Bag: Yesh Matzav: How We Can Love and Teach the Real Israel.” RAVSAK, November 8, 2013.
• Shefter, Laura. “Review” Journal of Jewish Education 81.3 (2015): 340-344.

New Article: Kizel, The Presentation of Germany in Israeli History Textbooks between 1948 and 2014

Kizel, Arie. “The Presentation of Germany in Israeli History Textbooks between 1948 and 2014.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 7.1 (2015): 94-115.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/jemms.2015.070105

 

Abstract

This article reviews an extensive study of Israeli secondary school general history curricula and textbooks since the establishment of the state in 1948 until the present day. By analyzing the way in which Germany is presented in various contexts, the findings of the study indicate that, while the textbooks reflect a shift from an early censorious attitude to a factual approach, the curriculum continues to present national Jewish Zionism as the metanarrative. In this context, Germany is framed as a victimizer.

 

New Article: Lazar et al, Positive Weighing of the Other’s Collective Narrative among Jewish and Bedouin-Palestinian Teachers

Lazar, Alon, Orna Braun-Lewensohn, and Tal Litvak Hirsch. “Positive Weighing of the Other’s Collective Narrative among Jewish and Bedouin-Palestinian Teachers in Israel and Its Correlates.” International Journal of Psychology (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12152

 

Abstract

Teachers play a pivotal role in the educational discourse around collective narratives, and especially the other’s narrative. The study assumed that members of groups entangled in a conflict approach the different modules of the other’s narrative distinctively. Jewish and Palestinian teachers, Israeli citizens, answered questionnaires dealing with the narrative of the other, readiness for interethnic contact, negative between-group emotions and preferences for resolutions of the Israeli–Palestinian (I–P) conflict. Positive weighing of the other’s narrative among Jewish teachers correlated with high levels of readiness for interethnic contact and low levels of negative between-group emotions, across the various modules of the Palestinian narrative. Preferences for a peaceful resolution of the I–P conflict and rejection of a violent one were noted in two of the modules. Among Palestinian teachers, positive weighing of the other’s collective narrative was exclusively noted for the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust, and this stance negatively related to negative between-group emotions and preference for a violent solution of the I–P conflict, and positively related to readiness for interethnic contact and preference of a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Practical implications of these findings for peace education are discussed.