New Article: Omer, Hitmazrehut or Becoming of the East

Omer, Atalia. “Hitmazrehut or Becoming of the East: Re-Orienting Israeli Social Mapping.” Critical Sociology (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0896920515604475

 

Abstract

Through developing of the concept of hitmazrehut, the article highlights avenues for decolonializing and de-orientalizing sociopolitical theory and practice in Israel/Palestine. Hitmazrehut (literally ‘becoming of the East’) is understood as the transformation of relations between space, identity, and narrative through an intersectionality framework of social movement activism and intellectual counter-discourse. Exposing the intersections among sites of marginality as well as cultivating localized interpretations of identity (delinked from the orientalist positing of Israel in the ‘West’) would contribute to the possibility of the formation of transformative coalition building across national boundaries. Hitmazrehut is both an outcome and a necessary process for enabling geopolitical reframing. The article begins with the ahistorical and orientalist biases of sociological inquiry into the region. It continues with an analysis of efforts to localize and re-orient Jewish identity as well as the Mizrahi discursive critique of epistemological violence guiding sociological scholarship, double consciousness and patterns of ethnic passing.

 

 

New Article: Dorchin, Ethnography of Jewish and Arab Rap in Israel

Dorchin, Uri. “Flowing Beyond Sectarian Ethno-politics: Ethnography of Jewish and Arab Rap in Israel.” Ethnopolitics (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2015.1041752

 

Abstract

This article addresses the meaning of political music by drawing on the relationships between Jewish and Arab rappers in Israel. However, this article aims to go beyond the concerns of resistance and hegemony that are central to the power-relations paradigm typical of studies of both Israeli society and rap. Instead, it emphasizes how cross references made by rappers transgress social and political oppositions. Based on data gathered from various venues and interviews with performers in the local scene, the author seeks to explain why political music, even in its most scathing guise, should never be taken for a mere ‘musical politics’.

New Article: Leon | ‘Ovadia Yosef, the Shas Party, and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process

Leon, Nissim. “Rabbi ‘Ovadia Yosef, the Shas Party, and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process.” Middle East Journal 69.3 (2015): 379-95.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3751/69.3.13
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_middle_east_journal/v069/69.3.leon.html

 

Abstract

One of the prominent religious parties in Israel, intimately involved in political decision-making, has been the Shas party, led by the late Rabbi ‘Ovadia Yosef. This article examines four components of Rabbi Yosef’s political stance: (1) his view of Jewish religious law as a factor that moderates the force of changes of seemingly historical and revolutionary significance; (2) his opposition to radical messianism; (3) his desire to adopt independent positions; and (4) his role in the development of a Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox stream of Zionism.

 

New Article: Howson, Lessons from Shas about Israel

Howson, Luke. “Lessons from Shas about Israel.” Middle East Journal 69.3 (2015): 397-412.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3751/69.3.14
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_middle_east_journal/v069/69.3.howson.html

 

Abstract

This article focuses on the Israeli ethno-religious party Shas and its role in the Israeli social and political structure. It is argued that while Shas functions successfully in Israel’s Western-style political system, it does so as a more typical “Middle Eastern” party. Thus understanding the context within which Shas operates and its relation to political and societal divisions offers an insight into Israeli society and its political system.

New Article: Alush-Levron, Ethnic Melancholy in Israeli Cinema

Alush-Levron, Merav. “The Politics of Ethnic Melancholy in Israeli Cinema.” Social Identities 21.2 (2015): 169-83.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2015.1041015

Abstract

This paper deals with the way migrants’ children process the trans-generational trauma of immigration and examines its impact on the formation of their self-identity. It explores the manifestation of this trauma as present in two highly-notable works by Mizrahi cinematographers. The memory unfolding in these films is a penetrating audio-visual testimony to the immigration trauma with the mark it has left on the psyches and identities of migrants’ children. It argues that the split identity that is a product of both Israeli assimilationist and Mizrahi resistance inhabits the continuum between mourning and melancholy, grief and grievance. Along this continuum, immigrant subjects engage in intergenerational negotiations between mourning and melancholy, while their ethnic melancholy emerges as an alternative mental state to the Eurocentric hegemony.

Reviews: Shemer, Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema

Shemer, Yaron. Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2013.

 

 

Reviews

• Belinfante, Randall C. “Review.” Jewish Book Council, n.d.
• Sokoloff, Naomi. “Cinema Studies/Jewish Studies, 2011-2013.” AJS Review 38.1 (2014): 153-4.
• Bashkin, Orit. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.2 (2015): 395-7.

 

 

 

New Book: Kizel, The New Mizrahi Narrative in Israel (in Hebrew)

קיזל, אריה. הנרטיב המזרחי החדש בישראל. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2014.

The hyphenated narrative – the new Mizrahi narrative that stands at the center of a radical Mizrahi discourse – goes against the Zionism’s negation of an Oriental and Arab identity and posits itself as an alternative of an inntellectual and assertive identity. Arie Kizel’s book examines the rise and consolidation of the Mizrahi narrative which serves as a milestone in the struggle of conflicting narratives as an expression of various identities to express themselves as independent and hybrid among locations of Israeliness.

The author carefully examines the postcolonial and anti-Zionist origins of the Mizrahi narritve and the intellectual assault it launches against the very legitimacy of Zionism, as well as the morality of the political solution it created. This new narrative stance acknowledges the historical difficulties of its subversion, which is presented as emancipatory and especially as ethical. Its foundations relate to the victimized Palestinian narrative, and in its radical version seeks to collaborate with it in order create a new space that will favor Arabism – culturally, linguistically and even politically. This framework is expected to dismantle Zionist colonialism in relation to the regime of truth, the discourse of knowledge and the dominant power, along with rising voices and other narratives as part of a meeting point between anti-Zionism and postmodernism.

Using a three-stage narrative model the author examines the Mizrahi narrative’s attempt to challenge the limits of Israeli discourse, to dissociate from the hegemonic Zionist program, and to present a narrative plan that would allow the construction of a multicultural, anti-colonial model, and rehabilitate the space of Mizrahi-Arab identity. The author lays out the voices of opposition to the proposed narrative and analyzes the causes of the victimization stage it has reached and in which it is trapped, in a capitalist social reality created by Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Israelis and their joint children.

 

Dissertation: Cohen, Israeli State Violence/Mizrahi Resilience: An Ethnography of Mizrahi Experiences of War and Eviction and Their Intersection with Palestinian Experiences

Cohen, Ilise Benshushan. Israeli State Violence/Mizrahi Resilience: An Ethnography of Mizrahi Experiences of War and Eviction and Their Intersection with Palestinian Experiences. California Institute of Integral Studies, 2013.

 

URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1461742758

 

Abstract

Mizrahi Jews have historically been marginalized in Israeli society despite the fact that they make up the majority of Israel’s Jewish population. Through ethnographic research, this study highlights the experiences of Mizrahi Jews around two Mizrahi communities that continue to experience marginalization: Kfar Shalem, a neighborhood in south Tel Aviv that was the site of evictions without compensation in 2007, and Kiryat Shemona, a development town on Israel’s northern border that was directly affected by the second Lebanon war in 2006. Areas of focus of the research include the process of eviction without compensation for Kfar Shalem, the lasting effects of cross-border military conflict in Kiryat Shemona, and the violence produced by these experiences. The research methods utilized included ethnographic interviews, participant observation, archival research, and advocacy. The research participants in Kfar Shalem included Mizrahi families evicted from their homes, lawyers who represented the residents, and Mizrahi activists involved with the community. The research participants in Kiryat Shemona consisted of Mizrahi families who maintained a presence during the war and those who were displaced, and mental health professionals dealing with the effects of the war on residents. I also interviewed two Palestinian citizens of Israel who were able to speak to complex issues of displacement and citizenship. The dissertation frames the ethnographic research in a historical context that includes the U.N. partition of Palestine, Palestinian expulsion/ethnic cleansing, Mizrahi immigration to Israel, and the instrumentalization of Mizrahi Jews being settled in former Palestinian areas. It draws on comparisons between the struggles and ongoing activism of Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians in Israel/Palestine. The findings reveal the complex struggles of Mizrahi identity, discourses of discrimination and internalized oppression, and Mizrahi exposure to physical violence, loss of economic status, and instrumentalization by the state. The findings also highlight meaningful similarities and differences between Mizrahi and Palestinian experiences of state violence and about Mizrahi resilience and agency.

Subject: Cultural anthropology; Middle Eastern Studies; Judaic studies

Classification: 0326: Cultural anthropology; 0555: Middle Eastern Studies; 0751: Judaic studies

Identifier / keyword: Social sciences, State violence, Israel, Discrimination, Mizrahim, Mizrahi-Palestinian alliance, Mizrahi resistance

Number of pages: 567

Publication year: 2013

Degree date: 2013

School code: 0392

Source: DAI-A 75/02(E), Aug 2014

Place of publication: Ann Arbor

Country of publication: United States

ISBN: 9781303480928

Advisor: M’Panya, Mutombo

Committee member: Simons, Shoshana; Shubeli, Rafi

University/institution: California Institute of Integral Studies

Department: Social and Cultural Anthropology

University location: United States — California

Degree: Ph.D.

Source type: Dissertations & Theses

Language: English

Document type: Dissertation/Thesis

Dissertation/thesis number: 3598997

ProQuest document ID: 1461742758