New Book: Mechter and Maya-Mechter, Between the Intimate and the Anonymous in Urban Space

Mechter, Eytan, and Avital Maya. Between the Intimate and the Anonymous in Urban Space. A Socio-Cultural Perspective on Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2016 (in Hebrew).

 

 

This book seeks to contribute to the socio-cultural discourse on the first Hebrew-cosmopolitan city, a discourse that may serve as an alternative to the conventional economic content in relation to urban processes. The attempt to decipher the secret of the transformation of the first Hebrew city into a “world city” will be made by examining the uniqueness of the culture and ethos of Tel Aviv in connection with universal norms. The socio-cultural discussion presents the tension between rationality and desire that late capitalism is based on, while highlighting the manifestations of this tension in the urban, local, and general arenas–both by the conquest of space through capital and in the design of and objectified consciousness and consumerist styles.

Multiculturalism and density are distinct urban characteristics contributing to urban activity based on openness, creativity, innovation and sophistication, but also reflect expressions of convergence and alienation. The individuation process serves as a central axis f or the translation of the rational subject into an object of consumerist desire as a result of the capitalist system. Individuation and the process of self-branding encourage the growth of various forms of unique and dynamic identities and styles, but hinder the constructions of relationships based on emotions and commitment. “The neighborhood community” is offered in this book as a possible solution to anonymity and the instrumentalism of interpersonal relationships, a solution which enables interpersonal relationships in the metropolin without disrupting the dynamic nature of variability and diversity, while creating a stable core, whether territorial or virtual.

The concluding chapter discusses the spiritual challenge of the big city to cultivate expressions of “Hard Liberty” following Levinas, as a substitute for the splitting of the subject and the self-alienation which endanger the urban soul.

 

Eytan Mechter is a scholar and lecturer of sociology of culture at the NB Haifa School of Design, Holon Institute of Technology, and the Arts Faculty of the Kibbutzim College.Avital Maya Mechter was a lecture of creative education at Hemdat Hadarom college.

 

 

 

New Article: Trajtenberg, Female Israeli Artists Make Uncommissioned Street Art

Trajtenberg, Graciela. “Multiple Trespasses. Female Israeli Artists Make Uncommissioned Street Art.” Ethnologie française 161 (2016): 83-92.

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URL: http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=ETHN_161_0083

 

Abstract

This article analyzes the strategies used by Israeli women to make illegal street art. The findings demonstrate that female street artists do not only trespass the taken‑for‑granted capitalist concept of who controls the public space, but also the normative boundaries of what activities are permitted or forbidden for women in this domain. In comparison to women artists that work in other societies, the transgressive actions of Israeli street artists involve both strategies historically defined as feminine, as well as critical strategies of the malestream order.

 

 

 

New Article: Omer & Goldblatt, Spatial Patterns of Retail Activity in Israeli Cities

Omer, Itzhak, and Ran Goldblatt. “Spatial Patterns of Retail Activity and Street Network Structure in New and Traditional Israeli Cities.” Urban Geography (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2015.1101258
 
Abstract

The association between spatial patterns of retail activity and the spatial configuration of street networks was examined by means of the space syntax methodology in eight Israeli cities that represent two city types, characterized by different planning approaches and urban growth: (i) new towns, which were established according to a comprehensive city plan and modern planning concepts of “tree-like” hierarchical street networks and “neighborhood units”; (ii) older cities, where street networks and the spatial patterns of retail activity were formed incrementally during their growth. Unlike in older cities, retail activity in new towns concentrates in relatively less-accessible and intermediate locations. This is indicated by a weak correlation between retail activity and the street network’s Integration and Choice centrality measures. The comparison between Israeli cities illustrates the influence of urban growth and planning approaches on the formation of retail activity and its interaction with the structure of the street network.

 

 

 

New Article: Asman, Stalking and the Law

Asman, O. “Stalking and the Law – An Israeli Legal System Based Analysis.” European Psychiatry 30, Sup.1 (2015): 160ff.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0924-9338(15)30131-0

 

Abstract

Stalking may be defined as obsessive following (1) forcibly and continuously invading another’s privacy (2)(3); behaviors which: are directed at a particular person; are felt by the object person to be unwanted and invasive; arouse fear and/or concern in the object person. (4)

Mester, Birger and Margolin(5) referred to 3 types of interventions in response to stalking: police intervention, legal intervention and medical intervention. They also refer to possible mixed types of intervention strategies.

In this presentation we will relate to legal aspects of stalking, taking into account social, clinical and policy related considerations. A focus will be made on the 2001 Israeli law for preventing threatening harassment, and the main tools it provides a subject with: turning to court for an injunction, complaining to the police in case an injunction has been violated. Other legal tools will also be discussed – such as damages claims related to privacy infringements, libel etc.

In summary we will inquire whether these legal tools are effective in putting an end to disruptive stalking behaviors and to what extent should those legal possibilities play a part in an anti-stalking action plan for a stalking victim.

New Book: Tzur, Space and Place in the Novels of S. Yizhar (in Hebrew)

צור, דביר. בין הבית לשדה, בין אדם למקום. המרחב והמקום בספריו של ס. יזהר ‘מקדמות’ ו’צלהבים’. ירושלים: מאגנס, 2015.

URL: http://www.magnespress.co.il/

 

Abstract

S. Yizhar (Yizhar Smilansky), one of Israel’s most prominent authors, is considered by many to be the greatest literary conqueror of the local Israeli space, of which he wrote his epic novels and short stories. With his pen Yizhar transformed space into a place which is an integral part of the world for many, a place that is theirs and to which they belong.

In 1992, after 28 years of literary silence, Yizhar published his novel Preliminaries. The following year he published Zalhavim. These two books were the opening notes for his later wave of writing which included, in addition to these novels the short stories collections Asides, and By the Sea, and the novels Lovely Malcolmia and Discovering Elijah.

In this book, Tzur follows the footsteps of Preliminaries and Zalhavim. He examines their poetics of space, focused on the home and the field, two places that Yizhar alludes to time and again. In these novels Yizhar is not the literary conqueror of Israeli space, but rather one who observes his home and environment in a complex way. The Yizharian space is revealed as a world where the private and the public are intermingled with each other side by side. This is a space where the concrete and the envisioned, the universal and the local, are combined and intertwined with one another; a very Israeli space, very local and yet at the same time a space that raises existential and political questions, the answers to which is always nuanced, always multi-dimensional.

New Article: Mann, Palestinian Memory in the Israeli Landscape

Mann, Barbara E. ” ‘An Apartment to Remember’: Palestinian Memory in the Israeli Landscape.” History and Memory 27.1 (2015): 83-115.

 

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/histmemo.27.1.83

 

Abstract

This essay offers a site-specific reading of Jaffa Slope Park, a newly opened public space on the city’s coastal border, in relation to both Ajami, the largely Arab neighborhood upon whose ruins it was built, and Ayman Sikseck’s memoiristic novel, To Jaffa (Hebrew, 2010). The park is analyzed in relation to Hebrew literary history. Analyzing the production of Palestinian memory within Israeli culture allows us to rethink memory in a transnational setting, and to consider how the Nakba is remembered across different discursive realms shaped by geography, history and language.

 

New Article: Lapidot-Lefler et al, Social Space and Field as Constructs for Evaluating Social Inclusion

Lapidot-Lefler, Noam, Victor J. Friedman, Daniella Arieli, Noha Haj, Israel Sykes, and Nasreen Kais. “Social Space and Field as Constructs for Evaluating Social Inclusion.” New Directions for Evaluation 146 (2015): 33-43.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ev.20118

 
Abstract
This paper addresses the role of evaluation in promoting social inclusion, an important component of social justice, with a focus on exclusion resulting from physical disability. We argue that the evaluation of social exclusion and social inclusion requires evaluators not only to reconsider their role and methods, but also to revise the fundamental constructs through which they study how programs and other interventions generate change at the individual, group, community, and societal levels. Drawing on field theory, we suggest that social inclusion processes can be understood and assessed in terms of the expansion of individuals’ life space, which consists of social, political, cultural, and resource dimensions. The paper illustrates these constructs with data from a participative action evaluation of a pilot program for providing services to people with disabilities in Israel. Our aim in developing these constructs is to provide not only tools for assessment, but also ways of thinking that may enable socially excluded people to be more active agents of inclusion.

Symposium: Private Sphere as Public Policy in Israel (Berkeley, Feb 17, 2015)

THE PRIVATE SPHERE AS PUBLIC POLICY?:

A Symposium on Law and Society in Israel

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015

RECEPTION: 2:30; SYMPOSIUM 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

GOLDBERG ROOM (297 BOALT HALL), BERKELEY LAW

INTRODUCTION

Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law; Director, CSLS

PRISON PRIVATIZATION

Hila Shamir, Associate Professor, Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

JUDGING IN THE SHADOW OF THE LAW: PRIVATE FORUMS AND PRIVATIZED ADJUDICATION IN ISRAEL

Ori Aronson, Assistant Professor, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law

‘I’VE GOT NO ONE TO LEAN ON’: THE NEGOTIATION OF NETWORK RELATIONS AMONG LOW-INCOME MOTHERS IN ISRAEL UNDER A NEOLIBERAL DISCOURSE

Shira Offer, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University

THE (LEGITIMACY) PRICE OF PRIVATIZED WELFARE

Avishai Benish, Assistant Professor, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

RESPONDENT

Malcolm Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean’s Professor of Law

 

 

Click here for a PDF of the flyer.

New Article: Jobani & Perez, Women of the Wall: A Normative Analysis of the Place of Religion in the Public Sphere

Jobani, Yuval and Nahshon Perez. “Women of the Wall: A Normative Analysis of the Place of Religion in the Public Sphere.” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 3.3 (2014): 484-505.

 

URL: http://ojlr.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/3/484.abstract

 

Abstract

The place of religion in the public sphere is a controversial issue, and scholarly opinions differ, from insisting on a public sphere that reflects the religion of the majority, to those who insist on it being religion-free. Using the method of inquiry of contextual political theory, we examine the struggle of the Women of Wall (WoW) to pray collectively at the Western Wall. Their struggle began in 1988, and by 2013 includes many Courts decision, social struggles, public committees, and the involvement of many politicians and organizations, both in Israel and the USA. As this struggle takes place at the holiest place for observant Jews, it raises questions beyond its geographical location. The article describes three main normative approaches to state–religion relations (privatization, evenhandedness, and ‘dominant culture view’—DCV), examines them, and attempts to consider their application to the WoW case. Our conclusion points to the advantages of the privatization model, the permissibility of the evenhanded model and points to major shortcomings of the DCV.

New Book: Hatuka et al, eds. City-Industry (in Hebrew)

חתוקה, טלי, רוני בר, מירב בטט, יואב זילברדיק, כרמל חנני, שלי חפץ, מיכאל יעקובסון והילה לוטן. עיר-תעשייה. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2014.

 

URL: http://www.resling.co.il/book.asp?series_id=3&book_id=799

Most of us work somewhere, in a certain place. Our bodies perched above a machine for hours, our organs operate it. Thus, every day, in a repeated routine. But our days are not similar. Professional demands, working hours, employment conditions, the wages of our labor – all these separate us from one another. Our working environments are also different. The landscape of industry is diverse: streets, complexes, campuses, boxes, trains and towers whose design is linked to the production and branding system of the workplace. Landscapes follow the market’s mood, as it decides which factories will close, which will grow and develop, which company will be sold to an international corporate or relocated to a distant district. This is the landscape of production, a temporary landscape that influences and shapes our world.

An examination of the industrial landscape in Israel reveals a complex picture: the manifold industrial zones, sometimes in close proximity to one another, compete with each other with no comprehensive strategy; resources are distributed unjustly, and thus municipalities cannot always benefit from the profits of the industrial zones; construction expansion in open spaces wastes land resources; and mainly, an autonomous conceptualization of the industrial zone, with no spatial, administrative, or operative connection between it and the urban fabric. Nevertheless, even within this complex picture, situated in a context of time and place, one can discern patterns and spatial configurations in the background of the industrial landscape.

City-Industry is the product of the Laboratory for Contemporary Urban Design (LCUD) at Tel Aviv University. It is the second book in a trilogy on urban landscapes in Israel. The first book, Neighborhood-State, sought to investigate the dependent relationships between citizen and state in residential areas. The current volume exposes the overt and hidden relationships between city and industry. It follows the temporality and dynamics of work environments and recognizes them as arenas of precariousness. Within this temporariness, the authors – as planners – seek to raise awareness to relationships between worker and place, between the laborer and his city.

New Book: Rotbard, White City, Black City. Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa

Rotbard, Sharon. White City, Black City. Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015.

 

URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/white-city-black-city

 

n 2004, the city of Tel Aviv was declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site, an exemplar of modernism in architecture and town planning. Today, the Hebrew city of Tel Aviv gleams white against the desert sky, its Bauhaus-inspired architecture betraying few traces of what came before it: the Arab city of Jaffa. In White City, Black City, the Israeli architect and author Sharon Rotbard offers two intertwining narratives, that of colonized and colonizer. It is also a story of a decades-long campaign of architectural and cultural historical revision that cast Tel Aviv as a modernist “white city” emerging fully formed from the dunes while ignoring its real foundation—the obliteration of Jaffa. Rotbard shows that Tel Aviv was not, as a famous poem has it, built “from sea foam and clouds” but born in Jaffa and shaped according to its relation to Jaffa. His account is not only about architecture but also about war, destruction, Zionist agendas, erasure, and the erasure of the erasure.

Rotbard tells how Tel Aviv has seen Jaffa as an inverted reflection of itself—not shining and white but nocturnal, criminal, dirty: a “black city.” Jaffa lost its language, its history, and its architecture; Tel Aviv constructed its creation myth. White City, Black City—hailed upon its publication in Israel as ”path-breaking,” “brilliant,” and “a masterpiece”—promises to become the central text on Tel Aviv.

New Article: Englander, The Image of the Male Body in Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodox Thought in Israel and Corresponding Strategies for Forging an A-feminine Public Sphere

Englander, Yakir. “The Image of the Male Body in Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodox Thought in Israel and Corresponding Strategies for Forging an A-feminine Public Sphere.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 29.3 (2014): 457-70.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13537903.2014.945729

 

 

Abstract

This article deals with the increasingly severe attitude in Jewish Ultra-Orthodox society in the State of Israel regarding the relationship between the sexes. I seek to trace the philosophical roots of this attitude, as a product of existential thinking within the male contingent of the Ultra-Orthodox (Lithuanian) world itself, and I propose that the growing separation between the sexes is a direct result of rabbinic efforts to re-structure this world from within. The image of the Ultra-Orthodox public sphere is considered to be an exact reflection of the male individual and the way of life that is required of him. Ultra-Orthodox thought requires men to stop the flow of life, causing a ‘disconnect’ between the reflective self and the world in which the self exists as an object without reflexivity. According to Ultra-Orthodox thought, inability and failure to live all of life as reflective are linked to the human person as an ‘embodied being’. I explain the Ultra-Orthodox solution to the ‘problem of the body’ and how it influences the structure of the yeshiva as a ‘safe haven’. This mode of dealing with the body entails the exclusion of femininity from male life in the yeshiva context and is also increasingly reflected in the public domain. In recent years, Ultra-Orthodox rabbis have designed the public sphere using the model of the yeshiva as a space that is a-feminine. This is supported by readings from new Ultra-Orthodox Musar writings, directed to men, which deal with women’s sexuality and create a new definition of modesty.

Cite: Schwarz, Arab Sounds in Contested Space: Life Quality, Cultural Hierarchies and National Silencing

Schwarz, Ori. “Arab Sounds in a Contested Space: Life Quality, Cultural Hierarchies and National Silencing.” Ethnic and Racial Studies (published online before print publication).

 

URL: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2013.786109

 

Abstract

Sounds and sonic norms and regimes characterize both spaces/territories and individual bodies. This article explores the meanings of and reactions to Arab sounds in Israel – political struggles over muezzins, stereotypical representations of Israeli Palestinians as loud, and so on – in order to offer general insights into the role of the sonic (both actual sounds and their discursive representations) in the new ‘cultural’ racism, in the everyday ethnicized experience of one’s body, and in shaping relations between ethnic and national groups.

New Publication: Harris and Omer-Sherman, eds., Narratives of Dissent

Harris, Rachel S. and Ranen Omer-Sherman. Narratives of Dissent. War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture. Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 2012.

 

 

 

URL: http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/narratives-dissent

The year 1978 marked Israel’s entry into Lebanon, which led to the long-term military occupation of non-sovereign territory and the long, costly war in Lebanon. In the years that followed, many Israelis found themselves alienated from the idea that their country used force only when there was no alternative, and Israeli society eventually underwent a dramatic change in attitude toward militarization and the infallibility of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). In Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture editors Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman collect nineteen essays that examine the impact of this cultural shift on Israeli visual art, music, literature, poetry, film, theatre, public broadcasting, and commemoration practices after 1978.

Divided into three thematic sections-Private and Public Spaces of Commemoration and Mourning, Poetry and Prose, and Cinema and Stage-this collection presents an exciting diversity of experiences, cultural interests, and disciplinary perspectives. From the earliest wartime writings of S. Yizhar to the global phenomenon of films such as Beaufort, Waltz with Bashir, and Lebanon, the Israeli artist’s imaginative and critical engagement with war and occupation has been informed by the catalysts of mourning, pain, and loss, often accompanied by a biting sense of irony. This book highlights many of the aesthetic narratives that have wielded the most profound impact on Israeli culture in the present day.

These works address both incremental and radical changes in individual and collective consciousness that have spread through Israeli culture in response to the persistent affliction of war. No other such volume exists in Hebrew or English. Students and teachers of Israeli studies will appreciate Narratives of Dissent.

 

 

Table of Contents (from Library of Congress)

Introduction: zionism and the culture of dissent / Ranen Omer-Sherman — Private and public spaces of commemoration and mourning — "Music of peace" at a time of war : Middle Eastern music amid the second intifada / Galeet Dardashti — Privatizing commemoration : the helicopter disaster monument and the absent state / Michael Feige — "Cyclic interruptions" : popular music on Israeli radio in times of emergency / Danny Kaplan — Consuming nostalgia : greetings cards and soldier-citizens / Noa Roei — The photographic memory of Asad Azi / Tal Ben Zvi — "We shall remember them all" : the culture of online mourning and commemoration of fallen soldiers in Israel / Liav Sade-Beck — Poetry and prose — Bereavement and breakdown : war and failed motherhood in Raya Harnik’s work / Esther Raizen — From IDF to .pdf : war poetry in the Israeli digital age / Adriana X. Jacobs — "Unveiling injustice" : Dahlia Ravikovitch’s poetry of witness / Ilana Szobel — War at home : literary engagements with the Israeli political crisis in two novels by Gabriela Avigur-Rotem / Shiri Goren — Forcing the end : apocalyptic Israeli fiction, 1971-2009 / Adam Rovner — Oh, my land, my birthplace : Lebanon war and intifada in Israeli fiction and poetry / Glenda Abramson — Vexing resistance, complicating occupation : a contrapuntal reading of Sahar Khalifeh’s wild thorns and David Grossman’s The smile of the lamb / Philip Metres — Gender, war, and zionist mythogynies : feminist trends in Israeli scholarship / Esther Fuchs — Cinema and stage — Representations of war in Israeli drama and theater / Dan Urian — From national heroes to postnational witnesses : a reconstruction of Israeli soldiers’ cinematic narratives as witnesses of history / Yael Munk — A woman’s war : The Gulf War and popular women’s culture in Israel / Rachel S. Harris — Beaufort the book, beaufort the film : Israeli militarism under attack / Yaron Peleg — Shifting manhood: masculinity and the Lebanon war in Beaufort and waltz with Bashir / Philip Hollander — List of contributors — Index.

Cite: Hatuka, The Power of Appearance along a Fragmented Border in Israel/Palestine

Hatuka, Tali. “Civilian Consciousness of the Mutable Nature of Borders: The Power of Appearance along a Fragmented Border in Israel/Palestine.” Political Geography [In Press, Corrected Proof, online since July 20, 2012]

 

URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629812000649

 

Abstract

Abstract

What is the role of citizenship in a protest? How are civilian rights used as a source of power to craft socio-spatial strategies of dissent? I argue that the growing civilian consciousness of the “power to” (i.e. capacity to act) and of the border as public space is enhancing civil participation and new dissent strategies through which participants consciously and sophisticatedly use their citizenship as a tool, offering different conceptualizations of borders. This paper examines the role of citizenship in the design and performance of dissent focusing on two groups of Israeli activists, Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. Using their Israeli citizenship as a source of power, these groups apply different strategies of dissent while challenging the discriminating practices of control in occupied Palestinian territories. These case studies demonstrate a growing civilian consciousness of the mutable nature of borders as designed by state power. Analyzing the ways actors consciously and sophisticatedly use citizenship as a tool in their dissent, which is aimed at supporting indigenous noncitizens, I argue that Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall enact and promote different models of citizenship and understandings of borders, in Israel/Palestine.

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Highlights

► The paper analyzes how civilian rights are used to craft socio-spatial strategies of dissent. ► Analysis is focused on groups of Israeli activists, Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. ► Case studies demonstrate a civilian consciousness of the mutable nature of borders. ► Protests have the capacity to challenge the state’s model of citizenship.

 

Keywords

• Dissent;
• Israel;
• Space;
• Place;
• Spheres and principles of protests

Cite: Hermoni and Lebel, Politicizing Memory

Hermoni, Gal and Udi Lebel. “Politicizing Memory.” Cultural Studies 26.4 (2012): 469-491.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rcus/2012/00000026/00000004/art00003

 

Abstract

This paper argues that hegemonic memorial ceremonies are typically based on the practice and discourse of de-politicization of the `Israeli condition’. Three mechanisms serve such de-politicization: rendering death meaningful; idealizing the fallen and focusing on their transcendental as opposed to their corporeal side and the sanctification of time. Ceremonies featuring these mechanisms are paradigmatic events that perpetuate the hegemonic model of bereavement in Israel. Ceremonies deviating from these practices function as an opposition to static collective memory by acting as extra-paradigmatic sites of memory (Lieux de mémoire). This paper analyzes the Hallal (Hebrew for both `fallen’ and `void’) ceremony (Tzavta Theatre, Tel Aviv, 2009), that serves as an `alternative’ Remembrance Day ceremony. Drawing on the ethnography of ceremonies, we claim that this ceremony is an extra-paradigmatic event on account of its subversion of the de-politicizing mechanisms.

Cite: Weiss, Landscape at the Ben Gurion Airport

Weiss, Elliott. “Establishing Roots at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport Garden: Landscapes of National Identity.” National Identities 12.2 (2010): 199-210.

 

URL: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a922322109

Abstract

With the understanding that the planning of public space is a discursive practice, this article examines the cultural meanings encoded in the design of the grounds around Israel’s main airport, Ben Gurion International. Using the example of Terminal 3, the article discusses how the State of Israel leverages landscaped space as an ideological tool in the struggle for control over symbolic expressions of national identity. The design decisions here are framed in the context of the all important Zionist trope of ‘redemption’, or land reclamation in the image of Zion. The airport’s ‘Seven Species Garden’ is explained as part of a widespread mythology of an autochthonous people/land bond, deeply rooted in Jewish-Israeli consciousness, which draws upon the Bible for territorial legitimacy and national identity. Finally, the Orientalist bias betrayed in the airport grounds effectively bars entry of the county’s largest minority to the ‘gateway’ of Israeli national space because such references are based on ethnicity.