Search results
This book looks at the theoretical issue of how a democracy can defend itself from those wishing to subvert or destroy it without being required to take measures that would impinge upon the basic principles of the democratic idea. It links social and institutional perspectives to the study, and includes a case study of the Israeli response to Jewish extremism and violence, which tests the theoretical framework outlined in the first chapter. There is an extensive diachronic scrutiny of the state's response to extremist political parties, violent organizations and the infrastructure of extremism and intolerance within Israeli society. The book emphasises the dynamics of the response and the factors that encourage or discourage the shift from less democratic and more democratic models of response.
. Zionism remains the primary philosophy holding Israeli society together. Since Israel’s Declaration of Independence and establishment as a state in 1947, the state’s political borders have remained undetermined in international law, but internal social borders between insiders and outsiders have been erected. Many people throughout Israel’s history remain hidden or suppressed from the dominant national story, like Jews from across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and, of course, Arabs. 3 Their search for a place in the state territory has been coloured by state and
enterprise as a role model because it gave credibility to their focus on the need to absorb modern sciences and technologies, to revive the Arabic language and to discard a culture of passivity. As the years passed and Israel was established and became a viable political fact, militarily, economically and technologically prosperous, Arab liberals discovered additional elements in Zionist history and the development of Israeli society that they wished to introduce (or reintroduce) into Arab societies, including the prosperity of democracy in the light of political and
an instrument of the government (ibid.:1/3). Moreover, he aired pessimism regarding the impact that a club or a movement, which Mapai would establish, could have on solving the Arabs’ problems (ibid.:2/3). MK Zalman Aran raised two points: the first, on the Arab leadership, a focal point in the emerging Israeli discourse; and the second, regarding the representations and the stereotyping of Palestinians in Israeli society and media, an issue which would be disregarded for several decades. On the question of Palestinian leadership, he distinguished between two
The 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel also resulted in the destruction of Palestinian society, when some 80 per cent of the Palestinians who lived in the major part of Palestine upon which Israel was established became refugees. Israelis call the 1948 war their ‘War of Independence’ and the Palestinians their ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe. After many years of Nakba denial, land appropriation, political discrimination against the Palestinians within Israel and the denial of rights to Palestinian refugees, in recent years the Nakba is beginning to penetrate Israeli public discourse. This book explores the construction of collective memory in Israeli society, where the memory of the trauma of the Holocaust and of Israel's war dead competes with the memory claims of the dispossessed Palestinians. Taking an auto-ethnographic approach, it makes a contribution to social memory studies through a critical evaluation of the co-memoration of the Palestinian Nakba by Israeli Jews. Against a background of the Israeli resistance movement, the book's central argument is that co-memorating the Nakba by Israeli Jews is motivated by an unresolved melancholia about the disappearance of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinians, a melancholia which shifts mourning from the lost object to the grieving subject. The book theorises Nakba co-memory as a politics of resistance, counterpoising co-memorative practices by internally displaced Israeli Palestinians with Israeli Jewish discourses of the Palestinian right of return, and questions whether return narratives by Israeli Jews are ultimately about Israeli Jewish self-healing.
and of transforming the Jewish national character from a persecuted minority in the diaspora into a sovereign and independent majority in Palestine. The army was given a special role in the transformation of both the Israeli citizen and Israeli society ( Almog, 1993 ), and the process of state development. Over the years, the protracted Arab–Israeli conflict has effectively positioned the state and
The Arab–Israeli conflict has been at the centre of international affairs for decades. Despite repeated political efforts, the confrontation and casualties continue, especially in fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. This new assessment emphasizes the role that military force plays in blocking a diplomatic resolution. Many Arabs and Israelis believe that the only way to survive or to be secure is through the development, threat, and use of military force and violence. This idea is deeply flawed and results in missed diplomatic opportunities and growing insecurity. Coercion cannot force rivals to sign a peace agreement to end a long-running conflict. Sometimes negotiations and mutual concessions are the key to improving the fate of a country or national movement. Using short historical case studies from the 1950s through to today, the book explores and pushes back against the dominant belief that military force leads to triumph while negotiations and concessions lead to defeat and further unwelcome challenges. In The sword is not enough, we learn both what makes this idea so compelling to Arab and Israeli leaders and how it eventually may get dislodged.
democracy. First, in a country such as Israel, the official authorities have not yet forged a clear-cut policy on the central principles by which its future citizens should be educated. Therefore, there is ample space for intervention by non-state institutions seeking to promote an education in democratic values either by means of school courses or less formal avenues. A no less important role is reserved for civil organisations hoping to bridge the various and gaping social abysses of Israeli society. Second, these same non
antisemitism following circulation of an online video in which he had allegedly stated (in Arabic) that he would be ‘delighted’ if Iranian missiles were to strike Israel. The student newspaper reported that the Israel Society’s attempts to prevent the event going ahead had failed, although they had succeeded in moving it to a Monday evening in order to make it possible for observant Jewish students to attend.1 Struggles over the staging of the proposed event focused on the ‘controversial’ status of Abdul Almasi and the borderline topic of his talk. Pro-Israeli media
before, during and after battle. 28 In 2004 Weiss established a Combat Values Branch (renamed the Jewish Awareness Department in 2006) under the auspices of the Rabbinate. What was perceived among the IDF, the political classes and wider Jewish-Israeli society to be a lacklustre performance during the 2006 Lebanon War compounded concerns among the IDF, brewing since the mid-1990s, that the ranks were facing a ‘crisis’, not only in motivation to serve but in understanding the ‘purpose’ of service. The dramatic failure of the Oslo process and political controversy