The Idea of Israel

by Ilan Pappe

  15 These ideas were gathered in Moshe Behar and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, ed., Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture, 1893–1958, Boston: Brandeis University Press, 2012.

  16 Moshe Behar, ‘Is the Mizrachi Question Relevant to the Future of the Entire Middle East’, Kedma.org, (January 1997) (Hebrew).

  17 Sami Shalom Chetrit, Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel: White Jews, Black Jews, London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

  18 See Yehouda Shenhav, ed., Colonialism and the Post-Colonialist Condition, Jerusalem: Van Leer, 2004 (Hebrew).

  19 Quote from Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p. 1; see also Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, London: Bloomsbury 1998; and Edward Cavanagh, Settler Colonialism and Land Rights in South Africa: Possession and Dispossession on the Orange River, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

  20 Ella Shohat, ‘The Invention of the Mizrachim’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 29:1, (Autumn 1999), pp. 5–20.

  21 Chetrit, Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel.

  22 Yossi Yonah, Yonit Naaman and David Machlev, ed., Rainbow of Opinions: A Mizrachi Agenda for Israel, Jerusalem: November Books, 2007 (Hebrew).

  23 From his poem ‘I Am an Arab Refugee’, 2004. The best line in the quotation is an oath Jews use with regard to Jerusalem.

  24 Smadar Lavie, ‘Arrival of the New Cultured Tenants’, Times Literary Supplement, (14 June 1991).

  25 Yoav Peled, ‘Towards a Redefinition of Jewish Nationalism in Israel? The Engima of Shas’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21:4, (1998), pp. 703–23.

  26 Traubman, Haaretz.

  27 Chetrit, Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel.

  9 The Post-Zionist Cultural Moment

  1 Quoted in Yigal Nizri, ‘Foreword: From a Noun to Us’ in Nizri, Eastern Appearance, p. 27.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Dror Mishani, ‘The Mizrahi as a Linguistic Abberation’ in Nizri, Eastern Appearance, p. 86 (Hebrew).

  4 Sami Shalom Chetrit, Poems in Ashdodit, Tel Aviv: Andalus, 2003 (Hebrew). Ashdod, the former depopulated Palestinian town Majdal, is where Chetrit grew up.

  5 Ilan Pappe, ‘Post-Zionism and Its Popular Culture’ in Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg, ed., Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

  6 Albert Swissa, Bound, Tel Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuhad, 1985 (Hebrew), and Yerach Gover, Zionism: The Limits of Moral Discourse in Israeli Hebrew Fiction, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

  7 Yitzhak Laor, The People, Food Fit for a King, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1994 (Hebrew).

  8 Yitzhak Laor, In the Spring: After the Reserve Service (Early Stories), Tel Aviv: Keter, 2000, p. 137 (Hebrew).

  9 David Grossman, The Yellow Wind, New York: Picador, 2002, and Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel, New York: Picador, 2003.

  10 See Dina Goren, ‘The Media in Israel’, Skira Hodshit, 8–9, (August/September 1984), pp. 57–67 (Hebrew).

  11 Issam Abu Riya, ‘The Arab Minority and the Israeli Media’ in Issam Abu Riya et al., ed., Exclusion and Negative Images, The Israeli Civil Rights Report, 2002 (Hebrew).

  12 Calev Ben-David and David Wainer, ‘The Controversy Over Israel’s Business Élite’, Bloomberg Businessweek, (7 October 2010).

  13 Yaron Ezrahi, Rubber Bullets: Power and Consciousness in Modern Israel, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

  14 Waltz with Bashir, directed by Ari Folman, 2008; The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh, 2012.

  15 Ezrahi, Rubber Bullets.

  16 See a very incisive analysis of liberal Zionism in Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets.

  10 On the Post-Zionist Stage and Screen

  1 Hanoch Levin, The Labour of Life: Selected Plays, trans. Barborn Harshaw, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

  2 Dan Urian, The Arab in Drama and Israeli Theatre, London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

  3 See Ilan Pappe, ‘A Text in the Eyes of the Beholder: Four Theatrical Interpretations of Kanafani’s Men in the Sun’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 3, (1995), pp. 157–74.

  4 For example, A Trumpet in the Wadi, adapted and directed by Shmuel Hasfari, 1998.

  5 Fouad Awad and Eran Baneil directed a local version of Romeo and Juliet for the Kahn Theatre in Jerusalem (an Israeli Jerusalemite theatre) and al-Qasaba (a Palestinian Jerusalemite theatre).

  6 The play was censored in 1988 and was staged privately in 1989.

  7 Quoted in an interview in Yedioth Ahronoth, (December 2009).

  8 Ram Levi’s adaptation was screened in February 1978.

  9 Ram Levi in conversation with Ilan Pappe in Zochrot, (19 November 2012).

  10 Jad Ne’eman directed about twenty films. His most well known is probably The Stretcher’s Journey, released in 1977. Such a journey is the initiation of soldiers into the IDF’s élite units.

  11 Mathieu Albert presents a good summary of Bourdieu’s position in ‘The Relevance of Pierre Bourdieu’s Social Theory for the Study of Scientific Knowledge Production’, Canadian Journal of Sociology Online, (October 2002).

  12 Laor has analysed the method of appropriation in this film and others in Yitzhak Laor, We Are Writing You, Homeland, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1995 (Hebrew).

  13 Said, ‘Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims’.

  14 Esh Zolevet was directed by Gideon Ganani with a screenplay by Benny Barabash.

  15 Do Not Touch My Holocaust, directed by Asher Tlalim in, 1994.

  16 The film was banned for a while by the French Ministry of Culture.

  17 For David Hoffman’s review of the film, see ‘Through the Veil of Exile’, Washington Post, (12 November 1992).

  18 See report by Ronni Singer in Haaretz, 22 April 2004.

  19 He is one of Israel’s most prolific directors. Since 1998, he has directed more than twenty films, many of them full-length feature films about the Arab–Israeli conflict.

  20 Ilan Pappe, ‘Israeli Television’s Fiftieth Anniversary Series: “Tekumma”: A Post-Zionist View?’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 27: 4, (Summer 1998), pp. 99–105.

  21 Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2006.

  22 Itamar Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken: Early Arab–Israeli Negotiations, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan; Pappe, The Making of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951.

  23 Emile Habibi, The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, New York: Interlink, 2001.

  11 The Triumph of Neo-Zionism

  1 Adi Ofir, The Work of the Present: Essays on Contemporary Israeli Culture, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2001, pp. 257–8 (Hebrew).

  2 Neri Livneh, ‘The Rise and Fall of Post-Zionism’ in Haaretz, (19 September 2001). The English version appeared a day later as ‘Post-Zionism Only Rings Once’.

  3 Ari Shavit, ‘Post-Post-Zionism’, Haaretz, (18 April 2013).

  4 Amnon Rubinstein, ‘Who Is a Post-Zionist?’, Haaretz, (1 September 1995); see also his book From Herzl to Rabin: The Changing Image of Zionism, New York: Holmes and Meyer Publishers, 2000.

  5 Mentioned in Livneh, ‘The Rise and Fall of Post-Zionism’.

  6 Anita Shapira, ‘The Past Is Not a Foreign Country: The Failure of Israel’s New Historians to Explain War and Peace’, New Republic, (29 November 1999).

  7 Tuvia Friling, ed., An Answer to a Post-Zionist Colleague, Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronoth, 2003 (Hebrew).

  8 Elhanan Yakira, Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust: Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting and the Delegitimisation of Israel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

  9 David Ohana, The Last Israelis, Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1997 (Hebrew).

  10 ‘The New Anti-Semitism – A Threat to the Spirit of Freedom and Humanity’, Makor Rishon, (23 July 2010).

  1
1 Shavit, ‘Post-Post-Zionism’.

  12 Livneh, ‘The Rise and Fall of Post-Zionism’.

  13 Tom Segev, Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanisation of Israel, New York: Picador, 2002.

  14 Livneth, ‘The Rise and Fall of Post-Zionism’.

  15 ‘The Politics Behind the Closure of the Department of Politics’, Haaretz, (5 October 2012).

  16 Nurit Stadler, ‘Is Profane Work an Obstacle to Salvation? The Case of Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews in Israel’, Sociology of Religion, 63:4, (2002), pp. 455–74.

  17 Sefi Rachlevsky, Messiah’s Donky, Yiedoth Ahronoth: Tel Aviv, 1998.

  18 See Pappe, The Forgotten Palestinians, p. 260.

  19 Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman, Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; Peled-Elhanan, Palestine in Israeli School Books.

  20 The Ministry of Education, Israel Jubilee, Jerusalem, 1998. The book was covered in Associated Press reports when it came out and a review can be found in the Hebron Institute for Political and Religious Studies.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Ethan Bronner, ‘Israel’s History Textbooks Replace Myths with Facts’, New York Times, (14 August 1999).

  23 Haaretz, (29 March 1998).

  24 A summary of this report appeared in Haaretz, (27 March 2001).

  25 The report can be found on the society’s website: acri.org.il.

  26 See an analysis of these laws in Pappe, The Forgotten Palestinians, pp. 4–5.

  12 The Neo-Zionist New Historians

  1 Daniel Pilser, ‘Making History’, Techelet, (9 March 2000), p. 1 (Hebrew).

  2 Louis Althusser, Essays on Ideology, London and New York: Verso, 1984.

  3 Ilan Gur-Ze’ev and Ilan Pappe, ‘Beyond the Destruction of the Other’s Collective Memory: Blueprints for a Palestinian/Israeli Dialogue’, Theory, Culture and Society, 20: 1, (February 2003), pp. 93–108.

  4 Yoav Gelber, Independence Versus Nakba: The Arab–Israeli War of 1948, Tel Aviv: Devir, 2004 (Hebrew).

  5 Friling, An Answer to a Post-Zionist Colleague.

  6 Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The ‘New Historians’, London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

  7 Pilser, ‘Making History’, p. 1.

  8 Anita Shapira and Derek J. Penslar, ed., Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left to Right, London and Portland: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. iv–vi.

  9 Michael Walzer, ‘History and National Liberation’, in Shapira and Penslar, Israeli Historical Revisionism, pp. 1–8.

  10 Daniel Gutwein, ‘Left and Right Post-Zionism and the Privatisation of Israeli Collective Memory’, in Shapira and Penslar, Israeli Historical Revisionism, pp. 9–42.

  11 Martin S. Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001; and Gelber, Independence Versus Nakba.

  12 Benny Morris, Correcting a Mistake: Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel, 1936–1956, Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000 (Hebrew).

  13 Benny Morris, ‘The Survival of the Fittest’, interview in Haaretz, reproduced by The Journal of Palestine Studies, 33: 3, (Spring 2004). p. 168.

  14 Ibid., p. 169.

  15 Ibid., p. 168.

  16 Morris, 1948.

  17 Alon Kadish, ed., Israel’s War of Independence 1948–1949, 2 vols., Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence Publications, 2004, pp. 11–13 (Hebrew).

  18 Ibid., p. 14.

  19 Mordechai Bar-On, A Memory in a Book: The Early Israeli Historiography of the War of Independence, 1948–1958, Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence Publications, 2001, p. 60 (Hebrew).

  20 Mordechai Bar-On and Meir Hazan, eds, People at War: A Collection of Studies on the Civilian Society During the War of Independence, Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2007 (Hebrew).

  21 Gelber writes that the 1948 war began because of the Palestinian rejection of the partition resolution and the Arab world’s wish to destroy the Jewish state. In his view, whatever the Jewish forces did was in total, morally justified self-defence; see Yoav Gelber, ‘Why Did the Palestinians Run Away in 1948?’, History News Network, (17 June 2002), hnn.us/article/782.

  22 Tamir Goren, ‘Separate or Mixed Municipalities? Attitudes of Jewish Yishuv Leadership to the Mixed Municipality During the British Mandate: The Case of Haifa’, Israel Studies, 9: 1, (Spring 2004), pp. 101–24.

  23 Yakob Markovizky, ‘The Gahal–Recruitment Abroad in the War of Independence’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 525–38; Alon Kadish, ‘Settlements Prepare for War’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 801–48; Jonathan Fine, ‘Basic Problems in Government and Logistics’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 679–710; Amir Bar-Or, ‘The War of Independence: The Supervision of the Political Institutions over the Hagana Organisation’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 711–58; and Haim Barkai, ‘The Real Cost of the War of Independence’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 759–92.

  24 Arnon Golan, ‘The Reshaping of the Ex-Arab Space and the Construction of an Israeli Space (1948–1950)’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, p. 912.

  25 Arnon Golan, ‘The Transformation of the Settlements Map in the Areas Abandoned by the Arab Population as a Result of the War of Independence in the Territory on which the State of Israel was Founded, 1948–1950’, University of Haifa, 1993 (Hebrew).

  26 Benny Morris, ‘The Survival of the Fittest’; Morris, 1948.

  27 Dani Hadari, ‘The War of Independence in the North’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 119–70.

  28 Ibid., p, 131.

  29 Ibid., p. 133.

  30 Uri Milstein, ‘The Looting by Harel’, NEWS1, 28 February 2005.

  31 Yoav Peled, ‘The Campaign in Jaffa and the Surrounding Area’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 389–422; and Moshe Arnewald, ‘The Military Campaign in Jerusalem in the War of Independence, November 1947–April 1948’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 341–88.

  32 Peled, ‘The Campaign in Jaffa’, p. 417.

  33 Arnewald, ‘The Military Campaign’, p. 362.

  34 Ibid., p. 359.

  35 Ibid.

  36 Aaron Klein, ‘The Arab POWs in the War of Independence’, in Kadish, ed., Israel’s War, pp. 567–86.

  37 Salman Abu-Sitta, report on Israeli website Zochrot, zochrot.org, (19 May 2002) (Hebrew).

  38 See Abu-Sitta’s research in Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleaning of Palestine, pp. 200–4.

  39 The insensitivity displayed in Klein’s choice of subtitles, which would send shivers up the spine of any Holocaust survivor, could be the result of overuse, and manipulation of Holocaust memory in Israel, or simply ignorance. His use of the term Mahanot Haavoda (labour prison camps) shows a similar insensitivity; see Klein, ‘The Arab POWs’, p. 577.

  40 Ibid., p. 568.

  41 Ilan Pappe, ‘The Tantura Case in Israel: the Katz Research and Trial’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 30: 3, (Spring 2001), pp. 23–5.

  42 Klein, ‘The Arab POWs’, pp. 568, 576.

  43 Ibid., p. 576.

  44 Ibid., p. 583.

  45 Nimr al-Khatib, Palestine’s Nakba, Damascus, 1950 (Arabic).

  46 Klein, the Arab PoWs, p. 580.

  47 Klein’s lack of interest in the testimonies is perhaps not surprising, but this is the only study I have ever seen about the POWs that totally disregards the testimonies of the prisoners themselves. Imagine reconstructing life in a Japanese prison camp without oral and written testimonies of the inmates.

  48 Kadish, Israel’s War, p. 24.

  49 This is the basis of the argument also made in Yoav Gelber’s book, Independence Versus Nakba, which inspired the curriculum choice.

  50 Daniel Bar-Tal, Living With the Conflict: Socio-Psychological Analysis of the Jewish Society in Israel, Jerusalem: Carmel, 2007, p. 443 (Hebrew).

  51 See Sami Adwan and Ruth Firer, The Narrative of the Palestinian Refugees During the War of 1948 in Israeli and Palestinian History and Civic Education Textbooks, Pari
s: UNESCO Publications, 1997.

  52 Anita Shapira, ‘The Past Is Not a Foreign Country’.

  53 Anita Shapira, Yigal Allon: A Biography, pp. 154, 375.

  54 Leah Segal, ‘Between Myth and Reality: Few Against Many?’, Hazofeh, (24 February 2004) (Hebrew).

  Epilogue: Brand Israel 2013

  1 From the official website of the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport, speech made on 3 May 2012; see mcs.gov.il. For the debate in English, see ‘Ministry of Culture Offers Prize for “Zionist-Orientated” Art’, Haaretz, (6 October 2011). The full list of the 2012 winners appears only in the Hebrew version of the Ministry of Culture website, but not in the English one.

  2 ‘Ministry of Culture Offers Prize for “Zionist-Orientated” Art’, Haaretz.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Haaretz, (28 April 2013).

  8 Haaretz, (6 December 2011).

  9 Haaretz, (25 May 2013).

  10 See reports on website, ngo-monitor.org.il.

  11 Sarah Schulman, ‘A Documentary Guide to “Brand Israel” and the Art of Pinkwashing’, Mondoweiss, (30 November 2011), mondoweiss.net/2011/11/a-documentary-guide-to-brand-israel-and-the-art-of-pinkwashing.html.

  12 Ibid.

  13 The David Project, davidproject.org.

  14 Ibid.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Schulman, ‘A Documentary Guide’.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Yedioth Ahronoth, (27 July 2011).

  22 Gary Rosenblatt, ‘Marketing a New Image’, Jewish Week, (20 January 2005).

  23 Ibid.

  24 Ibid.

  25 Ibid.

  26 Ibid.

  27 See israelatheart.org.

  28 ‘Calls to Boycott Batsheva in the Edinburgh Festival’, Haaretz, (17 July 2012).

  29 Guardian, (22 May 2009).

  30 Schulman, ‘A Documentary Guide’.

  31 Schulman, ‘A Documentary Guide’.

  32 ‘The Delegitimisation Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall’, the Reut Institute, (14 February 2010), reut-institute.org (Hebrew).

  33 Haaretz, (28 November 2007).

  34 Jewish People Policy Institute, Annual Assessment 2010, Executive Report 7, p. 182.

  35 Vera Michlin, ‘Winning the Battle of the Narrative’, the Tenth Herzliya Annual Report, (31 January–3 February 2010), pp. 56–60.