Israel Studies Review

For the first two decades of its existence as an organization, the Association for Israel Studies issued its semi-annual publication on its own. The mostly informational tool, Israel Studies Newsletter, and its successor, Israel Studies Bulletin (which included brief essays and book reviews), facilitated a modest link among AIS members in between their annual meetings.

The current state of the debate over Israeli democracy and the state of Israeli democracy itself are analyzed through the citizenship status of Israel's Palestinian citizens. The two main theoretical models featured in this debate—Smooha's "ethnic democracy" and Yiftachel's "ethnocracy"—are discussed, focusing on the 'framework decisions' that inform their arguments. After demonstrating that the question of Israeli democracy should be viewed dynamically and historically, it will be clear that the Israeli state has been evolving from non-democratic ethnocracy, though ethnic democracy, toward non-democratic majoritarianism. For each one of these phases, prior to October 2000, we analyze a seminal decision of the Supreme Court that highlighted the citizenship status of the Palestinian citizens during that phase. For the period since October 2000, we analyze the Or Commission report and its reception by the government to argue that Israel may be on its way to becoming a non-democratic majoritarian state.

This article analyzes recent trends in Israeli public sociology and examines the extent to which Israeli sociologists have been engaged in the public realm. The basic presumption informing this essay is that since the 1967 War, Israeli society has been in a continuous state of crisis as a result of an inability to make decisions regarding the Occupied Territories. This crisis and its societal consequences have not been incorporated into Israeli academic sociology, either conceptually or paradigmatically. One result of this omission (but perhaps also its major cause) is the withdrawal of most Israeli sociologists from the public sphere and the lack of public sociology in Israel. The author calls for discussion and debate among his Israeli colleagues regarding this state of affairs.

A survey of the literature on Israeli parties and elections reveals a gradual shift from a perception of the country as sui generis toward the study of Israeli parties as a seedbed for hypotheses to be tested elsewhere. The dramatic nature of the Israeli party system also renders it a suitable testing ground for dynamic heuristic models, such as one that explains strategic choices that guide party competitiveness under shifting circumtances. The present article illustrates this claim by introducing the concept of the party goal triangle and examining it through an analysis of the 2003 electoral campaign. Focus is placed on the movement of the main competitors along the triangle legs as forms of adjustment to electoral reform, and on the factors constraining a party's choice of strategy.

Hebrew literature has always been inseparable from the national narrative. Public expectations from the writer have been extremely demanding: a writer must carry the national moral beacon. The effects of this demanding role can be easily recognized in current Hebrew literature. Few are those who ignore the call. Authors may opt for one of three alternatives: Alexander Penn's way, Natan Alterman's way, or Joseph Brenner's way. Penn's way entails direct public involvement embedded in literary works. Alterman's way means the separation between the 'public' and the 'private'. Brenner's way is the complex fusion of the 'public' and the 'private'. This last approach seems to have become the dominant one, with contemporary Hebrew literature and the state of the nation upholding and supporting each other.

Gad Barzilai, Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities by Helena Silverstein

Michael Keren, Zichroni v. State of Israel: The Biography of a Civil Rights Lawyer by Jonathan Mendilow

Yosefa Loshitzky, Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen by Michael Keren

Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Richard B. Parker

Michal Peled Ginsburg and Moshe Ron, Shattered Vessels: Memory, Identity, and Creation in the Work of David Shahar by Naomi Sokoloff

Mel Scult, Yahaduth Mithhadesheth: HaBiographiah shel Mordecai M. Kaplan by Rabbi Jack Cohen

Notes on contributors

Israel Studies Centers and Chairs

Graduate Program in Israel Studies at the University of Calgary