Israel Studies Review

After our Winter 2013 special issue, which contained 17 articles focusing intently on all (or almost all) aspects of the family in Israel, we have changed lenses and are presenting quite a bit of variety in this issue. We start off with Efrat Ben-Ze’ev’s provocative article “Hidden Scripts: The Social Evolution of Alterman’s ‘Don’t You Give Them Guns,’” which investigates the transformation in meaning of that single phrase in Israeli society as a whole, but particularly the poem’s significance in the annual commemoration ceremony held by a specific Palmach unit. It is a fascinating exploration of meaning using the tools of an anthropologist.

Nathan Alterman's poem “Don't You Give Them Guns” echoed European post–World War I anti-war literature. Curiously, the poem turned into a key text in a ritual instituted by members of the elite Jewish underground fighting force, the Palmach, which was established during World War II. This article is an attempt to understand how a pacifist poem came to be used by Jewish-Israeli soldiers at the heart of the 1948 War of Independence. In terms of theory, the analysis dwells on the relations between text and social context, arguing that alternative social ideas conceal themselves in poetry and other literary forms. These texts can be likened to undercurrents that preserve hidden social concerns. To follow the changing role of such texts, the article considers the fate of “Don't You Give Them Guns” from its birth in 1934 to its later manifestations in the early twenty-first century.

In this article we assert that it was Yitzhak Shamir who created new possibilities for mobility within the Herut party, laying the foundation for the Mahapach (electoral upheaval) of 1977. The contrast between Shamir, who avoided the limelight, and Menachem Begin, who was comfortable with the masses, has left Shamir on the sidelines of the research, debate, and discourse on the Herut and Likud parties. Rather than taking the usual approach of focusing on Begin, we highlight Shamir's role in devising and consolidating the new model for the division of power within Herut, making possible the involvement of political forces that had previously been inactive in the party's institutions. Shamir's approach toward integration, which benefited mainly Mizrahim, allowed Herut to remake itself internally. It was this reworked infrastructure, we believe, that brought about the dramatic electoral results of May 1977.

This study explores features of the routinization of the Israeli-Arab conflict in everyday life in Israel. Specifically, it examines how foreign students view this aspect of the culture of conflict, compared to the point of view of Israeli students born into the day-to-day reality of a society that has been engaged in an intractable conflict for decades. Findings show that foreigners perceived and identified various conflict-related routines that have been absorbed into the social and physical spaces of daily life in Israel, becoming unnoticeable to Israelis. This was the case particularly with various images and symbols of the conflict that saturate both public and private spaces, conflict-related informal norms of behavior, and the central place that the conflict occupies in private interpersonal discourse. These results are discussed in relation to the functionalities of the routinization of the conflict and its implications.

Local television news is the most-watched news source in America, yet we know very little about how local channels cover foreign events. In this article, we examine and compare the news coverage of the 2006 Lebanon War on local and network news channels in the United States. Applying Entman's framing functions, we find that the local news coverage of this war was significantly more supportive of the Israeli position compared to the coverage of the same event on network news. We suggest that this difference is due to features of the local newsroom, including economic and institutional constraints, as well as newsroom routines that result in the tendency of the local media to comply with the positions of the US authorities.

This article presents a socio-cultural analysis of advertisements in the Israeli press that feature visual images of major world sites and urban landscapes, dating from 1967 through 2008. These locations are represented in the advertisements as places of entertainment and leisure. Images of foreign cities and exotic lands are contrasted to the density and crowded reality of everyday Israeli life. Advertising thus serves as a means through which the illusion of being abroad appears to be accessible to every consumer. It becomes the refuge of consumers, who can escape to a land of dreams evoked in an advertisement. In this way, the use of distancing in advertising functions as a metaphor for Israel's place in the hearts and minds of those who are being targeted by Israeli advertisements.

In Israel, the contemporary Haredi kollel (institute for advanced Torah study for adult men) is caught between two institutional visions: one sees the kollel as a selective, temporary framework to train future educators, rabbis, and leaders, while the other views the kollel as a non-selective phenomenon of indefinite study for people who have few career options. This tension has resulted in several types of contemporary kollels and a number of religious ideologies that promote full-time study for adult men. The article examines three different models of Haredi kollels and analyzes how they manage the friction between temporary and permanent kollel study. It articulates an abstract typology of ideological justifications that are advanced to support long-term kollel study.

Yigal Kipnis, 1973: The Road to War (Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books, 2013), 323 pp., $28.00 (paperback).

Daniel C. Kurtzer, ed., Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 237 pp., $31.00 (hardback).

Daniel C. Kurtzer, Scott B. Lasensky, William B. Quandt, Steven L. Spiegel, and Shibley Z. Telhami, The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989–2011 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 336 pp., $29.95 (hardback).

Guy Ben-Porat, Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Contemporary Israel Review by Netanel Fisher

Hanna Lerner, Making Constitutions in Deeply Divided Societies Review by Mordechai Kremnitzer

David Ohana, Israel and Its Mediterranean Identity Review by Sammy Smooha

Margalit Toledano and David McKie, Public Relations and Nation Building: Influencing Israel Review by Anat First

Myron J. Aronoff and Jan Kubik, Anthropology and Political Science: A Convergent Approach Review by Joel Migdal

Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman, eds., Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture Review by Tal Dekel

Yigal Zalmona, A Century of Israeli Art Review by Tal Dekel

Ilana Szobel, A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch Review by Eric Zakim