Israel Studies Review

At the end of 2013, the Israeli army radio station Galei Zahal decided to revise the format of The University on Air, a radio program that had served as a unique forum for academia and the media in Israel for almost four decades. Launched in 1977, and with over 6,000 aired lectures, the program, with its long history, is a telling case of academia and media in Israel. We present a topical analysis of all courses aired from 1977 to 2013 and suggest that the program took a contrapuntal stance toward trends in both Israeli media and academia. We argue that processes of privatization during the 1990s created a more commercial-oriented atmosphere for science communication broadcasts. However, unlike the case with private media channels and private institutions of higher education, the shift to commercialism and ratings-oriented formats was slowed down by the protective shield of the army.

This article analyzes Menachem Begin’s attitude toward the Jewish Diaspora based on documented evidence from his international travels. Begin spent a significant amount of time traveling overseas in the 1950s and 1960s. When his leadership was threatened by Revisionists in Israel and challenged by key members of the Herut party, which he had founded, Begin looked for political legitimacy from Revisionists around the world. The staunch support of Diaspora Revisionists was an asset he could not disregard, and he recruited them as partners in decisions that had an impact on life in Israel. The backing of Diaspora Jewry was one of Begin’s sources of power and helped to secure his leadership in the Herut movement and in the State of Israel.

In February 1962, the Israeli government put in place a far-reaching economic liberalization reform. Had it been implemented as designed by the economists at the Bank of Israel and the Ministry of Finance, the plan could have dramatically changed Israel’s political-economic structure. Yet the plan’s actual implementation was limited and partial, with the result that economic liberalization was postponed for two further decades. This article examines the political dynamics through which Israeli economists tried to persuade political decision-makers to adopt the New Economic Policy and assesses the political obstructions that organized workers, employers, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry utilized in order to prevent its implementation. This analysis reveals the real yet limited political power that Israeli professional economists possessed in the 1960s, as well as the limits binding the power of the state with regard to organized economic interests.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 aroused strong responses in the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine. The support for the Spanish Republic—prevalent in the Zionist left as well as among the Communists—resulted in young Jews and Arabs volunteering to fight in Spain. These volunteers, primarily Jewish Communists, became part of a cult created around the war by the Communist Party. This article will examine the content of this cult while relating it to parallel groups in the West and in East Germany. Through this analysis, the ideological elements, heroes, modes of memory, and dissemination of the memory of the war will be explored.

The Constituent Assembly elections on 25 January 1949 were a crucial step—governmentally, politically, and symbolically—in the transformation of Israel into a democracy in the spirit of the November 1947 UN partition plan resolution. The election campaign, conducted amid the battles of the War of Independence, focused on where the newly founded state should be heading, that is, whether the military conquests should continue or should be wound up. The American administration attempted to exert direct and indirect influence over the conduct and outcomes of the election campaign. Mapai, however, needed no outside assistance to impose its political dominance, much of which was based on the leadership of David Ben-Gurion. The successes on the battlefield assured Mapai’s electoral triumph among both civilians and soldiers, with the latter accounting for a significant portion of the electorate.

Belying its conservative and old-fashioned image, Haredi society is constantly changing. Scholars examining these changes debate their direction and scope as well as their future implications. In this article I address the most striking example of these social changes. I argue that not only is Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) society adopting Western social values in addition to certain Israeli characteristics, but that these processes are occurring even within the most extreme sub-group of Haredi society, which I refer to as Extreme Orthodoxy. I then proceed to offer several examples to demonstrate how, in recent decades, Extreme Orthodoxy has appropriated many Western and Israeli social and behavioral traits.

Turkey’s relationship with Israel has been mixed since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Although Turkey was one ofthe first Muslim countries to recognize and initiate diplomatic relations with Israel soon after, improving bilateral relations never becameapriority. During the Cold War years, the two main determinants of Turkish-Israeli relations were their status as pro-Western countries in the region and the Arab-Israel conflict, which directly and indirectly influenced Turkish foreign policy toward Israel. Efforts to improve relations during the Cold War were constantly interrupted by the Arab-Israel conflict and by Turkish public opinion regarding Israel’s regional policies. Until the restoration of full diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level following the 1992 Madrid Conference, secret diplomacy between the two countries was the norm. Attempts at forming a Turkish-Israeli alignment were short-lived during these years.