Israel Studies Review

The horrid events of October 7 and ensuing war have profoundly impacted the Israel Studies academic community. Our hearts go out to the victims, survivors, and their family members. We are republishing the statement issued by the AIS executive on October 13.

This Special Issue is dedicated to the study of public policies in Israel. The issue illustrates the dynamics, specific character, and complexity of policy approaches to diverse issues in Israel. Our aim is to analyze challenges and offer practical remedies. By focusing on public policies, we highlight concepts and strategies of policy management. We also offer recommendations for improving the understanding of some intricate issues and, ipso facto, social conditions in a number of spheres.

Constructivists in the field of International Relations assume that states not only seek to ensure their physical security but also try to secure their identities by maintaining durable behavioral patterns in their relations with other actors. The dominant identity of the Israeli state is associated with policies characterized by resoluteness and decisiveness. This article argues that this state identity also manifests itself in the domestic sphere and presents case studies of two such manifestations. The first pertains to the development of Israeli offshore gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean while the second deals with the country's COVID-19 pandemic containment strategy. The two cases are similar in the decisive and extraordinary character of the measures that the government attempted to use. At the same time, in the first case study this attempt was mostly unsuccessful and only in the second case the decisive stance was effectively implemented.

In March 2020, the Israeli government decided that its internal security agency may collect, process, and use technological information measures to tackle the spread of COVID-19. This was done by tracking the cellphones of those who may have contracted the virus, along with obtaining details on those who were in proximity for more than fifteen minutes and fourteen days prior to the positive outcome of those traced. The article discusses the controversial track and trace measure and proposes an alternative model of using tracing technology, considering the obligation to preserve human life and the right to individual privacy among other rights and liberties. It is argued that measures infringing on the right to privacy must be effectively restricted in time and meet standards of necessity, proportionality, and scientific validity, as required by constitutional standards. The government needs to balance the right to health against the right to privacy.

What strategies do state institutions use to maintain their existing unpopular policies? To what extent are citizens content with these strategies? This article presents a model classifying the various methods state institutions use to manage unpopular policies while keeping these core policies intact. The model demonstrates that state institutions manage unpopular policies by using three strategies, adjusted accordingly to counteract societal discontent: (1) disregard, (2) accommodation of under-the-legislative-threshold alternatives, and (3) partial institutional modification. To test this model, I compare three religion-based policies in Israel: marriage, public transportation on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath), and kosher food inspection in public institutions. Each policy is an example of the different measures taken by state institutions to mitigate societal discontent without changing the core of the policy.

The significance of the Western Wall in Jerusalem has undergone numerous transformations over time. Originally a supporting wall for the Temple Mount, it became the focus of mourning after the Temple's destruction, and later a symbol for national rebirth; after the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel reclaimed it as part of its capital. Since then, two trends have been notable: strict religious authorities have taken charge of the site, and this transfer has been portrayed as part of an overall and purportedly inevitable shift in modern Israeli history. But the subsuming of national-historical significance of the Western Wall into a narrower religious one was not inevitable, and this article presents a number of viable policy alternatives that were available in 1967. Moreover, it suggests that the current status of the wall and policy towards it are outliers relative to mainstream public opinion, an example of political expediency conflicting with public interest.

This article explores the contributions of non-governmental entities to Israeli policies for preventing and responding to oil spills on land and at sea. It discusses the legal and practical aspects of Israeli policies, reviews the country's experiences with oil spills, and examines two case studies. The policies in question exhibit characteristic features of the Israeli polity, such as centralization and deficiencies in long-term planning; activism by the judiciary, the media, experts, NGOs, and a multitude of public agencies; and procrastination, indecisiveness, and securitization. The non-governmental entities involved dispose of vital material and nonmaterial resources and play a visible role through information sharing, lobbying, litigating, and direct action. Deficiencies in governance harm prospects for streamlining these policies and enhancing the contributions of non-governmental entities.

This article deals with Israel's cultural policy and public funding for the arts—a nascent, under-developed research field in Israeli scholarship. The article focuses on the plastic arts and film, presenting data about the system of budget allocation and the structure of relevant Ministry of Culture and Sports decision-making committees. The discussion takes a gender perspective, focusing on obstacles women artists face in accessibility to public budgets for the arts. These challenges, we argue, are compounded when considering additional and overlapping identity categories. We apply intersectional analysis—a perspective that considers positionality and social background, including gender, class, race, nationality, and religion—and conclude with suggestions for improving public policy for the arts.

Eshel, Ruth. Dance Spreads Its Wings: Israeli Concert Dance 1920–2010 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2021), 500 pp., $99.99 (hardback).

ROZENTAL, ROTEM. Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement (New York: Routledge, 2023). 260 pp., $128 (hardback).