Israel Studies Review

In recent months, studying and publishing research on Israel has become more arduous than at any time in recent decades. Academic research is imperative to enhance understanding of Israel. The absence of scholarly research, in contrast, impoverishes knowledge about Israel, ultimately risking misinformed debates.

The interview with Amos Eiran offers a first-hand account of clandestine talks between then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein, between 1974 and 1977. Eiran, then the Director General of the Prime Minister's office (1975–1977), participated in most of the talks. His account offers unknown details, as well as reflections on why the talks did not lead to a breakthrough at that time. Eiran's account reflects a King Hussein who is confident, thoughtful, charming, and keenly aware of the internal and regional challenges Jordan faced at the time. Although not formally part of the process, the Nixon and Ford administrations kept a close watch, and maintained side contacts with the parties. Eiran's account also highlights the critical role of personal relations, trust, and confidence building in a conflict that was already decades old and had far-reaching regional and global strategic resonance.

This article revisits the 1983 Israel-Lebanon Agreement using new archival material, mainly from the Israel State Archives, with three main goals. First, it demonstrates the centrality of the agreement for Israeli schemes in Lebanon and argues that Israeli demands during the negotiations shed new light on its decision to stay in Lebanon in June 1985, despite the government decision of January 1985 to withdraw to the international border. Second, it reconsiders Syria's ‘veto power’ over the agreement given Israel's objectives to establish a security zone in south Lebanon. Finally, by using new archival evidence, it completes our historical knowledge about the road to the agreement and its aftermath.

This article maintains that states can utilize place naming in their capitals to advance two foreign policy goals: first, promoting closer relations with other international actors, including states and international organizations, thereby complementing more traditional diplomatic means; second, supporting national branding efforts as the state strives to enhance the image it seeks to project to other international actors and its global reputation. Drawing on the case of Israel's extensive place naming efforts in Jerusalem in the period 1948–1967, which were designed to achieve these two goals, the article establishes that the use of place naming as a diplomatic tool should be viewed as part of what is often referred to as cultural diplomacy, namely, international actors’ exchange of and collaboration regarding ideas, values, perceptions, and cultural gestures that serve to strengthen ties in the long term.

Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state. Although various groups have challenged its identity, it was only after 2009 that Jewish identity was presented by Israeli governments as facing a serious existential threat. Utilizing the concept of “securitization,” which frames an issue as an existential threat requiring extraordinary measures, this article examines the education system's role in securitizing Jewish identity in Israel. My argument is that public education serves as a powerful tool in this securitization, overlooked by studies on securitization or education in Israel. The result is a reduction in teachers’ and students’ ability to act according to their worldview, affecting not only the present but also future citizens’ civic skills needed in a democratic state.

Historically, the impact of American Jewish philanthropic support for Israel has been significant and far reaching. Yet American Jews have, by and large, not attempted to leverage their philanthropy for the purposes of advancing their own agendas in Israel. Since the 1990s, however, there have been substantial changes in how American Jews give to Israel. Total inflation-adjusted peacetime giving is higher than at any point in Israel's history, but the traditional channels that dominated the field for decades—Jewish federations and the Jewish Agency—have been overtaken collectively by over eight hundred smaller ‘friends of’ and umbrella organizations. This article assesses the degree to which the American Jews running these organizations use their money as a means to push for agendas not necessarily prioritized in the same way by the Israelis to whom they are donating. Through case studies of ten Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their relationships with their associated American fundraising vehicles, this article elucidates the range of interaction patterns, exploring issues such as trust, collaboration, and the extent of involvement by Americans. Most importantly, it introduces a typology for studying the broader field of thousands of Israeli NGOs that depend on diaspora Jews for financial support.

This article examines the personal diary of Dr. Michael Simon, the first chief of protocol for Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that he wrote in April 1955 during his visit to Morocco. The diary raises questions about the beliefs, perceptions, stances, and images that prevailed among European Jews in Israel vis-à-vis Middle Eastern and North African Jews during the first decade of the State of Israel's existence. I propose that Simon's outlook on Moroccan Jewry was complex, integrative, and free of stereotypes. Analyzing Simon's case enables an exploration of the conditions that informed his views of Morocco's Jews, conditions that were manifested in different ways by most of the Israelis of European heritage whose writings dealt with Middle East and North Africa Jews and their descendants in Israel.

Shay Rabineau. Walking the Land: A History of Israeli Hiking Trail (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023).

Viola Arianov-Rautenberg. No Longer Ladies and Gentlemen: Gender and the German-Jewish Migration to Mandatory Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2023).

Weininger, Melissa. Beyond the Land: Diaspora Israeli Culture in the Twenty-First Century. (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2023). 232 pp., Paperback, $27.99

Ziv, Guy. The Generals vs Netanyahu: The Battle for Israel's Future. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024). 266 pp., Hardback, $90.

Netanyahu, Benjamin. Bibi: My Story. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2022), 736 pp., paperback, $23.99.

Muallem, Mazal. Cracking the Netanyahu Code. [In Hebrew] (Shoham: Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, 2022), 432 pp., paperback, $29.99.