Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-05T13:19:51.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Postnationalist Pasts: The Case of Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Extract

National identity is hegemonic among the population of Jewish descent in Israel. Zionism, modern Jewish nationalism, originated in eastern Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A national movement without a territory, Zionism naturally adopted the ethnic, or integrative, type of nationalism that prevailed in the region (for a basic typology of nationalism see Smith 1986: 79-84). In Palestine the diasporic Jewish nationalism turned into a settler-colonial nationalism. The state of Israel inherited the ethnic principle of membership and never adopted the alternative liberal-territorial principle. To this day the dominant ethos of the state is Zionist, that is, Jewish nationalist. Though Israeli citizenship is de jure equal to Jews and Arabs, a de facto distinction is easily discernible between the dominated minority and the dominant majority and its state.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1998 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Al-Haj, Majid (1995) Education, Empowerment, and Control: The Case of Arabs in Israel. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Alkalai, Amiel (1993) After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities. 2d ed. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Appleby, Joyce Oldham, Hunt, Lynn, and Jacobs, Margaret (1994) Telling the Truth about History. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Arnason, Johann P. (1990) “Nationalism, globalization, and modernity,” in Featherstone, M. (ed.) Global Culture. New York: Sage: 207–36.Google Scholar
Asaf, David (1995) “The robbers of memory.” Haaretz, 17 February.Google Scholar
Axford, Barry (1995) The Global System: Economics, Politics and Culture. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Barnai, Jacob (1995) Historiography and Nationalism. Jerusalem: Magnes [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Bar On, Dan (1994) Fear and Hope. Kibbutz Lohamei Hegetaot: Ghetto Fighters House [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Bar Yosef, Rivka (1980 [1969]) “Deserialization and resocialization: The adjustment process of immigrants,” in Kraust, E. (ed.) Studies of Israeli Society. Vol. 1, Migration, Ethnicity, and Community. Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books: 1937.Google Scholar
Barzilai, Gad (1996) Wars, Internal Conflict, and Political Order. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, Yehuda (1993) “No ‘Tom’ and no ‘Segev.’” Iton 77, 161: 2428.Google Scholar
Bauer, Yehuda (1994) “That’s what a Jewish state is for.” Haaretz, 27 September.Google Scholar
Beit Zvi, Shabtai (1977) Post-Ugandian Zionism in the Crucible of the Holocaust. Tel Aviv: Bronfman [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Ben-Eliezer, Uri (1995) The Emergence of Israeli Militarism, 1936-1956. Tel Aviv: Dvir [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Berger, Stefan (1995) “Historians and nation-building in Germany after reunification.” Past and Present 148:187222.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Deborah (1987) The Struggle for Equality: Urban Women Workers in Pre-State Israeli Society. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Deborah (1992) “Human being—or housewife?: The status of women in the Jewish working class family in Palestine of the 1920s and 1930s,” in Bernstein, D. (ed.) Pioneers and Homeworks. Albany: SUNY Press: 246–71.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi (1990) Nation and Narration. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bienfeld, Manfred (1994) “Capitalism and the nation-state.” Socialist Register 30: 94129.Google Scholar
Bishara, Azmi (1993) “On the question of the Palestinian minority in Israel,” in Ram, U. (ed.) Israeli Society: Critical Perspectives. Tel Aviv: Breirot [Hebrew]: 203–21.Google Scholar
Bodnar, John (1991) Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cable, Vincent (1995) “The diminished nation-state: A study in the loss of economic power.” Daedalus 124: 2353.Google Scholar
Carmi, Shulamit, and Rosenfeld, Henry (1989) “The rise of militaristic nationalism in Israel.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 3: 549.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel (1997) The Information Age. Vol. 2, The Power of Identity. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha (1993) The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post-colonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick (1994) “Conflict and connection: Rethinking colonial African history.” American Historical Review 99:1516–45.Google Scholar
Crawford, Young (1993) The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay? Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Curthoys, Ann (1993) “Identity crisis: Colonialism, nation and gender in Australian history.” Gender and History 5:165–76.Google Scholar
Diner, Dan (1988) “The Yishuv in the face of the holocaust of European Jewry (review article).” Haziyonut 13: 301–8 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Dunn, John (1994) “Political studies: The crisis of the nation-state.” Special Issue of Political Studies 42.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Avishai (1987) “Israel: Conflict, war and social change,” in Creighton, C. a. M. S. (ed.) The Sociology of War and Peace. Devonshire: McMillan Press: 121–42.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah (1967) Israeli Society: Background, Development, Problems. Jerusalem: Magnes [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Elkana, Yehuda (1978) “Two tier thinking: Philosophical realism and historical relativism.” Social Studies of Science 8: 309–26.Google Scholar
Eshkoli-Wagman, Hava (1994) Silence: Mapai and the Holocaust, 1939-1942. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak Ben Zvi.Google Scholar
Evron, Boaz (1988) A National Reckoning. Tel Aviv: Dvir [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Featherstone, Mike (1995) Undoing Culture. New York: Sage.Google Scholar
Feierman, Steven (1995) “Africa in history: The end of universal narratives,” in Prakash, G. (ed.) After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 4065.Google Scholar
Firer, Ruth (1985) The Agents of Zionist Education. Kiryat Tivon: Oranim [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Firer, Ruth (1989) Agents of the Holocaust Lesson. Tel Aviv: Hakkibbutz Hameuhad [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Flapan, Simha (1987) The Birth of Israel: Myth and Realities. London: Chroom Helm.Google Scholar
Fogel-Bijaui, Silviya (1991) “Mothers and revolution: The case of women in the kibbutz, 1910-1948.” Shorashim 6:143–92 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Foner, Eric (1990) The New American History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Friedlander, Saul (1993) Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews in Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Funkenstein, Amos (1991) Perceptions of Jewish History from Antiquity to the Present. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, Ross (1992) South of the West: Postcolonialism and the Narrative Construction of Australia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Giladi, Dan (1973) Jewish Palestine during the Fourth Aliya Period (1924–1929). Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Giladi, Dan (1994) The Return to Our Forefathers’ Land: Z. D. Lavontin: A Proponent of a Free Enterprise Approach to Zionism. Jerusalem: Friends of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Gildea, Robert (1994) The Past in French History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gorni, Yosef (1973) Achdut Haavoda, 1919-1930. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Grinberg, Lev (1993) The Histadrut above All. Jerusalem: Nevo [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Grodzinsky, Yosef (1994) “The Holocaust, the Yishuv, their leaders and their historians (Parts A and B).” Haaretz, 8 and 15 April.Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit, and Spivak, Gayatri C., eds. (1988) Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford.Google Scholar
Gunew, Sneja (1990) “Denaturalizing cultural nationalisms: Multicultural readings of ‘Australia,’” in Bhabha, H. (ed.) Nation and Narration. London: Routledge: 99120.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1984/1987) The Theory of Communicative Action. Vols. 1 and 2. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1994) “Citizenship and national identity,” in Bart, V. S. (ed.) The Condition of Citizenship. London: Sage: 2035.Google Scholar
Handvaker, Haim (1996) “Shakespeare surrenders to the Riggio brothers.” Haaretz, 7 July.Google Scholar
Harvey, David (1989) The Condition of Post-Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Helman, Sara (1993) “Conscientious objection to military service as an attempt to redefine the contents of citizenship.” Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University [Hebrew], Jerusalem.Google Scholar
Hertzberger, David (1995) Narrating the Past: Fiction and History in Post-War Spain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Herzog, Hana (1994) “A forgotten chapter in the historiography of the Yishuv: Women’s organizations.” Cathedra 70:111–33.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric (1990) Nations and nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence (1983) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Dan, and Lissak, Moshe (1977) The Origins of the Israeli Polity. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Jenkins, Keith (1997) The Post-Modern History Reader. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kadish, Alon (1989) “The refugees problem: The history and the accusation.” Haaretz, 14 August.Google Scholar
Kafkafi, Eyal (1994) An Optional War: To Sinai and Back, 1956-1957. Ramat Efal: Yad Tabenkin [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Karakasidou, Anastasia N. (1994) “Sacred scholars, profane advocates: Intellectuals modeling national consciousness in Greece.” Identities 1: 3561.Google Scholar
Katz, Yosef (1989) Hyozma hapratit bebinyan eretz israel betkufat haliya hashniya [The free enterprise’s contribution to the build-up of Eretz Israel]. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University.Google Scholar
Katz, Yosef (1993) The Colonization Activity in Palestine of the Zionist Private Companies and Associations. Jerusalem: Chamul [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Kimmerling, Baruch (1983) Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kimmerling, Baruch (1985) “Between the primordial and the civil dimensions of the collective identity,” in Almagor, E. C. a. M. L. Uri (ed.) Comparative Social Dynamics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press: 262–83.Google Scholar
Kimmerling, Baruch (1992) “Sociology, ideology and nation building: The Palestinians and their meaning in Israeli sociology.” American Sociological Review 57: 460–66.Google Scholar
Kimmerling, Baruch (1993) “Militarism in Israeli society.” Theory and Critique 4:123–40 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Lash, Scott, and Urry, John (1994) Economies of Time and Space. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Levi, Yagil, and Peled, Yoav (1993) “The break that never was: Israeli sociology reflected through the Six Day War.” Theory and Critique 3: 115–28.Google Scholar
Libes, Yehuda (1992) “New directions in Kabbala research.” Peamim 50: 150–70 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Liebman, Charles, and Eliezer, Don Yehiya (1983) Civil Religion in Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lori, Aviva (1996) “The Battle over the Bank.” Haaretz Supplement, 2 August.Google Scholar
Lustick, Ian (1988) For the Land and the Lord. New York: Council on Foreign Relations.Google Scholar
Maier, Charles S. (1988) The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mallon, Florencia E. (1994) “The promise and dilemma of subaltern studies: Perspectives from Latin American history.” American Historical Review 99:14911515.Google Scholar
Meged, Aharon (1994) “The Israeli suicidal drive.” Haaretz Supplement, 10 June.Google Scholar
Megill, Alan (1987) “The rhetoric of history,” in Nelson, J., Megill, Alan, and McClosky, David (eds.) The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: 221–38.Google Scholar
Michman, Dan (1994) “On history and charlatanism.” Haaretz, 6 May.Google Scholar
Morris, Benny (1991) The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947–1949. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Morris, Benny (1993) Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Morris, Benny (1994) “Objective history.” Haaretz Supplement, 1 July.Google Scholar
Muller, Wolfgang C., and Wright, Vincent (1994) “The state in Western Europe,” in West European Politics, 17: 34. London: Frank Kasse.Google Scholar
Nahon, Yaakov (1993) “Occupational status,” in Eisenstadt, M. L. a. Y. N. S.N. (ed.) Ethnic Communities in Israel. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies [Hebrew]: 3045.Google Scholar
Novick, Peter (1988) That Noble Dream: The “ObjectivityQuestion and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oron, Yair (1993) Israeli-Jewish Identity. Tel Aviv: Siriyat Poalim [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Palmer, Bryan (1994) “Canadian controversies.” History Today 44: 4449.Google Scholar
Pappe, Ilan (1986) “Moshe Sharet, David Ben Gurion and the ‘Palestinian Option,’ 1948-1956.” Zionism 11: 361–80 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Pappe, Ilan (1992) The Making of the Israeli-Arab Conflict. London: I. B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Pappe, Ilan (1993) “The new history of the 1948 war.” Theory and Critique 3: 99114 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Pappe, Ilan (1994) “The impact of Zionist ideology on Israeli historiography,” Davar, 15 May.Google Scholar
Peled, Yoav (1993) “Strangers in utopia: The civic status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.” Theory and Critique 3: 2138 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Peri, Yoram (1989) “From political nationalism to ethno-nationalism: The case of Israel.” in Battah, Y. L. a. A. M. (ed.) The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Boulder, CO: Westview Press: 4153.Google Scholar
Pieterse, Jan Nederveen (1995) “Globalization as hybridization,” in Lash, M. F a. S. (ed.) Global Modernities. New York: Sage: 4568.Google Scholar
Piterberg, Gabi (1995) “The nation and its raconteurs: Orientalism and nationalist historiography.” Theory and Critique 6: 81104 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Porat, Dina (1986) An Entangled Leadership: The Yishuv and the Holocaust, 1942-1945. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Porat, Dina (1990) “Contemporary historiography of Zionist efforts during the Holocaust period.” Yahadut Zemanenu 6:117–32 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Porat, Dina (1995) “Two Jewish peoples.” Haaretz, 17 February.Google Scholar
Prakash, Gyan (1994) “Subaltern studies as postcolonial criticism.” American Historical Review 99:1475–90.Google Scholar
Ram, Uri (1993) “Israeli society: Critical perspectives.” Tel Aviv: Breirot [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Ram, Uri (1995a) The Changing Agenda of Israeli Sociology: Theory, Ideology and Identity. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Ram, Uri (1995b) “Zionist historiography and the invention of modern Jewish nationhood: The case of Ben Zion Dinur.” History and Memory 7: 91124.Google Scholar
Ram, Uri (1996) “Historical consciousness in Israel: Between Zionism and post-Zionism.” Gesher 132: 9397 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Ravitsky, Aviezer (1996) Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon (1994) “Exile within sovereignty: Toward a critique of the ‘negation of exile ’ in Israeli culture (Parts I and II).” Theory and Critique 4 and 5: 623, 113–32 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Revel, Jacques, and Hunt, Lynn (1995) Histories: French Constructions of the Past. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Robertson, Ronald (1987) “Globalization theory and civilization analysis.” Comparative Civilizations Review 17: 2030.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, Henry (1978) “The class situation of the Arab national minority in Israel.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20: 309–26.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, Henry, and Shulamit Carmi (1976) “The privatization of public means, the state made middle class, and the realization of family values in Israel,” in Peristiany, J. G. (ed.) Kinship and Modernization in Mediterranean Society. Rome: The Center for Mediterranean Studies, American Universities Field Staff: 131–59.Google Scholar
Rosenhak, Zeev (1995) “New development in the study of the Palestinian citizens of Israel: An analytical survey.” Megamot 47:167–90 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Ross, Robert J. S. (1990) “The relative decline of relative economy: Global capitalism and the political economy of state change,” in Mayer, E. S. G. a. T. M. (ed.) Changes in the State. Berkeley: Sage: 206–23.Google Scholar
Rousso, Henry (1991) The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Amnon (1995) “The distortion of Zionism.” Haaretz, 12 September.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., (1991) The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Vivian A. (1995) “The new world order, incorporated: The rise of business and the decline of the nation-state.” Daedalus 124: 75106.Google Scholar
Schwarz, Yigal (1994) “The Hebrew literature: The ‘post’ era.” Yediot Aharonot: Saturday Supplement, 2930.Google Scholar
Segev, Tom (1991) The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. Jerusalem: Keter [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Shafir, Gershon (1989) Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shafir, Gershon (1993) “Territory, labor and population in Zionist colonization,” in Ram, U. (ed.) Israeli Society: Critical Perspectives. Tel Aviv: Breirot: 104–19.Google Scholar
Shalev, Michael (1992) Labor and the Political Economy of Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shapira, Anita (1980) Berl Katznelson: A Biography. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Shapiro, Yonathan (1975) The Organization of Power. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Shapiro, Yonathan (1993) “The historical origins of Israeli democracy,” in Sprinzak, D. C. a. E. (ed.)Israeli Democracy under Stress. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner.Google Scholar
Shlaim, Avi (1988) Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Shohat, Ella (1989) Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Silberstein, Lawrence (1991) “New perspectives on Israeli history.” New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Slater, Jerome (1995) “Lost opportunities for peace: Reassessing the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Tikkun 10: 5964, 88.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. (1981) The Ethnic Revival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. (1986) The Ethnic Origins of Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. (1995) Nations and Nationalism in the Global Era. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Smooha, Sammy (1978) Israel: Pluralism and Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Smooha, Sammy (1990) “Minority status in ethnic democracy: The status of the Arab minority in Israel.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 13: 389413.Google Scholar
Soysal, Yasmin Nuhoglu (1994) Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sprinzak, Ehud (1991) The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sternhell, Zeev (1995) Nation-Building or New Society? Tel Aviv: Am Oved.Google Scholar
Swirski, Shlomo (1981) Orientals and Ashkenazim in Israel. Haifa: Notebooks for Research and Critique [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Swirski, Shlomo (1990) Education in Israel: Schooling for Inequality. Tel Aviv: Breirot [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Swirski, Shlomo (1993) “Tomorrow,” in Ram, U. (ed.) Israeli Society: Critical Perspectives. Tel Aviv: Breirot [Hebrew]: 351–63.Google Scholar
Swirski, Shlomo (1995) Seeds of Inequality. Tel Aviv: Breirot [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Tevet, Shabtai (1989) “The New Historians.” Haaretz, 4,14, 21 April.Google Scholar
Tevet, Shabtai (1994a) “The black hole: Ben Gurion between Holocaust and revival.” Alpayim 10:111–95 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Tevet, Shabtai (1994b) “Shock, ambivalence or helplessness?Haaretz Sfarim, 30 March, pp. 45.Google Scholar
Volkov, Shulamit (1991) “History, historians and the German nation-state.” Zmanim 37: 5965.Google Scholar
Wasserman, Henry (1986) “The nationalization of the memory of the six million.” Politika 8: 7–6, 55.Google Scholar
Weingrod, Alex (1993) “Changing Israeli Landscapes: Building and the uses of the past.” Cultural Anthropology 8: 370–87.Google Scholar
Weitz, Yehiam (1994) Aware But Helpless. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak Ben Zvi [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Yiftachel, Oren (1992) Planning a Mixed Region in Israel: The Political Geography of Arab-Jewish Relations in the Galilee. Aldershot, Hants: Avebury.Google Scholar
Zertal, Idit (1994) “The sacrifice and the sanctified: The construction of national martyrology.” Zmanim 48: 2645 [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Zertal, Idit (1995) “On Zmanin.” Haaretz, 3 December.Google Scholar
Zertal, Idit (1996) From Catastrophe to Power: Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine, 1945-1948. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Zukerman, Moshe (1993) Shoah in the Sealed Room. Tel Aviv: The Author [Hebrew].Google Scholar