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Homeland-construed perceptions of the diaspora can yield valuable insights into the discourse around the homeland's collective identity. I illustrate this claim using the debate surrounding the Kotel Compromise, a government plan designed to regulate pluralistic and non-Orthodox Jewish prayer at the Western Wall (Kotel in Hebrew). This plan has recently become a subject of contention between the State of Israel, where Orthodox Judaism has an institutional monopoly, and Diaspora Jews, many of whom identify with non-Orthodox Jewish denominations, such as Reform and Conservative Judaism. Drawing on protocols of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), I show how the different participants in this debate used their perceptions of Diaspora Jews not only to reaffirm external boundaries relating to Jewish peoplehood, but also to reconstruct internal boundaries relating to Judaism as religion. This paper suggests that analyzing homeland perceptions of the diaspora can widen our understanding of the construction of homeland identities and boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the possibility of gaining meaningful insights into a place by exploring its relationship with its surroundings. A model is suggested for examining the possible significances of this relationship and the actual meanings attributed to it by those who plan and use the place. The site analyzed here is Sidnā 'Alī, an Islamic shrine on Israel's Mediterranean coast. Sidnā 'Alī, which has been a pilgrimage site for centuries, was abandoned during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War; it was renovated in the late 1980s by Muslim Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. The paper discusses the social mobilization for the renovation of the old mosque as a prelude to exploring the meanings of Sidnā 'Alī's relationships with the surrounding landscapes, places and buildings. The study of the social function of the renovation campaign focuses on its role in unifying the people involved and on forging a collective identity based on the shared struggle to return the site to Muslim hands. The spatial interpretation presented examines the renovation project as a form of Palestinian, Arab and Islamic resistance to the covert and overt Zionist hegemony in the public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the possibility of gaining meaningful insights into a place by exploring its relationship with its surroundings. A model is suggested for examining the possible significances of this relationship and the actual meanings attributed to it by those who plan and use the place. The site analyzed here is Sidnā 'Alī, an Islamic shrine on Israel's Mediterranean coast. Sidnā 'Alī, which has been a pilgrimage site for centuries, was abandoned during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War; it was renovated in the late 1980s by Muslim Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. The paper discusses the social mobilization for the renovation of the old mosque as a prelude to exploring the meanings of Sidnā 'Alī's relationships with the surrounding landscapes, places and buildings. The study of the social function of the renovation campaign focuses on its role in unifying the people involved and on forging a collective identity based on the shared struggle to return the site to Muslim hands. The spatial interpretation presented examines the renovation project as a form of Palestinian, Arab and Islamic resistance to the covert and overt Zionist hegemony in the public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 election campaign in Israel shows, at first glance, some unanticipated results and unexpected reactions of several political actors. Three events in particular can be noted: (1) the rise of a significant centrist middle-class party; (2) the association of the newly elected right-wing Prime Minister with his left-wing rivals; and (3) the revival of a national religious party after years of decline. A broad overview, however, reveals that from many perspectives numerous key elements of Israeli politics have remained broadly the same over the decades. Some unanticipated outcomes of the elections are to a substantial extent repetitions of past events, referred to in this paper as historic recurrences. In order to establish this claim about historic recurrence, each event is compared to past events with which several striking similarities are found. In order to explain the phenomenon of historic recurrence in Israeli politics, two sets of concepts are applied: the sociological terminology regarding reference group and collective identity, and rational choice theories about voter behaviour and the preferences of political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper, based on interviews, follows something of the process by which a group of Palestinian social workers came to 'stand tall' as Palestinian citizens of Israel. The process began with their acute discomfort both with blending into Jewish Israeli society and with being singled out for exclusion or harsh treatment as Palestinians. These feelings set in motion a process of self empowerment that was marked first by resistance and protest and then by the simultaneous embracing of and reflection on their identity as Palestinian citizens of Israel. Parallels are drawn between the historical development of the identity of the Palestinian collective in Israel that has been charted in the literature and the identity development of individual Palestinians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what way does national history shape the interpretation of international events in that country's media? Germany has always had a particularly sensitive and complex relationship with Israel. The Holocaust left such a scar on German identity that the country cannot consider Israel without confronting its own history. In Israel, Germany sees a 'reflection' of its own historical and symbolic space. In this article, I draw together a close reading of major German newspapers with more interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives in order to illuminate the mechanism of what I call 'mirror reading,' and especially to reveal its workings during what I consider a key shift in the discourse on German identity. The German print media, which I treat as the activating agent in German narration of national identity, plays a central role in this reflection by projecting national symbols onto Israel. In particular, I identify the initial reception of the Israeli wall (2003-2004) as a turning point in the debate on German self-understanding after the Holocaust. I establish that there are two extremes in a continuum of how German national history can frame the Israeli wall, one making Germany an active agent and the other a passive one. Employing national symbols in the media distorts the domestic perception of foreign events. My study casts a first light on this little understood-but nonetheless crucial-phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use of irony for boundary work in social media. It suggests that the combination of the polysemy inherent to ironic humor and new decontextualized digital environments entails greater potential for misinterpretation, thus turning humorous interactions into segregating tools. Using the case of left-wing mockery of a far-right-wing group in Israel, I trace the ways in which online irony serves as a means for social consolidation and differentiation. Findings indicate that the combination of medium (Facebook), keying (ironic humor), and content (social divides) works to empower one group and marginalize the other, potentially deepening existing social gaps. In addition, I show how this triangle leads to the construction of a new overarching social division between intellect (associated with left-wingers) and physicality (associated with right-wingers). Finally, I discuss the implications of social divides for our understanding of relations between irony and power structures in digital environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israeli media coverage of a well-known event, the 1993 handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, provides a glimpse into the nature of competing collective identities held by Israelis. The potential for multiple interpretations (and therefore multiple perspectives) of the largely nonverbal event allows for these identities to be presented and, in many cases, contrasted. To assess competing identities in the mediated discourse, we reviewed 191 articles/transcripts in the Hebrew-language Israeli media that had been translated into English and in the English-language Israeli media. These texts provided an array of what we argue are dialectics or oppositional forces present in the discussions. Most notable of these dialectics were those that characterized the handshake and the accompanying negotiations as inevitable or impossible, as opening or closing opportunities for Israelis, as resulting in feelings of euphoria or betrayal, and as splintering or unifying the relevant parties. The authors argue that these dialectics, sometimes presented as both/and rather than either/or (L. A. Baxter & B. M. Montgomery, 1996), reflect a larger, complex negotiation of collective cultural identity for the Israeli people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the 1948 Nakba (disaster) and collapse of Palestinian society, its national project and cultural sites, a residue of 170,000 Palestinians became citizens of the emerging state of Israel, which existed under a strict military rule until 1966. This residue was mainly illiterate villagers who were left without national and intellectual leadership. After a few years of frightened silence, a new intellectual stratum of young poets from this group began to publish reflections on their national situation. Intentionally simple, direct, and mainly easily memorized, their poetry became the ultimate cultural channel to create and disseminate a Palestinian version of the 1948 war, its subsequent state, and the vision of a desired future. These young poets gradually became the leading producers of Palestinian culture in Israel and abroad. Their poetry became the ultimate reference point for Palestine’s national ethos and myths. Palestinians abroad named them the “poets of resistance” and their poems were composed into inflaming national songs. But while this new intellectual strata became active cultural producers, intervening in “the nation building process,” their social role remained ambivalent and problematic. Despite their national enthusiasm and appeal for social change, they were unable to transgress the patriarchic rule that was hegemonic in Palestinian society. This hegemonic narrative was interwoven in three themes: (1) using the lexicon of natural disaster to conceptualize the 1948 events, presenting them as an irresistible natural disaster (even by God who appeared during the events as pathetic and useless); (2) representing the Palestinian defeat in 1948 through patriarchal language of “collective shame,” “land rape,” and “honor lost;” and (3) articulating the national liberation project as masculine, promising to liberate the “captured land-woman” and to recover the collective honor of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The defining challenge for Israel since 1967 has been the future of the territories captured in the Six Day War and the population living in them. With the stalemate festering and the salience of the conflict very high, the conflict with the Palestinians has become the major cleavage dimension in Israeli politics. Building on the multidimensional conceptualization of cleavage, we argue that despite the occurrence of many, dramatic, changes, the cleavage structure has not changed in the past decade, and the 1977 realignment is still in place. The primary cleavage is a full and consistent interlocking cleavage. Its potency, and the quality that permits it to achieve this overarching position, is associated with its expression of underlying collective identity dilemmas, which combine external and internal dimensions. Collective identity concerns, more readily than others, produce full cleavages and are likely to dominate and endure, overriding other issues. The establishment, positioning and success of Kadima in the 2006 elections are explicated within this framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the week following the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in November 1996, the Israeli media were confronted with a liminal situation created by the unprecedented political violence. Among the problems that emerged were potential social disintegration and anomie. One of the major factors in re-establishing social integration was the reconstruction of Rabin's biography by the media as the collective biography, so that it represented the collective identity of Israeli society. A content analysis of the Rabin myth created during this event shows the practices used by the hegemonic interpretative communities to reinvent society, and the ramifications of excluding the voices of others from the process of national deliberation on the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]