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Israel Studies is a rather recent and fragmented discipline in the Italian academic system. Nonetheless, the interest in Israel's geopolitical history has progressively emerged from Middle East and International Relations scholars as well as from some non-academic actors seeking to understand the Israeli-Arab conflict and later on Israel's own sociopolitical complexity. Universities such as Venice and Pisa include Israeli history in various academic curricula while Florence University offers a specific course on Israel's History. The article reconstructs the development of Israel Studies in Italy by examining the decentralized academic dynamics and by contextualizing it within local academia and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Israeli academia houses numerous research centers that explore German history and culture, German universities stand out for the near absence of Israel Studies as an institutionalized discipline. At present, there is not a single permanent professorship for Israel Studies at Germany's large research universities. The article analyzes this blind spot by contextualizing it within the unique nature of German-Israeli academic relations, established in the shadow of the Shoah. We argue that the attempt to recover and reclaim the German-Jewish past in the Federal Republic of Germany was accompanied by a systemic blindness vis-à-vis the Israeli present. By contrasting the German case to Anglo-Saxon academia, the article points out that the core components for institutionalizing Israel Studies as a scholarly field are missing in Germany so far – both in terms of means (public and private funding), motive (mobilization by pro-Israel actors), and opportunity (interest by neighboring fields). Following a historical overview of research on Zionism and Israel in German academia, the article discusses the slow emergence of Israel Studies in recent years: While small clusters of systematic research into Israeli history are developing, the research field of Israel Studies is facing an uphill battle in its struggle for academic institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the history of the administration of courts in Israel, from 1948 to circa 1995, unearthing a series of tensions that undergirded the management of Israeli courts throughout their history. It illustrates that judiciary-executive tensions, as well as intra-judiciary and other extra-judiciary tensions, informed the trajectory of Israeli court administration. Furthermore, the article singles out two outstanding figures in the history of the Israeli judiciary, chief justices Yitzhak Olshan and Meir Shamgar, whose lesser-known preoccupation with the administration of courts – alongside the work of even lesser-known Israeli jurists who "managed" Israeli courts for decades – is revealed in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that contemporary Israeli literary criticism posits the nation as its horizon of interpretation, which has eroded Israeli literary criticism's ability to detect newness in its objects of inquiry, and to present Israeli literary history as advancing through engagement with new social problems. I examine three literary works: A.B. Yehoshua's 1963 novella "Facing the Forests," Etgar Keret's Missing Kissinger (1994), and Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds (2007). For each, I show how critical commentary puts the nation as the center of interpretation. I then elaborate a critical position that sees the nation not as the point of critique's termination,but as means toward trying to solve, in imagination, real social contradictions of its time. Thus, I argue that the fire in "Facing the Forests" is a figure for the threat of proletarian revolution under welfare-state capitalism; and that the fusion of realist narrative and its interpretive code in Keret's Missing Kissinger signals a crisis of historicity whose origin is the proletarianization of Palestinians after the 1967; and lastly that Exit Wounds reestablishes Israeli historicity, using events of national significance – such as Palestinian suicide bombings – to represent the experience of precarious labor under neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can anti-capitalist satire exist within show business, or is this an oxymoron? How can mainstream films claim to be socially conscious and rebellious, when at the same time they are products of an industry which aim to appeal to the masses and maximize profits? These questions were recently raised in relation to the popular and critical success of Hollywood hits like The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street, which followed the 2008 financial crash. This paper uses a group of Israeli financial satires as a case study and contributes a significant transnational addition to the debate. During the first half of the 1980s, the Israeli economy struggled with rampant inflation. The crisis inspired comedies such as Million Dollar Madness, The Plumber, and The Man Who Flew in to Grab. Although these films failed, they express a unique zeitgeist in Israeli history, and they are useful to examine the paradox. This analysis of these films provides valuable insights that can guide filmmakers toward overcoming and even resolving the paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1948 War was one of the most formative events in both Israeli and Palestinian history. Recent years have seen a transformation in Israeli historiography relating to this war, with the emergence of three intertwined research orientations: social history, the study of Palestinian society, and microhistory. The two books at the center of this article correspond well with the trend of growing interest being shown by Middle East historians in Israel – Jews and Palestinians alike – in the 1948 War, together with the turn toward research of the Palestinian society and the adoption of microhistory. Yet, a chasm seems to separate the approaches of Eliezer Tauber and Adel Manna to the events of 1948. Nevertheless, there are a number of similarities between them – which is perhaps not so surprising, as both are contemporary historians who are conversing with the cumulative research about the 1948 War. The two books illustrate vividly how difficult it is for Israeli historians, Jewish and Palestinian alike, to write today about the events of 1948 disengaged from an ideological and even ethnocentric point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on three "Holocaust trials": the Kapo Trials (1950–70); the "Kasztner Trial" (1953–58); and the Eichmann Trial (1961), to decipher the illusion of collective memory that marks the Eichmann Trial as the first Israeli legal confrontation with the Holocaust. It argues that the historical–legal oblivion into which the "Kapo Trials" sank is not a product of the mere passage of time, but a systematic reconstruction located in the socio-political and legal contexts of Israel's early years. The article shows that, when neglecting certain socio-legal conditions, the law can operate not only as a "lieu de mémoire" as Pierre Nora showed us but also as a site of forgetting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case study of one nuclear family, the Mutchniks from Nahalal, focusing on the dynamic between its dominant patron, Pinchas, and its dominant matron, Rosa, and a spatial analysis of the "home away from home" they had built in Yeruham from 1956 to 1969. These two aspects tie together an article concerned with several interlocking questions. What kind of decisions make up an intergenerational family strategy, and what role do women play in planning and carrying it out? How can a history that is (mis)represented by contemporary sources produce a valuable analysis? How were patronage networks micromanaged? And how is keeping the privileged access to professional and financial opportunities in the frontier to certain groups of settlers related to long-term social climbing avenues? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars agree that the labor movement's demise was a turning point in Israeli history, they have failed to explain how, why, and even when it happened. The influence wielded by its cultural institutions declined in the 1960s; political support for it declined in the 1970s, and its economic institutions crumbled in the 1980s. Which of these marks the beginning of the end? Were these manifestations related to each other and, if so, how? And why did it take such a long time? I argue that the Israeli labor movement's rise and fall can only be understood if it is viewed as a social movement integrating, as most labor movements do, economic, political, and cultural functions. While these components operated in harmony, the movement prospered; when they worked at cross-purposes, it deteriorated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a slightly different historical path toward understanding how Shas arrived on the Israeli political scene. This view highlights the ideological climate that prevailed among the Haredi elements of the Mizrahi religious leadership during the State of Israel's formative years. These elements constituted a small Mizrahi religious circle – the Ne'emanei Ha-Torah movement that was active in Jerusalem during 1962–1971. Ne'emanei Ha-Torah was the site that consolidated the national and ethnic – Haredi and Mizrahi – political climate that served as an ideological home for those figures who, when Shas was founded, assumed spiritual-leadership roles within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines mnemonic practices and discursive strategies that structure the past and its relation to the present, drawing on examples from Israeli Jewish culture. The discussion explores the discursive construction of an "event" as a singular development and underscores the significance of its beginning and ending. It analyzes the impact of introducing symbolic bridges connecting separated historical periods, proposing historical analogies that highlight recurrent historical patterns, creating mnemonic bubbles governed by commemorative time, and conflating historical events into multilayered commemorations. These temporal structures, often anchored in mnemonic traditions, continue to influence the understanding of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines changes in the commemoration work and memorial discourse surrounding the first Sephardi Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, Rabbi Ben-Tzion Meir Hai Uziel. While commemoration work in the public sphere in Israel has dwindled over the years, there has been a revival of memory discourse in recent years, especially amongst Religious Zionists. The article proposes reasons for this resurgence, including a response to processes of Haredization of the Sephardi spiritual leadership in Israel and a quest for a source of inspiration for a moderate, Zionist Orthodox rabbinate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israeli rule over the territories it occupied in the June 1967 war has been the subject of animated international debate in the past half century. This article explores the policy-making process behind Israel’s immediate postwar propaganda and public diplomacy, or “hasbara” in Hebrew, intended to put before foreign audiences the necessity and legitimacy of the occupation. Based on unpublished archival sources, this paper will delineate and analyze the Israeli government’s numerous difficulties in explaining the occupation, faced by media and other reports of Palestinian postwar hardship and resistance to Israeli rule, as well as the harsh measures enforcing Israeli military control and the beginning of Israeli settlement. It also demonstrates the problem of conflicting demands placed on the Israeli government by its domestic audience. It finally argues that the perceived dent to Israel’s image so often discussed by its government and public, has much to say generally about the limits of any propaganda and public diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the first year of Mapam's existence, focusing on its role in the War of Independence and on the elections to the Constituent Assembly (the first Knesset), beginning with the election campaign through the negotiations on forming the government and the implications of Mapam's remaining in the opposition. It also discusses two issues that occupied a central place on Mapam's ideological agenda: the question of the “whole Land of Israel” and the attitude toward the Soviet Union. The article's main contentions are that beyond the internal and external arguments and disagreements, in the War of Independence Mapam was first and foremost the loyal soldier of the nation and remained in the opposition against its will. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within the issue on topics including Jewish middle class housing in the Palestine Mandate, housing policy in Israel regarding rent control and owners' rights, and the adoption of Middle Eastern courtyards in the architectural design of public housing projects in Israel.

The Tel Aviv Purim carnival was the largest public event in Mandatory Palestine. However, due to its capitalistic character, the carnival has been ignored in the scholarship on the Zionist civil religion, which was regarded as having been created by the Zionist socialist/agricultural ethos alone. This article employs an anthropological methodology, analyzing the carnival as a pilgrimage event and revealing its ideological nationalist contents, which positioned Tel Aviv as a symbolic center of the Yishuv and thus powerfully presented the emerging nation in a visible manner. By exploring some common values shared by capitalism and nationalism, the analysis uncovers the ideological world of urban Zionism, which had far more impact on the sociocultural than on the political-institutional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article inquires into the reasons why the ideal type of ethnic democracy proposed by Sammy Smooha has no viable manifestation other than Israel. Ethnic democracy exists in the tensions between the two contradictory principles of inclusive and egalitarian democracy, on the one hand, and a preference for a majority ethnic group on the other. The archetype of the ideal type of ethnic democracy is Israel. Yet since the conceptual tool of ideal type was developed by Weber for the purpose of overcoming idiosyncrasies and discovering similarities, other manifestations of the ideal type must be found. Although Smooha presupposes that ethnic democracy is essentially “non-Western,” he finds its manifestations mainly in “Western” democracies. He tries to overcome this difficulty by characterizing Israel as the sole embodiment of the ideal type of ethnic democracy. However, a comparison with West European democracies renders the ethnic attributes of Israeli democracy empirically dubious and logically circular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a response to Adam Danel's critique of my model of ethnic democracy. Danel argues that the model fails as an ideal type and as a comparative tool because ethnic democracy does not exist anywhere. I show, however, that there are indeed quite a few cases of ethnic democracy, although some are partial and some historical, including Estonia, Latvia, Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1972, Macedonia from 1991 to 2001, interwar Poland, Slovakia, and Malaysia. Danel does not address the real functions of the model as a theory of the emergence and stability of ethnic democracy and as a conceptual scheme for the comparative study of ethnic democracies. The theory accounts for the developments of ethnic democracy in these states and for the conditions for its success and failure. Danel also tries to show that Israel is a Western liberal democracy by overstressing its liberal traits and the non-liberal characteristics of Western democracies. I argue that Israel's ideology, design, policies, and practices as the homeland of the Jewish people, most of whom are not its citizens, and as the “property” of the Israeli-Jewish majority, means that it has a second-rate ethnic democracy and as a state and society does not qualify as Western. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to understand the place of the Russian immigrant community in the larger Israeli culture and to explore how immigrants themselves negotiate their position. One site of such negotiation is the film Paper Snow (2003) created predominantly by Russian-Israeli filmmakers. Their distinct vantage point emerges through the film's casting, genre, style, and language. Paper Snow features such iconic figures of Israeli culture-in-the-making as actress Hanna Rovina and poets Alexander Penn and Avraham Shlonsky, but represents them as part of the Russian intelligentsia. In this way, the film adheres to the familiar story of nation building, but tells it with an accent: by emphasizing the Russianness of the Israeli national past, the film inscribes contemporary Russian immigrants onto the grand narrative of the nation. By revising the official collective memory, Paper Snow produces accented memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at filling some gaps in the existing knowledge regarding the quantitative dimensions of Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine, particularly during the first decade of British rule. It does so by providing an explorative analysis of the immigration in the long 1920s (1919-32), which is based on a newly constructed micro data set containing rich details of about 45,000 individuals (making up more than 40% of all the registered immigrants in those years). In dwelling on the immigrants' demographic characteristics, labor market skills, and entry categories, the analysis offers tentative answers to some of the questions concerning the comparative nature of Palestine's Jewish immigration at the time, while pointing to other, still unresolved issues awaiting further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the representation of Jewish history in the Zionist school system of the Yishuv and the early State of Israel (1920-1954). In the Yishuv period the history curriculum was centered on “shifting Jewish centers” in the spirit of historian Simon Dubnow, an approach that also integrated Jewish and non-Jewish history. From the 1930s, Ben Zion Dinur and the Teachers' Council of the Keren Kayemet le-Yisrael (Jewish National Fund) attempted to make the Land of Israel the central axis uniting Jewish history, a focus that downplayed non-Jewish history. Because of the opposition to this approach within the education system, this change, which Dinur regarded as essential for the integration of the new immigrants from the Muslim countries into Israeli society, was implemented only after he was appointed minister of education in the early 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to the reports published within the issue, including Michael Silber's article on the 19th-century Alliance of the Hebrews movement, Nahum Karlinsky's examination of Jewish philanthropy, and François Guesnet's study of travel to Palestine in the interwar period.

The editors, editorial board members, and international advisory board members for "Journal of Israeli History" are presented.