The Italian government's response to the problem of Jewish refugees 1945–1948∗

This article deals with the fall of Palestinian-Arab Jaffa in the 1948 war. As the largest Arab city in Palestine, its accelerated social and military collapse came as a surprise to many, despite Jewish dominance in the Jaffa region. While previous research has mostly neglected this question, the present study aims at revealing the underlying causes, besides Jewish military pressure, for Jaffa's collapse and the resulting exodus of its Arab population. The article describes the precarious social and military Palestinian-Arab situation in Jaffa as a case study for Palestine as a whole during the December 1947–May 1948 inter-communal war.     

Heritage Interpretation and Politics in Kfar Etzion,Israel

Kfar Etzion is a Kibbutz first established in Palestine in the 1930s. At the end of the British Mandate, in 1948, it became a de facto Israeli military outpost that controlled access to Jerusalem from the south. Kfar Etzion fell to Arab forces in 1948 and the area became Jordanian territory until 1967 when Israeli forces occupied the West Bank. Kfar Etzion was re-established in the same year. Kfar Etzion now interprets its history through a sophisticated multilingual audio-visual presentation offered in a museum built over a former bunker where Jewish defenders were killed. This presentation is analysed to illustrate the ways in which an historical narrative is constructed for interpretive purposes and to show that Bloc and Israeli perspectives are conflated for political purposes. The battle for the Bloc continues through the interpretation of heritage.     

Oral testimonies,archival sources,and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War: A close look at the occupation of a Galilean village

This article explores the (still) possible and significant contribution oral history can make to the study of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Its purpose is to create a constructive “dialogue” between archival sources and oral testimonies. By weaving the information contained in written documents together with that conveyed through spoken words – the two sources simultaneously support and cast doubt on each other – it bridges a gap between the path generally followed by Israeli historians and that taken by many Palestinian scholars. To illustrate the potential embodied in the proposed “dialogue” to improve our understanding of the war, the article presents a historical close-up of Fassuta, one of the Arab villages occupied by Jewish forces during the war. Cross-checking Israeli documents in Hebrew against Palestinian memories conveyed in Arabic, this article seeks to explain how and why that particular village remained intact while many of the neighboring villages were depopulated and destroyed.     

“They Will Take the Country from Us”: Labor Zionism,the Origins and Legacy of the “Other” in Israeli Mass Media,and Hegemonic Narratives

After 1948, Israel's governing elites embarked on a rigorous program of state building and settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. In the process, the elites, primarily from the leading Mapai party, developed a process of othering Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, Arab citizens, and Orthodox Jews. They were physically segregated in their own schools and communities, and the elite culture described them as a threat against the European culture of Jewish immigrants from central Europe. The process targeted Mizrahi Jews before moving on to deplore the “demographic threat” of Orthodox Jews and resulted in the current normative hegemonic discourse in Israel that paints numerous groups as threatening the state. This article proposes a four‐part model for understanding “the other” in Israel: contemporary denial and nostalgia for a homogenous past, the view of Zionism as a civilizing mission, the application of separation of ethnic groups in planning, and demographic fear of the other. Altogether, they paint a picture of an Israel that has not come to grips with its past, and therefore continues the process of “othering” in its contemporary ethnocratic framework. Combining the analysis of geographic separation, and planning and media, it presents an innovative understanding of Israeli society.     

Military Rule,Political Manipulation,and Jewish Settlement: Israeli Mechanisms for Controlling Nazareth in the 1950s

This article explores the first decade of relations between the State of Israel and the city of Nazareth, which after the 1948 war constituted the largest and most important Arab center in the new Jewish state. It focuses on the strategies employed by central government officials to retain state control over the all-Arab city and surrounding region, highlighting the integrated use of military, political, and spatial mechanisms. The Nazareth municipal elections of 1954 emerge as an important milestone in this process, compelling officials to intervene in local politics and to take immediate concrete steps towards establishing the Jewish town of Upper Nazareth.     

The Historiography of Deir Yassin

This article describes Israeli and Arab historiography concerning the events in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in April 1948, during the first Israeli–Arab war, of 1948. It begins with the internal, left–right Israeli controversy during 1969–71 about the alleged massacre and then describes and analyses what “really” happened at Deir Yassin on the basis of the Israeli (and, to a smaller extent, British) documentation from 1948 that has been declassified over the last few years. It then concludes by describing the evolution of the Israel and Palestinian histographical narratives on the event.     

A Chronicle of Failure Foretold: The UK,Israel and Arms Sales to Argentina in the Era of the Falklands War

In spite of fierce British protests, Israel supplied Argentina with arms both during the Falklands war and with greater intensity after the fighting. While the weapons sales were vital for Israel's economy and its arms industry, recently declassified papers suggest that the Begin government viewed the arms supplies to Argentina as a bargaining chip to exert pressure on Britain to halt its own sale of weapons to Israel's Arab adversaries and to end London's arms embargo against the Jewish State. Britain's restrictions on arms sales had long cast a shadow over Anglo-Israeli ties, and Israeli resentment towards Britain was exacerbated by anger over London's strong condemnation of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its leading involvement in the EEC Venice Declaration of June 1980 which recognized Palestinian self-determination and a role for the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Israelis also perceived the arms supplies as a means to influence the junta in its treatment of Argentina's Jews. Yet, there was actually a rise in the level of anti-Semitism in Argentina during the period in question. At the same time, Britain's approach in attempting to dissuade its allies from selling arms to Argentina was riddled with inconsistencies and ultimately misconceived.     

Judaism and communism: Hanukkah,Passover, and the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and Israel, 1919–1965

This article explores the mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic aspects of the ways in which the festivals of Hanukkah and Passover were celebrated by the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and the State of Israel. It illustrates how elements of Zionist-socialist culture were adopted by Jewish Communists and integrated in their cultural activities. In a gradual process starting in the1920s and culminating in the mid-1960s, the Jewish Communists created a combination of Marxist ideology and Zionist-socialist cultural practices. However, when a group of young Sabra activists reinforced the Zionist-socialist elements, the balance was undermined, contributing to the rift within Israeli communism.     

The 1948 war veterans and postwar reconstruction in Israel

This article deals with the characteristics of postwar reconstruction in the State of Israel at the end of the 1948 war and during the early 1950s, focusing on the patterns and priorities of reconstruction of society as a whole and the rehabilitation of veteran soldiers in particular. The article addresses the social impact of the rehabilitation of the 1948 war veterans on the emerging Israeli society, including the creation of a social distinction between different sectors undergoing rehabilitation in terms of employment and housing. The article also discusses the social and political protests that accompanied the rehabilitation of the demobilized soldiers who campaigned for recognition and commemoration.     

Between nation and state: `fractured' regionalism among Palestinian-Arabs in Israel

Theories of nationalism have often overlooked variations in ethnic spatial settings, and have too easily subsumed nation and state. But nationalism surfaces in a variety of dynamic forms, such as among homeland ethnic minorities `trapped' within states controlled by others. In such cases `ethnoregional' identities often emerge, combining ethnonational and civic bases of identity with attachment and confinement to specific places or territories. Ethnoregional movements denote spatial and political entities which mobilise for rights, resources and political restructuring within their states. This is the case in the Israeli Jewish `ethnocracy', where an oppressed Palestinian-Arab minority resides in stable but confined enclaves which make up an Arab `fractured' region. The spatial, socioeconomic and political characteristics of the Arab struggle in Israel provide early signs for the emergence of an ethnoregional movement. This movement is creating a new collective identity, situated between Palestinian nation and Jewish nation-state. The ethnoregional interpretation challenges existing accounts which perceive the minority as either politicising or radicalising, and points to a likely Arab struggle for autonomy, equality and the de-Zionisation of Israel. Arab mobilisation also resembles other ethno-regional movements, whose persistent struggles expose embedded contradictions in the global `nation-state' order.     

Convergence: The Classic Case Nazi Germany,Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II

Despite granting permission for limited Jewish emigration to Palestine in the 1930s, the ideology and policy of the Nazi regime never supported establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. During World War II, Hitler's ideologically consistent view that such a state would be a branch of an international Jewish conspiracy converged with shorter-term efforts to gain Arab and Islamic support for the Third Reich's military goals in the Middle East. The ideological convergence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism found expression in the works of Nazi propagandists as well as in the speeches and radio addresses of Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, broadcast from wartime Berlin to the Middle East. Examination of the lineages, similarities and differences between Europe's totalitarian past and its aftereffects in the Arab and Islamic world remains an important task for comparative historical scholarship.     

The Palestinian village of Ijzim during the 1948 war: Forming an anthropological history through villagers accounts and army documents

In the summer of 1948, following over six months of clashes, the Palestinian village of Ijzim was captured by Israeli troops and its inhabitants were uprooted and dispersed throughout the Middle East. Ijzim was one of roughly 400 Palestinian villages and towns that were depopulated during the 1948 war in Palestine. The combination of information gathered from Israeli army documents and the refugees' oral accounts, collected in Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, yields a complex picture of the local guerilla fighting and the social conditions that influenced the final consequences. Two main arguments are presented along the historical recounting of the events. The one sets the microcosmos of one village in contrast to the macro picture of the war. The other highlights the uniqueness and contribution of oral histories as sources that reveal facets otherwise missing. 1     

Anti‐cosmopolitan liberalism: Isaiah Berlin,Jacob Talmon and the dilemma of national identity

ABSTRACT. The debate between contemporary cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism is hardly new. Nevertheless, much of it is based on the erroneous assumption that cosmopolitanism should be seen as an outgrowth of liberalism, and that both should be considered as the complete conceptual opposites of nationalism. In this article I focus on two of the post‐war Jewish anglophile intellectuals who took part in this debate during the Cold War years: the Oxonian liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) and the Israeli historian Jacob L. Talmon (1916–80). I use their examples to argue that the dividing line between cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism should not be regarded as signifying the distinction between liberals and anti‐liberals; in fact, this debate also took place within the camp of the liberal thinkers themselves. I divide my discussion into three parts. Firstly, I examine Berlin's and Talmon's positions within the post‐war anti‐totalitarian discourse, which came to be known as ‘liberalism of fear’. Secondly, I show how a sense of Jewish identity, combined with deep Zionist convictions, induced both thinkers to divorce anti‐nationalist cosmopolitanism – which they regarded as a hollow, illusionary ideal associated with impossible assimilationist yearnings – from the liberal idea. I conclude by suggesting that, although neither man had ever developed a systematic theoretical framework to deal with the complex interactions between ethno‐nationalism, liberal individualism and multiculturalism, Berlin's vision of pluralism provides the foundations for building such a theory, in which liberalism and nationalism become complementary rather than conflicting notions.     

The cloak,the cage and the fog of sanctity: the Zionist mission and the role of religion among Arab Jews*

Abstract. This paper examines the Zionist national mission to mobilise Jewish ethnic communities in Arab countries, in the period preceding the establishment of the state of Israel. It draws on archival texts to trace a phenomenon known in Jewish historiography as ‘Shadarut’; a voluntary religious practice of fundraising which was widespread in the Jewish world for hundreds of years. The paper shows how this pre‐national religious practice (to be labelled ‘the cloak’) was adopted and incorporated into the Zionist national project (‘the cage’), first generating tension between the Jewish religious establishment and the Zionist ‘secular’ movement, and then blurring the distinction between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as a national identity. The paper shows how secular emissaries of European origin arrived in Arab countries as religious emissaries (‘shadarim’) and aspired to discover a strong religious fervour among members of the Jewish communities there. This is because in the eyes of the Zionist (ostensibly secular) movement, being religious Jews in Islamic countries was a criterion that demarcated them from their Arab neighbours. This analysis entails two main conclusions: (a) that contrary to the experience of the European Zionist national movement in which secularism and the revolt against the Jewish religion played a central role, in Islamic countries it was particularly the Jewish religion, and not secular nationalism that was used to mobilise the Jewish community into the Jewish national movement; (b) that the ‘shadarut’ practice refuses to yield to the epistemological imperatives and the common divisions that arise from the binary distinction between ‘religiousness’ and ‘secularity’, particularly in the Middle East. Some implications for contemporary Israeli society are discussed.     

Municipal Boundary Conflicts Between Jewish and Arab Local Authorities in Israel: Geography of Administration or Geopolitics?

Municipal boundaries shape the influence of local government on patterns of development and disparities. Based on a largely qualitative assessment of initiatives to change municipal boundaries of Arab localities in Israel between the 1960s and 2001, we aim to demonstrate the tension between geographical‐administrative considerations and political, particularly geopolitical, issues at two levels: Arab claims and central government decisions. We emphasize that municipal boundary conflicts provide broader insights on societal transformations and dilemmas, as well as influencing them. Growing activism of Arabs and trends of political decentralization led not only to class‐based demands, but also to ethno‐national‐based demands. In addition to development needs with an emphasis on equality, claims of Arab municipalities also reflect aspirations to reverse consequences of the 1948 war and to redefine the Jewish essence of the state. A major dilemma among Arabs is whether to emphasize geographic‐administrative justifications or to explicitly take the ethno‐national path. Among central government decision‐makers, an explicitly political discourse has apparently given way to a professional one, which faces dilemmas of incorporating unique political‐cultural attributes of Arabs in professional assessments, and balancing them with concerns of security and state identity. Whereas professional jargon is not value free and can mask political agendas, dialogues based on a professional jargon could lead to solutions in otherwise dead‐end political disputes, although such dialogues could gain momentum only if showing results.     

The political geography of war's end: Territorialisation,circulation, and moral anxiety in Trincomalee,Sri Lanka

This article argues that territorialisation and circulation are centrally important to the transition that takes place at the end of a war. It does so with a case study of Trincomalee, a multiethnic region on Sri Lanka's east coast, after the end of the ethno-separatist war in 2009. Post-war territorialisation comprises the consolidation of the government's military victory through the establishment of military zones and sacred sites, the construction of strategic roads and shifts in the ethnic settlement patterns. There are, however, a number of contingent counter-forces that unsettle the common interpretation that this is orchestrated 'Sinhala colonisation'. The angle of circulation directs us to flows and influences that become manifest when the curtailment of war (checkpoints, frontlines, collapsed infrastructure, surveillance) comes to an end. This propels a peace dividend - access, security, mobility - but also incites concerns among all ethnic communities about exposure to the moral decay of a globalised world. While territorialisation and circulation may appear to be opposites, they are in fact a conceptual pair. The two terms expose a field of tension that has much to contribute to the geographical literature on war endings, which has neglected the significance of postwar shifts in circulation thus far.     

RAF Ein Shemer: A Forgotten Case of Jewish and Arab Work in a British Army Camp in Palestine during the Second World War

This article explores lingering recollections of a marginalised sphere of participation by Jewish and Arab citizens of Mandatory Palestine in the Allied war effort. During the war, Palestine became a major staging ground for Allied troops in the Middle East. Some 15,000 Jewish and 35,000 Arab workers worked in administrative, construction, catering, and maintenances roles within the newly built army bases. The story of civilian labour in RAF Ein Shemer reveals previously neglected normative and non-normative patterns of inter-communal relations between British soldiers and Jewish and Arab workers on the social, economic, ideological, and romantic levels within the context of a colonial-era military installation.     

Review Article: Technology and Culture during the First Climacteric

In 1953 Israel abandoned the ‘defensive–offensive’ military strategy that it had adopted four years earlier, in the wake of the First Arab–Israeli War, in favor of an ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy that, to a large extent, persists until this day. This paper, which employs previously untapped Israeli official documents, personal interviews, memoirs, biographies, and secondary sources, casts new light on this critical juncture in the history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict. The paper challenges existing works by showing when and how Israel's ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy was adopted. More specifically, the authors argue that it was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), especially its planning bodies - and not the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, David Ben Gurion, or the IDF's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Dayan - that initiated this change, and that the new strategy met no objection when it was discussed and approved by the Israeli government. The authors also inquire about the possible implications of this change for Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict, and ask how this case informs general debates regarding the origins of military strategies.     

Socio‐spatial mix and inter‐ethnic attitudes: Jewish newcomers and Arab‐Jewish issues in the Galilee

Urban and regional planners tend to recommend spatial mix of socially diverse populations as an appropriate strategy to achieve social equity and improve inter‐group relations. However, the actual impact of such a mix on social relations in general, and inter‐ethnic attitudes in particular, has been subject to on‐going, yet inconclusive, debates among social scientists. This paper adds to the study of these issues by examining the inter‐ethnic attitudes of residents in Jewish ‘new settlements’ (elsewhere termed ‘community settlements’, or ‘mitzpim'), which were established some 15 years ago among the Arab villages of Israel's central Galilee region. We found that despite certain strands of ethnocentrism, most Jewish settlers hold significantly more moderate views on Arab‐Jewish issues than: (a) the general (non‐Galilee) Jewish public in Israel; and (b) the region's Arab population. The influence of the socio‐spatial mix on the moderation of hostile attitudes, at least among the Jews, is analyzed and explained by comparing our data with the findings of previous research on the topic. On the basis of that comparison we conclude that the Arab — Jewish mix in the Galilee, along with socio‐economic characteristics of the Jewish population and the existence of a ‘penetrating group phenomenon’, have combined to moderate Jewish attitudes in the study region. Planners are called upon to use this knowledge.     

Gender Segregation,Effacement, and Suppression: Trends in the Status of Women in Israel

The aim of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in Israel. The article describes some of the causes of this phenomenon, its impact on Israeli society, and the difficulty in confronting it. Israeli women have made impressive gains on many fronts, but the exclusion of women from the public sphere as a result of the influence of the growing Ultra‐Orthodox minority, which imposes its norms on the general public, raises serious concerns. The exclusion of women manifests itself in several forms: gender segregation in public spaces, the effacement of women's images from the public sphere, and the suppression of women's voice. The infiltration of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalism into Israeli society may cause the regression of advancements previously made in women's rights in Israel. The article points to the limitations of the treatment of this phenomenon within a theory of multiculturalism, and suggests an alternative framework of discourse, which relies on concepts that are drawn from the literature on environmental ethics, public rights, and public ownership of space and resources.