Articles

Israel and the Escape Victims of Military Repression in Argentina During the military dictatorship of 1976 Argentina, between 350 and 400 citizens who feared for their lives were able to escape Argentina and find shelter in Israel. This article considers the evolving procedures, institutional mechanisms and escape routes operated by Israeli diplomats and representatives stationed in Argentina and neighboring countries, and assesses the impact of official policies, Israel’s friendly relations with the military government, and the ethos of helping persecuted Jews. The parallel analysis of the social and political background of those who chose to appeal for Israeli help indicates a weak attachment to Jewish communal ties. It also raises the issue of the negotiation of identity, as interpreted by persecuted individuals and Israeli representatives against a background of contradictory interests, commitments and constraints that prevented those at-risk from fleeing a country friendly to Israel ruled – at the time – by a repressive government. 

 The National City and the International City: Jerusalem and Tel Aviv This paper examines the impact of globalization processes on the two largest cities in Israel: Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. As globalization has greatly influenced the Israeli urban arena, this paper seeks to understand how these cities integrate in global flows. In this article, fundamental differences between the cities are explored and several indicators of the two cities’ opposing municipal-state relations are introduced, along with marked differences in citizen-authority interactions. The research suggests that the state is deeply involved in Jerusalem’s municipal issues but its impact on Tel Aviv’ local governance is more limited, and weakening. The state limits Jerusalem`s global interactions while influencing its concept of citizenship, whereas in Tel Aviv the municipality has developed policies independent of the state and has helped in the creation of global attitudes of citizenship. The article attributes these findings to the observation that Jerusalem is a ‘national city’ and Tel Aviv is a global city.

In this article, I join the discussion about education in Palestinian/Bedouin society in the Negev in Israel, and offer narratives of female trainee teachers as the basis for an analysis of the changing status of Bedouin women and their communities. Teaching gives Bedouin women from the Negev an opportunity to integrate themselves into the public spheres of education and employment. In becoming a part of these communities, they are constructing a new educational discourse. The case of Bedouin society in the Negev is particularly interesting for the insight it offers into public perceptions of teaching, largely because education is such a significant practice in the life of a community seeking integration into Israeli society. The academic discourse on teaching in Bedouin society ignores the existence of a discussion outside the categories of “traditional and modern” and/or “Jewish and Bedouin.” This article is based on the narratives of ten female Bedouin students from the Negev who were trained as teachers. Six of these students studied at teachers’ colleges, and the remaining four studied in a special teaching-certificate program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the Southern part of Israel. The latter are university graduates.

The article explores the interpretive discourse on the past during rituals of remembrance and guided tours in a museum exhibition. The field chosen for this research is the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, in Tel-Aviv. The analysis is based on ethnographic research and focuses on the two interpretive dimensions of museum guidance. One dimension concentrates on the meanings and symbolic processing of the past and the way it is interwoven with the present. Three discourse practices of presenting the past and connecting between past and present will illustrate this dimension. The second one penetrates to the discourse’s themes and contents, deciphering the representation of social boundaries and relations between Jews and non-Jews as well as between different groups in Israeli society. The interpretive discourse is steeped in memory, imprints upon the present and constructs a dialogue between the Jewish past and the Israeli reality outside the museum exhibition.

Visual representations of women soldiers are part of the Israeli cultural codex. This interpretative paper deals with the political use of representations and their function in social contexts. Inspired by Althusser, the discussion focuses on the interplay among visual images and social systems. The research examines photographs of women soldiers that appear in official albums published by the Israel Defense Force (IDF), with a relation to archival material dating from 1948 to 1958 stored in IDF archive. The albums contain the dominant discourse and self-image that the military disseminated to the public. An examination of this source reveals the hegemonic discourse regarding women soldiers that was prevalent during the first decade of Israel’s statehood. Pivotal questions consider the role of visual practice in structuring and reinforcing the ‘gender regime’, and its link to constitutional and military practices. The paper analyzes various images containing women soldiers and asks if these representations changed during the first decade of Israel’s statehood.

This article presents an encounter between hegemony (national institutions) and the “other” (Yemenite immigrants) in the Moshav Ovdim of Ravid, prior to the founding of the State of Israel and the ambivalence of the cultural field where the absorbing community encounters the new immigrants being absorbed. After the establishment of the State, the Moshav became a tool for implementing the “melting pot” policy, while Ravid evolved into a hybrid territory where a process of negotiation took place. The absorbed settlers strove to imitate the absorbing society, but not to assimilate. The simultaneous hybridization expressed both the internalization of settlement society principles and opposition to this society. Absorbing institutions attempted to enculturate the Yemenites and force Moshav principles on them, but gradually compromised, thus deviating from settlement ideology. Hence, the hegemonic voice did not act according to its own plan, nor was it monolithic.

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