Introduction: special focus on racism in Israeli society

Abstract

Racism is, by definition, an inter-group phenomenon that is rooted in cultural patterns, societal structures, routine practices, ideologies and discourses, by which specific racial or ethnic groups are ensured a superior and privileged status, while others are excluded and inferiorised. Furthermore, racism is a process that is both historically anchored and ingrained in a society’s dominant culture, and fully integrated in the experiences of everyday life. The papers in this second issue of Social Identities on racism in Israeli society further illustrate both the historical roots of racism and the ways in which it is an everyday problem, adapting to political and cultural realities, norms and values, and operating through the society’s structures of power. The articles confront a broad array of issues, ranging from the historic and socio-political roots of racism against the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel, to the ongoing construction of collective memories in a manner that sustains the moral acceptability of the Zionist colonial settler project. Other papers focus on the manifestations of racism in a number of specific contexts, such as police attitudes and approaches to domestic violence against Palestinian Israeli women; the racialised immigration and military policies and practices that have been formulated and utilised against Mizrahi Jews; the new racist and anti-racist discourses and practices involving Ethiopian Jews in Israel; and the racialisation of the relatively new phenomenon of the non-Jewish, non-Arab migrant labour force in Israel. Ahmad Sa’di’s article, ‘Construction and Reconstruction of Racialised Boundaries: Discourse, Institutions and Methods’, discusses the historic, cultural and socio-political roots of anti-Palestinian/Arab racism. Sa’di describes the construction of racial boundaries between the European Jewish settlers and the native Arabs during the late nineteenth century and the historical changes that followed the establishment of the state, leading to the reconstruction of the racial borders. These racial boundaries served to translate the settler-native division into a social, educational and class hierarchy, and to preclude the emergence of a more egalitarian social order. He also highlights the ways in which the massive immigration of Jews from Arab countries posed a challenge to the binary distinction between ‘modern’ (European) and ‘backward’ (native/ Arab) peoples. Joyce Dalsheim’s article, ‘Settler Nationalism, Collective Memories of Violence and the ‘Uncanny Other’ ’, focuses on representations of violence in the national past among a hegemonic group of self proclaimed left-wing, liberal Israeli Jews, examining some of the ways in which these representations fuel