Hebrew Press Research Articles

Diasporal Jewish school newspapers and children's Hebrew commercial press journey between 19th century to the Israeli establishment

At the end of the 19th century and throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Hebrew press in Jewish schools in Europe and the United States mainly formed part of the social and cultural image of the Jewish communities in the diaspora, and inspired the emergence of a commercial press for children in the Hebrew language. Newspapers developed as platforms for various purposes, mainly as learning Hebrew and personal expression. The newspapers were managed and edited by the school educational staff, and sometimes the students also participated in it. This press was used as an infrastructure for the school press in the Land of Israel in the years before and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Mizrahi Jews as Viewed in the Yishuv: The Case of Hannah Helena Thon

ABSTRACT: Hannah Helena Thon (1886–1954) was born in Germany and settled in Palestine in the early 1920s. She was a pioneer social worker, an activist in women's organizations, a journalist, commentator, and lecturer. Thon's widely disseminated lectures and writings in the Hebrew press won her esteem and influence as an authority on the economic, social, and cultural characteristics of Mizrahi Jews. My analysis of her views is based on her archived articles and private papers, and sheds light on the perception of Mizrahi Jews among Ashkenazi Jews in the Yishuv and its effect the socialethnic gap.

Mizrahi Jews as Viewed in the Yishuv: The Case of Hannah Helena Thon

ABSTRACT: Hannah Helena Thon (1886–1954) was born in Germany and settled in Palestine in the early 1920s. She was a pioneer social worker, an activist in women's organizations, a journalist, commentator, and lecturer. Thon's widely disseminated lectures and writings in the Hebrew press won her esteem and influence as an authority on the economic, social, and cultural characteristics of Mizrahi Jews. My analysis of her views is based on her archived articles and private papers, and sheds light on the perception of Mizrahi Jews among Ashkenazi Jews in the Yishuv and its effect the socialethnic gap.

The Turkish War of Independence in Examples from the Arabic and Hebrew Press of Palestine, 1919-1922

Bu çalışma, Filistin’de 1919 ile 1922 arasında yayımlanan Arapça ve İbranice beş gazetenin Türk Millî Mücadelesi’ne dair yorumlarını inceleyerek şu soruyu ele almaktadır: Filistin’de bu dönemde yayımlanan bazı önemli Arapça ve İbranice gazeteler Millî Mücadele’ye nasıl yaklaşıyorlardı ve benimsedikleri farklı tutumların ardında hangi nedenler yatmaktaydı? İncelemenin ortaya
 koyduğu üzere, Arapça gazetelerden el-Karmil ile Mirʾatü’ş-Şarḳ Kuvâyı Milliye’ye yakın ilgi göstererek hararetli bir destek veriyorlardı. Bu tutumlarının başlıca nedeni, aynı dönemde kurulup resmîleşme sürecinde olan İngiliz Mandası’na ve onun gerçekleştirmeyi taahhüt ettiği Balfour Deklarasyonu’na karşı duydukları endişeydi. Siyonizm’e onlar gibi muhalif olan Filisṭîn ise Birinci Dünya Savaşı ve sonrasında Şerif Hüseyin ve oğullarıyla hareket eden Hüseynî ailesine yakınlığı nedeniyle Millî Mücadele’ye karşı menfi olmasa bile çok daha mesafeli bir tutum benimsemişti. Diğer yandan
 İbranice gazeteler Do’ar ha-Yom ve Haaretz İngiliz Mandası’nın Anadolu’daki savaş sonuçlanmadan yürürlüğe girmeyeceği hesabıyla sabırsızlanıyor, iki tarafın karşılıklı tavizlerde bulunmalarını ve Avrupa ülkelerinin barış için aracılık yapmasını salık veriyorlardı.

The Bais Yaakov Network: A Case Study for a Transnationally Sustainable Community Leadership

Abstract: The Bais Yaakov school network represents an unusual phenomenon: a school system with strong transnational tendencies. Founded in 1917 in Poland, it developed rapidly there in the interwar period; in the 1930s, it also struck roots first in Mandate Palestine and then in North America. The Bais Yaakov network of schools, which flourishes today, tells a story of sustainability over time and space. This paper presents historical analysis and social network analysis (SNA) of the early years of the Bais Yaakov network, analyzing Hebrew press newspaper articles published between 1930 and 1948 to demonstrate how a number of key leaders in the schools' administration played a crucial role in developing the network. This network involved not only the schools themselves, but also religious advocacy and government relations. Key actors leveraged their brokering power with these larger organizations in order to expand the network in Poland and the Land of Israel. The organizational affiliations of key actors thus shed light on the place of Bais Yaakov within a larger network of community organizations: in both locations, these leaders usually held a double role as educators as well as important community figures within the broader Orthodox Jewish context. These findings suggest that the sustainability of transnational networks depends on strong leaders who are involved within the network to promote its specific global identity but who are also active and powerful in the local peripheries, amplifying network visibility within local and broader communities and maintaining beneficial connections with local governmental authorities.

Responses to the abolitions of the Ottoman Sultanate and Caliphate in the Arabic and Hebrew press of Palestine, 1922–1924

This is a study of the responses of the Arabic and Hebrew press of Palestine to the abolitions of the Ottoman Sultanate and Caliphate. It is based on a comparative examination of the contemporary coverage of the events by the Arabic newspapers al-Karmil and Filastin and by the Hebrew newspapers Doar ha-Yom and Haaretz. The analysis yields valuable insights about how the Yishuv and the Palestinians viewed the abolitions of the Sultanate and Caliphate, the contemporary significance of these institutions, Kemalist Turkey, the rival population in Palestine, and Sharif Husayn. Mainly, it shows that the Hebrew press hailed the abolitions as revolutionary developments that would pave the road before the modernization of not only Turkey but the whole of Asia, while the Arabic press considered this too momentous a matter to be decided by Turkey alone and predicted adverse consequences for both that country and the East.

Computational Analysis of Historical Hebrew Newspapers: Proof of Concept

Abstract This article focuses on one decade, 1874–1883, in the relatively long lifespan of the Hebrew weekly Ha-Tzefirah, which was founded in Warsaw in 1862. Applying computational tools to the study of the early Hebrew press requires a unique effort. The Hebrew language in general is distinct in its characters, morphological structure, and word order. The contribution of this proof-of-concept study is two-fold: First, computational analysis provides a long-term indication of trends in the discourse that cannot be attained through qualitative study. The second contribution is on the micro level: Computational analysis can potentially shed light, in a diachronic perspective, on the use of a specific term or the discussion of a specific geographical location.

FİLİSTİN’DE YAŞAYAN YAHUDİ GÖÇMENLERİN 19. YÜZYIL İBRANİ GAZETECİLERİNCE TEMSİLLERİ: KALIPYARGILAR VE TOPLUMSAL KİMLİK

Tensions between the Jewish communities, particularly in the context of the division between “Ashkenazim” and “Sephardim” produce reciprocal images, which, according to social psychologists, create stereotypes that ”attach” some characteristics to this or that community. Stereotypes can also have a function in the formation and transformation of cultural identities, including in their historical concept, as diagnosed by cultural studies scholars.The claim regarding discrimination against oriental communities in shaping the cultural identity of the State of Israel is well known. It could be assumed that the phenomenon, as known to us in its present dimensions, is as old as the State of Israel. However, the previous waves of immigration as well created a situation of Communal Identification.Texts and reports from the years 1878- 1884 written by notable Hebrew journalists of the time, demonstrate that the attempt to identify “Ashkenazi characteristics” and “Sephardi characteristics” was already obvious in 19th century Palestine. We make use of texts by Yehiel Bril, founder and editor of the first Hebrew newspaper in Palestine, The Lebanon (1863) and Eliezer Ben Yehuda, founder of the Modern Hebrew press in Palestine since 1884.In 1878, Bril wrote a text as a letter to a friend, analyzing “communal problems” of Jerusalem. In this text and another one written three years later, the observations of Bril, are more sympathetic to the Sephardim, although he also knows how to qualify his praise. In 1883, Bril visited Palestine again and found new comparisons of Sephardic and Ashkenazi characteristics.During the visit of Bril in Palestine, another top Hebrew journalist was already there. The newcomer, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the renovator of Hebrew language, created his own press “Empire” in Jerusalem. Ben-Yehuda, native of Russia, expressed already its preference to Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew language, but in his writings, he enlarges the “Sephardic superiority” (however, mixed with “orientalist” approach) also to other stereotypical personal and social characteristics. It appears that communal tensions existed already in the 19th century. The stereotypes existed, although their contents were not always similar to those of today. However, the communal identity was supposed to merge into a national identity. Nevertheless, identity, as Habermas urges, “is not something given, but also, and simultaneously, our own project”. There is apparently no clear agreement on such a project, even in Israel and the Jewish World of our days.

The Merchant of Venice in the Hebrew Press

Abstract This article will discuss two points, half a century apart: the first Hebrew press review of The Merchant of Venice, and the press coverage of the first production of the play on the Hebrew stage and the public debate that accompanied it. The first review was published in the first Hebrew daily HaYom in St Petersburg on 23 August 1887 and addressed the showing of Merchant by Russian actors. The reviewer was the writer and critic David Frischmann. Merchant was first presented in Hebrew in May 1936 by Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv, directed by Leopold Jessner, who had escaped from Germany. The Hebrew press of the time provided extensive coverage around the production of the play in the context of the violent riots in Palestine and the rise of Nazism in Europe. Among the participants in the public debate were major representatives of the intellectual elite of the time.

The Merchant of Venice in the Hebrew Press

This article will discuss two points, half a century apart: the first Hebrew press review of The Merchant of Venice, and the press coverage of the first production of the play on the Hebrew stage and the public debate that accompanied it. The first review was published in the first Hebrew daily HaYom in St Petersburg on 23 August 1887 and addressed the showing of Merchant by Russian actors. The reviewer was the writer and critic David Frischmann. Merchant was first presented in Hebrew in May 1936 by Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv, directed by Leopold Jessner, who had escaped from Germany. The Hebrew press of the time provided extensive coverage around the production of the play in the context of the violent riots in Palestine and the rise of Nazism in Europe. Among the participants in the public debate were major representatives of the intellectual elite of the time.

A note on Kemalizm in the Hebrew press of Palestine

ABSTRACTThe paper will attempt to examine the reactions of the Hebrew press to the Kemalist reforms and their importance for world civilization in general and Turkey's progress in particular. The newspapers wrote approvingly about the process of decision-making by the Kemalists who weighed carefully all options and then carried out all decisions firmly. The press emphasized what it considered Turkey's liberation from an Asiatic civilization and a theocratic regime via the establishment of a secular republic open to Europe and the West. The newspapers praised highly Turkey's drive towards modernization in its political, social and economic development. They were highly appreciative of the language reform and the purification of Turkish from Arabic and Persian loanwords – a process similar to what was going on then in modern Hebrew in Palestine. Some commended the well-organized introduction of the Latin script, an issue which was being debated then in Palestine (but with different results). They also praised the equalization in the status of women in Turkey.

Sparks of Happenstance: Photographs, Public Celebrations, and the Ottoman Military Band of Jerusalem

This paper explores the depiction of public celebration in the late Hamidian period in Ottoman Jerusalem through the relationship between textual and photographic sources, and between state performers and the viewing public. The joy of public celebrations on the sultan’s birthday and accession day conveyed in the Ottoman Turkish and Hebrew press was at odds with formal, flat photographs of the occasion, but in fact shared that aesthetic through its formulaic tropes and language. A key part of the narratives of these occasions in Jerusalem was the performance of music by the military band of the garrison. Through a close reading of these and other images, the uniform images and narratives of these public events of the state can be penetrated, and snapshots of discord, emotion, and reaction emerge that show performances to be perhaps cacophonous affairs, and the attending crowds a part of the scenery rather than active participants. As such, this paper will consider the role of these photographs in reconstructing both the experiential and political atmospheres of these formal state occasions. In particular, a stereographic image of a concert of the Jerusalem band in 1903 permits an alternative reading of these occasions. Using the chance details captured in the shot, the value of close readings of photographs as microhistories can be found in exposing narratives beyond those peddled by the state, and the flaws and tensions of the relationship between ruler and ruled thus becomes more readily apparent.

Rom – den hebraiske bogs vugge

Ulf G. Haxen: Rome – Cradle of the Hebrew Book
 The Royal Library in Copenhagen has, throughout the twentieth century, received two substantial collections of Hebraica and Judaica. In 1933 the library acquired the private library of chief rabbi and professor David Simonsen, which amounted to an impressive 40,000 manuscripts, books and correspondence of scholarly importance. Dr. Lazarus Goldschmidt escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and managed to bring his 2,500 volumes of Hebraica and Judaica, including 43 immaculate and well preserved incunables, safely to London. His entire collection of rare Hebrew books was purchased by the Royal Library for a moderate sum in 1949 because Goldschmidt was “honoured to have his books incorporated in Bibliotheca Simonseniana.”Both scholars were recognised authorities in their own right, Simonsen as philologist in Semitics and specialist in Jewish booklore, and Goldschmidt as a renowned bibliophile and connoisseur of 15th century Hebraic incunables. His 46 rare incunables were eventually listed in Victor Madsen’s catalogue of incunables (1935–1963).The art of printing was born c.1455 in Mainz (Germany) with Johan Gutenberg’s printed edition of the bible. Among scholars it was generally believed that migrating Christian and Jewish apprentices carried the revolutionising “black art” of printing from Mainz to Spain and Italy. Coincidentally enough, the first two dated Hebrew works appeared in print thirty years after Gutenberg in the exact same year in southern and northern Italy respectively: these being the Rashi commentary on the Jewish bible issued 17th February 1475 in Reggia di Calabria and printed by Abraham Garton ben Isaac, and the Arba’ah turim in Piove di Sacco near Venezia published by Meshullam Cusi on 3rd July 1475.These two books were for a long time considered to be the first books printed with Hebrew types. The famous Christian scholar of Hebraica, Giambernardo de Rossi, who was the fortunate owner of the allegedly “first” cradle book from Reggia, subsequently published the first census of Hebrew incunables in Annales hebraica-typographica saeculi XV (1795). The scene was thus set for the future scholarly research of the undated incunables labelled “Roma, ante 1480” (Rome, before 1480) by de Rossi. The present essay discusses five of these incunables, all of which are described in Victor Madsen’s catalogue as printed in “Roma, ante 1480”; an approximated date which needs correcting. David Simonsen refers in passing to “the three printers of Rome” viz. Obadiah, Menasseh and Benjamin, as supposedly having been active in a printing press in Rome. The incunable with Salomon ben Abraham ibn Aderet (Raschba) Teschubot sche’elot. (“Answers to Questions”) dated “before 1980” is a case in point (#4332 in Victor Madsen’s catalogue), furnished with an earlier approximate publishing date c.1469–1472 no. 55 in the Offenberg census (1990) and eventually with REX online catalogue Inc. Haun in 2015.The best known printing press in Rome was created by the two German printers Conrad Sweynheym & Arnold Pannartz who established their first workshop at Santa Scolastica at Subiaco in the Sabine Mountains outside Rome in 1464, where they published several unique Latin works and introduced a Greek typeface. In 1467 they moved the press to the city of Rome in order to get closer to the reading and profitable public. In 1467 they moved the press to Rome in order to get closer to their reading public – and their profits. Here they were privileged to be housed in Palazzo Massimo by the proprietors Pietro and Francesco Massimo. What is more, they began working under the patronage of the respected humanist Giovanni Andrea Bussi, who was editor in charge.It is safe to conjecture that the Hebrew press was born in this milieu, as indeed suggested by Edwin Hall: “… a casual remark of Bussi in the preface to the Latin Bible hints at a possible connection between Sweynheym and Pannartz and what are thought to be the earliest printed books in Hebrew. These books, which contain no indication of date or place of printing, are the work of obscure printers named Obadiah, Manasseh, and Benjamin de Roma and constitute the most primitive surviving examples of printing in Italy.”I thank Dr. Ann Brener, Specialist in the Hebraic Section at the Library of Congress for supplying additional bibliographic references.

“Jews, Be Ottomans!” Zionism, Ottomanism, and Ottomanisation in the Hebrew-Language Press, 1890–1914

In recent years the study of national and civic identities in the later Ottoman period has revealed huge degrees of complexity among previously homogenised groups, none more so that the Jewish population of the Sublime State. Those Jews who moved to the Ottoman Empire from the 1880s as part of a burgeoning expression of Jewish nationalism developed a complex relationship with an Ottomanist identity that requires further consideration. Through an examination of the Hebrew-language press in Palestine, run largely by immigrant Zionist Jews, complemented by the archival records of the Ottoman state and parliament, this paper aims to show the complexities of the engagement between Ottoman and Jewish national identities. The development of Jewish nationalism by largely foreign Jews came with an increase in suspicion from the Ottoman elites, sometimes manifesting itself in outright anti-Semitism, and strong expressions of nationalism in the Hebrew press were denounced both by Ottoman and non- and anti-nationalist Jewish populations. The controversy over immigrant Jewish land purchases in Palestine from the 1890s led to a number of discussions over how far foreign Jews could and should embrace an Ottoman cultural and political identity, with cultural, labour, and political Zionists taking different positions. The issue of Ottomanisation should also be taken in the context of the post-1908 political landscape in the Ottoman Empire, with separatist nationalisms increasingly under the spotlight, and the debates among the different forms of Jewish nationalism increasingly focusing on the limits of performative and civic Ottoman nationalism.

Rethinking the yishuv: late-Ottoman Palestine’s Jewish communities revisited

ABSTRACTThis article argues for a significant revision in the understanding of Jews in late-Ottoman Palestine: from a model of a singular community (the yishuv) to a model of multiple communities, embedded within local, regional and global networks. The conceptualization of Palestine’s Jewry is reappraised, from the Jerusalem School to recent literature. Despite acknowledging their ethnic and linguistic diversity, the historiography has long portrayed Palestine’s Jews as a sui-generis community, a Jewish microcosm united in its unique attachment to Eretz Israel. It was studied as part of Jewish history, in isolation from its Middle Eastern context. In contrast, recent Relational Studies stressed Jewish connections to the Arab and Ottoman environment in Palestine. The article examines the self-perception of Jewish communities as plural and heterogeneous, through a survey of early Hebrew press. It traces the genealogy of the term yishuv, from an ideological project of revival and colonization in the 1860s, to an imagined pan-Jewish national community after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. This shift was boosted not only by Zionism and Jewish diaspora influence, but also by Ottomanism. Even then, Jewish communities in Palestine continued to operate separately in a highly fragmented manner well into the British Mandate period.

Everybody’s team? The national narrative in the Hebrew press covering Israeli national soccer team matches

Sports media offer a unique discourse site because the nationalistic nature of reporting is often radicalized and in most cases ‘the national flag is waved with eternal enthusiasm’. Therefore, this study examined changes in the coverage of the Israeli national soccer team between 1949 and 2006 through an exploration of the identity of the journalistic narratives’ storytellers and protagonists. Our findings illuminate a complex picture: whereas during the Israel’s formative era sports reporters pursued a patriotic narrative that praised the players for their fighting spirit and contribution to national prestige, in recent decades the sports sections echo a new variety of local, professional, and gender voices that challenge the supposedly natural hegemony of national identity. These changes can be explained by factors rooted in the fields of journalism, sports, and the politics of identity.

Sanctions, Censure and Punitive Censorship: Some Targeted Hebrew Translations of Arabic Literature from 1961-1992

Translations of Arabic literature into Hebrew have been marginally present in Israeli Jewish culture for the last 62 years. Their production and reception have been affected by the ongoing political Jewish-Arab conflict which depicts the Arab as a threatening enemy and inferior to the Jew. This depiction has often led to fear and apprehension of Arabic literary works. The present paper focuses on several cases where Hebrew translations of Arabic prose and poetry were publicly condemned as a potential threat to the stability of Israeli Jewish sociopolitical creeds and state security. The various sanctions imposed on the texts and their writers (though not on their translators!) by Israeli authorities, the Israeli Hebrew press and public opinion are described and explained. These sanctions were subsequently lifted after Israeli Jewish writers rose up against censure and censorship by raising their voices in protest.

Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Diaspora

In the introduction to Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines?, Raanan Rein calls for a change in Latin American Jewish Studies away from an essentialist approach that focuses almost exclusively on the Jews of one or more Latin American countries. He proposes that Jewish Latin Americans should be studied as an ethnic group that interacts with other groups and navigates the social structures within a certain place. In this way he distances himself from Haim Avni, Judith Laikin Elkin, Judit Bokser Liwerant, Robert M. Levine, and other influential scholars of Jewish Latin America.Rein employs this ethnic methodology in many, though not all, the essays in this volume. Chapters such as “Complementary Identities: Sephardim, Zionists, and Argen-tines in the Interwar Period” and “A Pact of Oblivion: The De-Peronization of the Jewish Community” are written from an ethnic perspective. They deal with rivalries and support systems within the Jewish community and shed light on how Jews have coped in an increasingly multicultural and sometimes hostile environment. Rein explores the complex interrelations not only among Jews and non-Jews in Argentina but also among Jews of differing social class, origin, and level of affiliation with the established Jewish organizations within that country.Other chapters, like “Argentina, World War II, and the Entry of Nazi War Criminals,” “Diplomats and Journalists: The Image of Peronism in the Hebrew Press,” and “Soccer as a Double-Edged Sword: Argentine Exiles in Israel Protest against the 1978 World Cup,” go far beyond ethnicity. Rein’s interests are much broader and include the relationship of Juan Domingo Perón and Evita Perón to the organized Jewish community, the US State Department’s unrelenting opposition to Perón, the vicissitudes of the Argentine Catholic Church (particularly over the issue of religious education in the public schools), the evolving culture of Argentine Jews who have emigrated to Israel, the Israeli press’s reporting of the two Perón administrations, and, especially, Argentine-Israeli relations.Rein is quite effective in debunking long-held views about Jewish life in Argentina. In contrast to beliefs expressed by historians and accepted by the general public in many countries, Rein demonstrates convincingly that Perón was favorable to the Jewish-Argentine community and remained so even after Jews voted against him en masse in the presidential elections of 1951. Perón had Jewish advisors at the highest levels, and he maintained excellent relations with the fledgling State of Israel. Jews held key positions in the Peronist party. Also, Rein argues that only 50 German Nazi war criminals and about 130 others from Nazi-occupied territory actually settled in Argentina, out of the tens of thousands that passed through Argentina while fleeing the denazification of Europe from 1945 on.In his analysis of the influence of the State of Israel on Jewish Argentines, Rein also provides new insights. He explains how despite continuous emigration to Israel, the concept of Zionism in Argentina serves more to provide Jewish Argentines with an idealized “homeland,” like that of other immigrants, rather than an incentive to leave one’s South American “home.” Conversely, he points to Israel’s repeatedly taking actions without concern for the safety of Jewish Argentines, thus putting national interests before Jewish ones. However justified, the 1960 Israeli kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann from a Buenos Aires suburb led to two years of violent anti-Semitic backlash by the Tacuara and other armed right-wing shock troops and the subsequent creation of effective Jewish defense organizations. Rein reveals new information about the close ties between the Israeli government and the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Leaders of both countries made reciprocal “goodwill” visits, the Israeli generals bragged of the highly profitable arms deals they made with the Argentine generals, and the Argentine generals appreciated their favored status. During the same time period, a disproportionate number of Jewish Argentines were being disappeared by military and paramilitary death squads, without protest from the Israeli government.Rein is a meticulous researcher. His argumentation is very clear and free of jargon and extraordinarily well documented. The bibliography of this book is exhaustive. The inclusion of Hebrew-language journalistic and governmental sources and new or lesser-known Argentine ones is a particularly valuable addition. This bibliography alone will provide a valuable resource for historians in many fields.Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? will certainly be of interest to scholars in Jewish studies and Latin American Jewish studies, Israel studies, and historians of Argentina. Professors and graduate students of Israeli foreign policy and its press will find much new material here. An Israeli historian with extensive experience in Argentina, Raanan Rein has made an exciting contribution to Latin American Jewish scholarship.

Mediating touristic dangerscapes: the semiotics of state travel warnings issued to Israeli tourists

Official ‘travel warnings’ are recurrently published by the Counter-Terrorism Bureau in Israeli media, with the aim of informing potential tourists about the dangers of terrorism aimed at Israelis who travel abroad. These travel warnings, which juxtapose menacing warnings with tranquil visual representations of touristic vacationscapes, have recently gained a considerable public attention and have sprouted discussions around local tourism and identities. In this article, we offer a discursive and semiotic analysis of 55 travel warning articles, which appeared between 1998 and 2010 in printed and digital Hebrew press in Israel. We address visual and textual aspects of the articles and ask how they represent and mediate touristic vacationscapes. Following recent developments (‘turns’) in both tourism studies and media studies, we argue that these warnings articles construct multilayered spatial–visual representations of tourist destinations, which amount to a unique genre of tourism imagery in and of itself. Focussing on travel warnings addressing Israeli tourists who travel to the Eastern shores of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, we find that these combined or hybrid images and spaces present a convergence of two contemporary systems of representation, related to tourism and mass media, respectively, and construct a charged and mediated cultural space in Israeli collective imagination.

The Arab public sphere in Israel: media space and cultural resistance

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Media Space, Political Control, and Cultural Resistance 2. The Indigenous Arab Minority in the Israeli State 3. Israeli Media Policies toward the Arab Minority 4. Arabic Media Space in the Jewish State: Seeking New Communicative Action 5. Arabic Print Media and the New Culture of Newspaper Reading 6. Resisting Cultural Imperialism: Alienation and Strategic Reading of the Hebrew Press 7. Electronic Media and the Strategy of In-Betweenness Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index