Israeli Identity Research Articles

IsraPulp: The Israeli Popular Literature Collection at Arizona State University

Based on research literature, the article reviews the history of Hebrew popular literature since the 1930s, its connections with Yiddish Schund literature and its effects on the development of Modern Hebrew literature and Israeli identity, especially in light the New Hebrew ethos. The article features the research collection of Hebrew pulps at Arizona State Univeristy, demonstrates the significance of collecting popular materials in research libraries, and suggests possible new study directions. An appendix lists some of the materials available at the IsraPulp Collection.

Nation and history: Israeli historiography and identity between Zionism and post-Zionism

Nation and history: Israeli historiography and identity between Zionism and post-Zionism

The Jewish Quarter after 1967

The article explores the reconstruction of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter after the 1967 war, with an emphasis on the area’s emergence as a symbolic Israeli landscape. The post-1967 Jewish Quarter became a symbol of national renewal and of Jewish control over united Jerusalem. In fact, it was the destruction during the 1948 war and the severe neglect in its aftermath that provided Israel the opportunity to recreate the area’s geography and history, to design and build it anew from both a physical and a symbolic standpoint. After 1967, primarily during the formative years of the 1970s and 1980s, various agents—politicians, planners, contractors, archeologists, clergy, cultural groups, and private people—had their impact on the revival of the Jewish Quarter. Together, they crafted a new landscape whose connection to the pre-1948 neighborhood is extremely vague. By drawing from the quarter’s past in a selective manner, these agents created new forms of historical memory, which helped forge and bolster Israeli identity and pride. At the end of this process, it is doubtful whether the symbolic values of the Jewish Quarter as one can experience them today were developed according to ideas that the government agents had in the beginning of its reconstruction.

Belonging here, not there: The case of attaining European passports by grandchildren of Holocaust survivors

The paper presents findings obtained from interviews conducted with sixty Israeli grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, discussing their views regarding Israel and Europe as expressed by their intentions to live in Israel and acquire European citizenship. Analysis of the interviews revealed that the majority view Israel as the place in which they choose to live because of family and cultural bonds, as well as from the long-lasting impact of the Holocaust. Others felt less anchored and viewed the opportunity to immigrate to their forefathers’ European homelands more positively. Their reasons were based either on the unstable Israeli security situation, compounded by the anxieties elicited by the memory of the Holocaust, or as a result of perceiving Europe as a gateway to the globalized world and its financial gains. The emerging image of Europe for this third generation vacillates between two poles, each anchored in a different time and cultural frame. The first is the “Europe of the Holocaust”; image which emerged as a result of the events that took place on European soil during the period 1933–1945 together with current anti Semitism. The second is “Europe of the Globalized world”, that is, the Europe of the era beginning in the late 1980s, with its ever-expanding social, cultural and economic boundaries. Moreover, the willingness of the third generation to openly discuss the option of either staying or leaving Israel, represents a significant change in attitude from the first and second generation of Israeli Holocaust survivors. The change is seen, as part of a process of maturation of the Israeli identity which allows for multi voices to be heard on issues of belonging and citizenship.

The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (review)

Reviewed by: The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches Barry Laga The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, edited by Samantha Baskind and Ranen Omer-Sherman. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 292 pp. $49.95 (c); $28.95 (p). Defining the “Jewish graphic novel” as “an illustrative narrative produced by a Jew that addresses a Jewish subject or some aspect of the Jewish experience” (p. xvi), editors Samantha Baskind and Ranen Omer-Sherman celebrate the “flourishing of unbound Jewish imagination” (p. ix) in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches. While presenting “focused and illuminating discussions of major trends, developments, and figures intrinsic to the Jewish graphic novel” (p. xv) the editors want to “attract conceptual approaches that were as diverse as the works themselves” (p. xvii). Admittedly, the anthology goes a long way towards accomplishing this goal. The collection is organized thematically. Part One covers “The Jewish American Experience” and addresses several foundational issues, including Laurence Roth’s exploration of the “tension between abject pasts and heroic futures” that defines the Jewish comic book (p. 3), Jeremy Dauber’s acknowledgement of Will Eisner, who shapes the medium and content of sequential narrative and graphic art, Josh Lambert’s tracing of the shift in readership in his chapter, “Wanna watch the grown-ups doin’ dirty things?,” and Roxanne Harde’s examination of Jewish masculinity in “‘Give ’em another circumcision’: Jewish Masculinities in The Golem’s Mighty Swing.” Part Two focuses on “The Holocaust across Borders,” and these borders include Lisa Naomi Mulman’s discussion of the “mouse as victim” (p. 86) in Spiegelman’s Maus as well as Horst Rosenthal’s Mickey Mouse in the Gurs Internment Camp. “When time stands still” by Erin McGlothlin, frames Spiegelman’s work in terms of trauma, the super-present, and postmemory. Brad Prager’s contribution, “The Holocaust without Ink,” explores Yossel: April 19, 1943 and maintains that Joe Kubert is “addressing his own absence of memories” by creating a “lengthy and personal What If? comic” (p. 126). And like many memories described by children of Holocaust survivors, Miriam Harris uncovers the pain involved in reconciling the past with the present and the future in Bernice Eisenstein’s I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors. “Witness, Trauma, and Remembrance” by Cheryl Alexander Malcolm completes this section by examining “how the Holocaust underpins the distrust and uncertainty that characterize X-Men comic books and makes mutants a metaphor for Jews” (p. 144). The third section of the collection moves beyond the United States and celebrates work created by French and Israeli artists and writers. Paul Eisenstein considers the problems with rabbinic authority, doubt, heritage, and certainty in Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat. Marla Harris adds to the discussion of [End Page 169] Sfar’s work and also discusses his Klezmer: Tales of the Wild East, exploring how “borders and border crossings—between Jews and Muslims, Jews and Christians, humans and animals, Africa and Europe, author and reader” (p. 182) address and complicate our notions of cosmopolitanism. Ariel Kahn studies the formation of Israeli identity and a re-imagined Akeda in Yirmi Pinkus’ Margolis and Black Milk, Izik Rennert’s Speaking of the Devil, Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds, as well as Asaf Hanuka and Etgar Keret’s Pizzeria Kamikaze. Alon Raab explains how Eli Eshed, Uri Fink, and Ilana Zeffren question the mythic proportions of key Israeli historic and cultural events and the development of the “nation’s consciousness of itself ” (p. 230). The final section of the book, “Jewish Graphic Novelists in Their Own Words and Pictures,” offers a more personal focus as Baskind and Omer-Sherman interview Miriam Katin and Miriam Libicki, whose graphic story “Jewish Memoir Goes Pow! Zap! Oy!” completes the anthology by presenting us with a history of Jewish comics within the frame of “gonzo literary comics” (p. 254). Admittedly, the collection offers an appealing variety of essays. Baskind and Omer-Sherman have assembled works that provide insights that address biographical, historical, and aesthetic dimensions of Jewish graphic novels. Analytical essays sit alongside two interviews, a graphic memoir, selections for further reading, and a collection of glossy color illustrations that supplement the black and white images that accompany each...

‘The hips don't lie’: Dancing around gendered, ethnic, and national identity in Israel

This paper examines a belly dancing workshop through a qualitative phenomenological methodology. It presents a case study of how a group of women in Israel (Muslim, Arab-Jewish, and Western Jewish) from a range of professional levels (lower administration to professors in the same university), through a belly dancing workshop, experience their bodies and construct their sexuality contextualised within the specific social and cultural realities of being a women of different religion, class, and culture, in Israel, all working in a patriarchal university context that refuses to fund the group. The women address personal, group, and social- political levels through their experience of their body and their re-definition of power and of sexuality through the belly dancing itself, and through their struggle to enable the group to continue.

Social representations of the Holocaust and Jewish Israeli identity construction: insights from identity process theory

This study explores how a group of young Israeli Jews understood and defined their ethno-national identities, focusing upon the role of social representations of the Holocaust in the construction of Jewish Israeli identity. Eleven individuals were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Transcripts were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. The analysis was informed by identity process theory and social representations theory. Three superordinate themes are reported, entitled: (i) ‘perceptions of the Holocaust as a personal and shared loss’; (ii) ‘re-conceptualising the Holocaust and its impact upon intra-/intergroup relations’; and (iii) ‘the Holocaust as a heuristic lens for understanding the Israeli-Arab conflict’. The data suggest that awareness of social representations of the Holocaust may enhance the belonging and continuity principles of identity, in particular. It is argued that the maintenance of national ingroup security constitutes a source of (group) continuity. Implications for psychological well-being are discussed.

Judeo-Greek in the era of globalization

This article presents a picture of the state and status of Judeo-Greek language varieties (JGLVs) in the post-modern period throughout the regions in which they are/were used, i.e. Greece, Israel and the USA. The paper gives historical background and weighs in on the methodological and theoretical controversies connected with the JGLVs and their place in the broader Greek-speaking realm. Special emphasis is placed on the sociological context of the emergence and use of JGLVs, including the postvernacular varieties brought forward by imagined Greek identities in Israel and the USA.

Israeli Youth Pilgrimages to Poland. Rationale and Polemics

The article, which was written based on material collected as part of a project evaluating the pilgrimage trips to Poland by Israeli adolescents as part of the Holocaust curriculum, attempted to provide the reader with the background for these trips. In this context, the authors discussed the evolving national agenda in Israel, and the transition from experiencing independence to experiencing the Holocaust. It was explained that this process began with the Eichmann trial in 1961, but became far more intense after the political upheaval in 1977, when the Labor Party, which had been in power since the 1920s, lost the election. The authors of the article stressed that in the wake of the profound social changes that took place in Israeli society, the memory of the Holocaust gained new significance among the country’s national priorities. While a policy known as “the great silence” regarding the Holocaust prevailed among the first generation after statehood, the Holocaust has now become a factor that shaped the national ethos. In 1979, for the first time, the Ministry of Education commissioned two curricula dealing exclusively with the Holocaust. It was this new attitude to the sources of Israeli identity that led to the commencement of trips to Poland by adolescents in the 1980s. Since the trips began, in 1988, over 300,000 adolescents have traveled to Poland. These journeys have become a sort of rite de passage for the relevant age group (high school juniors and seniors). They can be compared to backpacking by young adults who travel abroad to “clear their heads” after completing their army service, on trips lasting anywhere from a few months to two years. The authors noted that nevertheless, only 25-30% of Israeli adolescents actually take part in these journeys. Inter alia, the article reviewed the evolving goals of the trips defined by the MOE, in accordance with the worldview of the minister in office, and noted that, in accordance with the spirit of the times, there were sometimes differences in the main nuances along the particularism-universality axis. The article further stated that apart from the terms in office of ministers Rubinstein and Aloni, the assimilation of the humanistic, moral, universal and anti-totalitarian lessons of the Holocaust during the trips was minor. The article includes a fairly extensive discussion of the dispute on this issue in Israeli discourse. The article noted that the Holocaust and its lessons can be examined from three different perspectives: The first perspective focuses on presenting the universal significance of the Holocaust and perceiving it as parallel to other cases of genocide (such as the murder of the Armenians by the Turks, the genocide in Rwanda and so on). The second perspective focuses on presenting the national significance of the Holocaust as a unique and unparalleled case of the Jewish People. The perception held by this approach is actually “the whole world is against us.” The third perspective is a synthesis of these two approaches. In this article, the authors noted that the longstanding debate in Israeli society over the various methods for instilling the Holocaust and the journeys to Poland by adolescents expresses these three perspectives. The speakers and writers interviewed in the field research each represent one of these perspectives. The article contains many direct quotations from authors, teachers, academics and others, which support the points made by the authors.

The Relationship between the Poor in Judea and Israel under Foreign Rule: Sirach 35:14-26 among Second Temple Prayers and Hymns

AbstractThe transition from the plight of the poor to the plight of Israel under foreign rule in Sir 35:14-26 is far smoother than is generally recognized. This is a result of a typological relationship between the poor and the identity of Israel, which is not only found in Ben Sira’s thought but is a common motif in Second Temple prayers and hymns. Attention to the content of Sir 35 as well as the larger trend in Second temple prayers and hymns helps to provide an explanation for the presence of the nationalistic prayer in chapter 36.

Another man’s faith? The image of Judaism in the BBC television series Men Seeking God

The 1954 BBC television series Men Seeking God saw Labour MP Christopher Mayhew interview devout believers of the world’s great living religions. The present article uses press coverage, Mayhew’s and the BBC’s archives, and the surviving 15 minutes of footage to reconstruct and discuss episode three on Judaism, arguing that it conflates Judaism, Jewishness, Anglo-Jewish and Israeli identity.

The Druze in Israel: Questions of Identity, Citizenship, and Patriotism

Druze of Israel constitute a very unique community within the pluralistic, though Jewish-dominated, social map of the country. Their religious heritage and ethnic integrity set them apart, even while they have participated in the political and military domains in close affiliation with the population. Through research and analysis, a picture emerges of Druze solidarity with the Zionist ethos, as they simultaneously distance themselves from the Arab and Islamic themes resonant among the Israeli-Arab sector of society. tiny Druze group prioritizes while balancing its allegiances, vigorously defends its interests, and campaigns for improved socio-economic conditions in the complexity of their minority experience in the of Israel. paradoxes of Druze life, simultaneously loyal to and community, present an intricate picture of perseverance, patriotism, and patience in Israel. Druze community of Israel enjoys a special place alongside and in-between the Jews and the Arabs. Accounting for less than 2% of Israel's population, numbering just 122,400 people of a total of about seven million, the Druze community is marginal quantitatively and seemingly no less qualitatively to the country's national ethos.1 national history, biblically-embedded, using the Hebrew language, and bound to Judaism, is the paramount cultural definition of Israel. Yet unlike the predominant non-Jewish Arab minority population, overwhelmingly Palestinian by national and Muslim by religious affiliation, the Druze have preferred a more insular identity, remaining outside of the ideological rift in the country while sharing the Arabic language and aspects of Arab culture with the large Arab-Israeli community. Most pointedly, the Druze have shown no readiness to identify with the Arab narrative of Palestine, as formulated in The Democratic Constitution by 'Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in and the Haifa Declaration of 2007. A similar Arab political manifesto was issued by the Arab Monitoring Committee in its document, The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, which, like the other statements, proposed the nullification of Israel as a state.2 call for reconstituting Israel as a democratic, bilingual, multi-cultural state, effectively a bi-national entity that recognizes the Palestinian Arabs as nationally equal to the people of did not evoke Druze solidarity or enthusiasm. Druze, sandwiched between the Jews and Arabs of by their collective and public stance have nonetheless made a discerning mark on Israel's ethnic and political map. Multiple identities are common benchmarks in as is the same in the rest of the Middle East. For the Druze, the Israeli identity, not just the formal citizenship, is a special communal badge that indicates that Israeli-ness sustains not only Jews but non-Jews as well. Other communities - Circassians, Bedouins, and some Muslims and Christians - may also comfortably adopt the Israeli in a natural native fashion, but the Druze exemplify the pinnacle of this phenomenon. It then is a question to what extent the Israeli establishment and society generally have accepted or in fact habitually accept the Druze as run-of-the-mill, unhyphenated Israelis. Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is the of the Jews, and others. issue of citizenship has multiple faces in both conception and policy implementation. It can be addressed as an integral manifestation of an ethnic community, or as John Stuart Mill defined it, identity of race and descent.3 Alternatively, citizenship is granted by principle based on territorial residence. right of blood [jus sanguinis] or the right of soil [jus soli] are essential and competing, if not clashing, legal and philosophical categories in the Israeli experience. Israel definitely and explicitly accords citizenship as rightfully enjoyed by all Jews coming to Israel; but Israel also recognizes birth and residence within the state, of Jews and non-Jews, as criteria for citizenship. …

Role of Druze high schools in Israel in shaping students’ identity and citizenship

This study investigated how two Israeli Druze high schools shape the identity and citizenship of adolescents through curriculum, teaching, discourse, social activities and national ceremonies. Data were collected through interviews with teachers, the two school principals, policymakers for Druze education in the Ministry of Education, and students, as well as through observations and document analysis. The research found that the Israeli Druze school system plays a significant role in shaping students’ identity and citizenship in the difficult Israeli context, developing adolescents who are firmly rooted in both Druze and Israeli identity. Four central mechanisms were found to infuse the schools in order to accomplish these goals. These were characterized as multi-faceted values education, multi-faceted development of students’ identity and citizenship, meaningful learning and the community good. The commitment of Druze educators to building strong Druze-Israeli identity in their students was seen to spring from Druze religious beliefs and from the unique position of the Druze among other Arab groups in Israel.

L'ethnicisation du champ éducatif religieux en Israël : l'exemple de Petah-Tikva

By redefining their ethno-religious identity, the religious education network established in Israel at the end of the 1980s by the ultraorthodox Sephardic party, Shas, has played a major role in drawing a portion of the Jews who originated in Arab-Mulsim countries (Mizrahim) together into a community. An analysis inspired by the sociology of social movements sheds light on the manner in which this process of communitarianization has taken place. The Shas Party was able to acquire the political weight necessary to ensure the rapid growth of its school network thanks to structures of political opportunity that facilitated the emergence of this collective action in both the political and educational fields. Yet it was the reorganization of the educational field that more specifically permitted the mobilization of identity to take place through schools. Born of the discrepancy between a discourse that supported ethnically mixed schools and practices running counter to it, the crisis of legitimacy in the public school system allowed the Shas Party to implement efforts to redefine the categories of Israeli identity. For a growing number of families, the result has been to make the Party’s school network an alternative space propitious to the communitarianization of the eastern ethnicity. &#9632

The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity (review)

Reviewed by: The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity Ranen Omer-Sherman The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity, by Alexandra Nocke. Boston: Brill, 2009. 298 pp. $140.00. Alexandra Nocke's splendidly written and meticulously researched The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity (2009) deftly exposes the ways that the spirit of Yam Tikhoniut (or "Mediterraneanism") is employed by Israelis to expand their claustrophobic situation by relating to their locale as intrinsic to a more expansive geo-cultural space. Whether considering daily life or artistic expression, the author provides a timely and richly interdisciplinary perspective that promises to open up important new trajectories in Israel Studies as well as twenty-first-century approaches to Jewish identity. Nocke is keenly interested in journalist Zvi Bar'el's formulation of the transformative broadening of the Israeli sense of spatial belonging that has lately taken hold: "The Mediterranean Sea ceased to be a place into which Jews could be thrown, and turned into a 'basin' around which one discuss[es] common regional problems" (p. 27). While fully acknowledging that such an expansion is subject to the increasingly precarious status of the peace process in recent years, Nocke, together with her subjects, finds vibrant expressions of Mediterranean identity "in the media, in cultural and everyday social practices, and as a part of public debates" (p. 28). The powerful attraction to this transnational mode of belonging owes in part to its capacity for complementing "existing models of identity without either threatening their legitimacy or replacing them" (p. 29). In other words, Yam Tikhoniut (Nocke occasionally translates this as the "Mediterranean Option") encompasses the "East" and the "West" without imposing a monolithic model of identity. Yet it would be hard to deny that such an orientation might have potentially far-reaching social and political implications. For instance, there is President Shimon Peres' declaration that, rather than devote more resources to settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories, "we must invest in the sea, and stretch our western borders in that direction by building artificial islands" (p. 32). Undeniably, the expansive sense of belonging that Yam Tikhoniut temptingly promises also carries a certain pragmatism and demographic logic; after all, seventy percent of the country's population dwells on the coastal plain. (In this regard, it is worth noting that "Mediterraneanism" has lately taken [End Page 195] hold in other countries in the region; in 2008 Nicolas Sarkozy called for a "Mediterranean Union" that might one day lead to a supranational body.) For the average citizen, Nocke speculates, "the Mediterranean Idea . . . offers a political vision, adding a new dimension to the prevailing fatigue, bitterness, and disenchantment with politics that can generally be found in contemporary Israel" (p. 33). But the fraught question of belonging posed by the "East" and "West" demarcation is not so easily put to rest. In this regard, some of Nocke's Mizrahi respondents express wariness about the prospect of being marginalized (or condescended to) once again by what sounds to them like yet another Eurocentric rubric. Thus, Iraqi-born Jewish Israeli novelist Sami Michael proposes an alternative formulation that respects the traditional Levantine configuration of Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria but would be called the "Middle Eastern Union." Both of these supranational paradigms look toward a much longed-for integration in the region, but they are heavily idealized, ignoring the prickly identity politics, let alone the tenacious ferocity of religious fundamentalism, that besets the entire region. (Pace Nocke's Israeli subjects, a Lebanese academic complains to her, "Why shall we, alongside with Israel, all of a sudden become 'Mediterranean,' just for Israel to feel more welcomed in the region? We are Arabs and we will stay Arabs!" [p. 247].) Yet it is worth noting that variations on the views espoused by the Israelis who appear in Nocke's book have already been articulated by others, including Arab intellectuals, in the region. In "Re-Thinking the Mediterranean" Omar Barghouti and Adrian Grima call for new regional alliances to transcend the ethos of a West and East destined for permanent enmity: "A progressive alliance that focuses on the Mediterranean can be a credible, indeed a crucial, core of a...

Israeli identity formation and the Arab—Israeli conflict in election platforms, 1969—2006

This study focuses on the relationship between national identity and intractable conflict. Abdelal’s definition of collective identity that refers to the level of agreement regarding the purposes, practices, relational comparisons with other entities, and narratives that define collective identity was adapted to national identity during intractable conflict and was later applied to Israel’s national identity. A review of the Israeli 1969—2006 election platforms shows that in the 1980s and 1990s significant changes occurred in Israel’s national identity. The most significant changes included: changes regarding the territorial purpose of Israeli identity; changes in practices on who may become an Israeli citizen; changes of perception of the relationship between Israel and the Arabs; and a growing Israeli acceptance of Palestinian identity. Since 2000, following the failure of the Israeli—Palestinian peace process, some components of Israeli national identity have reverted to their original form. The study indicates that the Arab—Israeli conflict triggered changes in Israel’s national identity, but the conflict also seemed affected by changes in that identity. The article connects the changes in Israeli national identity to specific mechanisms and conditions of conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Cultural identity and perceived success among Israeli immigrants: An emic approach

Abstract This study proposes an emic conceptualization and measurement of identity and adaptation following immigration, which assesses both constructs in terms of the immigrant's own criteria—and not according to standardized external parameters. 337 Israeli immigrants completed the group characteristics questionnaire with relation to their minority (“Russian”), majority (“Israeli”), and ethnic (“Jewish”) identities, as well as the perceived success questionnaire. Results revealed that people who perceived their immigration as successful exhibit higher levels of Israeli identity than those who perceived their immigration as unsuccessful. We found that unsuccessful immigrants were characterized primarily by a marginalization orientation whereas those who perceived themselves as successful showed primarily an integration orientation followed by one of assimilation. Positive valences of the Israeli identity, but also negative valences of the Jewish identity, were related positively to success. Finally, we learned that newcomers with high levels of Russian identity are likely to define success in terms of competence, whereas immigrants who have high levels of Israeli identity tend to characterize success in terms of belonging. Results are explained in light of the special contribution of the new conceptualizations and methodologies to the understanding of cultural transition processes and outcomes.

Joining the Jewish People: Non-Jewish Immigrants from the Former USSR, Israeli Identity and Jewish Peoplehood

The Law of Return grants every Jew the right to immigrate to Israel; this also applies to non-Jewish relatives of Jews. The Citizenship Law grants every such “returnee” automatic citizenship. The wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union in the 90s brought a large number of immigrants not considered Jewish under the definition accepted in Israel. Is this large group of Israeli citizens—who do not, at least formally, belong to the Jewish people—an emerging second substantial national minority in Israel? This Article argues that regardless of formal definitions based on Orthodox religious law under which a religious conversion is the only way for a non-Jew to become Jewish, these immigrants, through their successful social and cultural integration in the Hebrew-speaking Jewish society in Israel, are joining, de facto, the Jewish people. It is no longer true that religious conversion is the only way to join the Jewish people.

Meir Gal

Meir (Miro) Gal is an artist who lives and works in New York. He left Israel in 1981 and settled in New York City in 1987. His photographs, installations, and interventions challenge the cultural, historical, political, and militaristic nature of the Israeli state. In Gal's work, the myths that have shaped Israeli identity, perceptions, and memory are interrogated and often demolished, and the body politic's dangerous internalization of the state's explicit military ethos is exposed.

Deleuze and the Contemporary World

This volume of essays aims to bring Deleuze's thought into a critical and analytical relation with the contemporary world. Taken together, the essays offer a robust defence of Deleuzian philosophy against charges that have recently levelled against it, namely that it is overly abstract, idealistic and otherworldly (Badiou, Hallward) and that, in offering an anarchic model of desiring production, it is ultimately complicit with contemporary capitalism and the ideology of neo-liberalism (Žižek). The aim, then, is to offer a range of discussions that make use of Deleuzian concepts in order to ‘describe, analyze, critique, and evaluate the tone, timbre and rhythm of the contemporary world’ (p. 18) with a view to rethinking, and offering theoretical alternatives to, the political problems that manifest themselves today. The volume covers a wide range of issues from the question of political community and ‘minor politics’ as thought by Deleuze, through to questions concerning the structure of the modern state, European identity, the legacy of colonialism and the Holocaust, Israeli identity, the desiring flows of capitalism and the question of culture in the age of information technology and cybernetics. At their best the analyses given do succeed in offering insightful critiques of contemporary political problems and their historical underpinnings. A good example of this is Paul Patton's excellent analysis of the legacy of colonization in Australia and issues of contemporary law relating to land rights. Patton's piece draws on Deleuze and Guattari's conceptualization of the ‘event’ and of the state as an apparatus of capture in order to show that such concepts can both allow for a critical-philosophical thinking of the colonial event and its legacy and open up concrete possibilities for envisaging a post-colonial society. Like all the best pieces in this collection Patton's essay demonstrates that Deleuze's thought can offer unique insights into political problems which other modes of thinking cannot. The use of Deleuzian concepts appears less convincing when they seem to be grafted rather too quickly onto an assumed political consensus or an assumed givenness of the empirical realities of the contemporary world. For instance, the discussion of Deleuzian axioms, US power and the international system given in the introduction uses the issue of oil and of oil reserves as an illustrative example while relying on highly selective sources (pp. 5–6) and apparently ignoring some of the key questions in the debate about remaining global oil supplies (see, for instance, David Goodstein, Out of Gas (London, Norton, 2004)). Despite such occasional shortcomings, this volume succeeds in demonstrating very convincingly that the charge of otherworldliness levelled at Deleuzian philosophy falls far short of the mark. Questions may remain about the extent to which Deleuzian analysis can foster direct interventions and create concrete possibilities for change. Nevertheless, the essays of this collection clearly show that the creation of innovative philosophical concepts that allow us to think complexity and multiplicity in new ways offers the best hope of understanding the complex political realities and challenges of the contemporary world.