Challenging the established view that the civilian sector in Israel has been predominant over its security sector since the state's independence in 1948, this volume critically and systematically reexamines the relationship between these sectors and provides a deeper, more nuanced view of their interactions. Individual chapters cast light on the formal and informal arrangements, connections, and dynamic relations that closely tie Israel's security sector to the country's culture, civil society, political system, economy, educational system, gender relations, and the media. Among the issues and events discussed are Israel's separation barrier, the impact of Israel's military confrontations with the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern states -- especially Lebanon -- and the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Israeli case offers insights about the role of the military and security in democratic nations in contemporary times.

The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society systematically examines the cultural and social construction of 'things military' within Israel. Contributors from comparative literature, film studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, history, and cultural studies explore the arenas in which the centrality of military matters are produced and reproduced by the state and by other public bodies. Analysis is presented using three perspectives: the production and reproduction of collective representations; the dynamics of gender, voice, and resistance; and the construction of individual life-worlds.

By revisiting the past hundred years of shared Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli history, Baruch Kimmerling reveals surprising relations of influence between a stateless indigenous society and the settler-immigrants who would later form the state of Israel. Shattering our assumptions about these two seemingly irreconcilable cultures, Kimmerling composes a sophisticated portrait of one side's behavior and characteristics and the way in which they irrevocably shaped those of the other. Kimmerling focuses on the clashes, tensions, and complementarities that link Jewish, Palestinian, and Israeli identities. He explores the phenomena of reciprocal relationships between Jewish and Arab communities in mandatory Palestine, relations between state and society in Israel, patterns of militarism, the problems of jurisdiction in an immigrant-settler society, and the ongoing struggle of Israel to achieve legitimacy as both a Jewish and a democratic state. By merging Israeli and Jewish studies with a vast body of scholarship on Palestinians and the Middle East, Kimmerling introduces a unique conceptual framework for analyzing the cultural, political, and material overlap of both societies. A must read for those concerned with Israel and the relations between Jews and Arabs, Clash of Identities is a provocative exploration of the ever-evolving, always-contending identities available to Israelis and Palestinians and the fascinating contexts in which they take form.

This work reexamines Israel in terms of its origins as a haven for a persecuted people and its evolution into a multi-cultural society. The author suggests that the Israeli State has divided into seven major cultures.

This book examines Israel’s civil-military relations (CMR) in order to explore alternatives to orthodox Western models of security sector reform (SSR) in post-conflict societies. This book argues that the guidelines of SSR have always tended to draw on theoretical work in the field of CMR and focus too heavily on Western, liberal democratic models of governance. Consequently, reform programs based on these guidelines, and intended for use in post-conflict and conflict-affected states, have had, at best, mixed results. The book challenges the necessity for this over-reliance on traditional Western liberal democratic solutions and instead advocates an alternative approach. It proposes that by drawing on an unconventional CMR model, that in turn references the specific context and cultural background of the particular state being subject to reform, there is a significantly higher chance of success. Drawing on a case study of Israel's CMR, the author seeks to provide practical assistance to those working in this area and considers the question of how this unorthodox CMR model might usefully inform post-conflict and conflict-affected SSR programmes. This book will be of interest to students of military studies, security studies, Israeli politics, and International Relations.

Traditional explorations of war look through the lens of history and military science, focusing on big events, big battles, and big generals. By contrast, The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspective views war through the lens of the social sciences, looking at the causes, processes and effects of war and drawing from a vast group of fields such as communication and mass media, economics, political science and law, psychology and sociology. Key features include: More than 650 entries organized in an A-to-Z format, authored and signed by key academics in the field Entries conclude with cross-references and further readings, aiding the researcher further in their research journeys An alternative Reader’s Guide table of contents groups articles by disciplinary areas and by broad themes A helpful Resource Guide directing researchers to classic books, journals and electronic resources for more in-depth study This important and distinctive work will be a key reference for all researchers in the fields of political science, international relations and sociology.

Awarded an Honourable Mention by the Association for Israeli Studies. Exploring the politics of the image in the context of Israeli militarized visual culture, Civic Aesthetics examines both the omnipresence of militarism in Israeli culture and society and the way in which this omnipresence is articulated, enhanced, and contested within local contemporary visual art. Looking at a range of contemporary artworks through the lens of “civilian militarism”, Roei employs the theory of various fields, including memory studies, gender studies, landscape theory, and aesthetics, to explore the potential of visual art to communicate military excesses to its viewers. This study builds on the specific sociological concerns of the chosen cases to discuss the complexities of visuality, the visible and non-visible, arguing for art's capacity to expose the scopic regimes that construct their visibility. Images and artworks are often read either out of context, on purely aesthetic or art-historical ground, or as cultural artefacts whose aesthetics play a minor role in their significance. This book breaks with both traditions as it approaches all art, both high and popular art, as part of the surrounding visual culture in which it is created and presented. This approach allows a new theory of the image to come forth, where the relation between the political and the aesthetic is one of exchange, rather than exclusion.

This book applies the concept of mediatization to the contemporary dynamic between war, media and society, with a focus on the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Since the beginning of the 21st century the IDF has undergone an intensive process of mediatization that has transformed the media into an interpretative grid for many of its military activities and increasingly utilized media to garner public support and construct civilian perceptions of conflict and security through media activity and strategy. This process can be divided into four distinct chronological phases in accordance with the operational challenges confronted by the IDF during this period, from the Al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000, through Israeli unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the second Lebanon war of 2006, to the series of Gaza confrontations of 2008-2014. The work shows how the IDF’s media policy evolved from a narrow perception of its role, and separation between operational and media actions to a cohesive and coherently articulated media strategy that is increasingly intertwined with military action and operational strategy and a vital component of strategic military aims and objectives. This strategic stance has led the IDF to adopt a global media perspective using the most advanced new media platforms, designed to influence public opinion and improve national narratives, both in Israel and the international community. By applying the concept of mediatization to the Israeli case, this book fills a research lacuna and offers a new prism for the study of media-military relations in contemporary conflicts. The book will be of much interest to students of civil-military relations, strategic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, media and communication studies, sociology and IR, in general.

Analyses by the Israeli sociologist Michael Feige embraced every aspect of the State of Israel. He examined the ever-changing and complex identity of Israelis; how they remember and commemorate themselves; the long- and short-term conceptions of time of the left- and right-wing political movements; the spacial concept of the settlers; myths underlying the lives and deaths of its citizens; and the dialectical vicissitudes of the real and imagined Israel. The book contains material from Professor Feiges literary output, contextualized in an Introduction by David Ohana. Chapters delve into the meaning of Israeli signs and symbols; the semiotics of secular spaces (sites of disasters and graves of political and religious leaders); the semiotics of historical time and daily existence; forms of commemoration (of figures like David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, airforce pilots, a female settler and a peace activist). Feige scrutinized communities formed around political cells, the processes of fragmentation and globalization in Israel, the traumas and scars from the Yom Kippur War, the evacuation of settlements, and the killing of Yitzhak Rabin. Feiges scrutiny illuminated Israeli society in myriad ways. He was a sociologist among historians and a historian among sociologists, and internationally acknowledged as having an extraordinary ability to convey sociological meaning and structure to Israels radical political culture as expressed in its social actions and underlying mythology. Semiotics of Israeli Space and Time is not only an essential sociological toolbox for students and an historical masterpiece for the wider Israeli public to better understand the society to which they belong, but a commemorative volume to honour his life and work. Michael was murdered on 8 June 2016 when two Palestinian gunmen opened fire in the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv.

" . . . an original interpretation of the wide-ranging impact of the military on Israeli society . . . one of the most insightful works on Israeli society in general." —Gershon Shafir From the early days of the Yishuv, militarism and the military have become a way of life for Israelis. Focusing on the period between 1936 and 1956, Uri Ben-Eliezer traces the ways in which military force acquired legitimacy in civilian society and how the use of organized violence became an acceptable solution to conflicts, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict.