far cry from post-Zionism; it was also a very different animal from the Liberal or Labour Zionism that had informed the idea in the previous century. The gist of it is quite familiar today: a highly nationalistic, racist and dogmatic version of Zionist values overrule all other values in the society, and any attempt to challenge that interpretation of the idea of Israel is considered unpatriotic and in fact treasonous.
The Impact of Post-Zionism
Let us examine first if indeed post-Zionism was as prevalent and hegemonic as the founders of the Shalem Center and their supporters asserted it was. As mentioned in the two previous chapters, the post-Zionist interpretation of Israel’s past and present was widelyfilmed and broadcast. But merely the fact that it had been adopted by the knowledge producers was not an indication that their message was widely accepted in 1996 by the knowledge consumers. We now know, in 2014, that it was in fact basically rejected by the vast majority of them, though we did not know this at the time.
In general, it would be fair to say that the novels, plays and films that seriously transcended the Zionist narrative and its negative portrayal of Arabs did not become part of the Israeli canon, even in the heyday of post-Zionism. They did not represent a dominant cultural position, and their producers were not among the leaders of the Israeli cultural scene. Nonetheless, the ‘new historians’, poets, writers, film-makers, and playwrights did operate within the system that produced and shaped the country’s cultural identiy, and they could conceivably have affected the society had they been able to persist with their critique beyond 2000.
The continuing scholarly debate, joined by other cultural producers, signalled not merely a scholarly rift but an identity crisis in a society that had been exposed to the possibility of peace in 1993. Peace had the potential to undermine the national consensus, which was based on the need to act jointly against common enemies. Relative economic success and security had already led deprived groups to demand a fairer share, just as it encouraged the Palestinians in Israel to lay bare the tension between the country’s pretence of being a democracy and its insistence on remaining a Jewish state. Genuine peace demanded a radical change in the Israeli mentality and in the basic Jewish views about Arabs, specifically Palestinians. So a small number of people, with access to the public via the universities, schools, press, and movie screens, began to offer starting points for such a transformation. The point of departure was the acknowledgement that reality could be interpreted in a non-Zionist way, or at least that Israel’s cultural identity must be more pluralistic.
The cultural identity of a society is shaped by historical and contemporary reality as well as by how this reality is interpreted by those who control sociopolitical power. By the time of this exceptional chapter in Israel’s history, the nation’s cultural identity could be characterised as a cultural product, shaped by the heritage andhuman geography of the land of Palestine and by the conscious national (that is to say, Zionist) attempt to change the identity of that land. From the very beginning, Zionism rejected the Palestinian identity of Palestine and successfuly used force and power to Judaise it. However, certain people and groups challenged the Zionist identity: Palestinians, some of the Jews who had been brought in from the Arab countries, and a small number of individuals, such as this writer, who were born in the country after the establishment of the state and who voiced their dissent in the 1990s.
The Zionist identity of the land and the society was continuously the challenged not because of ‘new historians’ or anti-Zionist novelists. The political demands of the deprived groups, the continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the frozen peace accord all contributed
The Impact of Post-Zionism
Let us examine first if indeed post-Zionism was as prevalent and hegemonic as the founders of the Shalem Center and their supporters asserted it was. As mentioned in the two previous chapters, the post-Zionist interpretation of Israel’s past and present was widelyfilmed and broadcast. But merely the fact that it had been adopted by the knowledge producers was not an indication that their message was widely accepted in 1996 by the knowledge consumers. We now know, in 2014, that it was in fact basically rejected by the vast majority of them, though we did not know this at the time.
In general, it would be fair to say that the novels, plays and films that seriously transcended the Zionist narrative and its negative portrayal of Arabs did not become part of the Israeli canon, even in the heyday of post-Zionism. They did not represent a dominant cultural position, and their producers were not among the leaders of the Israeli cultural scene. Nonetheless, the ‘new historians’, poets, writers, film-makers, and playwrights did operate within the system that produced and shaped the country’s cultural identiy, and they could conceivably have affected the society had they been able to persist with their critique beyond 2000.
The continuing scholarly debate, joined by other cultural producers, signalled not merely a scholarly rift but an identity crisis in a society that had been exposed to the possibility of peace in 1993. Peace had the potential to undermine the national consensus, which was based on the need to act jointly against common enemies. Relative economic success and security had already led deprived groups to demand a fairer share, just as it encouraged the Palestinians in Israel to lay bare the tension between the country’s pretence of being a democracy and its insistence on remaining a Jewish state. Genuine peace demanded a radical change in the Israeli mentality and in the basic Jewish views about Arabs, specifically Palestinians. So a small number of people, with access to the public via the universities, schools, press, and movie screens, began to offer starting points for such a transformation. The point of departure was the acknowledgement that reality could be interpreted in a non-Zionist way, or at least that Israel’s cultural identity must be more pluralistic.
The cultural identity of a society is shaped by historical and contemporary reality as well as by how this reality is interpreted by those who control sociopolitical power. By the time of this exceptional chapter in Israel’s history, the nation’s cultural identity could be characterised as a cultural product, shaped by the heritage andhuman geography of the land of Palestine and by the conscious national (that is to say, Zionist) attempt to change the identity of that land. From the very beginning, Zionism rejected the Palestinian identity of Palestine and successfuly used force and power to Judaise it. However, certain people and groups challenged the Zionist identity: Palestinians, some of the Jews who had been brought in from the Arab countries, and a small number of individuals, such as this writer, who were born in the country after the establishment of the state and who voiced their dissent in the 1990s.
The Zionist identity of the land and the society was continuously the challenged not because of ‘new historians’ or anti-Zionist novelists. The political demands of the deprived groups, the continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the frozen peace accord all contributed
Similar Books
