Zionism: Inclusion within the Exclusion?
Since its inception in the late 1980s, critical scholarship has greatly enriched our understanding of Zionism, the Yishuv, Israeli society, and the conflict with the Palestinians. It has had a significant impact on the public discourse locally and internationally. From all fields of the humanities and social sciences, these studies demonstrated that Zionist ideology and praxis meant for “others,” Arabs and Jews, displacement, oppression, exclusion, and subordination. Despite the endurance of ethnic hierarchies in Israel, and the entrenchment of the Israeli military occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, recent years have seen profound changes in the makeup of Israeli political identities: the rise of Mizrahi and Palestinian Arab bourgeoisie, revolutions in the hegemonic culture, and even unprecedented mutual readiness for political coordination between Palestinian Arab and Zionist parties.
We invite studies investigating Zionist ideology or practice as eliciting commitment from those located on the Yishuv and Israeli society’s fringes and enabling consent from non-Jews. We are also interested in studies demonstrating how Mizrahim, Palestinian Arabs, and other indigenous and immigrant, non-Jewish groups have adopted or adapted Zionist discourse and symbols. At the heart of the workshop’s theme is the assumption that the complex relationship between Zionist institutions and subordinate groups does not fit essentialist, deterministic, and monolithic conceptual molds, and that Zionism is a more malleable ideology than how it is sometimes narrated. We seek to widen the critical perspective’s scope by analyzing the flexibility of Zionist thought and deed and its ability to attract peripheral and even non-Jewish groups and investigate the historical consequences of these processes. In other words, we want to examine Zionism or its institutions’ appeal for various groups in the periphery of Israeli society and its ramifications.
We look forward to receiving submissions from scholars in all fields and disciplines who study Zionism, Israeli society, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sponsored by The Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry and The Cherrik Center for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel
Deadline for submission of abstracts: June 8, 2021.
Please email abstracts (300 words) and refer questions to Arnon Degani <arnon.degani@mail.huji.ac.il>. The organizers are in contact with several interested English-language peer-reviewed journals to host selected workshop papers