Post-zionist critique on Israel and the Palestinians part I: The academic debate

Abstract

Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies Article DOI: 10.2307/2537781 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2537781©2001 by The Regents of the University of California. Copying and permissions notice: Authorisation to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by [the Regents of the University of California/on behalf of the Sponsoring Society] for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® on [JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/r/ucal)] or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center, http://www.copyright.comThis three-part article describes changes in how Israelis-scholars, writers, poets, film makers, and others on Israel's cultural scene-view themselves and the "Other. " Part I presents the scholarly debate on Israel's past and present that laid the groundwork for the transformation of the cultural discourse described in the second and third parts. The debate, launched by new findings in the Israeli archives and encouraged by an ideology critical of Zionism, also was influenced by sociopolitical and economic changes in Israeli society in the wake of the October 1973 war. The various aspects of the post-Zionist critique-the challenge by the "new historians" and "critical sociologists" not only of the Zionist interpretation but also of the role of Israeli academia in providing the scholarly underpinnings of this interpretation are examined