This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary Israel, accounting for changes, developments and contemporary debates. The different chapters offer both a historical background and an updated analysis of politics, economy, society and culture.
Across five sections, a multidisciplinary group of experts, including sociologists, political scientists, historians and social scientists, engage in a wide variety of topics through different perspectives and insights. The book opens with a historical section outlining the formation of Israel and Jewish nationalism. The second section examines contemporary institutions in Israel, their developments and the contemporary challenges they face in light of social, economic, political and cultural changes. The third section explores geopolitics and Israel’s foreign relations, exploring conflicts, alliances and foreign policy with neighbors and powers. The fourth section engages with Israel’s internal divisions and schisms, highlighting questions of identity and inequality while also outlining processes of integration and marginalization between groups. The final section explores matters of culture, through the social and demographic shifts in contemporary music, poetry and cuisine, along with the struggles for inclusion and the impact of globalization on Israeli culture.
The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Israel is designed for academics along with undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on Israel, Israeli politics, and culture and society in modern Israel.
Author(s): Guy Ben-Porat, Yariv Feniger, Dani Filc, Paula Kabalo, Julia Mirsky
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 544
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Introduction
Part One Historical Overview
1 Zionism Between Despair and Hope
2 Mamlakhtiyut: The Zionist and Israeli Version of Republicanism
3 Melting Pot and Plurality of Cultures in Early Israel
4 The Palestinian National Movement: A Short History
5 Israel’s Foreign Policy: The Historical Mound
Part Two Institutions
6 The Political System and Political Parties
7 Israeli Organized Civil Society: Trends and Challenges of the Nonprofit Sector
8 Major Contemporary Trends in Civil–Military Relations in Israel
9 Israel’s Legal System: Institutions, Principles and Challenges
10 The Israeli Education System
11 How the People of the Book Became the People of the Media: The Israeli Media Landscape
Part Three Foreign Relations and Policy
12 Israel and the Palestinians
13 Israel and the Arab World: From War to Peacemaking
14 The Special Relationship Between the United States and Israel
15 The Rubik’s Cube of Israeli–European Union Relations
16 Israel–Russia Bilateral Relations: Market Rationality and Political Affinity
17 Better Late Than Never: China–Israel Diplomatic Relations in Perspective
Part Four Divisions and Schisms
18 Leadership Legitimacy, Responsiveness and Representation in Palestinian Society in Israel
19 Religious Zionism – Romantic Religious Nationalism in Israel
20 Religion in Contemporary Israel: Haredi Varieties
21 Israel: Between Religion and Secularism
22 Haredism versus Traditionism: A New Reading of Mizrahi Religious Politics at the Start of the 21st Century
23 The Ethiopian Jews in Israel
24 Acculturation as a Two-Way Process: Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel
25 Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Gender Relations in Contemporary Israel
26 Paradoxes of Control: Incorporating Precarious Migrants in Tel Aviv in Times of Restrictive Migration Policies
27 Demographic Trends in Israel
28 Israel’s Economic Development: An Overview
29 The Israeli Labor Market
30 The Start-up Nation: Myths and Reality
31 Neoliberalization of Welfare and Social Protest
32 Peripheralities
Part Five Culture
33 Desert, Hill and Sea: Cinematic Visions and Re-Visions of War
34 Bass and Silsulim: Israeli Music After Muzika Mizrahit
35 Who Killed Poetry? An Israeli Perspective
36 Large, Cheap and Mizrahi (“Oriental”): Israeli Cuisine
Index
