This book examines the changing meanings Americans and Israelis invested in the relationship between their countries from the late 1950s to the 1980s. Bringing to light previously unexamined sources, this study is the first to investigate the intricate mechanisms that defined and redefined Israel's place in American imagination through the war-strewn 1960s and 1970s. Departing from traditional diplomatic histories that focus on the political elites alone, Shaul Mitelpunkt places the relationship deep in the cultural, social, intellectual, and ideological landscapes of both societies. Examining Israeli propaganda operations in America, Mitelpunkt also pays close attention to the way Israelis manipulated and responded to American perceptions of their country, and reveals the reservations some expressed towards their country's relationship with the United States. By contextualizing the relationship within the changing domestic concerns in both countries, this book provides a truly transnational history of US-Israeli relations.

Israel in the American Mind: The Cultural Politics of US-Israeli Relations, 1958–1988

With the objective of outlining a decision-making process for the selection, evaluation, and application of films for invigorating Palestinian-Israeli dialogue encounters, this project researches, collates, and weaves together the historico-political narratives of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, the artistic worldviews of the Israeli and Palestinian national cinemas, and the procedural designs of successful Track II dialogue interventions. Using a tailored version of Lucien Goldman’s method of homologic textual analysis, three Palestinian and three Israeli popular film texts are analyzed along the dimensions of Historico-Political Contextuality, SocioCultural Intertextuality, and Ethno-National Textuality. Then, applying the six “best practices” criteria gleaned from thriving dialogue programs, coupled with the six “cautionary tales” criteria gleaned from flawed dialogue models, three bi-national peacebuilding film texts are homologically analyzed and contrasted with the six popular film texts. This exercise is designed to implement a method for identifying “which, why, how, and when” filmic communication is best paired with dialogic communication to buttress the effects of Israeli-Palestinian Track II peacebuilding mediations. It is proposed that a synergized approach of film plus dialogue will contribute to the re-mediation of ethnonational imaginaries and the re-imagining of the violent parameters of the conflict. INDEX WORDS: Palestinian Cinema, Israeli Cinema, Film, Dialogue, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, National Identity RE-MEDIATING THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT: THE USE OF FILMS TO FACILITATE DIALOGUE

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Re-Mediating the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Use of Films to Facilitate Dialogue

The Philosophy of War Films

This thesis argues that stability of the concept ‘national cinema’ is located in the discursive positioning of individual films in such a way that they are connected to a national ‘common ground’, one which is ritually accessed via engagement with media such as cinema. This positioning, however, is not quantifiable and may not be identified as arising from any particular production practice, dimension of popularity, theme, style, characteristic of production personnel, and so on. By synthesising the work of several theorists and applying this synthesis to a selection of films, a framework of ideas (around the ritualised ‘flagging’ of the national via the expression of stakeholder interests) is applied to cinema in New Zealand. In particular, an ideoscape is ultimately mapped as a result of applying this framework of ideas. The normative assumptions of national cinema are examined in this way and found to be lacking despite the weight that the term ‘national cinema’ continues to have.

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A Necessary Fiction: the Ritualisation of Stakeholder Practices in New Zealand Cinema

Amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a need to concentrate on efforts between local citizens to find a hopeful common ground through dialogue, peace-building, and nonviolent activism. The five non-fiction films examined in this thesis attempt to add nuance to our understanding of the contested region through resisting a polarized political rhetoric that has defined much mainstream coverage of the violence and ethnic struggle. Cultural scholars, through examining Israeli and Palestinian cinema as separate and oppositional entities, further fail to dissolve barriers that contribute to intensified misconceptions of the Other. Therefore, this investigation will align with the aims of “post-Zionism,” an ideology that attempts to move beyond the original tenets of Zionism, embrace the multicultural makeup of Israel-Palestine, and address under-seen, marginalized perspectives of the country’s history. The five post-Zionist documentaries analyzed, made during a period of intensified conflict and stalled peace talks in the early twenty-first century, examine a formidable array of viewpoints while questioning and deconstructing Israeli myths.

Trees Before Walls: Alternative Cinematic Perspectives of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The article examines Israeli cinema as a critical participant in the local drama of national ideology and national identity Israeli filmmakers have engaged in enunciating the national culture, in the context of the medium's history, political ideologies, and the tension between high art and popular culture The historical review of Israeli films shows dramatic changes over the years from nationalistic propaganda to radical critique and post-Zionism Israeli cinema appears now to seek a constructive and fruitful dialogue with viewers In the recent wave of popular films, the national ideology is more conscious of its past mistakes and inherent deficiencies; its presentation of national identity is less narrow and more open to alternative types, thereby suggesting new vistas of national culture The recent revival of the ideology of nationalism and the preoccupation with the subject of national identity has led to new attention to national cinemas The concept at "national cinema" has become a category of reference in popular discourse and a critical concept similar to the status of auteur, genre, or gender in the analyses of films National cinemas are no longer regarded as the phenomenon of developing countries, which tend to engage in local, exotic themes, reflecting specific-and marginalized-cultures in relation to the works of leading film artists and the centers of film production in Europe and Hollywood1 Rather, in the past two decades, there have been numerous publications on the national dimension in European cinemas, or studies of American cinema as a national cinema In Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at US History, Robert Burgoyne makes the point that "[i]n its range and coverage of the held of national imaginings, the Hollywood cinema is in many ways an unparalleled expression of national culture, one that has molded the self-image of the nation in pervasive and explicit ways"2 And Susan Hayward published French National Cinema, with an exemplary introduction that states: "In the writing of a national cinema there are two fundamental yet crucial axes of reflection to be considered First, how is the national enunciated? In other words, what are the texts and what meanings do they mobilise? And, second, how to enunciate the national? That is, what typologies must be traced into a cartography of the national?"3 The important input of the new critical discourse of national cinema is that it is not simply a study of how filmmaking reflects a specific ideology or serves as an agent of that ideology Rather, films gain special cultural meaning and added value through their engagement with the explicit concerns of their local audience and the deeper layers of collective fears and desires that inform the drama of national identity My paper will examine Israeli cinema as a critical participant in the local drama of national ideology and national identity, considering the content and forms of the films along with their social and cultural position in the public discourse The historical review of Israeli films in terms of their enunciation of the national will show a dramatic narrative of significant changes over the years from a nationalistic propaganda to radical critique and national nihilism, with the possibility of a renewed beginning for Israeli national cinema in the new millennium The ideology of nationalism was held in great suspicion following the catastrophic consequences of two world wars in the twentieth century-historical disasters which were viewed as being caused primarily by the unbridled forces of nationalism With the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, the termination of superpowers politics, and the apparent resolution-or suspension-of the ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism, there was a moment of a sense of historical vacuum, popularized by the notion of "the end of history" History, to be sure, continued its course as the narrative of peoples' aspirations and the drama of political conflicts …

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Ilan Avisar

Papers

The National and the Popular in Israeli Cinema