title | : | The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society SUNY Series in Israeli Studies
author | : | Lomsky-Feder, Edna.; Ben-Ari, Eyal
publisher | : | State University of New York Press
isbn10 | asin | : | 0791443515
print isbn13 | : | 9780791443514
ebook isbn13 | : | 9780585342405
language | : | English
subject |  | Sociology, Military--Israel, Militarism--Israel, Israel--Armed Forces--Military life.
publication date | : | 1999
lcc | : | U21.5.M445 1999eb
ddc | : | 306.2/7/095694
subject | : | Sociology, Military--Israel, Militarism--Israel, Israel--Armed Forces--Military life.

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The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society

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SUNY series in Israeli Studies
Russell Stone, editor

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The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society

Edited by
Edna Lomsky-Feder
and
Eyal Ben-Ari

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Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany

© 1999 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Nachman Ben-Yehuda's chapter appeared previously as a chapter in his book The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel and is reprinted by the permission of University of Wisconsin Press.

Eyal Ben-Ari's chapter appeared previously and is reprinted with the permission of the American Anthropological Association from Cultural Anthropology 4(4): 37289. Not for further reproduction.

Segments of Eyal Ben-Ari and Efrat Ben-Ze'ev's chapter appeared previously in Anthropology Today 12(6) pages 73 published by the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Meira Weiss's chapter appeared before in The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 27(2), 1998. It is reprinted by permission of Sage Publications and Corwin Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The military and militarism in Israeli society  /  [edited by] Edna
Lomsky-Feder, Eyal Ben-Ari.
p.   cm.  (SUNY series in Israeli studies)
Includes bibliographical references
ISBN 0-7914-4351-5 (alk. paper).  ISBN 0-7914-4352-3 (pb : alk.
paper)
1. Sociology, MilitaryIsrael.    2. MilitarismIsrael.
3. IsraelArmed ForcesMilitary life.    I. Lomsky-Feder, Edna.
II. Ben-Ari, Eyal, 1953   III. Series.
U21.5.M445 1999
306.2'7'095694-dc21                                   99-10884
CIP

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

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CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Cultural Constructions of War and the Military in Israel

Eyal Ben-Ari and Edna Lomsky-Feder

1

Part I. Setting the Context

2. Wars as Catalysts of Political and Cultural Change

Myron J. Aronoff

37

Part II. Cultural Sites

3. The Masada Mythical Narrative and the Israeli Army

Nachman Ben-Yehuda

57

4. The Independence Day Military Parade: A Political History of a Patriotic Ritual

Maoz Azaryahu

89

5. War, Heroism, and Public Representations: The Case of a Museum of "Coexistence" in Jerusalem

Efrat Ben-Ze'ev and Eyal Ben-Ari

117

Part III. The Construction of Life-Worlds

6. Army and War: Collective Narratives of Early Childhood in Contemporary Israel

Mirta Furman

141

7. Masks and Soldiering: The Israeli Army and the Palestinian Uprising

Eyal Ben-Ari

169

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8. Militarism and the Construction of the Life-World of Israeli Males: The Case of the Reserves System

Sara Helman

191

Part IV. Gender, Hegemony, and Resistance

9. Gender, Body, and the National Subject: Israeli Women's Poetry in the War of Independence

Hannan Hever

225

10. Filming National Identity: War and Woman in Israeli Cinema

Anat Zanger

261

11. Engendering the Gulf War: Israeli Nurses and the Discourse of Soldiering

Meira Z. Weiss

281

12. Epilogue

Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari

301

About the Contributors

313

Index

317

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1
Introduction:
Cultural Constructions of War and the Military in Israel

Eyal Ben-Ari and Edna Lomsky-Feder

Both warfare and armed service represent intensive meeting points between the individual and the collective. They are locations of engagement between biography and history and the places where social considerations acutely penetrate the lives of individuals. This volume examines the construction of these meeting points from three perspectives: the production and reproduction of collective representations; the dynamics of gender, voice, and resistance; and the construction of individual life-worlds.

It is difficult to be unaware of how recent historical developments have led to an explosion of cultural critiques, polemical essays, and more ordered academic treatises about the place of war and the military in Israel (Ehrlich 1987; Kimmerling 1993). This collection both expresses and belongs to this wider intellectual movement. The volume as a whole, nevertheless, goes beyond existing studies to make three major contributions. First, we accept the current critical assessment of the military and of war in Israel, but we ask readers to be aware of the following point: while these studies underscore the constructed nature of the Israeli-Arab conflicts, they tend to look at how the state has been constituted through the "other," the Arabs (e.g., in defining the borders of the nation or garering legitimacy). In this sense, this volume represents a systematic attempt to examine the cultural and social constructions of "things military" within Israel. By "things military'' we refer to social and cultural concerns related to (and derived from) the armed forces, war and provisions for "national security." Thus, we

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investigate the social and cultural arenas within which the centrality of military matters are produced and reproduced by the state (and its representative bodies) and by other public bodies.

Second, from a theoretical point of view we direct our analyses to a level that has hitherto been relatively little researched: to a tier above the individual-psychological level and below the macro-social one. It is this intermediate level that mediates and channels the effects of the macro forces on the micro plane of the individual. More concretely, the various chapters examine the variety of cultural mechanisms and tactics by which the life-worlds of individuals are constructed and negotiated.

Third, we argue that such phenomena as war and military service cannot be understood unless an interdisciplinary view is taken. Thematically, we refer to such diverse matters as internal military organization, assumptions underlying the behavior of soldiers, war as a social event, the personal significance of armed struggles, national service and access to resources, or the gendering of military roles. From a disciplinary point of view, this volume draws contributors from such specialties as comparative literature, film studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, history, and cultural studies. The stress on a diversity of topics and on a variety of disciplines is intentional because it is precisely the interlinkages between seemingly diverse areas that reveal the strength and the centrality of military considerations in Israeli culture and society.

In this editorial introduction we undertake four interrelated tasks in order to justify our foci: first, we situate this volume in relation to the general scholarship about war and armed service and to more specific inquiries related to Israel; second, we underscore and further develop the original contributions of the collection; third, we outline the conception that underlies the arrangements of the chapters and their wider implications; and fourth, we suggest something about the relationship between this volume and what may be termed its specific historical context.

Why the Military? Why War? and Why Israel?

The interest that the case of Israel has excited in the social sciences and humanities is related to its wider historical context of protracted conflict and to the attendant scholarship that has attempted to come to terms with the social implications of this situation. Generally speaking, we suggest that scholarly studies of the military in Israel encompass a broad movement. The movement has been from an analysis of Israel as a unique case of a society that maintains democracy under conditions of protracted war and the centrality of the military to an examination of this society as a radical instance of how democracy normalizes militarism of a specific

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kind. If at the beginning the guiding scholarly image of Israel was one of a nonmilitaristic society, now the picture is of a society characterized by a certain kind of militarism, which Kimmerling (1993) has termed cognitive-militarism.

This broad movement may be better pictured as a series of three successive intellectual waves. Within each wave a central modelFrancophone formulations would put this as a problematiquedeveloped for theoretical or comparative purposes has been applied to the Israeli case. Given the centrality of military matters in Israel, however, the example of this society has formed part (sometimes a major part) of each new theoretical formulation about war and military forces. Thus, interestingly, while the case of Israel has had very little impact on the construction of general social theory (unlike the case of the former Soviet Union or Japan, for instance) it has had a respectable effect on the construction of theoretical approaches to a broad area of research called "armed forces and society." Thus it is not coincidental that works dealing with comparative issues related to civil-military relations, or with the military in general, have invariably referred to the Israeli case (Schiff 1995). Thus, for example, in his overview of military psychiatry, Gabriel (1987) uses the Israeli case as one of a small number instances in formulating his general assessment of the history and present status of this discipline.

The systematic examination of things military in the postWorld War II era was launched by scholars who focused on the military as a social institution and on its leadership as a professional and social elite. As expressed in the name given to the journal set up by these scholars"Armed Forces and Society"within this broad approach the overwhelming emphasis was on the links between the military and civilian sectors of society (Burk 1993; Huntington 1957; Janowitz 1971, 1976; Moskos 1976). Indeed, in this scholarly wave, Israel was seen as a sort of "test case" suited for examining the relations between the military and civilian spheres. Israel seemed to offer an interesting instance that combined in and around the military both nationbuilding taskslike much of the so-called Third Worldand a commitment to democratic processeslike other industrialized democracies. To put this point somewhat humorously, the Israeli case had to be invented for comparative purposes.

Along these lines, Israel, it was argued, was the only democracyarguably, only within the pre-1967 boundariesin which the military has occupied a central place for such a long period. Thus while it has taken such a dominant place in other societiesBritain or the United States during World War IIit has done so in Israel for a much lengthier period of time. Again, while it has figured prominently for long periods in other societiesthe case of Switzerland comes readily to mind here

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the centrality of the armed forces in Israel has not been a ceremonial or formal one. In Israel, the dominance of the military is related to the eruptions of war and to the constant skirmishes that have become part of both institutional arrangements and the experiences of individuals (Azarya and Kimmerling 1984; Horowitz and Lissak 1989). Empirically speaking, this centrality is expressed in such provisions as reserve duty, security checks, judicial decisions, or appropriations of land. On a more theoretical level, this broad approach culminated in good analyses of such issues as the social and institutional linkages between the armed forces and political structures and groups (Horowitz and Lissak 1989), the military industrial complex (Kleiman and Pedatzur 1991; Mintz 1976), and the dominance of military matters in national decision making (Ben-David 1997; Kleiman 1985; Lissak 1984).

These kinds of studies have tended to focus primarily on the institutional level, and the kind of problematique they have dealt with revolved around the capacity of Israel's political system to maintain democratic arrangements despite the demands of security considerations, the prominence of military elites in decision-making bodies, and the allocation of resources to ongoing military efforts. The dominant conceptualization within this approach was on the relatively permeable boundaries between the civilian and military sectors of Israeli society and on the mutual influence and "dilution" of the more extreme orientations of both spheres. The most prominent scholars who have worked within this framework have been Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Daniel Maman (Lissak and Maman 1996), Baruch Kimmerling (in his earlier works such as Horowitz and Kimmerling 1974), Yoram Peri (1977; 1981) and Amos Perlmutter (1968). But because the overwhelming stress within this approach was on institutions and on elites, little was said (or asked) about war as an autonomous phenomenon, as a specific kind of occurrence with a distinctive set of implications for society.

It was Baruch Kimmerling (1984; 1985) who took up precisely these kinds of questions. Kimmerling, while placed squarely within the institutional school, extended his examination beyond their concern by asking about war as a distinct social phenomenon in Israel. His main concern was to chart out the manner by which Israeli society institutionalizesthat is, mobilizes, arranges, regularizes, and patternswar into society so that it does not become a totally transformative event. To deal with this question he developed a model of an "interrupted system" according to which during times of war the system puts routine activities "on hold" and mobilizes all of its resources to handle the existential threat. At the same time, this system has developed a range of social mechanisms (employment practices and arrangements for payments, for instance) that allow it

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to return to normal routines when the fighting concludes. Thus, the overall conception here is of Israel as a rather flexible society capable of adapting to different (social) structural codes in times of "war" and "non-belligerence." Thus, Kimmerling's (earlier) work, while conceptualizing war as integral to society (and not as outside of it), still examined war within the framework of the armed forces and society paradigm.

It was only during the early 1980s that war began to be examinedwithin the framework of a critical sociologyas just such an independent social concern. The stress within this second intellectual wave has been on the examination of how war is related to society. Here two related approaches can be discerned: one with a "sociological" focus on war and the state, and the other with a "cultural" accent on collective representations of national conflicts.

In the more "sociological" vein, war began to be examined within the social sciences as part of the social order and especially as an integral consideration of state institutions as they impinge on larger society. Thus, for example, modern war was examined as one of the primary means by which the state establishes its power within society by mobilizing resources for external conflicts. The most compelling dimension of these studies has been to show how war (or its possibility) works toward centralizing the state and contributing to the institutionalization of the means of violence in a given society (Giddens 1985; Mann 1987; Shaw 1984; 1988; Tilly 1985).

Along these lines, while the earlier school focused on the relations between the armed forces and society, this approach concentrated on how war is part of the ongoing relations between the state and civil society. Such diverging analytical foci were predicated first of all on very different assumptions about modern democracies. Firstly, while the initial (functionalinstitutional) approach was developed in the heyday of America's success in World War II and was essentially celebratory, the latter (conflict-statist) approach was formulated in the context of the cold war and the debacle of Vietnam and was highly critical. Secondly, the distinct frameworks called attention to different analytical issues: the first to institutional linkages (the structure of a regime) and the second to focal points of power and dissension (in and around the structures of the state). Thirdly, given such assumptions, the two approaches asked different questions about the armed forces and about conflicts: one about the mechanisms by which democracies continued to function in the face of the importance of the military, the other about how armed struggles figured in the manner by which democratic states were enhanced by certain kinds of militarism.

Within Israel, the contentions of the second wave of studies have been applied most forcefully by Ehrlich (1987) who suggested the importance of bringing to the heart of sociological analyses questions as to the manner by

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which the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts have not only had an impact on almost all of the dimensions of social life in Israel but also figure in the practices by which the Israeli state assures its very legitimacy. In an interesting extension of his earlier work, Kimmerling (1993) began opening up questions related to the state and militarism in Israel by exploring the assumptions and practical implications of Israel's military doctrine and state institutions. His argumentwhich, given the historical memories on which Israel is based, has met with much resistance among Israeli intellectualsis that this society is characterized by a cognitive militarism: by modes of thought and action in which security considerations are preeminent. Yet for all of this, the limits of both kinds of analysisthe institutional and the criticallie in their macro-social focus: they tend to leave issues related to culture and meaning and to individual experiences unexamined.

Uri Ben-Eliezer (1995a, 1995b, 1997) has taken many of the contentions found in the works of Kimmerling and Ehrlich a step further. Using a careful historical analysis of the Ben-Gurion era, he shows how the leaders of Israel at its beginnings were very aware of the use of the army in nationbuilding (and we may well add, in character-building). But because Ben-Eliezer tends to concentrate on a specific period, he only suggests (rather than follows) some significant questions about what may be termed the development of a military mentalite in Israel. ¹ Thus, what his analysis hints at, and this volume pursues, is an examination of the extent to which military ways of thinking have seeped into, indeed dominate, everyday life in Israel.

Other scholars such as Nira Yuval-Davis, Baruch Kimmerling, and Dafna Izraeli have linked military service to patterns of gender, power, and inequality. Yuval-Davis's (1987) scheme centers on the divergence found in the Israeli army (as in all armies) between roles found at the "front" and at the "rear." She shows how these two kinds of army roles have historically developed into a pattern of sexual division of labor: the men are at the front manning combat-related roles, and the women are at the back staffing support roles (both within the military and outside it). Kimmerling (1993: 217), for his part, suggested that the military itself is basically a machoistic and male-oriented subculture. The result of these circumstances has been the marginalizationthrough the militaryof Jewish-Israeli women throughout society. The overall impact of this situation has been not only the reinforcement of women's general marginality but also their exclusion from the most important societal discourse in Israel, that of 'national security.' Again, while very suggestive, these contentions should be seen as beginning points for further questions that this volume addresses: the way by which cultural definitions and social

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practices produce and reproduce the gendered divide of inequality (see Izraeli 1997).

The Cultural Construction of War

Studies belonging to the "cultural" approach are situated within the same general camp as the critical sociologists. These investigations are aimed at uncovering the mannerthe processes and mechanismsby which militarism is constructed. This surge of scholarship, however, is concerned neither with the direct study of the military nor with the state, but with patterns of cultural construction. This approach began within the humanities, and perhaps the most famous examples are the inquiries of Paul Fussel (1975; 1989). He examined the cultural meanscanonical and noncanonical literary worksby which war is sacrilized and constructed in terms of collective memories. Within the social sciences, this broad wave includes such works as those carried out by Kertzer (1988) and Da Matta (1977) on political and military rituals, Mosse (1990) on military cemeteries, Kavanagh (1988) on war museums, or Kapferer (1988) on war in myths of national creation. These investigations focus on the collective meanings of war and military service and on the cultural and historical context of various rites and sites. While many of these inquiries proceed from Halbwachs's (1980; 1992) insights into how collective memory is a sort of collective consciousness, some of the newer studies take on a much more processual and negotiatory perspective to talk about the manner by which the past is selectively exploited for contemporary purposes by different groups (Schwartz 1982). Good American examples of this perspective are recent investigations about the Vietnam War Memorial (Bodnar 1992; Gilles 1994; Griswold 1986; Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991). All these studies proceed from the realization that commemoration is a central means by which people explicitly formulate the links between past, present, and future.

In Israel, works attuned to cultural matters have examined such things as the place of the military (or more generally, security matters) in creating definitions of "Israeliness," fostering sentiments of belongingness, or creating and maintaining collective memories. One example is an investigation into military funerals by Nissan Rubin (1985), who deals with the way that army units maintain a sense of a shared past and promote ties with civilians. It is in a similar light that a host of studies on the importance of military symbols in national rites like Independence Day should be seen (Dominguez 1989; Handelman and Katz 1995; Handelman and Shamgar-Handelman 1997; Liebman 1988; Liebman and Don-Yehiya 1983). Other studies have highlighted the different methodsrites, texts, educational

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curricula, languageby which collective meanings of war and national service are transmitted and imparted (Meiron 1992; Ofrat 1991, 1994; Veiler 1991). Of special significance is Emmanuel Sivan's (1991) work, which traces out the ways in which soldiers who fell during Israel's War of Independence in 1948 were commemorated by their friends and families in the decade following the war.

Interestingly, these kinds of studiesexamining the place of conflict and national service in the public culture of Israelonly began to emerge in the mid-1980s. Historically speaking, their appearance reflected both the broader interrogation of things military in the country and the exposure of Israeli intellectuals to wider trends in the (Western) world. In this sense, the contributions in this volume go on to present the different paths that have developed out of the initial attempts to uncover the cultural construction of war and the military in Israel. But while the major contribution of the earlier studies has been to highlight the mechanisms by which the military symbols of Israeli mainstream culture are propagated, they have asked relatively few questions about the way the life-worlds of individuals are constructed.

Constructing The Life-world of the Individual

The third wave of studies have taken up just these kinds of issues: they have documented and explored mechanisms of the cultural construction of military experiences for individuals. Since the mid-1980s scholarly investigationsrooted primarily in psychology and sociologyhave begun to ask rather new questions about military experiences. For example, the studies appearing in the collection edited by Segal and Sinaiko (1986) have demonstrated not only the importance of a 'bottom-up' approach to the analysis of (American) military life but have suggested the utility of studying hitherto little explored areas, such as socialization into the military, the different criteria by which soldiers appraise themselves and their service, or the creation within the armed forces of certain folk images and stereotypes. Other works (Eisenhart 1975; Shatan 1977) have suggested the profitability of analyzing military training in symbolic or ritualistic terms. Finally Ingraham (1984; also Dunivin 1994) has shown most forcefully how a qualitatively minded approach can provide a basis for analyzing the relations between individual identities, primary group dynamics, and military culture. To be sure, works published about the military after the Second World War (Elkin 1945/1946) and the Vietnam War (Moskos 1975) grappled with "cultural" issues, such as language and imagery. But while their focus was on finding different variables that would explain the efficient functioning of soldiers and units (based on a structural-functional orientation), the newer

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works tend to proceed from an emphasis on organizational culture and to ask questions about the way military reality is created.

In Israel such newer works all focus on the "meanings," "images," or "intentions" that are related to military duties (overwhelmingly, but not only, of Jewish men). ² A book by Reuven Gal (1986), a former chief psychologist of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), includes insightful chapters about heroism and the "spirit'' of combat units, and suggests that it would be fruitful to explore how certain Israeli (Jewish-male) propensities for initiative and gregariousness are inculcated by (and used within) the army. Through an enticing use of oral life histories, Amia Lieblich (1989; Lieblich and Perlow 1988), a developmental psychologist, examines the transitions to adulthood that Israeli (Jewish) men undergo during their compulsory term of service. Similarly, Edna Lomsky-Feder's paper (1992, also 1994) on the life stories of veterans of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 examines how war and military service figure in the personal narratives of Israeli men. Another project is Sarit Helman's (1992; see also Liebes and Blum-Kulka 1994) examination of conscientious objectors to the Lebanon War. By analyzing in-depth interviews with theserather marginal, but nevertheless highly perceptivemen, she has uncovered the types of discourses underlying war, peace, citizenship, and military service in Israel.

To further underscore the distinctiveness of the chapters in this volume contrast them to other kinds of research that have been carried out in regard to the IDF. The first kind is a vast research literature rooted in psychology and psychiatry, which has examined facets of what has been variously termed "combat reactions," "battle fatigue," "or functional debilitation" (Gabriel 1987: 48, 74; Shalit 1988: 103). The core of these investigations has been on the diagnostic devices and therapeutic practices by which soldiers suffering from such "reactions" are returned to active duty (Bar-Gal 1982; Moses et al. 1976). Because the stress here has been on the intra-psychic and individual responses to participation in fire fights, the major organizational question these inquiries raise is that of the short- and long-term ability of soldiers to contribute to the military effort (Levy et al. 1993; Solomon 1990). Thus while these kinds of studies well underscore the intensity of experience men undergo in combat, their orientation is recuperative and restorative (and pertinent for only a minority of soldiers). The stress of this volume, by contrast, is on the way such combat experiences are made sense of, that is, are interpreted by the vast majority of soldiers.

In this sense, we follow Lomsky-Feder's (1995) work dealing with how war is represented within the personal narratives of veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Lomsky-Feder demonstrates how individuals interpret intense national events like wars by weaving them into the life

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stories of their lives: those collections of events and experiences that individual narrators choose (consciously and unconsciously) to present as their personal story along a time axis. She claims that just as war has been institutionalized and normalized into the macro-social arrangements of Israeli society, so too individuals integrate armed conflicts into their personal biographies. Most Israeli soldiers do not represent the experience of war as a traumatic one, but rather as a normal"natural" and expectedaspect of their lives.

Lomsky-Feder's conclusions consequently contradict two kinds of common perceptions. First, they challenge Israeli beliefs about the lasting disturbances that the Yom Kippur War of 1973 is supposed to have created in Israel and among veterans of that conflict. Second, her findings about the normalization of war directly contradict much of the accepted popular and (especially) psychological wisdom about the effects of combat and warfare. Put somewhat simply, this view sees war as inevitably (and universally) traumatic on both the social and individual levels. Hence, because current research usually proceeds from an assumption of war-as-trauma it tends to foreclose other kinds of questions. Thus, the tendency is not to reason about the possibility that participation in armed conflict may lead to the mobilization of personal definitions by which war is interpreted as an expectedalbeit intenseexperience in the lives of individual soldiers.

The second type of work that has sought links between individual experiences and the structure of the military have been studies of mobility. These studies have examined the manner by which resources garnered within the IDF provide the means for wider social mobility (Azarya and Kimmerling 1984; Enoch and Yogev 1989; Peri and Lissak 1976). Here the emphasis has been on the kinds of structures of opportunities that are opened (or closed) by different kinds of military service, including roles related to gender (Izraeli 1997). Again the stress has been on the structural advantages and limits posed by service and not on the way in which these are interpreted by individuals. For example, while these studies ask about the different strategies and opportunities utilized by an individual undergoing mobility, we would ask about the kinds of cultural scenarios that such mobility answers. We find that the question of why military service is taken as a legitimate, normal, and highly evaluated arena for mobility is of crucial importance.

The Framework:
Hegemony, Resistance, and Agency

It is within these approaches to the military that this volume is situated. From the critical sociological approach we take our theoreticalfocus on the place of the military in the relations between state and civil society and on

Page 11

the analysis of war as an integral part of the dynamics of any complex society. From the broad (macro) cultural approach to the subject, we adopt the investigation of the social and cultural mechanisms by which the centrality of military matters are produced and reproduced. Finally, we utilize the suggestions of investigations centered on meaning systems to explore the arenas within which the state and its representative bodies construct the experiences of small groups and individuals. Moreover, within these core issues, the chapters in this volume represent a movement between two dilemmas or axes: hegemony (and resistance) on the one hand and (individual) agency in processes of production and reproduction on the other hand.

The use of the term hegemony is not just a matter of semantics, nor is it a matter of using a rather fashionable social scientific expression. We maintain that this conceptualization goes beyond one predicated on notions of mainstream or normative representations or arrangements. The term hegemonic encompasses (at one and the same time) ideas about a socially legitimated and maintained hierarchy between alternative arrangements and the centrality of the state (and its myriad agents) in controlling not only material and state resources but also dominating the very conceptual categories through which Israeli Jews think about the reality within which they live. By hegemonic, we suggest the dominance of certain groups not only in economic or political terms but also in ideological ones. Hegemony, following Williams (1977), is a process rather than a state: as the system of domination and inequality becomes so lodged in cultural belief it comes to appear natural and inviolate. Along these lines the first section of this volume includes chapters on the main cultural sites within which hegemonic representations of war and the military are created and propagated as well as the dominant elites that bear and convey these governing ideas.

But a conceptualization of hegemony does not imply that there are no resistances. Rather, it implies that these oppositions and protests are related to the very logic of what they are disputing. Hence, the final section in this book includes chapters related to gender. The reasoning underlying this section is that it is in and around gender issues that some of the strongest hegemonic assumptions about accepted behavior and appropriate classification are found and that the most explicit challenges and resistances to them are now emerging.

Our second axis relates to the place of individual agents in replicating and creating accepted notions and practices. This axis is related to the question of how collective representations are translated into the everyday lives of people. The theoretical backdrop for this question is structuration theory (Giddens 1977, 1979, 1984). Here what must be grasped is not how structure determines action or how a combination of actions make up

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structure. Rather the problem is how action is structured in everyday contexts and how the structured features of action are (by the very performance of action) thereby reproduced. Even action that disrupts the social order, breaking conventions or challenging established hierarchies, is mediated by structural features that are reconstituted by the action, albeit in a modified form. Along these lines, individual agents are not simply passive or active in the construction of their lives. Their activities are the medium through which the very conditions and frameworks for the construction of their lives are continually produced and reproduced. Accordingly, in the volume's second section we present chapters on the construction of individual life-worlds because here the twin issues of the macro-micro link and the place of individual agency come to the fore.

The Chapters

Cultural Sites

By cultural sites we refer to those locations where the collective representationsthe dominant symbols, beliefs, and assumptionsof a society are conveyed. Such sites are where the "definitional" dimension of society is made most explicit (Myerhoff 1978: 22): places and occasions where one finds kinds of "collective autobiographies," means by which groups create their identity by telling themselves stories about themselves in narrative or performative terms. The sites covered by chapters in this section encompass a myth (Masada), a ceremony (the Independence Day parade), and a place (the Tourjeman Post Museum in Jerusalem).

Nachman Ben-Yehuda's chapter, The Masada Mythical Narrative and the Israeli Army, presents both a historical and a sociological analysis. He deals with the question of how a central mythical narrativethe "heroic" story of Masada's defenseis "translated" into military practices through the role of what may be termed "entrepreneurs of memory." The junction where the myth and a specific landscape meetthe rediscovered fortress in the Judean desertis, he contends, a major element in the creation of a space of national sharing. Yet Ben-Yehuda is not content merely with laying out the various texts surrounding Masada (Bruner and Gorfain 1983; Schwartz et al. 1986). The power of his analysis lies in analyzing the actual military ceremonies that took place there and in representing the actorsthe cultural creatorsthat established and devised these events. Furthermore, by demonstrating the constructed nature of the Masada account, BenYehuda demonstrates the complexity of connections between the past and the needs of the present. Israeli soldiers are concurrently linked to a "far" past in which the defenders of the fortress provided an

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example of courage and sacrifice and a "near" past of the Palmach during which young men dared to scale the mountain in what was then dangerous territory.

Yet his chapter bears wider import. The most common view of military service among scholarsand a major cultural assumption in Israeli societyis that it is a "rite of passage" (see Lieblich and Perlow 1988: 45; Sion 1997). Conceptualizing military service in this way suggests its importance as a significant life experience for individuals. Military service is seen in this manner as the major arrangement for conveying Jewish-Israeli (foremostly male) individuals from youth to adulthood. Ben-Yehuda's contribution, however, compels us to formulate a more complex argument. A close examination of such military service reveals that (analytically speaking) it actually comprises two kinds of rites: events that mark the passage of persons from one social position to another (rites of passage) and activities that periodically validate various individual and collective identities (rites of affirmation).

Thus, if we want to understand how the dominant myths of Israel are systematically turned into a taken-for-granted matter for Israeli Jews then we must understood how such accounts as the Masada myth are linked both to rites of passage and to rites of affirmation. Along these lines, BenYehuda reveals how the Masada narrative was used in the initiation ceremony marking entry into the IDF's armored corps (held at the beginning of basic training) ³ and the transformation of the new recruits into military men. In other words, the special characteristics of the rite of passagecommunitas, liminality, and personal exposureere used to link the personal experiences of the initiates to Israel's wider historical experience.⁴

The second chapter by Maoz Azaryahu is titled The Independence Day Military Parade: A Political History of a Patriotic Ritual. Azaryahu's argument is that while quintessential political rituals exist around the world (Kertzer 1988), in order to understand a specific rite there is a need to take into account its distinctive social and cultural backdrop. He explains how the Independence Day paradelike military parades around the worldis linked to sentiments of national belonging and to willingness to defend (and be sacrificed for) the nation-state. Such military parades include a host of what Ortner (1973) terms summarizing symbols: uniforms, flags, and other emblems that affirm, unify, and soberly reinforce a broad field of conceptual and emotional significance related to the "new" polity.⁵ Along these lines, contained within Israel's Independence Day parade are messages about bonding and solidarity with the (Jewish) nation and about the place of the IDF in defending its boundaries.

As Azaryahu shows, from the parade's beginning these themes were intensely coupled with messages about the unique conditions of the creation

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and independence of the Jewish state. Within the parade the "nationalization" of new (Jewish) immigrants was symbolized by the two paramount mechanisms of nation-building. It was represented first by Independence Day as the national holiday. We would add that this celebration marks the culmination of a cycle of rites beginning with the Jewish holiday of Passover and in this way marks the climax of a ceremonial recitation of the national narrative of redemption (Handelman and Katz 1995). Second, it was exemplified by the notion of the IDF as the people's army, a means to actualize the ideology of Israel as a melting pot.

Yet Azaryahu's analysis goes beyond a simplistic assertion of the parade being an indicatoror an actualizationof Israeli (or any other kind of) militarism. The general assertion that military processions are manifestations of militaristic tendencies has been voiced by such scholars as Kertzer (1988) and Fernandez (1986: 276, 280) who notes that the "military parade is a parade of the 'instruments of violence' of which the nation-state enjoys sole possession and legitimate use." The parade is consequently one of the means people in authority use to get the dominated to obey them. But when the Israeli case is examined, the militarism-parade link appears to be more complex.

Given how often and consistently the parade was opposed by the country's military elites, the procession seems to have suited the interests of the civilian elites. Indeed, here two alternative interpretations could be used to make sense of Azaryahu's intriguing findings about the IDF's resistance to the march. On the one hand, one could understand this opposition as the outcome of the military elites being "civilianized" and therefore believing that they have no need for such ceremonial military trappings. On the other hand, it could be said that the military leaders were so sure of their position (and Israeli society is so militaristic) that they saw no need for the outer accouterments of military authority. Could the adoption and promotion of the parade by Israel's noncombatant elites not be a signal that militaristic attitudeswhat Kimmerling (1993) terms "cognitive militarism"have indeed come to saturate the very thinking of civilian leaders.

The next chapter, War, Heroism, and Public Representations: The Case of a Museum of "Coexistence" in Jerusalem is by Efrat Ben-Ze'ev and Eyal Ben-Ari. Here the authors examine the contradictions between public representations of war and heroism and the cultural space remaining for the expression of alternative voices in present-day Israel. The case chosen by Ben-Ze'ev and Ben-Ari is the attempted renewal program of the Tourjeman Post Museum in Jerusalem, a former army position on the border between the Jewish and Palestinian parts of the city. The program embodied

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an attempt to develop a museum of coexistence, but given that aim the institution's central narrative could not escape the history of strife and bloodshed that is part of this city. Thus, the bid to renew the place by the Israelis within a political context marked by deep conflict led to failure. Although the museum's direct messages were to be unification and accord, in practice it demonstrated the opposite.

The authors suggest that the Tourjeman Post Museum's structure, its specific geographical position, and the manner by which it has been repaired all being outcomes of the Jewish Israeli point of view, carry particular messages about how to understand its contents. It still is very much a military post overlooking the Palestinian part of Jerusalem. Moreover, the texts that guide visitors all allude not only to the destructiveness of war but also to the heroism of the Israeli army in bringing about the "union" of the city. Thus the Tourjeman Post Museum is not only a museum, it also serves partially as a commemorative site. ⁶ As such an establishment, it is related first to wider foundation myths of the Zionist state as a solution to the Jewish problem in diaspora (Aronoff 1993); second, to the intentional cultivation of a "new" active and combative Jew, differing radically from the passive and nonresistant Jew of the diaspora (Katriel 1986: ch. 2); and third, to the birth of the nationstate in war and on the basis of sacrifice (Sivan 1991).

Yet the chapter raises another point related to this section on cultural sites. Soffer and Minghi (1986) have argued that security landscapes in Israel include not only the formally designated training areas and camps of the IDF but also a whole range of shrines, monuments, memorials, statues, cemeteries, and museums. This landscape is not a motionless map, rather it is the result of constant processes of place-making in Zionism. In Israel, we would suggest, one finds a cultural scenario that links Zionism, money from abroad, and implementation of plans for building. In all of these cases the emphasis is on "making" or "creating" Israel on two analytically distinct levels: through transforming the country's actual landscapeby building, assembling, and creating "facts"and through pointing to sites where IsraeliJewish culture's key scenario is actualized (Katriel and Shenhar 1991: 376). Thus, from an organizational point of view, beyond the actual contents of the museum, its very conception as a spatial act (based on recruiting monies from outside the country) can be seen as part of the Zionist ethos of place-making. In this sense, we would argue that this is as true of the early Zionists (Cohen 1977), as it is of such contemporaries as Gush Emunim (Aran 1991), Jerusalem's Teddy Kollek, and Baba Baruch in Netivot (Bilu and Ben-Ari 1991), as it is of the case of Beit Tourjeman.

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The Social Construction of Life-worlds

A host of scholars have proposed that 'security,' the 'army,' and 'war' are central organizing principles in Israeli society. Thus, for example, while Horowitz and Lissak (1989) identify the linkages (and permeability) between the civilian and military sectors of Israel, Kimmerling (1993) provides a catalog of features that he derives from definitions of militarism. We argue that such studies are not enough because they tend to be static, to be lists of structural features or of cultural qualities. By contrast, in this section there are a number of chapters that underscore the processual nature of the links between military and society. These chapters probe an intermediate level, which mediates and channels the effects of macro forces on the transformation (over time) of individual life-worlds. While the first chapter (Furman) focuses on the place of the military in the Israeli experience, the next one (Ben-Ari) uncovers the encounter of Israeli individuals with the military itself. The final chapter (Helman) exposes the male experience as it is related to Israeliness and militarism and leads on to the volume's final section. In this sense all of the contributions in this part explore what may be termed an "Israelinessmilitarismmanhood" complex that is the epitome of the Israeli hegemony.

The next chapter is by Mirta Furman and is titled Army and War: Collective Narratives of Early Childhood in Contemporary Israel. It focuses on the exploitation of educational rituals for political purposes by examining the messages of rites related to warfare and the military as they are transmitted by urban (Jewish) kindergartens in Israel. These messages include statements about the necessity of war and sacrifice or the glories of heroism. By showing how teachers in institutions of early childhood education create a "community of memories," Furman restores us to the themes explored by BenYehuda and Azaryahu.

Furman provides a detailed analysis not only of the contents of the kindergarten rituals, but also and most importantly of the forms in which these declarations are conveyed to the children (see Shamgar-Handelman and Handelman 1986). For instance, she shows how teachers utilize their dominant status in the classroom to impart their central ideas: like the elders of the tribe they convey the message that they alone are in possession of the collectivity's unalterable and uncontestable stories. By conveying various renderings of heroic stories within ceremonial contexts, there is very little invitation of the children to reflect upon such divisive issues as the bifurcation of Israel following the Lebanon War. This blurring is achieved through such means as the structuring of time in the kindergarten's rites. In the ceremonies, the emphasis is not on temporal continuity but on thematic unity: the Pharonaic era, the Maccabbees, Haman, Hitler, the

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British Mandate, and the post-1948 era are all depicted as epitomizing the theme of a war of "us against them."

Furman's analysis is connected to a wider question about the longterm effects of preschools: what are the relations between such institutions and adult behavior? Against the background of understanding national culture as malleable and mobile, as the outcome of a constant process of cultural production, we would suggest approaching this question with caution because by looking for the links between childhood and adulthood we may create a misleading impression of uniformity and monocausality. Essentially, the question is how to conceptualize at one and the same time the continuities between these two periods with the openness of cultural constructs. As we suggested earlier, the notion of "key scenarios" in Israeli culture may aid us in this respect. If we conceptualize forms like military service as a scenario that Israeli Jews learn to "carry in their heads" as well as "carry in their bodies," we can understand how these schemas are conveyed in a variety of contexts throughout their life course. What Furman's interpretation clarifies is the place of accumulated experience (preadaption) in compelling people to carry out these key scenarios: through rites in kindergarten during childhood, the adult Israeli is being prepared for the future in an intimate manner. By the time they reach the army, Israeli youths have internalized the knowledge, the motivation, and the comfortableness to act within this scenario.

Eyal Ben-Ari's chapter, Masks and Soldiering: The Israeli Army and the Palestinian Uprising, is based on his personal participation in a unit of IDF infantry reserves (see also Ben-Ari 1998). His contention is that despite the circumstances of the intifada (Palestinian uprising), which necessitated policelike activities, the military ethos soon drew soldiers and officers to define their role through an essentially military orientation. This happened, he maintains, through a process of "naturalization" that worked through the organizational structure and rules of the battalion. Ben-Ari reveals the crucial role of the unit's reality constructorsthe officers and senior noncommissioned officersin providing the men of the unit with answers to questions about "who are we?" and "what are we doing here?". But his analysis raises more serious questions. As Ben-Ari shows, the soldiers had an a priori textactualized in organizational roles, small groups, and military dictatesthat channeled their perception of conflict and the enemy in the intifada. Yet, as Paine (1992) suggests, what is significant here is that this military text was also a Zionist text.

Ben-Ari and many members of his unit belong to Israel's "liberal, enlightened, western-oriented" citizens: to a group self-styled as 'Zionism with a conscience.' But they could not engage in a truly reflective examination of the situation. By defining stints during the intifada as periods of

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military duty (as opposed to policing and controlling civilians) these men (and Ben-Ari among them) related their personal understanding to the grand narrative of the IDF protecting the very survival of the nation-state. In this manner, the Palestinian Uprising was naturalized by allowing its subordination to the a priori Zionist text. In other words, in comprehending the intifada as a "normal" or "natural" military situation, the activities of the unit were linked to the notion that military actions by Israeli soldiers are ultimately related to the safety and security of the country. To paraphrase Paine's (1992: 19192) words, can it be suggested that much in Israeli culture can be understood in just those terms: the need to defend the validity of what has been done (the establishment of a Jewish state) so that a reflection on deeper issues is deflected.

The contribution by Ben-Ari, however, may prompt us to consider the kinds of texts published about war and the military. John Keegan's (1976) contention still holds for studies carried out both outside and within Israel: the overwhelming majority of textshistories and biographies, stories and reminiscences, documents and analysesare written from the point of view of generals and commanders. Only in the past two decades have the ordinary soldiers' voices begun to be heard. Hansen's (1992) recent collection is one such American example, while Lieblich's (1989) volume is an Israeli instance. The voices of these people contain much stumbling and hesitation, and are often marked by a lack of clarity and by emotionality but they are not the voices of cold calculation and decision making that characterize much of the writing of commanders. But we must read this literature with caution. In much of the literature that has been inspired by the Vietnam War, the voices being heard are of men suffering from "posttraumatic syndrome." We must be careful to ask whether these are the principal voices of soldiers at this level.

Sara Helman's chapter, Militarism and the Construction of the Life World of Israeli Males: The Case of the Reserves System moves us to the final section of this volume through an excursion into an field hardly dealt with in the current crop of critical work on the Israeli military. To our knowledge it is one out of a very limited number of attempts to examine an Israeli version of masculinity (although her analysis does not proceed from a feminist perspective that is explicitly formulated). Helman sees military serviceand especially reserve dutyas a discourse of men and as a discourse about masculinity (see also Ben-Ari 1998). Helman carries the accepted Western assumption that the warrior is still a key symbol of masculinity (Morgan 1994) in a sophisticated sociological direction. She shows how what has been created in Israel are not only a plethora of face-to-face communities of men who have served together but, perhaps more importantly, an imagined community of men who have as such served in

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the IDF. The implication of this situation is that the community of strangers, while based on face-to-face groups, tends to subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) radiate outward to wider social issues in a manner that excludes women from full social participation.

Helman's material, which is based on interviews with conscientious objectors, is illuminating in this respect. These men refused to take up reserve duty during Israel's Lebanon War in the 1980s (''Operation Peace for Galilee"). The grounds for their refusal were the unjustifiability of the war (it was "a war of choice") and the notion that there were viable alternatives to waging this armed conflict. What they did not question, however, was the basic demand that they serve in the IDF. Helman's interviewees all carefully declare the importance of the Israeli military and the requirement of all (male) citizens to serve within it. Thus, the grounds for their resistance to the war stemmed from ideas of citizenship rather than notions of gender inequality. Moreover, in their reflections about national service, all of these individuals did more than leave the issue of creating a community of men in the IDF unquestioned. Participation in this community, according to their reasoning, is what grants them the justification to critique the Lebanon War. Paradoxically, then, their participation in the definer of Israeliness, in the center, allows them to portray themselves as the individuals capable of criticism. The imagined community of warriors is thus preserved and supported and military obligations throughout (Jewish) men's lives normalized.

Much more than the stretch of compulsory service, reserve duty represents the periodic creation of an exclusive male preserve: a recurrent creation of an enclave of space and time within which the meaning of military service is crystallized anew. To return to a point we raised earlier, if compulsory service is marked by a series of rites of passage, reserve duty underscore to a great degree how service also involves rites-of-affirmation: by periodically reliving their military "selves" soldiers affirm their identity as citizens, as military professionals, and as men. During stints of reserve duty, men are actually and symbolically "torn away" from their everyday civilian lives to participate in a public occasion in which certain key values are validated and personally experienced. Yet what are validated anew are the values experienced during youth. To put this point picturesquely, the image is of twenty-, thirty- and forty-year-old men who periodically return to their eighteen- and nineteen-year-old selves (Ben-Ari 1998).

Yet Helman's composition subtly documents something else: a continued questioning of previously undisputed assumptions held by state authorities and the majority of the population about military qualities and behavior. Many groups in contemporary Israeli society are no longer

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willing to grant the IDF its previous status of unquestioned professionalism and to accord "state security" considerations as the only (or primary) criteria for national decision making. Helman's case should be seen as part of a much wider interrogation of the necessity of war and the military that is now taking place in our society. We are now witness to reflections about such matters as the role of women in the army and in combat, the links between families and military authorities, the reasons for and handling of suicides by army authorities, or the leeway left to families to determine the symbols used in graves and military memorials.

Gender, Hegemony, and Resistance

The emphasis on questioning and resistance comes up as a major theme in the next section devoted to gender. The chapters chosen for this section involve three social locationspoetry, films, and a female occupation (nursing)where issues of hegemonic and dissident voices emerge. The reason for introducing feminist perspectives on gender, however, are not only related to what can be revealed about alternatives from the perspective of "marginals." To be sure, feminist theory is far from a unitary phenomenon. Yet all such theory focuses (from its beginnings) on the power and asymmetry of the gender dichotomy and of gendered relationships. The most fundamental assumption of contemporary feminist theory is that gender is not simply a form of difference but a form of power (Dirks et al. 1994). Indeed, because the military in Israellike the military establishments of all industrialized societiesis par excellence a male preserve, we contend that approaches asking questions about gender may illuminate how women are integral to the manner by which hegemonic arrangements are constituted (in actualizing an ethos of manhood and in establishing the subordination of women). Furthermore, given that the recruitment of women into the IDF is part of a declared ideology of gender equality, and has been a part of the purported creation of a "new society" (the historical mission of nationbuilding) these questions seem even more crucial in the specific Israeli case (see Hazleton 1977).

Hannan Hever titles his chapter Gender, Body, and the National Subject: Israeli Women's Poetry in the War of Independence. It comprises a feminist reading of the poetry of Israel's War of Independence. War, Hever contends, is the most intense social instant in which the individual and the collective are interpellated. War disrupts the integration of the national subject within which the individual feels a part of the national whole, and which provides meaning and value for individual action. Because of this disruption, poetry during the War of Independence was one of a variety of practices undertaken to create and sustain an imagined

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national community. One of the ways in which wartime poetry achieved this aim was through the production of an image of the "living-dead," soldiers who had fallen but continued to live in social memory. The invention of such imagery was a cultural practice designed to legitimate and explain the need for sacrifices. The representation worked through a blurring, an obfuscation, of the line between life and death. The portrait of the living-dead is an oxymoron, Hever argues, that unites opposites: the personal casualty is awarded meaning as a National Living.

This is the setting within which Hever examines the place of women's poetry. Hever finds that during the historical moment of the wararguably the most threatening of Israel's warswomen poets were compelled to consider their contribution to the national subject. They were forced to do so because they were excluded from male prerogatives of poetic expression on three levels. First, as they did not participate in combat and as they were not "first hand" witnesses to death they could not speak on behalf of the fallen soldiers. Second, they were not agents, let alone heros, in the poems. And third, the image of living-dead encasing as it did the idea of (social) rebirth excluded them from connection to the deceased via their role as mothers. But while continuing to be tied to the central poetical canon by means of their focus on the fallen soldiers, these women refused to surrender to the blurring of the line between life and death. This simultaneous interlinkage and noncompliance with the canonical genre was actualized in the concrete imagery of the bodies of the fatalities. Through portraying the material, tangible bodies of dead soldiers, the heroic aspect of the living-dead is subverted and the mother-child links summoned anew.

But there is no escaping the canon, for the resistances offered by the women poets were based on the hegemonic representations. Thus in all of the poems recorded by Hever, the "fallen"like the individuals commemorated in the memorial books of the War of Independence (Sivan 1991)are males (sons, husbands, fathers, or friends). First, this characterization reemphasizes the centrality of the scenario, whereby it is men who go out to war and are sacrificed for the sake of national survival. Second, it underscores how women are linked to the men via their relational position. They contribute to the country's persistence through "their" men, and through this participation they are crucial to the constitution of the male agents.

Anat Zanger's chapter is titled Filming National Identity: War and Woman in Israeli Cinema. She begins with the contention that war and the military are definers of the national experience. Fears over external boundaries and notions about the internal order of the "nation" are often explored through reflection about the armed forces and about hostilities. It is against this background that the importance of war films should be

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understood. Classic war films (typically movies depicting World War II) worked to produce and reproduce what Zanger terms communion images: images of solidarity, belongingness, and fellowship that tended to blur the tensions and contradictions that mark everyday existence. Yet what are we to make of progressive war films that have been made since the 1970s? Zanger charges that such movies question many of the assumptions of the older genre and appear to be a sort of cinematographic equivalent of "demilitarization." In America these films question such issues as the legitimacy of waging warfare while in Israel they have begun to question the "binding principle" (ha-akeda), a central Israeli cultural theme linking war and loss: the father's (Abraham) willingness to sacrifice his son (Issac).

Yet Zanger is not content with formulating this strong thesis. She goes on to ask whether exploring of the place of women in war films may reveal hitherto little noticed dimensions. One would expect that as war and military service are a major component of male hegemony that women would hardly appear in war films. But Zanger's point is that the feminine dimension is part and parcel of such motion pictures. In both manifest and latent manners, women are definersdemarcators and designatorsof what being male entails. Here however, her thesis is intriguing. That women were subordinate to men in classic war films (as wives, nurses, or assistants, for example) is rather evident. But even in socalled progressive films, while women are portrayed as more active they are still a means for constituting the male subject. In other words, despite the more active role accorded to women in the newer films, the "agentive" promise is neutralized and women are relegated to their traditional, marginalized status. Feminine characters continue to be used to explore malesnow deeply disturbed and troubledwho remain at the center of such films.

Does Zanger's analysis exemplify a wider pattern of change in Israel? She makes a strong case for seeing films depicting the rupture of the binding (sacrifice) principle as part of a wider interrogation about warmaking and national service that is now going on among segments of Israeli society. But if, as in such films, men are now no longer bound to traditional male roles yet do not embrace any new kinds of (feminine) roles, then where are we headed? One interpretation is that men are in an in-between state, in a unique position of liminality, and can move in a variety of directions. But given that even progressive war films do not question the core of gender relations in Israel, we may ask whether we are witness, following Jeffords (1989), to a "remasculinization" of Israel. Is the current reevaluation of armed conflict and male identity only a temporary lull, a way station, to the revitalization of partriarchical values?

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The next chapter Engendering the Gulf War: Israeli Nurses and the Discourse of Soldiering is by Meira Weiss, who explores the significance of the Gulf War as a "postmodern" conflict for gender relations. If "conventional" war tends to clearly differentiate between the geographical and social positions of the sexes (Yuval-Davis 1987), then postmodern wars tend to confuse, baffle, and mistake conventional categories. In the case of such wars it is unclear where front and rear are and who are the warriors on the "battlefield" and who are the supporters at "home." In addition, we suggest that the reason that this war is relatively little remembered in Israeli societyin the sense of the public recognition and enumeration of the country's warsis that it shattered conventional categories by which Israel's wars have been conventionally understood. It is within these circumstances, asserts Weiss, that the case of hospital nurses becomes interesting.

During the Gulf War, these women appropriated both the pervading ethos of (Israeli) masculinity and the specific key male scenario for (military) action. The following comprise the main elements of the male scenario: ⁷ during war men leave their homes (populated by women, children, and other dependents) for battlefields (places of great threat and danger) and operate in military organizations (marked by solidarity and cohesion) in order to defend the existence of their country and the ways of life of the nation's people. During the Gulf War, Israeli nurses enacted this scenario. They left their homes (occupied by their husbands and charges), traveled along deserted and exposed streets to hospitals to deal (in medical teams) with the casualties of the existential threat to the country (victims of chemical warfare). The reports given to Weiss by the nurses echo accounts provided by men in previous wars: feelings of being at the front and exposed to danger, sentiments of solidarity with doctors and other staff (in contrast to customary status differences), and perceptions of being linked to the nation's top priorities and goals. Consequently, rather than becoming "mothers" to the nation (that is, adopting the archetypal feminine role of caring), the nurses embraced the self-perception and actions of the hegemonic-male role; they became "soldier-nurses." In this manner, they served to reproduce and strengthen the key scenario of male soldierhood.⁸

Nonetheless, once the war was over the nurses were relegated to their previous role of subordinate caregivers. During the war, suggestions that this would be the conflict's eventual outcome were reported by the women. Within their households the conflict between the demands of work-as-front and of home-as-front ("forsaking" their children by going to the hospitals) emerged in full force. These women faced an internal conflict that men as a rule do not face: between the contradictory demands of being a mother and being a trained professional. Later, a silent coalition of husbands at

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home (condemning their behavior) and doctors in hospitals was forged against them. Both groups of men did not accept the appropriation of the male scenario by these women as a permanent situation. The Gulf War represented only a temporary role reversal because the males reappropriated the key scenario. ⁹

Our Historical Situatedness

To be sure, it "is generally, the case that the powerful have little reason to reflect on their position as normal, just, or inevitable. This is true whether we are thinking of class, race, or ethnicity or gender" (Morgan 1994: 30). The individual chapters as well as this volume as a whole underscore something in relation to this point. In many senses, Israel seems to be in a certain state of crisis. At least some members of its dominant categories have been forced to consider anew their position in society. The sociological question is thus one of the social conditions that have marked Israel during the past decade or so and that have forced (or allowed) a more public reflection about attitudes toward the military and toward armed conflict.

In this concluding section we think it fruitful to offer a number of speculations about the historical moment in which we write and its relation to our scholarly engagement with war and the military.¹⁰ We would suggest that this connection between our scholarly focus and present historical circumstances is related to a set of processes that Israel has been undergoing in the past two-and-a-half decades. For a variety of (political, social, demographic, and economic) reasons, since 1967 Israel has been the site of steady changes in what could be termed the prevailing public attitudes and sentiments (see Aronoff 1989; Horowitz and Lissak 1989; Lustick 1988).

Some of the more important of these changes (and the list could be continued) include: a greater acceptance of the Jewish diaspora and the concomitant openness to Jewish 'ethnic pluralism'; a certain enhancement of religious sentiments and a related strengthening of nationalistic feelings; a changed attitude toward the Holocaust and a greater willingness to search for continuities with past Jewish identities; the eruption of the intifada and its impact on Israeli perceptions of Palestinians; the increased militancy of Israeli-Arabs and the uneasiness this has wrought among many Israeli-Jews; and, following Israel's debacle in Lebanon, the decreased legitimacy of such institutions as the army. Closely related to all of these, as Dominguez (1989: 13) notes, has been the weakening of the centralized state as the agent of social transformation affecting housing, language, health, technology, production, dress, and child rearing. Finally, we would mention accompanying all of these developments (and the outcome of

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many) are the ongoing peace processes with the Palestinians and Syrians, the "warm" and "cold" peace with Jordan and Egypt, and the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin.

It is within these developments that the critiques of the army and of war now being waged in Israel should be understood. To put this point by way of examples, it would have been hard to envisage the impact of two very different books like Grossman's Yellow Wind (1987) or Laor's The People, Food Fit for a King (1993) even fifteen years ago. Both volumes interrogate many of the basic assumptionsthe oxymoron of "benign occupation" on the one hand, or the "normalness" of war on the otherthat have guided Israelis since at least 1967.

Another example of the kinds of critical issues now being raised involves the study of prisoners of war. In the United States, returning prisoners of war were studied almost immediately upon their return (often in demobilization camps on their way home). But in Israel they have become a focus of research only in the last decade or so (Solomon et al. 1995). Is this ability to handle such issues related to the decline of longstanding myths as "here no one allows himself to be taken captive," or that "no one breaks down during captivity." A closely related matter is the question of military psychiatry and the label of "psychiatric casualty" that are now being challenged and historicized (Levy et al 1993). ¹¹

Yet the development of these critiques in Israel cannot be understood apart from changes in the wider intellectual atmosphere. We believe that parts of Israeli social science and the humanities in general, are undergoing a fruitful self-examination. As attested to in the recent debate between "old" and "new" historians and sociologists, this process combines a critique of scholarly practice, with a more astute inspection of our 'conventional' objects and subjects of study. By offering this volume on war and the military we are also, of course, participating in public debates now raging in Israel. The various chapters in this book, and the volume as a whole, should be seen as interrogatingquestioning current trends from a variety of perspectives.*

Notes

* Thanks are due to Efrat Ben-Ze'ev for comments on an earlier version of this introduction.

1. In addition, both Ehrlich (1987) and Kimmerling (1993) have well outlined how the production of social scientific knowledge about Israel is related to the centrality of 'things military.'

2. While essentially focusing on the social structures of IDF units, some very rare work done in the 1970s (Amir 1969, Gal 1973, Schild 1973)

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nevertheless contained a number of hints and suggestions about the importance of military symbols and meanings.

3. Ben-Yehuda also shows how the Masada myth was used in the Gadna (youth battalions). This is a special organization within the IDF that has existed for many years. Working closely with high schools, its role is to award premilitary training to youths and to prepare them for compulsory service. In this case exposure to the Masada myth was part of an anticipatory socialization Israeli youths undergo as preparation for the role of soldier and the possible sacrifices this role entails.

4. While Ben-Yehuda does not deal with present-day Israel, it should be stated that the intensity of recent debates about Masada attest to the continued potency of the myth for contemporary Israelis.

5. Interestingly, Manning (1983: 2425) observed that in many "new" or "developing" societies one finds political religions (moralistic ideologies that envision modernization as a kind of secular salvation) that tend to favor formal and dignified military parades over ludic masquerade and mummering parades (Grimes 1976).

6. It is thus similar to Ammunition Hill, the Golani Museum, or the Armored Corps Museum all of which are even more strongly linked to the army. All three institutions were established by public organizations and include commemorations of fallen soldiers and an explicit display of Israel's military legacy.

7. "Key scenarios" according to Ortner (1973) are valued because they formulate a culture's basic means-ends relationships in actable forms. They may be formal, usually named, events or sequences of action that are enacted and reenacted according to unarticulated formulae in the normal course of everyday events.

8. Compare: "the American entanglement in Southeast Asia, complete with air cavalry, ranger battalions, and native scouts, was a scenario based upon a deep definition of our national pronouns as frontiersman or Indian fighter extending enlightenment and civilization over against the 'hostiles' on the dark side of the frontier" (Fernandez 1986: 20).

9. In this sense, Weiss presents a cultural interpretation of the model formulated by Bar-Yosef and Eisenstark (1975) and Kimmerling (1984; 1985). These scholars developed a model of the social arrangements instituted in Israeli society for shifting between periods of wartime and nonbelligerency. Weiss shows how these arrangements are framed in cultural terms, as scenarios to be fulfilled, appropriately, by men and by women. While the earlier formulations began with a question of Israel's ability to function under conditions of crisis, her question is related to the cultural understandings that underlie the move between states of war and calm.

10. This section draws heavily on Ben-Ari and Bilu (1997).

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11. In this sense, and to be candid, one of the possible limits of our volume may be that we have not gone far enough in portraying and delineating "other voices"Palestinians, ultra-Orthodox Jews, non-Zionist Jews or the citizens of development towns. Yet we would argue that our approach could well be used to examine the views and actions of such groups as well.

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PART I
SETTING THE CONTEXT

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2
Wars as Catalysts of Political and Cultural Change

Myron J. Aronoff

Introduction

I contextualize the themes discussed in this volume through an analysis of two major political and cultural changes that have transformed Israeli society in the past three decades. The transition of Israel from a dominant party to a competitive party system and the corollary crisis of Zionism (which has constituted the hegemonic discourse of Israeli political culture since the inception of the modern state) provide the context for a fuller understanding of the meaning of the phenomena discussed in this book. Specific consequences of these changes, particularly the resurgence of political polarizationespecially in times of crisisare related to the theme of the changing status and image of Zahal.

As Mirta Furman notes in her essay, Israel has been involved in more wars since World War II than any other country in the world. Some Israelis perceive the brief history of their state as one long war punctuated by occasional cease-fires and lulls in acts of terrorism. Wars have had such profound effects on the society, economy, culture, and politics that they are convenient benchmarks for delineating these important processes and developments. ¹

The conventional wisdom is that wars create national solidarity and unity. Even when this is the case, as it was most dramatically in Israel during the war in 1967, unanticipated long-term negative consequences can result even from military victory. For example, I shall discuss the consequences of the termination of an important basis of consensus which resulted from the military occupation of territories conquered by Israel in

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1967. Furthermore, wars can, in certain contexts, seriously exacerbate internal divisions.

Political polarization has periodically peaked in Israel at times of national crises. Even the war of independence, while generally uniting the nation, was marked by divisive episodes that brought the nascent state to the verge of civil war. ² The highly controversial war (of choice) in Lebanon (198285) resulted in divisions reminiscent of the conflicts of that earlier era. The Palestinian uprising (intifada) (198793) made doves more dovish and hawks more hawkish. Most recently, in reaction to the Oslo Accords and the Interim Agreement, political acrimony culminated in the unprecedented assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. The 1994 election was the closest one in the history of Israel.

Controversial wars and even negotiations and treaties terminating conflict provide contexts for the escalation of political divisions. Given the intertwining of Zahal and Israeli society, which has been well documented in this volume, it is little wonder that the status and public image of the military is adversely effected by such dramatic, divisive events. Whether they produce internal cohesion or conflict, Israel's wars have almost invariably been agents, harbingers, or catalysts of cultural and political change.

The War of June 1967:
The End of a National Consensus

The war of June 1967 has been cited by many scholars as a particularly important turning point for Israel. For example, Rael Isaac (1981: 207) suggests that since 1967 the threat to Israeli survival no longer promoted consensus, because "it is the perception of threat itself which now divides the public in Israel. Once the threat is differentially perceived, it pits against each other those who identify differentoften contradictoryways of meeting perceived dangers." Isaac (1981: 212), expressing a nationalist perspective, claims that the loss of faith in the traditional slogan "there is no choice" (ein breira) is the most adverse development that has beset Israel since her 1967 military triumph.

Divisions over what constitutes the greater threatArab hostility or the erosion of democracy through continued military occupation of nearly two million Palestiniansand over whether the loss of the slogan ein breira was a tragedy or a blessinghave been the sources of political polarization in Israel since 1967. One expression of the breakdown of national consensus was the contrast between the biggest Independence Day parade in Israeli history in 1968 for its twentieth anniversary (when the prestige of Zahal was at its zenith) and the unprecedented emotional public debate that preceded and followed the replacement of the traditional military

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parade on Independence Day with a parade of underground veterans in 1977 as recounted by Maoz Azaryahu.

The euphoria of the "miraculous" six-day victory in June 1967 and the "liberation" of Jerusalem and "Judea and Samaria" provided the context for the popularity of more militantly nationalistic forms of Zionism, including the messianic Gush Emunimthe ideological vanguard for the more populist Begin-led Likud. Many Israelis vicariously basked in the reflected glory of an army perceived in heroic terms of mythical infallibility. By putting Zahal on such a pedestal, the Israeli public set itself up for inevitable disillusionment. Many illusions came crashing down on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) six years later.

The War of October 1973:
Tthe End of Labor Hegemony

Serious questioning of basic Zionist assumptions, especially those pertaining to the sanctity of Zahal, followed in the aftermath of the initial trauma of the surprise attack on and the heavy losses suffered by Zahal in October 1973. This, in turn, contributed to the end of political dominance of the Labor Party, which had already had been eroded through its gradual loss of ideological dominance, particularly since the mid-1960s. Azaryahu mentions the end of Labor hegemony in his analysis of the changing nature and status of the Independence Day parade. However, I stress the major significance of this change in the political system and the political culture in facilitating and shaping all of the phenomena investigated in this volume.

The traumatic surprise and losses suffered in the war of October 1973 created the conditions for the questioning of basic assumptions of security policy. ³ Eventually much else that had previously been taken for granted was questioned as well. The commission of judicial enquiry appointed by the government was restricted by its terms of appointment to investigate intelligence and military failures and therefore only military officers were forced to resign as a consequence of its report. However, the authority of the two responsible ministers (Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan) was so damaged that they eventually were pressured to resign as well. Ultimately the entire Labor Party suffered the loss of public confidence.

The hegemony of Labor, and especially of the version of Zionism that it espoused, had become seriously weakened before the 1973 war. However, the bankruptcy of promises based on false policy assumptions (e.g., that retention of the territories guaranteed peace) espoused by Labor before the war eventually proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of public trust in the credibility of the leadership of Labor.

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The more nationalistic and religiously inspired versions of Zionism articulated by Gush Emunim and by Menachem Begin filled an ideological vacuum created by the demise first of socialist-Zionism and then of statism (mamlachtiut). ⁴

I briefly illustrate the erosion of hegemony, which had succeeded in silencing criticism and had prevented the calling into question of basic assumptions prior to 1973. During my years of participant observation in the main forums of the Israel Labor Party (from 1969 through 1977), the questioning of basic assumptions and criticism of the leaders' policies were most frequently and successfully suppressed by invoking the sanctity of security.⁵ Security was also used to suppress controversial issues and helped the elite to control important internal political rituals before the 1973 war.⁶ However, even before the cessation of hostilities a perceptible change was taking place.

The initial public shock at the unexpected outbreak of war began to be articulated from the grass roots to higher echelons of the party even while the fighting proceeded. For example, Secretary-General Yadlin met with local party leaders and reported on government policy and developments of the war on October 17, 1973. Many of the local leaders reported "deep shock among the people." They said that some people were "asking questions which reach the sources of trust." Some claimed there was developing a "crisis of confidence in the government." They listed as examples of the kinds of questions that were being asked: "Where was our intelligence?'' "Where were the reserves and why weren't they mobilized sooner?" "What did you tell us about the Bar-Lev Line?" [the line of bunkers along the Suez Canal] Yadlin, representing the views [and arrogance] of the top leadership, replied, "The people will be wise. When the time comes for them to vote, they will vote correctly." (Aronoff, 1993: 144)

The first meeting of the Labor Central Committee following the war was postponed for nine hours while the top leaders met and thrashed out a compromise to avoid an open confrontation among themselves in the Central Committee. Simultaneously the secondary echelon of leaders met and initially engaged in a serious discussion of the need to change the top leaders and their policies (particularly security policy). However, this discussion evolved into a ritualized parody as they symbolically expressed their perceived inability to challenge their superiors.⁷

This meeting reflected the single most dramatic example of the hold of hegemony that I have ever personally witnessed. Although objectively I believe it would have been possible to have successfully challenged the

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leadership at the time, the secondary leaders and Central Committee members were still under the sway of their belief in the omnipotence of the top leaders so they gave up without even attempting to bring about change. The accommodation worked out among the elite and the acquiescence of their lieutenants enabled the former to control the Central Committee meeting and prevent its members from criticizing them and/or changing their policies. ⁸ However, these measures were only temporarily successful in stifling criticism and debate within the party and were even less effective in pacifying wider public criticism.⁹

Once the taboo against questioning basic assumptions that provided the foundation of Labor's dominance (especially on policies relating to security) had been broken and once the sacred image of Zahal had been tarnished, the genie was out of the bottle for good. Although the political ramifications were delayed because (by mutual agreement between Labor and the Likud) the party lists for the 1973 election were not allowed to be reopened, they were dramatically manifest in the results of the 1977 election.

Likud Failure to Establish Hegemony:
Political Polarization

The defeat of Labor in 1977 represented the end of the dominant party system that characterized Israeli politics from the early yishuv. The afterlife of hegemony was such that the major political actors failed to recognize how radically the political system had been transformed by the election results. Labor continued to behave in the opposition as if it still had the right to rule the country, and the Likud, initially, governed as if it was still in the opposition. Menachem Begin, not comprehending the reality of the new competitive party system, vainly attempted to replace Likud hegemony for that of Labor and in so doing greatly aggravated the polarization of Israeli politics.

Polarization was intensified by the attempt of the formerly delegitimized Likud leader to rewrite history. Begin attempted to elevate his ideological mentor, Jabotinsky, to the pantheon of national heroes. He attempted to gain recognition of the primacy of the role played by the nationalist underground movement he led in the birth of the nation. Similarly divisive were efforts to reinvent tradition through rituals like a state funeral for the two-thousand-year-old remains reputedly associated with Shimon Bar Kochba (the leader of the second Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire).¹⁰

Several groups that had been (in varying degrees) peripheral to the centers of power during the heyday of Labor rule were brought into greater proximity to the center of power in coalition with the Likud. Religious Zionists, represented by the National Religious Party (NRP)a traditional

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coalition junior partner of Labor, gained greater prominence and power in the Likud governments as the NRP became increasingly nationalistic. The ultra-Orthodox (haredim), whose parties had sometimes supported previous Labor governments without joining the coalitions, became members of Likud governments. Representatives of Jews from Middle Eastern backgrounds figured more prominently in top positions in the Likud governments.

New Claims for Centrality:
Revitalizing Zionism

These three newly empowered groups responded differently to the traditional central role of Zahal in Zionist discourse. I first discuss the religious Zionists and the Jews of Middle Eastern background. ¹¹ The positions of the (non-Zionist) haredim and of the Arab citizens of Israel will then be discussed in the context of an analysis of the impact of their challenges to the dominant Zionist discourse.

Military Casualties and Zionist Centrality

Since service in Zahal has traditionally been the primary rite of passage initiating one into full membership in the Zionist civil religion, "[t]he type of unit in which one (or members of one's group) serves, and even the proportion of casualties suffered by the members of one's group are seen to be proof of one's commitment and the centrality of the group in the mainstream of society" (Aronoff, 1989: 132). Just as the high casualty rate of kibbutznikim in past wars was cited as proof of their vanguard role in the Zionist venture, claims by leaders of the national religious and Jews of Middle Eastern background for central roles in the national struggle were given legitimacy by reference to their higher casualty rates in the War in Lebanon. In their bid for recognition of their centrality (legitimacy), they reaffirmed the validity of this core Zionist sacrament.

Conversely, those groups and social categories that do not serve in the army, particularly Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, are marginalized. This is also true, but to a lesser extent, of those persons (such as women) who serve in non-combatant roles. In essence, it is the "ownership" of military casualties that provides the most dramatic claim on centrality in Israeli society. Consequently, while funerals for the fallen are their final rites of passage, for the groups that claim them, their annual memorial ceremonies are an ongoing source of legitimacy as well as celebrations of national solidarity. (Aronoff, 1993b: 53)¹²

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Memorialization:
Cult of the Dead

I suggest that memorialization of the dead is such a central leitmotif in Israeli political culture that it has evolved into a national cult. There are vast numbers of war memorials and shrines in Israel and as many rites of commemoration held at them and at the thirty-nine military cemeteries throughout the country. There is also a Yad L'Banim (Memorial to the Sons) community center in every Jewish community as well as a central one for the Druze. They constitute foci for rituals of memorialization of those who died in Israel's wars and in fighting terrorism as well as rites of solidarity for the participants. The preoccupation with death even by young Israeli children is poignantly illustrated by Mirta Furman. ¹³

The immediacy and constancy of death in war and due to acts of terror has facilitated the primary salience of the memorialization of the victims of war in Israel.¹⁴ By way of contrast, the even greater number of deaths on the highways in Israel do not receive the same kind of reverential national attention. Obviously, not all types of death due to unnatural causes are imbued with the same cultural meaning. Perhaps, if in the future Israel will experience genuine peace including a complete cessation of acts of terrorism, the memorialization of the victims of war and the role of the military in general will occupy a less central place in the political culture.¹⁵

Reinternment

A related phenomena is the ceremonial internment in Israel of the remains of individuals who died abroad. I suggest this constitutes a "symbolic postmortem aliyah" (literally ascent, Zionist parlance for immigration to Israel), which, traditionally, is the primary obligation of every Zionist.¹⁶ The tradition, which began with the ceremonial internment of the patriarch Jacob (who died in Egypt) in the land of Israel, was revived by the modern Zionists to honor such leaders as Moses Hess, Theodore Herzl, Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and (somewhat more dubiously) Shimon Bar Koziba (a.k.a., Bar Kochba).¹⁷ Various veteran and ethnic groups have requested state ceremonies for the reburial of the remains of those who died in World War II or while attempting to immigrate to Israel and were buried abroad.

The Crisis of Zionism:
Challenges to the Dominant Discourse

Labor's loss of dominance and the failure of the Likud to establish hegemony contributed to the current crisis of political legitimacy. The

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latter is manifest as a crisis of Zionism, which has constituted the hegemonic discourse of Israeli political culture since the inception of the modern state. Whereas the competition between the historical antecedents of the two major political protagonists in Israel today helped establish the hegemony of Zionism, groups formerly marginalized by their rejection of its core symbols, myths and rituals, the haredim and the Palestinian Arabs who became Israeli citizens, have played important roles in challenging it during the more recent period of crisis that traditional Zionism is undergoing. ¹⁸

The growing political importance of the haredi political parties, which began during the era in which the Likud held political ascendancy, continued after Labor returned to power in 1992. Because it was the only religious party willing to join the Labor-led coalition, the haredi Shas, the Sephardi Guardian Party, replaced the National Religious Party as the most politically influential religious party in the Labor government. Conflict between the leaders of Shas and Meretz (the liberal alignment of three dovish parties with collectively the second largest Knesset representation in the coalition) created coalition instability until Shas resigned from the Rabin government.¹⁹ It continued to support the government even after it formally resigned.

Two Arab parties, the Arab Democratic Party and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, although not officially members of the coalition, provided it with vital support that enabled the government to maintain a narrow parliamentary majority. The haredim and the Arabs constitute the two largest groups traditionally marginalized by their failure to serve in Zahal. The growing political power of these groups, particularly as expressed in the 1992 and 1996 elections, gives greater voice to their counterhegemonic challenge to service in Zahal as a primary criteria for centrality in Israeli society.

Both groups have made substantive gains, such as receipt of government child support, which originally had been restricted to veterans of Zahal. The haredim received the benefits first and Israeli Arabs have received the same payments as Jews since 1994. No less significantly, the Labor government stopped using military service as a criteria in awarding civil-service jobs. Such measures, combined with trends discussed later, diminish (but do not eliminate) the enormous symbolic significance of, as well as the social and material benefits derived from, military service in Israel.

The Arab parties, in alliance with Meretz and dovish Labor leaders, were instrumental in challenging the demonization of the Palestinian Other, and in breaking the taboo against recognition of, and negotiation with, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This, in turn, made

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possible the Oslo Accords with the PLO, the Interim Agreement with the Palestinian Authority, peace with Jordan, and the establishment of relations with many other Arab and Muslim governments. ²⁰ These events have profound implications for the changing role of Zahal and for the reconceptualization of Israeli collective identity.

Pierre Atlas and I suggest that Israeli collective identity can be conceived along two different dimensions: one based on ethnicity ("Jewishness") and one based on territoriality ("Israeliness"). These types constitute alternative, frequently competing, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, foci for the conceptualization of Israeli collective identity.²¹ The challenges posed by the Israeli Arabs and the haredim for inclusion are each based on one of these two different conceptualizations of collective identity. Therefore their critique of the centrality of Zahal is the tip of the iceberg of much broader, but very different, critiques of traditional Zionism.

For example, Azmi Bishara, the leader of the National Democratic Assembly, calls for the "de-Zionization of Israel," and its conversion into "a state of all its citizens." Attacking the Law of Return (centerpiece of Zionist legislation), he says, "It's about time the state made citizenship a civic concept, separate from religion." Bishara's group advocates "cultural autonomy." He says:

We are not only individuals, we should be recognized as a national group with the rights of a national minority . . . Group rights are usually cultural rights. No one should impose on me my collective memory or history. (Azmi Bishara quoted by Joel Greenberg, 1996: A6).

Bishara clearly articulates a critique of Israeli collective identity based on Jewishness and demands a territorial based civic Israeli identity. He rejects the Law of Return, which is central to collective identity based on Jewishness and privileges the Jews of the Diaspora over Arabs born in Israel. He demands cultural autonomythe right to write (and to rewrite) his own history, to preserve (and to invent) his own traditions, and to remember (and to forget) his own collective memories.

This sentiment illuminates the contention of Ben-Ze'ev and Ben-Ari that the Tourjeman Post Museum failed to truly examine the conflict and disparity between the national groups in Jerusalem because it did not allow an independent Palestinian voice to tell their own narrative. Bishara's is but one of the many narratives of the Palestinians who gained Israeli citizenship.²² Their narratives differ in respects from those of their brethren and sisters who have lived under Israeli military occupation, and from those who live in the Palestinian Diaspora. Each narrative reflects the unique experiences of their respective communities over the past half

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century. Important parts of each narrative reflect shared history, experiences, and sentiments as well. ²³

Similarly, although I have lumped all ultra-Orthodox Jews under the category of haredim they constitute a community of great diversity. In terms of their stance toward Zionism they range from extremely hostile rejection of all aspects of Zionism to varying degrees of accommodation with and increasing dependence on a state that they consider to be unambiguously Zionist.²⁴ For example, Shas is ostensibly considered to be a non-Zionist party based on the positions of its haredi leadership (spiritual and political). However, it is more difficult to classify than are the other haredi parties. The bulk of the members of Shas became haredi as adults. Most served in Zahal, and the men continue to serve annually on active reserve duty. However, according to Willis (1992 and 1995), they want military deferments for their children. Others vote for Shas more from ethnic solidarity than religious sentiments and are ardently Zionist.

Shas derives much of its legitimacy and its support through its combination of religious and ethnic appeal. It projects an image of the cultural guardian of all Jews of Middle Eastern background. It has successfully invented a revitalized Sephardi tradition in spite of the fact that most of its religious leaders were trained in Lithuanian yishivot (institutes of hgher learning for ultra-orthodox men) in Israel. Shas claims to be uniquely qualified to bring the traditionally marginalized haredim and Sephardim into the mainstream of Israeli collective identity. Shas made particularly dramatic gains in the 1996 election.

Many haredim challenge modern secular Zionism by claiming they represent the legitimate authentic Zionism. They claim a privileged position within a redefined notion of collective identity based on Jewishness. They demand Israel become more Jewish in halachic terms while rejecting the post-Enlightenment separation of religion and politics. They wish to emphasize the two-thousand-year history of the Exile (Diaspora), "forgotten" by the collective memory of modern political Zionism that so arduously worked to create the new Hebrew.²⁵

The Changing Role and Status of Zahal

Many factors have contributed to the dramatic changes in the public perceptions of Zahal and in its manifold roles, symbolic as well as substantive. Although the peace process may be a bench mark, in fact, as Stuart Cohen (1995) persuasively argues, longer term processes had already determined the course of many of the dramatic changes that have taken and are taking place. I have already suggested that as a result of its roles in the controversial war in Lebanon and, perhaps even more

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profoundly, in suppressing the intifada, the sacrosanctity of the image of Zahal was significantly undermined.

The personal anguish retrospectively expressed by Eyal Ben-Ari, despite the "naturalization" of his reserve duty in Hebron during the Palestinian uprising, provides a penetrating insight into the turmoil experienced by many Israelis, which influenced the cultural meanings they ascribe to Zahal.

Demographic trends (Yom Kippur War baby boomers coming of age and the mass immigration of nearly a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia) produced a larger pool for the draft than needed. Coupled with the strategic reforms to make Zahal "slimmer and smarter," this has led to what Stuart Cohen (1995: 3) terms revolutionary manpower policies. Zahal has deviated significantly from the principle of universal and equal military service for all citizens and has moved to an increasingly stratified an unequal one.

For example, the number of reservists summoned for annual duty has been cut in half in the past decade with 60 percent of the burden borne by 9 percent of the available complement. Conscripts are also being called up more selectivelyespecially new immigrants and haredim many of whom tend to get outright releases rather than deferrals. Larger numbers of exemptions and early discharges are also granted for those with psychological, physical, and educational disabilities.

Cohen discusses the current multiyear plan to reduce 8,000 of the present long-service troops and 4,000 civilian employees in the near future. Simultaneously new incentives have been introduced to enable officers to advance more rapidly through the ranks and remain in service beyond the previous 20-year compulsory retirement. New managerial styles of organization have been introduced, which, along with budgetary restrictions, have led to a reduction of Zahal's nonmilitary roles (e.g., in educating marginal youth and socializing new immigrants). Aside from fiscal and (previously discussed) societal reasons for these changes, Cohen (1995: 1114) relates them to operational adjustments and to the changing strategic environment as well.

Conclusions

The implications of these changes are highly significant for the themes discussed in this book. Whereas security considerations will undoubtedly remain central to Israeli life for the foreseeable future, there are bound to be major changes in civil-military relations. ²⁶ Increasingly selective conscription and the growing exemption of various groups may reduce the centrality of military service in the political culture. The

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absence of a service record might become less of a reason (or excuse) for the marginalization of those who do not serve than it has thus far been. A professionalized "postmodern" military with a reduced extra-military role might diminish the importance of military service as the primary means for gaining legitimacy in Israel.

The loss of Labor's dominance and the failure of the Likud to establish its ideological dominance resulted in the polarization of politics and a crisis of Zionism as the hegemonic discourse or master narrative (Zerubavel, 1995) of Israeli political culture. Zerubavel (1995: 237) concludes: "The emergence of competing versions of the past and the moral claims regarding its use are central issues that continue to occupy contemporary Israelis as they negotiate the meaning of the present within the framework of their understanding of the past."

Challenges by previously marginalized groups as well as by privileged members of the center, each with their own narrative, version of collective memory, and agenda have made for a more dynamic, yet more fragile political culture. Like culture in general, political culture is an essential illusion that may be undermined by excessive challenges. Similar to other new nations, Israel claims to be "rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely" a human community "so 'natural' as to require no definition other than self assertion" (Hobsbawm, 1983: 14). Given the combination of internal and external challenges to taken-for-grantedness of these claims, Israeli political culture may be uniquely vulnerable.

Previous ideological disputes, which took place within its discourse, helped establish the hegemony of Zionism. It is unclear whether the current challenges strengthen or undermine its salience for greater numbers of Israelis. The results of the 1996 election dramatically demonstrate both the polarization of the polity and the fragmentation of society. The challenging segmentsArab, national religious, haredi-Sephardi, and Russian immigrantsgained political parliamentary strength at the expense of the two major parties which represent the major competing visions of the Zionist discourse. It remains unclear whether what unites them is still more significant than what divides them.

Notes

1. The consequences of war, however, should not be exaggerated. It is easy to mistakenly attribute causality to them for ongoing processes that have been intensified and/or become more prominent as a consequence of war.

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2. The Altalena Affair is the most conspicuous example. See Myron J. Aronoff (1989: 2223), for a brief account and Uri Brenner (1978), Eitan Haber (1979), and Shlomo Nakdimon (1978) for lengthier analyses from differing ideological and academic perspectives.

3. The fact that individuals successfully integrated or "normalized" armed conflicts into their personal biographies, as Edna Lomsky-Feder shows in her study of veterans of the 1973 war, does not seriously challenge the cumulative impact of the war on Israeli society as might be interpreted from her and Eyal Ben-Ari's comments on the implications of her research in their introductory essay. Even if their comments are restricted to the individual impact on veterans, I think the evidence is not conclusive. However, if they refer to the cumulative cultural and political impact of the war, I strongly disagree with them.

4. See Mitchell Cohen (1987); Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer DonYehiya (1983); and Ian Lustick (1988).

5. Two additional years of fieldwork in 198283 and in 198687 provided additional observations for the revised and expanded edition of my study of the Labor Party (Aronoff, 1993a) as well as for additional publications.

6. See Aronoff (1993a: 6566), for an example of an incident during the meeting of the national Secretariat in May of 1970. See also the related ritualization of aspects of the very important Standing Committee in chapter 5.

7. Aronoff (1993a: 99).

8. Aronoff (1993: 9899, 11112).

9. This is discussed in detail in chapter 8, The End of an Epoch and a New Regime, in Aronoff (1993a).

10. See chapter 3, The Manipulation of Political Culture Under the Likud, in Aronoff (1989) and Yael Zerubavel (1995).

11. For religious nationalism in Israel, see Gideon Aran (1990) and Charles Liebman (1990). For Middle Eastern Jews, see Sammy Smooha (1993), Pnina Morag-Talmon (1989), and Eliezer Ben-Rafael (1989).

12. The chapters by Hannan Hever, Anat Zanger, and Meira Weiss eloquently explore the changing role of gender from the War of Independence to the Gulf War through their analyses of poetry, film, and the experiences of Israeli nurses. Sara Helman's study of reserve duty highlights the annual rite as a discourse of masculinity that clearly excludes women. See also Juliet Pope (1993) for an analysis of the place of women in Israeli society.

13. Furman's material suggests that collective narratives for young Israeli children were characterized by totemic time. I have argued that

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totemic time perceptions are most characteristic of the more militant, or ultra, Zionists, whereas the humanist (or liberal) Zionist's temporal perceptions tend to be characterized by linear time. See Aronoff (1989: 13741). For an additional anecdote that illustrates how the celebration of holidays in Israeli elementary schools engenders this perspective as well as the perception that ''the whole world is against us," see Aronoff (1986: 7 endnote 1).

14. My younger daughter, Yael, who had spent her first six years living in Israel, at the time warned her first grade Dutch teacher (when we were on sabbatical in Holland) that when she visited Israel she should not pick up strange objects because they might be booby-trapped and to alert a policeman or a soldier if she saw a suspicious package because it might be a bomb.

15. James M. McPherson (1996) traces the evolution of Memorial Day in the United States from the early years after the Civil War, when it was a reverential occasion, through a period of festive parades and picnics, to its present trivialization and commercialization.

16. Aronoff (1993b: 54).

17. Aronoff (1993: 5455, including endnote 37).

18. Aronoff (1977)

19. Aronoff (1995: 13031)

20. Aronoff and Aronoff (1996 and 1997).

21. See Aronoff and Atlas (1997).

22. Anton Shammas (1991) eloquently relates another narrative.

23. Majid Al-Haj (1993 and 1995); Sammy Smooha (1989 and 1993); and Elie Rekhess (1991 and 1995).

24. Aviezer Ravitzky (1989 and 1990); Menachem Friedman (1990 and 1993); and Charles Liebman, 1995.

25. Yael Zerubavel (1995).

26. Yehuda Ben-Meir (1993).

References

Al-Haj, Majid. 1993. Strategies of Mobilization among the Arabs in Israel. In Keith Kyle and Joel Peters, eds., Whither Israel?, pp.14057. London: The Royal Institute for International Affairs with I.B. Tauris.

.1995. The Behavior of the Arabs in Israel in the 1992 Elections: Integration versus Segregation. In Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel 1992, pp.14160. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Aran, Gideon. 1990. Redemption as a Catastrophe: The Gospel of Gush Emunim. In Emmanuel Sivan and Menachem Friedman, eds.,

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Religious Radicalism & Politics in the Middle East, pp.15775. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Aronoff, Myron J. 1986. ed., The Frailty of Authority. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

. 1989. Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural Change and Political Conflict. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

. 1993a. Power and Ritual in the Israel Labor Party. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

. 1993b. The Origins of Israeli Political Culture. In Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond, eds., Israeli Democracy Under Stress, pp. 4763. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

. 1994. "Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion in Israel." A paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. New York, N.Y.

. 1995. Labor in the Second Rabin Era: The First Year of Leadership. In Robert O. Freedman, ed., Israel Under Rabin, pp. 12942. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Aronoff, Myron J., and Yael Aronoff. 1996. Explaining domestic influences on current Israeli foreign policy: The peace process. The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 3(2): 83101.

. and Yael Aronoff. 1997. Domestic Determinants of Israeli Foreign Policy: The Peace Process from the Declaration of Principles with the PLO to the Interim Agreement with the Palestinian Authority. In Robert O. Freedman, ed., The Middle East and the Peace Process, pp. 1134. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Aronoff, Myron J., and Pierre Atlas. 1997. The Peace Process and Competing Challenges to the Dominant Zionist Discourse. In Ilan Peleg, ed., The Middle East Peace Process, pp. 4160. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Ben-Meir, Yehuda. 1993. Civil-Military Relations in Israel. In Keith Kyle and Joel Peters, eds. Wither Israel?, pp.22334. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs with I.B. Tauris.

Ben-Rafael, Eliezer. 1989. The Changing Experience, Power and Prestige of Ethnic Groups in Israel: The Case of the Moroccans. In Peter Y. Medding, ed., Israel State and Society 19481988, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol.5, pp.3958. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brenner, Uri. 1978. Altalena (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Kibbutz Hameuchad.

Cohen, Mitchell. 1987. Zion & State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Cohen, Stuart A. 1995. "The Peace Process and Its Impact on the Development of a 'Slimmer and Smarter' IDF," Israel Affairs, 1(4): (reprinted as Security and Policy Studies No.24), pp. 121. Ramat Gan: The BESA Center for Strategic Studies Bar-Ilan University.

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Friedman, Menachem. 1990. Jewish Zealots: Conservative versus Innovative. In Emmanuel Sivan and Menachem Friedman, eds., Religious Radicalism &Politics in the Middle East, pp.12741.

. 1993. The Ultra-Orthodox and Israeli Society. In Keith Kyle and Joel Peters, eds., Whither Israel?, pp. 177201. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs with I.B. Tauris.

Greenberg, Joel. 1996. Reluctantly, Arab parties favor Peres, New York Times International, May 22, p. A6.

Haber, Eitan. 1979. Menachem Begin:The Man and the Legend. New York: Dell.

Hobbsbawm, Eric, and Terrence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Isaac, Rael Jean. 1981. Party Politics in Israel. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Liebman, Charles. 1990. The Jewish Religion and Contemporary Israeli Nationalism. In Emmanuel Sivan and Menachem Friedman, eds., Religious Radicalism & Politics in the Middle East, pp.7794. Albany: State University of New York Press.

. 1995. Paradigms Sometimes Fit: The Haredi Response to the Yom Kippur War. In Robert Wistrich and David Ohana, eds., The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory, and Trauma, pp. 17184. London: Frank Cass.

Liebman, Charles S. and Eliezer Don-Yehiya. 1983. Civil Religion in Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lustick, Ian S. 1988. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: Council on Foreign Affairs.

McPherson, James M. 1996. "When Memorial Day Was No Picnic," OPED, New York Times, May 26.

Morag-Talmon, Pnina. 1989. The Integration Processes of Eastern Jews in Israeli Society, 19481988. In Peter Y. Medding, ed., Israel State and Society 19481988, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 5, pp.2538. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nakdimon, Shlomo. 1978. Altalena (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Yediot Aharonot.

Pope, Juliet J. 1993. The Place of Women in Israeli Society. In Keith Kyle and Joel Peters, eds., Wither Israel?, pp. 20222. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs with I.B. Tauris.

Ravitzky, Aviezer. 1989. Exile in the Holy Land: The Dilemma of Haredi Jewry. In Peter Y. Medding, ed., Israel State and Society 19481988, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 5, pp. 89125. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

. 1990. Religious Radicalism and Political Messianism in Israel. In Emmanuel Sivan and Menachem Friedman, eds., Religious Radicalism & Politics in the Middle East, pp. 1137.

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Rekhess, Elie. 1991. The Arabs in Israel and the Intifad. In Robert O. Freedman, ed., The Intifada, pp. 34369. Miami: Florida International University Press.

. 1995. Israel's Arab Citizens and the Peace Process. In Robert O. Freedman, ed., Israel Under Rabin, pp. 189204. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Shammas, Anton. 1991. At Half-MastMyths, Symbols, and Rituals of the Emerging State: A Personal Testimony of an 'Israeli Arab.' In Laurence J. Silberstein, ed., New Perspectives in Israeli History: The Early Years of the State, pp.21624. New York: New York University Press.

Smooha, Sammy. 1989. The Arab Minority in Israel: Radicalization or Politicization? In Peter Y. Medding, ed., Israel State and Society, 19481988, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol.5, 5988. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

. 1993. Class, Ethnic, and National Cleavages and Democracy in Israel. In Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond, eds., Israeli Democracy Under Stress, pp. 30942. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Willis, Aaron. 1992. Redefining religious Zionism: Shas' ethno-politics. Israel Studies Bulletin 8(2): 38.

. 1995. Shasthe Sephardic Torah Guardians: Religious 'Movement' and Political Power. In Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel 1992, pp. 12139. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Zerubavel, Yael. 1995. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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PART II
CULTURAL SITES

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3
The Masada Mythical Narrative and the Israeli Army

Nachman Ben-Yehuda

Introduction

In this chapter we shall examine the Masada mythical narrative, as a heroic myth, and the Israeli army. This examination will be done within the general framework of the 1991 theoretical integration suggested for the field of collective memory by Barry Schwartz. ¹

The sociological field of collective memory has split into two competing analytical approaches.

The first approach is rooted in social constructionism. Basically, it states that the needs, concerns, and interests of the present are the prime factor in remembering the past. That is, the past is socially constructed in such a way as to fit the needs of the present. Halbwachs himself advocated this approach when he stated that

collective memory is essentially a reconstruction of the past, if it adapts the image of ancient facts to the beliefs and spiritual needs of the present, then a knowledge of the origin of these facts must be secondary, if not altogether useless, for the reality of the past is no longer in the past (1980:7).

Obviously, such a social construction requires deception and fabrication, because the past typically does not exactly fit the needs of the present and "corrections" of that past will always be called for. The past as a social construction by different groups in the present is, so it seems, the more dominant view in the field and is shared by quite a number of scholars.

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This approach means, as Schwartz (1991) argued, that there is a fundamental discontinuity between the past and the present. The reason this is so is that it implies that there is no "past." Accepting this approach is sort of like accepting Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire cat. The various groups in the "present" will construct different "pasts,'' which will appear and disappear as did that lovely Cheshire cat. Theoretically, this is not a very pleasant prospectaccurate perhaps, but not pleasant.

The second approach in the field is diametrically opposed to the first. It stipulates that it is the past that enables, indeed shapes, our understanding of the present. The emphasis here is on a stable and solid past, upon which the present depends. This past gives meaning, a sense of continuity and purpose to the present. The emphasis in this approach is on the continuity between the past and the present. There are a few scholars who support this view.

An awareness of the contradiction between these two approaches may be detected in Schwartz's earlier work, but not only there. Stanford W. Gregory and Jerry M. Lewis (1988) pointed out in their work that the erection of public memorials can be understood as a process of creating an "analogous linkage" between the past and the present. This process may indeed lie somewhere in between the two approaches. However, Gregory and Lewis do not explicitly recognize the two competing theoretical approaches and therefore their solution is not clear. In analyzing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz (1991) also locate their work in between these two approaches, emphasizing the needs of the present in the memorial, as well as the difficult past that this memorial stands for and symbolizes.

In his landmark 1991 paper, Schwartz sharpened and focused the contradiction between the two approaches in relation to the study of collective (historical) memory and suggested that they "can be seen as special cases of a broader generalization that relates both change and continuity in the perception of the past to immediate human experience" (p. 234). That is, he alerts researchers of collective memory to the possibility that these two theoretical approaches are not necessarily contradictory and that one may integrate them both into a coherent interpretation that emphasizes both continuity and discontinuity. For Schwartz, the collective historical memory always demonstrates continuity but also reveals new elements as the "past" is made to better fit contemporary needs, concerns, and linguistic habits.

One needs to add here that Schwartz's suggestion is perfectly consistent with the theoretical perspective of contextual constructionism. As both Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) and Best (1995) point out, there are two variants of the constructionist perspective. First, there is strict constructionism (e.g., see Best 1993), and second there is contextual constructionism. As

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Goode (1989: 328329) notes, the first variant argues that the expert, or scientific evaluation, of deviance as such simply represents one "claim making" activity out of many such activities. This view argues that scientific claims are also socially constructed, as are other claims, and can be studied as such. The second variant argues that while deviance and social problems are the results of "claim making" activities, the so-called "objective" dimension can be assessed and evaluated by an expert on the basis of some scientific evidence. Sociologists working from this theoretical perspective typically contrast the ''objective" and the "constructed" versions of reality. Contextual constructionism offers a solution for the problem focusing on the nature of reality. It cuts the defining parameters of reality at a particular point and hence provides the researcher with a powerful analytical docking anchor. Both the theoretical integration suggestion made by Schwartz and its empirical examination in this paper are viewed by the author as problems within contextual constructionism.

Specifically, examining the ways in which the Masada mythical narrative was presented in the Israeli army will provide us not only with a reinforcement of contextual constructionism but with a superb demonstration of how, in reality, Schwartz's theoretical integration is a valid one.

The choice of the Israeli army is not just a mere coincidence. In addition to its normal military roles and assignments, the Israeli army also acts as an important agent of socialization and education (see Lissak 1972; Azarya 1983). As such, the IDF has traditionally invested valuable resources into the symbolic education of its young soldiers. Thus, examining the role that the Masada mythical narrative played in the Israeli army is an important question in view of the educationally important role of the IDF.

To accomplish this goal we shall have, first, to acquaint ourselves with the nonmythical Masada accountthe one that appears in the writings of Josephus Flavius. For our purposes, this historical account will provide the "objective" part in the contextual constructionism equation. Then, we shall look at the mythical narrative (the other part of the contextual constructionism equation) and after that we shall be able to direct our attention to our main goal.

The Nonmythical Masada Account

For better or worse, the main source for the story of Masada is Josephus Flavius. What does Josephus tell us?

While the issue of the credibility of Josephus was not fully and satisfactorily resolved, more researchers seem to accept his credibility. There also seem to be two different schools regarding the reading and interpretation of Josephus. One school tends to infuse much interpretation into

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Josephus Flavius and read him very liberally. The other school emphasizes that one should read and interpret Josephus "as is," that is as close as possible to the text itself, without allowing much free interpretation.

What does Josephus say? ²

The Masada narrative is not a discrete, unrelated event. It must be understood within the relevant context otherwise it has no meaning.

Masada was part of a much larger Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire between the years 6673. That revolt ended in a disaster and a bitter defeat for the Jews. Masada was only the final defeat in the much larger suppression of that revolt.

Different ideological groups of Jews existed during the time of the revolt. Of those, four are singled out as important. It appears that the two most relevant groups are the Sicarii, and much more so the Zealots who apparently carried the main burden of the revolt. Josephus makes a clear distinction between these two groups. Throughout Josephus's books, the connection between the Zealots and the Sicarii is not always entirely clear, but when Josephus discusses Masada his use of the word sicarii to describe the Jewish rebels who were there is consistent.

The Masada fortress was taken over by force probably by the Sicarii (headed by Manahem) in 66 A.D., prior to the beginning of the revolt. In fact, this very act may have symbolized and marked the beginning of the Jewish Great Revolt.

The Sicarii in Jerusalem were involved in so much terrorist activity against Jews and others that they were forced to leave the city way before the Roman siege began there. They fled to Masada. There, under the leadership/command of Elazar Ben-Yair (a "tyrant" in Josephus' terminology) they remained (possibly with other non-Sicarii who may have joined them) until the bitter end when most of them agreed to kill one another.

While the Sicarii were in Masada, it is clear that they raided nearby villages. One of the "peaks" of these raids was the attack on Ein Gedi. According to Josephus, the Sicarii on Masada attacked Ein Gedi in the following ferocious manner:

they came down by night, without being discovered . . . and overran a small city called Engaddi:in which expedition they prevented those citizens that could have stopped them, before they could arm themselves and fight them. They also dispersed them, and cast them out of the city. As for such that could not run away, being women and children, they slew of them above seven hundred. (p. 537)

Afterwards, the Sicarii raiders carried all the food supplies from Ein Gedi to Masada.

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There are different versions of how long the siege of Masada lasted. Josephus does not discuss this issue. However, it is very obvious that the siege of Masada did not begin immediately following the destruction of Jerusalem. First, Herodium and Macherus were conquered, then Bassus died and was replaced in command by Flavius Silva. Silva had to gather his forces and only then launched the final attack on Masada. All these processes took time. Most researchers seem to accept that the siege and fall of Masada only took a few months. Probably from the winter of 7273 A.D. to the following spring. A matter of 46 (maybe 8) months. Moreover, this conclusion is supported by the recent attention paid to the fact that the massive siege ramp on the west side of Masada is based on a natural huge spur. If so, then the Roman army did not have to build the big siege ramp from the bottom of the mountain, but only had to add the actual ramp on top of that natural spur. This means that constructing the ramp took a significantly lesser effort than previously assumed by some. In fact, Roth's recent and meticulous work (1995) makes a very persuasive argument that the whole siege of Masada took 49 weeks, with 7 weeks the most probable length.

While in Josephus Flavius's description of the siege of Jerusalem he describes rather courageous raids made by the Jewish defenders of Jerusalem against the Romans, no such descriptions are available for the siege on Masada. This is a significant omission because after Jerusalem fell, the Roman army went on to conquer three other fortresses. One was Herodium, which fell rather quickly. The other was Macherus where the Jews also put up a courageous fight which included raids, against the Roman army. Moreover, Josephus had a clear "interest" to present the heroic fight put up by the Jews so as to demonstrate just how much more heroic was the Roman army that conquered them. His failure to mention any active fights or resistance (or raids) by Masada's defenders against the Romans is not insignificant. Thus, while the impression one typically gets is that there were battles that erupted around Jerusalem, fights and struggles, no such impression is projected about the Roman siege of Masada. In other words, there really was no "battle" around Masada.

We must remind ourselves at this point that there are plenty of historical examples of real, remarkable, and heroic "fighting to the last." For example: Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae (480 B.C.); the last stand at the Alamo (1836); the readiness of the American commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne to "fight to end" during the German counterattack in the Ardennes in 1944; the heroic stand of the U.S. Marines on Wake Island in 1941; the Jewish revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto, against all odds and analogus to the death of biblical Samson together with his enemies. Thus, even using a strictly Jewish

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analogy, when the Sicarii were faced with the choice, they selected suicide rather than the destiny of Samson.

What Josephus has to say about the suicide is that after the Romans entered Masada and discovered the dead bodies: "Nor could they [the Romans] do other than wonder at the courage of their [the Sicarii] resolution, and at the immovable contempt of death which so great a number of them had shown, when they went through with such an action as that was" (p. 603). The absolute resolution and courage of the Sicarii and their act of collective suicide in Masada raised, apparently, much respect and wonder among the Romans and in Josephus Flavius. Indeed, it should. But, the analytic jump from "respect" to "heroism" is not made by Josephus. It was socially constructed. Indeed, elsewhere Josephus describes the Sicarii killing one another as: ''Miserable men indeed they were!" (p. 603).

The unpleasant impression is that the Sicarii on Masada, so adept at raiding nearby villages, were not really good fighters and, in fact, avoided opportunities to fight.

Josephus points out, in particular, that Elazar Ben-Yair had to make two speeches in order to persuade the people to commit that suicide. He even "quotes" those speeches at length. The implication, obviously, is that the Jewish rebels on Masada were originally reluctant to commit themselves to collective suicide.

Josephus states that there were close to a thousand Sicarii on top of Masada. These people were not all warriors. There were women and children there and perhaps other noncombatants. How many actual fighters were there is unknown. Although Josephus Flavius does not state the specific size of the 10th Roman legion, which carried out the siege on Masada, it is safe to assume that it was probably composed of a minimum of 6,000 soldiers (the estimate found in the literature). The size could have possibly reached 10,000).

It is imperative to emphasize that there were seven survivors from the collective suicide. This is an important point because the details about that last night of the Sicarii on Masada were provided by one of the women survivors.

Thus, when we look at the main ingredients of Josephus Flavius's narrative about both the Great Revolt and Masada, a portrait of heroism in Masada is simply not provided. On the contrary, the narrative conveys the story of a doomed (and questionable) revolt, of a majestic failure and destruction of the Second Temple and of Jerusalem, of large-scale massacres of the Jews, of different factions of Jews fighting and killing each other, and of collective suicide (an act not viewed favorably by the Jewish faith) by a group of terrorists and assassins whose "fighting spirit" may have been questionable. Moreover, and specifically for Masada, the

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implication from Josephus is that it was not only the nature of the rebels there that was problematic but also their lack of a fighting spirit. Josephus implies that the 10th Roman legion came in and put a siege around Masada. That siege took only a few months (probably 28 months) and was not accompanied by any major fighting. When the Romans managed to enter the fortress they found seven survivors and the remains of the Jewish Sicarii (and perhaps some non-Sicarii) who had committed collective suicide. This act itself, clearly, instilled in both the Roman soldiers and Josephus a respect for those rebels.

From the Roman military perspective, the Masada campaign must have been an insignificant action following a major war in Judea. A sort of mop-up operation. Something the Roman army had to do but that did not involve anything too special in terms of military strategy or effort. Reading Josephus Flavius's narrative raises the immediate question of how could such a horrible and questionable story become such a positive symbol? After all, the heroism in the Masada narrative and in the context is not at all self-evident or understood.

How Do We Know What the Masada Mythical Narrative Is?

Now that we know what the historical account of Masada is, the next question is to what extent are Israelis familiar with this account? How close is their knowledge of Masada to the actual historical account? More important, how do we know what these Israelis (and others) know? To find out the answers to these questions, I decided to examine the different cultural manifestations of the account. In other words, the methodological question became focused on how cultures manufacture and transmit knowledge to their members. In the case of Masada, that question was not difficult to answer. I made an in-depth inquiry into almost every possible cultural facet that could have references to Masada, and I examined how the Masada account was described there (see Ben-Yehuda 1995). This examination was both historical and cross-sectional, and consisted of examining the publications (newsletters, books, pamphlets, newspapers) as well as interviews. The cultural elements that I checked were:

1. Youth movements. The major seven youth movements in Israel (secular and religious) were examined.

2. The use of Masada by the prestate Jewish underground movements in Palestine.

3. The ways that Masada was used in the Israeli army.

4. The way Masada is presented in textbooks for schools (elementary and high), as well as in reference texts and encyclopedias.

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5. The way Masada was presented in the printed daily media during the 196364 excavations of the site (religious and secular).

6. The way Masada is presented to tourists who visit the sitein printed manual tour guides; the numbers of visitors to Masada; the development of Masada as a site for tourists.

7. The way Masada is presented in various art forms: children's literature; adult fiction; poetry; theater; movies; pictures; sculptures; science fiction.

Examining all these areas gives us a very powerful cultural analysis as to the amount of consistency between the account given by Josephus Flavius and the nature of the presentation of Masada in the Jewish Israeli culture. Moreover, this cultural analysis also exposes the ways in which Masada was presented.

The Masada Mythical Narrative

It should come as no surprise to find out that the most obvious conclusion from the cultural analysis is that the way Masada is presented in the various cultural manifestations I examined is not at all consistent with the account provided by Josephus Flavius. As compared to Josephus, the Masada mythical narrative, no doubt, constitutes a significant deviation from the historical account.

Three main elements from Josephus's historical account are, more or less, kept in the mythical narrative. These are: (1) that Jewish rebels who took part in the Great Revolt against the Roman Empire found themselves at the end of the rebellion on Masada; (2) that the Roman imperial army launched a siege on the mountain in order to conquer the place and capture the rebels; and (3) that when the rebels realized that there was no more hope of either winning or holding out against the Roman army, they chose to kill themselves rather than surrender and become wretched slaves. These details can be found in nearly all forms of the mythical narrative, both written and oral. Viewed in this manner, it is indeed easy to be impressed with the heroism of the rebels on top of Masada.

Many other, no less important elements from the historical account are typically omitted altogether from the mythical account. Moreover, these omissions are frequently accompanied by factually unsubstantiated, imaginary (and sometimes quite creative, one must admit) "information." First, that the events at Masada were the final act in a failed and disastrous revolt against the Roman Empire. The wisdom of that revolt, and the questionable way in which it was organized and fought, are typically not

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examined. Generally added to this omission is the fabrication that the rebels on Masada arrived there after the destruction of Jerusalem. This is significant, since it implies that these "poor heroes," who fought so hard in Jerusalem, were barely able to escape the Roman army, but, having succeeded in doing so, then chose to continue the fight elsewhere. Almost completely ignored is the fact that the Sicarii on Masada were forced to leave the city by the other Jews in Jerusalem who had had enough of them and their leader, Menachem. The Sicarii were, in fact, forced to flee Jerusalem before the Roman army put a siege on the city. It was at this time that they found refuge on top of Masada.

Second, the true identity and nature of the "rebels" on Masada is not usually revealed. As we have seen, they were Sicarii, and what Josephus Flavius has to say about them is not exactly flattering. They were a group of thieves and assassins who killed and robbed other Jews. Very few accounts of the events mention them or their nature. The terms generally used to describe them, such as "defenders of Masada," ''fighters of Masada," and, most frequently, "Zealots," are deliberately deceptive. The last term, according to Josephus Flavius, is simply inaccurate.

Third, the raids carried out by the Sicarii at Masada on nearby Jewish (?) villages, and their massacre of the settlers at Ein Gedi (which testifies to their nature as brutal assassins and robbers, or terrorists) is almost universally ignored.

Fourth, the length of the Roman siege of Masada, most probably between 28 months, at least in accordance with Josephus Flavius, tends to be ignored. The siege is usually described vaguely as "long" or as having "taken years," or else as having lasted between one to three (more typical) years.

Fifth, the fact that no battles around Masada are described by Josephus Flavius is ignored, as well as the implied possibility that the Sicarii may have been less than enthusiastic about fighting the Roman army. On the other hand, many versions of the mythical narrative either imply or state explicitly that those on Masada during the siege fought the Roman 10th legion, carrying out raids on its troops, its war machines, and so on. Thus, a real battle is hinted at. However, this is pure fabrication, which archaeological excavations have failed to confirm (and even negated). It is probable that there may have been a fight in the last stage of the siege, when the Romans were actually in the process of breaching the wall; but there was no opposition from the besieged prior to this. Some creative writers have even suggested that Masada was the center of operations against the Romans. This is pure invention.

Sixth, attempts are made to "undo" the suicide either by using expressions that ignore the exact nature of the act, such as "died heroically," and

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"chose death over slavery," or by emphasizing that they killed each other and not themselves; that is, of course, except for the last person.

Seventh, the hesitation of the rebels to commit suicide and the fact that it took Elazar Ben-Yair two speeches in order to persuade them to do so is typically disregarded. Only one speech, if any, is usually mentioned. This, of course, is much more consistent with a tale of heroism; after all, heroes do not hesitate.

Eighth, Josephus Flavius's report of seven survivors is rarely mentioned, and it is often emphasized that all of those present on Masada committed suicide. Usually the whole matter is ignored, while at times, mention is made of "one survivor" (an "old lady"), or of "no survivors.'' Once again, this approach suits the heroic theme much better: heroes do not hide underground "cowering" in fear for their own survival.

Finally, the choices left open to the rebels on Masada are usually presented as having been limited to two: surrender or death (meaning suicide). Other possible (and glorious) alternatives, such as actually fighting to the end (as suggested by Josippon), or concentrating forces in one spot in an attempt to create a diversion that could allow for the escape of many, including the women and children, as suggested by Weiss-Rosmarin, are completely ignored; as is the possibility (albeit a less desirable one) of trying to negotiate with the Romans (in fact, such a negotiation did take place at Macherus).

Omission and addition are not the only methods used in the social construction of the mythical narrative. Emphasis has also played an important role. For example, most sources that disseminate the Masada myth present a picture of a small group of rebels against a huge Roman army. Sometimes, even figures are provided: 967 rebels against thousands (10,00015,000) of Roman soldiers. While these figures are most probably accurate, their very emphasis tends to reinforce an element that is one of the hallmarks of modern Israeli Jewish identitythe struggle of "the few against the many."

If I want to synthesize and reconstruct the Masada mythical narrative, with its preservation of true facts, its omissions and its additions, into an ideal type it might look something like this:

After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the remaining Zealots escaped to Masada. The Romans put a siege on Masada. The Zealots valiantly fought and raided the Roman positions over a period of three years. However, when they realized that there was no longer any hope to win and that the choice was either death or wretched slavery, they all chose to kill themselves.

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Thus, by preserving some elements, by ignoringin a systematic fashionthe more problematic aspects, and by adding liberal interpretations and fabrications, the heroic Masada mythical narrative was formed.

The combined effect of the previously mentioned omissions, additions, and selective emphasizing is the creation of a heroic tale. Moreover, this heroic tale was typically told on the site itself, in the presence of the ancient ruins and as part of a swearing-in ceremony (in the army); preceded by a long and arduous trek in the Judean desert, or some other educational activity. This method of combining the experiential part of an actual visit to Masada together with a logically constructed heroic tale, helped create the suspension of disbelief and the transmission of the Masada mythical narrative.

Masada and the Israeli Army (IDF) ³

That hundreds of thousands of soldiers from different units of the IDF have trekked to, and climbed up, Masada is a fact. Over the years, the overwhelming majority of soldiers have gone to Masada as part of their training, on treks designed to acquaint them with the geography and symbolic history of Eretz Israel. However, for soldiers from the Israeli armored units Masada has had a special meaning. On a more or less regular basis, until around 1991, these units climbed to Masada after completion of their basic training, in order to swear allegiance to the State of Israel and to the IDF. This is remembered as a most dramatic and memorable ceremony.

Some of the initial questions that need to be asked here are when did these military pilgrimages to Masada begin and what was the nature of the decision-making process that led to their establishment?

When Did the IDF Begin the Pilgrimage to Masada?

While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when these pilgrimages began, it is clear that from the early 1950s units from the IDF's armored units were climbing Masada. The first testimony is that of Yitzhak Ben-Ari,⁴ who has stated that the first military climbs to Masada were made by reconnaissance (scouts) company 135, in 1950 and/or 1953. These units were commanded by Ze'ev Eshkolot and Shmuel Lalkin. Lalkin⁵ confirmed that indeed his unit tried to climb Masada in 1953 but failed because of inaccurate navigation and fatigue. Yitzhak Arad ("Tolka")⁶ already received command of battalion no. 9 (which was part of brigade no. 7; the only armored brigade at that time in the IDF) in 1953, on top of Masada. According to Arad, battalion no. 9 was a unit that joined the IDF directly from the Palmach.

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Moshe Bar Kochva ("Bril") ⁷ climbed Masada in 1953 as a company commander. The first recorded ceremonies of armored units on Masada took place on September 14, December 10, and December 20 of 1956.⁸ From that time on, on a more or less regular basis, new recruits to the IDF armored units were sworn-in on top of Masada.

The Decision-Making Process

The question remains as to how the decision was made. Again, this is not an easy question to answer. What is very clear is that the decision to utilize Masada as a site for swearing in recruits was not the result of an organized process. No background discussions were held or position papers developed, followed by a weighed decision. What appears to have happened is that so many of the new commanders of the IDF, having come from the Palmach (and some from Etzel and Lehi), carried with them the legacy of the Masada mythical narrative with which they had been socialized. It must have been very natural for them to think of Masada, "the Zealots last stand" (in Yadin's much later terminology), as the appropriate site for a swearing-in ceremony. In light of the mythical narrative, they could not have been more correct. The selection of Masada was not only symbolic of the fact that "we are here again," stresses the continuity of the Jewish nation, but also as an act of almost megalomaniac historical challenge and colossal defiance: "indeed, we were NOT beaten.'' The ceremonies represented a message to Flavius Silva (commander of the Roman 10th legion) saying that "you did not win."

So, the decision to use Masada was simply the result of a grassroots demand from many different agents who were absolutely convinced of the truth of the myth. This conclusion is supported by most of the interviews that we conducted. Shaul Bevar⁹ was a key figure in the process according to almost all the interviewees. He maintains that he was the entrepreneur and the one who came up with the idea of a swearing in on top of Masada. Bevar stated that it would be impossible to find much documentation for this fact because most of the persuasion was accomplished verbally and that he had to carve his own role in this affair. Along with him, Avraham Adan ("Bren"),¹⁰ Moshe Bar-Kochva, and Herzel Shaffir¹¹ were all mentioned as officers under whose command soldiers began to be sworn in on Masada. However, while they all agree that during their command soldiers were indeed sworn in on top of Masada, they also maintained that when they assumed command that ceremony was already considered a "tradition." David Elazar ("Dado"), then commander of the armored units, clearly supported the custom.¹² In fact, Rechavam Ze'evi ("Ghandi") maintains that Elazar was searching for a place for the swearing-in

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ceremonies of his units and he, Ze'evi, suggested Masada. Togetheraccording to Ze'evithey decided on Masada. Arad also maintains that he came up with the idea of turning Masada into a location for the swearing in of recruits.

When we checked with the relevant figures, they all pointed out that the use of Masada was not a new idea. Ya'acov Heichal, Arad, Ze'evi, and Yehoshua Levinson all claim that they had already climbed to Masada with the Palmach. Ben-Ari stated that the idea of trekking to Masada was "natural." Moshe Nativ maintained that Masada was an important value in the Palmach and IDF treks there were a continuation of the tradition. He added that: "the majority of the commanders of the IDF's armored units were from the Palmach, and for them it was a natural continuation." Bar-Kochva confirmed this and added that Masada had something more to itit ignited the imagination. He himself came from Etzel and told us that Masada was cherished there too.

In the cognitive map of these commanders it was only natural to continue the prestate underground tradition of admiration for Masada. Thus, there was no "need" for organized preparations. Whoever suggested Masada as a swearing-in site did not encounter major or significant opposition, if any at all. However, this ideological connection was not the only reason.

A number of the interviewees did point out some geographical, physical considerations. Bar-Kochva and Shaffir claimed that the IDF's armored units were training in the south and it was convenient to use the area for swearing-in ceremonies. Rabbi Shlomo Goren added that until 1967 the Western Wall was not in Jewish hands and there was no other historical holy site that could express the heroism of Israel. "The only place was Masada. So, they chose Masada." Ze'evi added that: "They searched for a location which would combine both a national symbol and a site of Jewish heroism, and that an effort would be required in order to reach it."

Some interviewees pointed to what may be considered social and moral reasons. Heichal summarized this most succinctly:

After 1956 . . . the armored units were in a momentum of development. We began to look for subjects that "would boost the soldiers' morale." The armored units were based at the time in other units which had their own traditional sites for swearing-in, and we looked for a location that would unite everyone, and which was not connected to Palmach/Givati . . . When we took the soldiers for [some very difficult] training we searched for something that would give them the strength to continue. Then they [the soldiers] said: 'Masada!! Heroes! etc.' It was like a light projector, a flag [that everyone can see and identify with]

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Additional reasons have been given for the specific choice of Masada. Many of these reflect Rabbi Goren's earlier comment. "There is here [in Masada] a sign of heroism, of standing, of endless devotion" (Shaffir). Nativ adds:

[Masada] was accepted by the commanders because it symbolized that the connection was not severed, that new fighters came and the connection with the fighters [of that period] was not severed.

Ze'evi continues:

this was an heroic chapter in the history of our people, relatively covered by written documents . . . It was located in an unknown area. [People] want to travel to the mysterious, the unknown, the virgin

In Ben-Ari's words:

it was a place full of splendor, glory and majesty.

and according to Bar-Kochva:

We all knew the place as the national site. Masada as an educational symbol, for reinforcement of the spirit, pride and the connection to the homeland.

These comments indicate that for all the interviewees the construction of Masada as a heroic narrative was deeply internalized. It was accepted as such uncritically. The process by which this came into being is also of interest to us.

The Masada Socialization Process

We have seen earlier that many of the key commanders were already socialized into the Masada myth before they joined the IDF. How do they recall this process? Listen to them tell it in their own words:

"I first climbed Masada as an apprentice in Hashomer Hatzair every Passover vacation during 1941/2 . . ." (Avraham Adan). "These things accompanied us from the Etzel-education about the heritage of our fathers, wars that took place, Maccabees, Bar-Kochva, Masada" (Moshe Bar-Kochva). ''The legend of Masada was prevalent in Mahanot Haolim as far back as I can remember. It was a desire, a goal. In addition, at school, a teacher named Dr. Nathan Shalem, a man of the desert, a member of the Jerusalemite 'walkers association,' Breslawski's booklet about Masada and

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of course Flavius and Lamdan's poem [influenced us regarding Masada] and all the rest is oral Torah . . ." (Rechavam Ze'evi). "In the framework of Aliyat Hanoar [an organization for youth] in 1947, I climbed to Masada for the first time. We studied Ben-Yair's speech in school during history classes" (Moshe Nativ). "I was already educated about the Masada story in the Diaspora, in 'Tarbut' school in Lita (Vilna). During the Holocaust I was a partisan . . . and deep inside I had sentiments to this historical . . . Masada . . . I knew it as a narrative of Jewish heroism against the Romans. The suicide, the famous speech of the commander of Masada. This at the ripe age of 1011 in which the Jewish and personal consciousness [and identity] is crystallizing." (Yitzhak Arad). "I knew the subject from the Palmach. When I was in Beit Ha'arava [a Jewish settlement near the Dead Sea) I climbed to Masada a few times . . . this was a part of the stories we learned in the military course we took in order to become platoon commanders. The brave stand of women, children and men and how they killed each other so as not to surrender to the Romans. It was also touched on in the military courses officers took to become battalion commanders (Shmuel Lalkin). "Shmaria [Guttman] and Mahanot Haolim brought this to the youth. It was the fruit of their creation . . . So, the first Madrich [=guide] told of Masada during a Madrichim's seminar, and that is how it was passed on, and no one investigated the subject." (Shaul Bevar). Bevar, as can be recalled, was a key moral entrepreneur in the establishment of the Masada narrative and site as a backdrop for the swearing-in ceremonies of new recruits. In his interview, he summarized some of the elements which combined to make Masada an attractive site for Israel's armored units: ''It was important to have a challenge, and the site had to have an historic meaning. In the eyes of the Palmach's members, the most natural thing was that this challenge and historical meaning will be suggested on top of Masada. There were many Palmach members in the armored units. Everyone you said 'Masada' to remembered a ceremony from his days in the youth movement; the guy with the flute and Lamdan's poem . . . Personal experiences are immediately brought to memory . . . Masada is the real thing (as opposed to Latrun). In Masada you walk in history!!." Moreover, these personal memories were positive and plugged the officers into an experience they were familiar and comfortable with.

A very atypical opinion was voiced by Avraham Adan: "I was not involved in the subject with enthusiasm. I could not find a connection between Masada and the armored units and therefore, this whole affair did not appeal to me too much. But, I found it as such and it received a momentum from others."

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Commanders' Perception of How Soldiers Experienced Masada

Another topic that came up consistently in the interviews was how the commanders viewed Masada vis-à-vis the soldiers who were the real object of the ceremonies:

"During 195354 most soldiers were new immigrants, and climbing Masada had an influence on them" (Moshe Nativ). "The new recruits were Sefardic new immigrants, and we saw in this [climbing Masada] an important educational activity" (Shmuel Lalkin). ''We must remember that, in the past, not every soldier had beenbefore being recruitedto Masada. So, the very experience was primordial" (Amnon Reshef). ¹³ "The new recruits were 'the people of Israel' who except for hanging out in the neighborhood never went anywhere else. And [the Masada ceremony] made them very excited" (Shaul Bevar). "Most of the new recruits were new immigrants. They hardly knew Hebrew. There were holocaust survivors and people from North Africa. Some of the treks were made within an educational framework, part of learning to know and love the land. We included everything together. For them it was also the first time they saw the place and heard the story. [We wanted] to connect them to Jewish history through the treks" (Yitzhak Arad).

Hence, the conclusion is obvious. The trek to Masada, the climb and the ceremony there were also meant to acquaint a new generation of young and ignorant, Jewish immigrants with Israel, with what was viewed as a major ingredient of the newly emerging Jewish Israeli identity and its connection to the past. Once this was accomplished, the construction of Masada as a fundamental, and widely accepted, myth was complete.

The Structure and Content of Ceremonies on Masada

Most of the ceremonies on Masada were quite standard, with a certain degree of improvisation given to the discretion of the commanders in charge. This standardization was not very strong in the 1950s, but as time passed the ceremonies became more and more routinized. Eventually, there was a file in which all of the particulars and required logistics were detailed.¹⁴ These included:

1. The trek to Masada and the climb up the mountain.

2. A parade in special formation on the mountain and, later arrangement in a specific standing formation.

3. Loud reading of Elazar Ben-Yair's "speech." This "speech" was obviously edited from the two original speeches. Sometimes additional selected passages from Josephus Flavius were also read.

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4. Fire inscriptions (typically stating: "Masada Shall Not Fall Again").

5. Swearing in.

6. A speech by the commander of the armored units, usually followed by a speech by a chief military rabbi (Rabbi Goren carried out this function in many ceremonies).

7. Receipt of personal arms (usually an automatic weapon).

Sometimes, additional passages were read from various sources (e.g., from Lamdan's poetry) and occasionally some entertainment was provided after the ceremony (typically, singing). Often, the families of the soldiers (and other guests) were invited to the ceremony (the army typically provided transportation). It is clear that some age cohorts of soldiers prepared special dramatic plays for the event. On a few occasions, the soldiers remained overnight on top of Masada and woke up early in the morning to watch the spectacular sunrise over the foggy and massive mountains in the east. Sometimes, the commander of the armored units was, with the necessary dramatics, flown in by helicopter. On more than one occasion the soldiers spent additional time on and around Masada, divided into small groups, and received instruction on the Great Revolt and on Masada itself. Our interviewees pointed out that most of the ceremony was copied from similar ceremonies that they, and other commanders, had participated in when they climbed Masada as members of the youth movements (e.g., interview with Shaul Bevar).

The Masada Narrative as Perceived by the Commanders

How did the commanders themselves perceive the Masada narrative? With most of our interviewees the emphasis was placed on those elements of unification in the narrative, aspects that were conducive to the crystallization of the armored units. It almost seemed as though they consciously chose to repress and ignore the more problematic aspects (Ein Gedi; the role of the Sicarii, the failure of the revolt, etc.). The suicide was a very sour topic; something they all felt had to be "explained." When we raised these issues, most interviewees tended to dismiss them as unimportant. However, this dismissal, which was common to most of them, was based upon the false impression that they really knew the details of the narrative. Upon further questioning, it turned out that most of them did not actually repress or ignore these problematic aspects but that they were simply not aware of them. In other words, these commanders had themselves been exposed to the myth and not to the full story as given by Josephus Flavius. Thus, despite their claim that they had "read" Josephus Flavius, they

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really had not. Hence, the gaps in their version were filled with unsubstantiated assumptions and inappropriate and inaccurate elements. This, I must add, did not appear to be a deliberate lie, but rather stemmed from simple ignorance. In the very few cases where some of the real unpleasant elements were known, they were dismissed as either unimportant or as damaging. Let me give a few examples by some commanders whose names became legends for courage, determination, and strength:

Rechavam Ze'evi: "The Judean desert was utilizedall throughout historyas a refuge for resisters to the regime. Not only the Sicarii. I do not remember if we knew that the Sicarii were [there] or not. I assumed that this was not an important fact, because we did not look for the divisive, the lunatic and the crazy, but rather for the uniting elements and for the symbol of the final stand on the wall." Ya'acov Heichal: "In Masada there were some fighters and some people who lived in the neighborhood. Groups that decided to fight. I do not remember if some of the Sicarii were there." Rabbi Shlomo Goren: "The Sicarii were also Zealots. They were the remnants of the Great Revolt who found refuge in Masada, and fought till they realized that they could not win, and therefore I justify their story . . . When we talk about Masada we must understand about which period we talk. Masada was built by Herod as a fortress for himself . . . Everything he [Josephus Flavius] tells was in the period of the big revolts, in the period of the Temple . . . I do not contradict what he says. After that [after the destruction of the Temple] Masada was used by groups which were quarreling with other groups, such as those that were in an inferior military situation. This is not the Masada about which we speak . . . But Masada to where they escaped three years after the destruction and continued to fight there three years after the destruction [of the second Temple]. The thing that 960 people did there (that they all committed suicide) never happened again in history!!! It is not the place that matters. It is the events that took place there three years after the destruction that counts." Moshe Bar-Kochva: ''The question is what is more important. There is no perfection. Exactly who these people were [on top of Masada]it is not important! Were they Jewish?That is what is important! Of course it is possible to find things that would show that not everything was in order. But overall there are struggles for this land. And, when we look at this struggle, it becomes a potentiating charge that reinforces our struggle today. A heritage and tradition that we can rely on. The experience is so strong that even if other things will be found (archaeological, historical, etc.) it will not change it." Yitzhak Ben-Ari: "The Sicarii were Zealots. I got it from Shmaria Guttman . . . We did not read Josephus Flavius in the original. We received translations in booklets distributed by the [HQ of the army's] chief education officer. We did not ourselves delve into history.

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There [in the booklets] were quotations from Josephus Flavius. There was a special booklet for Masada." Herzel Shaffir: "I did not myself delve into it. What a people does from time to time is to take those things which are convenient for them, and changes them to suit their needs. From time to time, when you are removed from history things are received, emphasized and processed. Like in the case of Bar-Kochva and Rabbi Akiva. And the ultra orthodox Jews ignored it. It is placed in the headlines and this is the way things are done. This is not an historical process which can be followed." Avraham Adan: "We only knew the part of the myth about 'liberty or death'. This is the myth that was transferred along in the armored units." Yitzhak Arad: "Meirke Pail already tried to destroy this myth. As a leader and as an army man. It is not important at all if this myth is true or not. As long as it helps to activate the people and its light can be used for educational purposes . . . We are all selective, as a people and as individuals. We remember what was done to us. Myths are myths. It is good that there are myths. But, it is not good ¹⁵ for a people to live only on myth." Shaul Bevar: "We accepted things as they were. Like 'it is good to die for one's country.' This was an oral Torah. I am telling you these stories so that you can understand how [they] could catch us so easily in our naivete and build us myths . . . Today [they] are moving in the totally opposite direction. Trumpeldor was a pimp. Ben-Gurion a pick-pocket. Everyone corrupt [laughing]. But then, [they] accepted things as they were . . . This was a naive and romantic period and part of it was this business of Masada.''

The "Battle" of Masada

As officers in the IDF, it is interesting to look at the responses of our interviewees to the question of the "battle" on (or around) Masada. Interestingly enough, and as perhaps one may have expected, they all were convinced that there was a battle there.

"Of course there was a battle! Catapult stones, wood and siege. Of course there was . . . Of course there was! . . . The concept of the battle is a little foggy, but of course there was a defensive battle" (Herzl Shaffir). "Not the element of suicide, but the war to the end. Non-surrender. These are the concepts which I thought had to be instilled through Masada" (Yitzhak Arad). "[They] fought till they realized that they could not win" (Rabbi Shlomo Goren). "The battle . . . the siege . . . lasted for a long period. When they saw that they could not hold out any longer they decided to commit suicide" (Ya'acov Heichal). "The Romans put a siege around Masada for three years. And it was a difficult effort. They were also hit by the Jews! It angered them that there were 960 Jews sitting up there and they [the Romans] had to sit there in the heat and with rationed water" (Rechavam

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Ze'evi). "Because the Zealots who arrived there saidhere we shall fight to our last drop of blood" (Shaul Bevar).

The Suicide

The suicide theme is a difficult matter, handled by each one of the officers in his own way.

"We did not deal with the suicide issue. In the armored units we said: 'wait a minute! Should we educate people to commit suicide?' So, we found an explanation for it: that we now have a state. We shall never again reach a situation like that in Masada" (Shaul Bevar). According to Amnon Reshef, the chief of staff at that time (Rafael Eitan ["Raful"]) objected stating that Masada symbolized something negative, not heroic. ¹⁶ Reshef, however, chose to continue the tradition he found when he was appointed as commander of the armored units. He felt that even the chief of staff had no right to alter tradition.

One of the more interesting statements here was made by Yitzhak Ben-Ari, one of the most famous tank-units commanders in the Israeli army:¹⁷

Don't forget that there was a Holocaust. And we wanted to make sure that "Masada shall not return," that we should not reach a situation of Masada. We are here in a place where people committed suicide, took their lives, (they drew a lottery with ostraca with numbers on it, or names . . . I don't remember) and it was clear to people that we have returned to [our] homeland and that this is the role of each fighter in the I.D.F. to help this idea into being, that we shall not have to fortify ourselves again on Masada . . . We did not delve into [the suicide], it was a form of heroics which we did not touch on.

This terrible question of losing the kingdom but keeping the Jewish spirit, [such as] going down to Yavneh, and the possibility that the sovereignty and the [political] framework would remain in the hands of the enemy and that we would maintain the spirit of Judaism; We did not talk about this philosophy. This philosophy was not 'in' . . . When we studied history in the Gymnasia we talked about this but here [in the I.D.F.] we did not raise this issue at all.

If you take [for example] Y. Harkabi, and what he writes, then you see that this problem exists.¹⁸ We must know what the limit of our power is. Just a minute, this exists even today. Our nationalists are leading us to Masada, in the sense that "all the

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world is against us," we shall fight and if we have a nuclear bomb we shall use it! And what will remain for us? Nothing . . . So, [the Masada myth] gave us the power to cope. But we have to know what the limit of our power is, even if we have a nuclear [bomb] that does not mean we have to use it . . . [Use of a nuclear bomb] is a terrible thing for the State of Israel, for the environment; this is the way the State of Israel will be destroyed, and we only have one [state] . . . Our nationalists don't understand the limits of power.

In Masada they could not apply 'let me die with my enemy' ¹⁹ because the Romans had the superiority in numbers. This legacy [of Masada] also tells uswe do not want to lose [our] independence, but we may lose the state.

There are two interesting things about this particular interview: first, the association of Masada with contemporary Israel; and second, the obvious mistake in the analogy to the story of Samson. In the biblical narrative, Samson's enemies did have a numerical advantage, which was the very reason for his "let me die with my enemies" strategy. Yadin, as we shall see later, made the same mistaken analogy.

Readiness to commit suicide . . . A community of 1,800how many were there? . . . that were ready to commit suicide and not become slaves. When, as young adults, we participated in renewal Zionist youth movements, Masada was a symbol for the love of freedom . . . [The suicide] did not bother us at all! It seemed natural to us. We knew what the fate of prisoners in the Roman army was: Some were sold as slaves, some were sent to the arenas to fight lions. When you correctly read Elazar's speech, [you see how] it would have persuaded you too" (Rechavam Ze'evi). "You create an identification with them as fighters who made the decision to commit suicide so that they would not fall into the enemy's hands alive . . . to fight to the end, to show the enemy that he will not succeed" (Ya'acov Heichal).

Rabbi Goren, who was the chief military Rabbi for the IDF, added:

I had then lots of business with the armored units, lots of problems. He ("Dado") saw the acts of the heroes of Masada as symbolic of Judaism. I told him: 'NO!' We need to present in front of us symbols of victories and life and not of death. This is not our symbol, that they committed suicide.

I appeared there [during the ceremonies on top of Masada] and made a speech directly after him and said the exact opposite

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of what he had said. That for us Masada is a symbol of failure. The Hasmoneans are for us a symbol of the heroism of Israel and not Masada. ²⁰ [The Hasmoneans] fought with inferior forces and nevertheless won.

In the article which I wrote about the subject . . . I justify their (the people of Masada) acts (at that time the Christians in England attacked me on this issue) . . . and I prove that they had to act in the way they did according to Jewish Halacha . . . so that they would not fall into the hands of their enemies . . .

Under the conditions they did the right thing. And this was an act of heroism, and only one woman remained there. But I objected that this will symbolize the heroism of Israel. This was good for the Diaspora. Not after the creation of the State of Israel. Here we have to take as an example the heroism of the Hasmoneans. Kiddush Hashem²¹ must be achieved by life not by death. The season of Kiddush Hashem by death is finished!

One simply can not fail to notice the complicated position taken by Rabbi Gorenjustifying and yet distancing himself from the Masada mythand the wrong "information" about "one surviving woman." Goren's position is interesting because of the key important position he held in the IDF and the extended length of time he held that position. In 1985, in fact, Goren has already made a very strong statement along the lines of his arguments.

Moshe Dayan, one of Israel's most famous military man and politician, as well as a colleague of Goren, wrote in 1983 (p. 21) that:

Today, we can point only to the fact that Masada has become a symbol of heroism and of liberty for the Jewish people to whom it says: Fight to death rather than surrender; Prefer death to bondage and loss of freedom.

Moreover, in that particular source Dayan discusses Masada in the context of his view about Jewish history. Understanding Dayan's conceptualization of Jewish history in this context makes it very easy to grasp his interest in Masada and a heroic death. He states there, on the very same page, that Jews being massacred is a historically common phenomenon and claims that killing Jews from the days of the Great Revolt was a pattern "in one country after the another, the Jews have met a similar fate."

This is the proper place to state what must become obvious now and that is that Moshe Dayan was also a true believer in the Masada mythical narrative (e.g., see Shashar 1983 and Inbal 1991). Moreover, Moshe Dayan

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edited a 1983 book on Masada. (In fact, it was the last book he edited. The lavishly illustrated book was published a few months after his death.) He told Georges Israel, one of the publishers of that book, that: "Eleazar BenYair lives on in our hearts and in our actions, and I am ready to write a text which through the story of Masada will serve as a message for the generations to come" (Dayan 1983: 47). The chapter Dayan wrote for that book (pp. 1422) is titled: "The victory of the vanquished," which is really an oxymoron. In it, Dayan makes a revealing and yet ridiculously inaccurate comparison: "A thousand years earlier than Eleazar ben Yair, King Saul led Israel. Like the defenders of Masada, when defeat faced him in war, he chose to fall on his sword rather than fall into the hands of his enemy'' (1983: 22). It is interesting that Rabbi Goren makes the same strange comparison (1983). ²² In the very same chapter, Dayan draws another direct (and just as inaccurate and aggravating) comparative line between Masada and the Holocaust (p. 21).

Interesting to note Shargel's 1979 observation. She points out that: "by the middle of the 1970s, Masada had become, for many, a symbol of what Israel did not want to become." Her point is that during the 1970s the realization in Israel was that the nation must distance itself from the "Masada complex." Shargel adds that both Yadin and Dayan made that point explicitly. Both indicated that Israel should avoid the desperate choice faced by the rebels of Masada and that, contrary to the suicide on Masada, Israelis shouldand willcontinue to fight in order to live and survive, not to die (Shargel 1979: 370).

This is, perhaps, the proper place to point out that another very famous Israeli military man, archaeologist, and politician Yigael Yadin (e.g., see Silberman 1993) was a firm and an enthusiastic supporter of the Masada mythical narrative (e.g., see his 1966 book and Ben-Yehuda 1995).

If the suicide issue, a very central element in the Masada narrative, is so problematic, what then was the major message that the commanders wanted their soldiers to receive? Various answers were given in the interviews but they all converged on a number of values: "The love of one's country, appreciation of independence . . . being ready to sacrifice one's life" (Moshe Bar-Kochva). "We wanted to make sure that 'Masada shall not return,' that we shall not reach a situation of Masada . . . That we have returned to [our] homeland and that it is the role of each fighter in the I.D.F. to help this idea into being, that we shall not have to fortify ourselves again on Masada . . . This was a way of tying the twentieth century man to his roots in a form which emphasizes content, emotion and historical truth" (Yitzhak Ben-Ari). "The hard trek, the will of people to fight for their freedom" (Shaul Bevar). "When, as young adults, we were in revitalizing Zionist youth movements, this was a symbol of the love for freedom . . . People

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did not walk to Masada. People climbed Masada" (Rechavam Ze'evi). "Not the element of suicide but rather the war to the end. Non-surrender. These are concepts which I thought had to be provided through Masada . . . To tie them (the new recruits) to Jewish history, through the treks" (Yitzhak Arad).

Hence, the commanders wanted to use Masada as a vehicle by which to instill what they felt were important values in their new recruits: a willingness to fight to the end, nonsurrender, a renewed link to the past, an identification with ancient Jewish warriors, a love for freedom, a readiness to sacrifice.

Cessation of the Swearing-in Ceremonies on Masada

A final topic of interest here concerns the cessation of the armored units' involvement with Masada. Again, a number of factors combined here, leading to this outcome. To begin with, after the June 1967 Six Days War two consecutive age cohorts of new recruits were sworn in at the Western Wall and then, later on, recruits began to be sworn in at Latrun. ²³ The Latrun site has gradually become the chosen site for commemoration of the armored units. It is now the location where the swearing in of these units takes place, and an impressive museum of armored vehicles is found there. The reasons for this change are interesting.

"The basic consideration was that there had to be a place for commemoration of the armored units which was not connected to the heroism of others" (Amnon Reshe). Moshe Bar-Kochva stated that Masada was taken away from the armored units because it had become a national site. He added that until 1956 the armored units had very few heroic stories of their own, a state of affairs that changed later on. In fact, the 1948 battle of Latrun ended with an Israeli defeat, so there were arguments whether or not it was an appropriate site"nothing to be too proud about" (BarKochva). However, for a number of reasons it was finally chosen as the site of the armored units. First, after 1967, many new, exciting sites became accessible to Israelis, one of which was Latrun. As the age cohorts of soldiers entering the armored units became larger and larger, the logistics of maintaining the ceremony on Masada became prohibitively expensive and impractical. Second, there was no way the armored units could get permission to build a museum and a commemoration site on Masada. Both Rechavam Ze'evi and Shaul Bevar expressed dissatisfaction with the move. Ze'evi believes that the ceremonies were removed from Masada because ''Today we educate people with less values . . . And Masada is a value." Bevar feels that Latrun is not an appropriate place and that "Masadathat is the real thing! They moved for technical reasons. It is impossible to compare the excitement."

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In contradistinction, Tamary (1984; quoted by Blaushild 1985:26, 77, 123), a high-ranking military officer, argued that Israelis should not socialize anyone in the light of Masada, because swearing in new recruits in the spirit of a collective suicide is not such a good idea. Tamary attributed the exaltation of Masada to the search for a new identityone that rejected the near past, but glorified the distant one. In his view, this was redundant because Israelis should look for more positive identifications.

The most important figure in the decision to move was Yossi BenHanan, who was the commander of the armored units at the time. ²⁴ As a young officer, Ben-Hanan had climbed Masada a number of times. He admits that the ceremony there was very impressive. However, "[w]hen I became commander of the armored units in the summer of 1986 the reality was different. The main base for new recruits was moved far south. At that time, some swearing-in ceremonies were held on the base itself. Masada was no longer the site for all the swearing-ins . . . Logistically, the swearing-in on Masada became a very difficult procedure . . . I wanted to renew the tradition, but at that time I also became involved in the creation of the voluntary association of the armored units.²⁵We began to think of erecting a large memorial site in Latrun. It became clear very quickly that we could not collect money for a commemoration site in Latrun and continue with the swearing-ins on Masada." So, Ben-Hanan was effective in persuading all the relevant past and present commanders to agree to move everything to Latrun.

The ceremony in Latrun retains no hint of Masada. According to BenHanan, the arguments concerning the Masada myth had absolutely nothing to do with the transfer of the ceremonies. The considerations were mostly technical. In fact, in a sizable article, in the Ma'ariv supplement of May 3, 1987 (#89:21, 32), it is reported that the armored units will move the swearin ceremonies from Masada to Latrun. The article confirms most of what has been written here, emphasizing that true heroism and sacrifice of Israeli soldiers from armored units took place in Latrun. The report states that this change of sites was not without problems and was accompanied by arguments and debates.

Gadna

Another military branch that had an involvement with Masada was the GadnaGdudei Noar (=battalions of youth).²⁶ In 1949, the Gadna had declared the adoption of Hanukkah as their holiday.²⁷ On that particular occasion, the commander of the Gadna at the time, Moshe Gilboa, wrote an article titled, "In Those DaysAt This Time" in which he compared the heroism of the Maccabees (that is, of Hanukkah) to the heroism of the

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Israeli army. He even called the Maccabees the "ancient" Israeli army. And, in a paper justifying why the Gadna had adopted Hanukkah as its holiday, in which he compares the Israeli army to the Maccabees, he ends with, lo and behold, the sentences: "Masada shall not fall again, the State of Israel will actualize the vision of its prophets and builders." It is interesting to note that years later, Yigael Yadin gave the Hebrew version of his most important book about Masada exactly the same title: "MASADA. In Those DaysAt This Time."

As part of the Gadna youth training in 1950, a famous trek to Masada took place. It became known as "The Trek of the Thousand." ²⁸ One thousand adolescents climbed to Masada after a long and hard trek by foot.²⁹ The Masada mythical narrative was emphasized by the Gadna in its various socialization programs. There were a number of reasons for this as explained by Elchanan Oren:

We had an interest to prove that the Gadna could be a base for a national youth movement . . . The motive of ancient heroism was there . . . At the time we did not know about the Sicarii . . . Those who made a myth of Masada were not aware of the details of the Masada narrative . . . I do not accept the differences between the Sicarii and the Zealots . . . The important thing was that we came to this land . . . and we will fight for each necessary place, and so it was in the [1948] Independence war. Therefore, this is an ethos and not a myth.³⁰

Elchanan Yishai, who was the commander of the Gadna forces in 1949 when the "Trek of the Thousand" took place, told³¹ us that:

The connection to Masada was made by Shmaria Guttman. During an earlier period we helped him build stairs there . . . My first encounter with Masada was when I read Lamdan's poem, in my school days. It made a tremendous impression on us. Later we became interested in how to get there (I took every one of my children for his Bar Mitzvah to Masada) . . . Masada created so much excitement thatas commander of the GadnaI decided in 1949 to take the Gadna there in a big operation. [This is how the trek of the thousand took place] . . . it aroused a great deal of excitement in so many adolescents for whom this was the first visit to the site. In my Kibbutz, Masada had so much influence that we added to the Hagada of Pesach [Passover] both subjects: the revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto and Masada. Masada fell on the seventh day of Pesach and the Warsaw ghetto fell in the second day of Pesach . . . In the Hagada we used portions of Ben-Yair's

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speech . . . On Masada, the ceremonies included a "trial" for [Josephus] Flavius [as to whether or not he was a traitor] . . . was suicide the right thing to do? . . . fire inscriptions; reading from Lamdan . . . I have no doubt that [Masada] is a very exciting topic. Without getting into the suicide, the very stand [against the Romans] is very exciting . . .

When asked about the Sicarii and the Ein Gedi massacre, Yishai responded:

This is not what interested me . . . My world view and perception made us closer to the other part [of the story]. What should I tell the youth: that they murdered or that they defended themselves? That they murdered at Ein Gedi or that they fought to the last man? . . . But of course that they fought before [the Romans] reached them. It is written! They defended [themselves] with catapult stones, with everything they had. That is the story as we know it. Like in Gamla.

Yishai admitted that his association with Shmaria Guttman was very strong and that he helped him any time it was possible. Guttman, as we have already shown in detail, was one of the main figures in helping the Masada mythical narrative come into being.

In the early 1960s, when Yadin excavated Masada, the Gadna forces supplied him with a continuous flow of young volunteers to help in the excavations.

Summary

From a general theoretical perspective of contextual constructionism I examined the ways in which the Masada mythical narrative was presented and processed in the Israeli army. More specifically, this empirical examination served as a test for the 1991 theoretical integration suggested by Barry Schwartz for the two competing perspectives in the field of collective memory: the continuity vs. the discontinuity perspectives. It was not too difficult to see that Schwartz's suggestion received a very nice confirmation in this study. We could clearly see how both elements that should be considered as belonging to the continuity perspective and elements that should be considered as belonging to the discontinuity perspective played an important role together in the ways of how the Masada mythical narrative was presented, transmitted, and processed in the Israeli army.

The Masada mythical narrative was constructed as a central and national symbol of heroism for the new secular Zionist culture that was crystallizing during the nation-building process taking place in Palestine

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since the 1920s, and in the state of Israel after 1948. In Becker's (1986) terminology, the Masada mythical narrative was a central element in what he refers to as the cultural "doing together" of this newly emerging secular Zionist culture. The Masada mythical narrative most certainly played an important role in shaping the national and personal identity of many young Jewish Israelis. For that population, the Masada mythical narrative was definitely considered a positive and heroic symbol. A symbol from which to draw strength and inspiration. That lesson was, most frequently, driven to people's minds by using the dramatics of a trek in the Judean desert, a climb to the ancient fortress early in the morning, and playing a part in an awe-inspiring sight and sound show near and on Masada, focusing on the Great Revolt and Masada. The IDF most cetainly played a central role in this process.

Notes

1. This paper is based on my 1995 book, The Masada Myth. Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), particularly on chapter seven in that book. I am grateful to the University of Wisconsin Press for the permission to use part of that work.

2. When a reference to Josephus Flavius is made, the text used is The Complete Works of Josephus, by Josephus Flavius, Translated into English by William Whiston. I used the 1981 edition published by Kregel Publications (Grand Rapids, Michigan).

3. I am very grateful to the IDF Spokesman, Public Relations Office for allowing us access to interview army officers and for providing archive materials. I am particularly grateful to Uri Algom and Noah Hershko who helped us in any possible way they could. This is also the occasion to express my gratitude to the officers who granted us interviews: Avraham Adan ("Bren"); Yitzhak Arad ("Tolka"); Moshe Bar-Kochva ("Bril"); Yitzhak Ben-Ari; Shaul Bevar; Rafael Eitan ("Raful''); Rabbi Shlomo Goren; Menashe Harel; Ya'acov Heichal; Shmuel Lalkin; Yehoshua Levinson; Moshe Nativ; Elchanan Oren; Amnon Reshef; Herzel Shaffir; Elchanan Yishai; and Rechavam Ze'evi ("Gandhi"). I am particularly grateful to Anat Kaminer who was most effective with the interviews and summary of the information. Research grant no. 032-1191 from the Israeli Foundations Trustees helped to make this study a reality.

4. Who was then the commander of Company C and later commander of Battalion 46. Interview from January 1, 1990.

5. Shmuel Lalkin was then commander of reconnaissance (Scouts), Company 135 of Armored Brigade no. 7. Interview from December 3, 1991.

6. Interview from November 18, 1991.

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7. Who, around 1953, was a company commander in Battalion no. 79 and later its commander. In 1957 he served as the deputy commander of Battalion 82. Interview from December 2, 1991.

8. According to Ya'acov Heichal, then head of chambers of commander of Armored Brigade no. 7. The first documents we were able to locate in the IDF archives regarding a ceremony on Masada date back to 1961. A document dated September 21 from A. Ze'ev, then chief education officer, to the commander of the armored units, suggests that the slogan for the swearing-in ceremony on Masada would include a direct address to the "heroes of Masada: 'You were not the last warriors, (as Elazar BenYair stated) we exist and fight'."

9. Bevar was the chief education officer for the IDF's armored units after 1956. Chief of armored units at that time was David Elazar ("Dado"). Interview on March 14, 1990.

10. Who, in 1956, was commander of Battalion no. 82 and later commander of Armored Brigade no. 7. Interview on November 17, 1991.

11. Was commander of Armored Brigade no. 7 after Avraham Adan ("Bren").

12. This is confirmed from the interviews of Ya'acov Heichal (who was head of chambers [Ralash] of commander of Armored Brigade no. 7 (then, "Dado"). Interview on March 6, 1990; Rabbi Shlomo Goren (chief rabbi of the Israeli army 194872. Interview on November 17, 1992); Moshe Nativ (platoon commander in Armored Brigade no. 7 between 195354. Interview on February 8, 1992) and Rechavam Ze'evi ("Gandhi") (one of Palmach's most famous scouts. Interview on January 21, 1990). Hanoch Bartov, "Dado"'s biographer, indeed stated (1979, Vol.l: 101102) that it was "Dado" who emphasized the treks to the Judean desert and the climbs to Masada, including the swearing-in ceremonies.

13. Was the commander of the IDF's armored units after Mussa Peled. Interview from February 1992.

14. In other words, a PAKAL TEKES was created.

15. "OY" in the original.

16. In his interview, "Raful" did not confirm this.

17. Interview on January 1, 1990.

18. Ben-Ari refers here to the 1982 book by Y. Harkabi. In it, Harkabi examines, very critically, the Bar-Kochva revolt, and basically suggests that the revolt was not useful and should have been avoided.

19. Ben-Ari refers here to the biblical narrative concerning Samson: "Tamut Nafshi Im Pelishtim!" that is, to kill oneself together with the enemy.

20. The "we" and "us" Rabbi Goren uses refers to observant Jews as opposed to the secular Jews he was talking to.

21. Meaning, really, Jewish martyrdom.

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22. As Zerubavel (1995:126n36) points out, Goren's match between King Saul's death and Masada dates back to 1960.

23. A place where some famous battles took place during Israel's 1948 War of Independence. The site is located near the highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, about 26 kilometers west of Jerusalem. It has a British constructed "Tigert" police fortress.

24. Interview on April 27, 1992.

25. Amutat Hashirion.

26. A military section of the IDF that trained prerecruitment adolescents in a variety of military-related activities in preparation for military service. Some Gadna forces took an active combat role during the 1948 war. The Gadna emphasized in its training values of trekking and touring the land: of getting to know the country via field trips (for a short description see Haber and Schiff 1976:109110).

27. Niv-Alumim, 1948, No. 14, p. 2.

28. The trek to Masada began on March 20, 1950, in two columns, each consisting of about 500 adolescents. They all arrived at Masada on March 23, 1950. They climbed Masada early in the morning and from the top of the mountain used the wireless transmitters they carried to send greetings from the Gadna to the Israeli president, prime minister, and chief of staff of the IDF. This was not the only trek. On March 30, 1955, another 1,300 Gadna members repeated the operation.

29. The IDF archive has a soundless short movie called The Trek of the 1000 Gadnaim, dated 1950 and produced by the IDF's filming unit.

30. Oren was the chief instruction officer in the Gadna. Interview from November 17, 1991.

31. Interview from November 17, 1992.

Bibliography

Azarya, Victor. (1983). "The Israeli Armed Forces," pp. 99127 in The Political Education of Soldiers, edited by M. Janowitz and S. D. Wesbrook. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

Becker, Howard S. (1986). Doing Things Together: Selected Papers. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. (1995). The Myth of Masada. Collective Memory and mythmaking in Israel. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Best, Joel (ed.). (1995). Images of Issues. Typifying Contemporary Social Problems, 2nd ed., New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Coser, Lewis (ed.). (1992). Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Dayan, Moshe. (1983). Masada, Paris: Armand and Georges Israel Publishers.

Goode, Erich. (1989). "The American Drug Panic of the 1980s: Social Construction or Objective Threat?" Violence, Aggression and Terrorism, 3(4): 327348 (reprinted in The International Journal of the Addictions, 1990, 25(9): 10831098).

Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. (1994). Moral Panics, Oxford: Blackwell.

Goren, Shlomo (1985). "The heroism of Masada in light of the Halacha," pp. 4146 in Masada in a historical View. A Collection of articles for a conference "With Shmaria Guttman on Masada," Inner document, Kibbutz movement, Mador Leyediat Ha'aretz (Hebrew).

Gregory, Stanford W., and Jerry M. Lewis. (1988). "Symbols of Collective Memory: The Social Process of Memorializing May 4, 1970, At Kent State University." Symbolic Interaction, 11(2): 213233.

Halbwachs, Maurice. [1950] (1980). The Collective Memory, New York: Harper & Row.

Inbal, Leah (1991). "Sudden longings to Moshe Dayan," Yedioth Ahronoth, May 24, weekly magazine (7 Days), pp. 46 (Hebrew).

Lissak, Moshe. (1972). "The Israeli Defence Forces as an Agent of Socialization and Education: A Research in Role Expansion in a Democratic Society," pp. 325340 in The Perceived Role of The Military, edited by M. R. van Gils. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Rotterdam University Press.

Roth, Jonathan. (1995). "The Length of the Siege of Masada" Scripta Classica Israelica, 14: 87110.

Schwartz, Barry. (1991). "Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington" American Sociological Review, 56(2): 221236.

Shargel, Baila R. (1979). "The Evolution of the Masada Myth," Judaism, 28: 357371.

Shashar, Michael (1983). "Masada, Moshe Dayan and the destruction of a myth," Yedioth Ahronoth, Cultural, Literary and Art Supplement, October 28, p. 4 (Hebrew).

Silberman, Neil Asher. (1993). A prophet from amongst you: the life of Yigael Yadin: soldier, scholar, and mythmaker of modern Israel, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Wagner-Pacifici, Robin, and Barry Schwartz. (1991): "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past." American Journal of Sociology, 97(2): 376420.

Yadin, Yigael (1966). Masada. Herod's Fortress and the Zealots' Last Stand, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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Yael Zerubavel (1995). "The Multivocality of a National Myth: Memory and Counter-Memories of Masada" pp. 110128 in Wistrich Robert and David Ohana (eds.), The Shaping of Israeli Identity. Myth, Memory and Trauma, London: Frank Cass.

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4
The Independence Day Military Parade:
A Political History of a Patriotic Ritual

Maoz Azaryahu

A Song for Our Army

Sing a song for our army
From Lebanon to Eilat

that fights relentlessly
Beat the drum, raise the flag

It expanded the borders of our country

Let's move our legs and
dance! ¹

The Independence Day military parades to be held in the main cities, will form the central theme of the celebrations. On land, on sea and in the air, the three arms of the Defence Forces of Israel, whose valour and determination delivered the fledging state from the armed might of the aggressor, will proudly carry their standards before the admiring eyes of the nation.
Independence Day celebration, 19512

Once every few years the Israel Defence Forces parade is held on Independence Day. In front of the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief of Staff who stand on a stage, the IDF marches and presents its arms. At the same time the Air Force show is held, and the combat planes, in brave maneuvers, fill the blue sky. Masses of people pack the streets along the parade. Those who do not manage to get a place watch televison, through which the magnificent spectacle is transmitted to every citizen's home.
A. Oren, The Festivals of Israel for Children: Independence Day³

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Introduction

A highly formalized performance, a prestigious political ritual and an impressive spectacle, the prominence of the Independence Day military parade in Israeli patriotic culture was historically manifested both in its popular appeal and the extent to which it was embedded into the ceremonial landscape of this national holiday. The ceremonial prominence and popular appeal of the military parade and its direct and intimate association with the national holiday makes its examination especially rewarding for the study of the symbolic matrix of Israeli nationhood and especially for the study of the place of the army in Israeli patriotic culture. In their pioneering study, Liebman and Don-Yehya (1982) contextualized the Independence Day parade within the framework of Israeli civil religion, without, however, providing a detailed analysis of it. In the Israeli public discourse, the ultimate 'meaning' of the military parade oscillates between two opposite views. One views the parade as a genuine manifestation of patriotic sentiments. The other views the parade as an(other) articulation of Israeli militarism. Such view was articulated by a leading Israeli military historian in a newspaper interview. ⁴

This chapter does not intend to present a 'strong' interpretative version of the Israeli military parade. Rather its objective is to expound the Independence Day parade in terms of its evolvement as a national ritual and to chart the political contexts, intentions, and purposes that contributed to the construction of its meanings during various stages of its history. In particular this chapter focuses on the emergence, institutionalization, routinization, decline and revival, albeit in a modified form, of the Israeli Independence Day parade as a prime ritual of Israeli patriotic culture.

General Considerations

The aim of this section is to present some of the main features and functions of political ritual in general and of military parades in particular in order to provide a general framework for the detailed analysis of the Israeli Independence Day parade.

The military parade is a conventional political ritual, though not an obligatory norm, of the modern state. A basic distinction should be made between a triumph, a ritual that was developed and perfected in ancient Rome, and military parades that are integrated into the ceremonial structures of national holidays and belong to the patriotic traditions of modern nationalism. As a universal ritual, the military parade is ostensibly independent of the form of specific governments. The fact that military parades have served as ritual statements in a democratic France, a communist

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Soviet Union, an autocratic Egypt, and in the military regimes of Brazil and Burma, emphasizes this point. The universality of this ritual, however, does not mean that the military parade is 'neutral' in regard to the regime with which it is associated. In spite of the lack of comparative studies of military parades, it is clear that each military parade is contextualized in particular historical circumstances and that it further represents specific political ideologies and particular power relations.

Interestingly, in spite of the academic interest in the study of 'secular rituals' (Meyerhoff 1977) or 'public events' (Handelman 1990), scholarship has not yet yielded an analysis of the history and/or the anthropology of the military parade as a specific ritual genre. In this context of much relevance is the work of the Brazilian anthropologist Roberto Da Matta, who juxtaposed the Brazilian military parade with the carnival of Rio, thereby gaining useful insights in regard to the ceremonial aspect of Brazilian national life (Da Matta 1977). David Kertzer's (1988) comprehensive study of different facets and aspects of political rituals does not specifically deal with modern military parades, yet it provides an appropriate analytical framework for the analysis of the military parade as a political ritual. In the most general terms, a military parade serves as a mechanism for both inclusion and exclusion, legitimates power structures and represents power relations in society.

The ostensible meaning of a military parade is encapsulated in being a powerful demonstration of military force. The dynamic formations of soldiers and weaponry is indeed an impressive presentation of military power. The military parade is a highly formalized ritual where the ritual activity represents an ideal of perfection which is an antithesis of real war, with its chaos and confusion. A closer examination, however, reveals that the ritual text of a military parade also consists of a multilayered array of demonstrations of unity and loyalty. Ritualized communications are exchanged between the national leadership, the military command (which in the case of a military dictatorship is identical with the political leadership), the army, and the supreme values of the nation as a political community. The exclusion of spectators, though an exception, is a strong statement. Such a case was the military parade staged by Saddam Hussein in 1990, conducted in a stadium in the presence of the political leadership of Iraq and invited guests from abroad. Common people were excluded from the setting of the ceremonial event; their 'participation' was limited to watching the televised transmission of the spectacle.

The temporal and spatial-geographical aspects of the ritual are important features of its semiotic structure. Military parades are commonly held in the framework of national holidays and their underlying message is derived from the fundamental message of these days as a symbolic

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foundation of the political order embodied by the state. Prominent examples are the French military parade held on July 14 and the Soviet parades previously held on November 7: two national holidays that marked and celebrated the birth of the French Republic and the former Soviet Union respectively. The only military parade conducted in Nazi Germany was the one held in Berlin on April 20, 1939, on the occasion of the Fürer's fiftieth birthday. The day emphasized the notion of the Fürer as the embodiment of national socialist Germany, and the extent to which the parade represented the military power of Nazi Germany became evident in the following years in the battlefields of Europe. The geopolitics of the ritual includes the route of the parade and the place of its conduct. Holding a military parade at the national capital confirms and celebrates the capital as the symbolic center of national life. National tombs and monuments such as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier/Arc de Triomphe in Paris or Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow incorporate national myths and transmit values into the communication networks operative during ritual activities surrounding them. A most important contribution of such edifices to this ritual is based on how they infuse the parade, a profoundly secular ritual, with the notion of the sacred commonly associated with the cultic manifestations of national memory.

The Israeli Independence Day Parade Emergence:
19481949

The years 1948 and 1949 witnessed not only the establishment of the political structures of Israeli nationhood but also the construction of the main symbols of the State of Israel. Prominent among these were the determination of the national holiday and the design of the ceremonial features of the festival as a celebration of independence and sovereignty.

From State Day to Independence Day and Army Day:
19481949

The first Israeli military parades were conducted on July 27, 1948, on the occasion of the first national holiday of the State of Israel. The occasion was the day commemorating the death of Herzl, the founding father of modern Zionism. A traditional memorial day of the Zionist movement and the Jewish Yishuv, it was celebrated in 1948 as State Day and as such was the first national holiday commemorated by the State of Israel. The military parade in Tel Aviv constituted the main ceremonial feature of State Day in 1948. This was significant because it encapsulated the notion of the inseparability of the military parade from the celebration of independence and sovereignty. This was clearly evident in 1949, when the

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newly established independence was celebrated through an array of local events, (e.g. the 70th anniversary of the foundation of Petah Tiqva [November 1948] and the first anniversary of the 'Liberation of Haifa' [April 1949]) and special national celebrations, like Independence Day (April 1949) and Army Day (August 1949). The military parades of 1948 and 1949 were thus prominent demonstrations of Jewish national sovereignty. This was also evident through the selection of the parade locations. In 1949, for instance, Ben-Gurion emphasized the importance of conducting military parades in Beer Sheva and Eilat in order to assert their belonging to the sovereign territory of the State of Israel.

Through the ceremonial conflation of the military and the national, these military parades also demonstrated the congruence of the army (as a people's army), the nation-state, and the political leadership. To a substantial extent the military parades provided an opportunity to exhibit patriotic sentiments and to demonstrate the prevalent sense of national pride. Quintessentially patriotic, the military parades were embedded into the experience of the newly established nationhood.

Symbolic Meanings

In the formative period of Israeli history, the military parades fulfilled various symbolic functions. The parades provided an opportunity for demonstrating 'Jewish' weapons, which was especially significant in the context of the struggle of the Jewish Yishuv against the British Mandatory administration over the right of Jews to possess arms. The symbolic resonance of the public display of a Jewish military force was also related to Diaspora experiences and in particular to the exclusion of Jews from patriotic rites of local (mainly East) European nationalisms. Such experience of exclusion infused the sight of Jewish soldiers in the national homeland with an extra sense of pride. A short piece published in a children weekly magazine in 1951 serves as an example of the prevalence of such attitudes. ⁵ In this piece, a young boy described a traumatic Diaspora experience: how, while watching a military orchestra, he was beaten by a young neighbor who 'explained' to him that as a 'dirty Jew' he was not allowed to watch the soldiers. The child further related: "While coming home I told everything to my mother, and she said that the day would come and I would see parades and orchestras in our land . . . When we came to Israel and saw our soldiers I remembered the prophecy of my mother, and the same way as I was privileged to see Hebrew soldiers so I will have the privilege to be one of them."

On a deeper level of historical consciousness, it should be mentioned that while the military parades of 1948 and 1949 evinced the restoration of

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Jewish independence, the end of Jewish independence as the result of the suppression of the Great Revolt by the Romans was marked by a triumph conducted in honor of Emperor Titus in the Imperial capital. While this parade, as well as the Arch of Triumph and the coins displaying 'Judaea capta,' symbolized the destruction of Jewish independence, the military parades conducted by and in the State of Israel symbolized and concretized national resurrection. The notion of historical continuity permeated Zionist perceptions of national revival. This was also evident in the slogans that decorated the route of the military parade of Independence Day 1949, when the city of Tel Aviv congratulated the marching soldiers as the 'descendants of the Maccabees.' In a speech on the occasion of the first anniversary of the battle for Negba, Moshe Sharett, the Israeli foreign minister, specifically related the heroism of the defenders of Negba to that of the defenders of Jerusalem in the last stage of the Great Revolt. In a stage when historical associations played a decisive role in the symbolic construction of Israeli nationhood, the notion of such a trans-temporal 'dialogue' could confer extra symbolic meaning on the military parades of the restored State of Israel.

The military parade of State Day 1948 was held during the War of Independence, though the stabilization of the military situation and the fragile cease fire were necessary conditions for the diversion of military resources for ceremonial purposes. To a certain extent this was also a celebration of victory. The editorial of Davar commented: ''This procession was not a victory parade. It was a parade of an army whose victory still lies ahead." ⁶ The parades held throughout 1949 were victory parades par excellence providing the main ceremonial feature of the celebrations of the military accomplishments of the Israeli War of Independence. Such celebrations provided an outlet for public euphoria, and the military parades became a popular festival of unity between the victorious army and the civilian population. The enthusiasm prevalent among soldiers was also evident in a cable sent by Yigal Alon, the commander of the Southern Front, to the organizers: "All the battalions and brigades are eager to be represented in the parade in Tel Aviv. May I send a fourth company for the sake of internal peace?"⁷

The Failure:
Independence Day 1949

Officially designated as a 'historic event of the first Independence Day,' the military parade of 1949 was the only state event designated for the wider public rather than distinguished guests, and thus attracted a substantial number of viewers. Their number was estimated to range between

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250,000 and 300,000a substantial fraction of Israel's population at that time. ⁸ Paradoxically, the enthusiasm of those gathered eventually aborted the parade. "It was obvious that the masses in the streets were searching for a vent for the sense of festival and the wave of joy that flooded their hearts," as later the commission set up to investigate the event explained. This parade became known in Israeli folklore as 'The parade that did not march.' A young reporter articulated the profound sense of disappointment in a language full of pathos: "It should have been a victory parade that would grind our hearts to golden flour of will and readiness to continue. It should have been a festive parade of triumph, beautiful and healthy as a glass of tomato juice. It should have been a victory parade that would trespass the sky of Independence Day and engrave a path in it."⁹

A Demonstration of Statism:
Army Day 1949

A 'compensation' for the failure of the first Independence Day parade was provided by the military parade that constituted the central event of that year's Army Day. In 1949, after the establishment of Independence Day as the national holiday, the anniversary of Herzl's death was reinvented, this time as Army Day (in the previous year this was marked as State Day). As the main event of Army Day 1949, the military parade was an impressive demonstration of military power and organizational skills, and in this sense made up for the failure of the Independence Day parade. It was even suggested that the entire Army Day was devised by the government because it felt the need to erase the memory of that aborted parade.¹⁰ The insistence of the political leadership upon an Army Day, however, was also related to the role assigned to the military parade as a ritual of Israeli statism (mamlachtiut), which was promoted by Ben-Gurion as a major measure of state-building. This doctrine asserted the supremacy of the state and its institutions over political organizations and institutions of the pre-state era. In particular, the military, subject to a legitimate government and by virtue of its being a national army rather than a confederation of underground militias, evinced and concretized Ben-Gurion's concept of statism. In State Day parade 1948, units of Palmah marched as an independent contingent. In 1949, after the Palmah (a left-wing-oriented elite militia) and the Irgun and the 'Stern Gang' (the two underground organizations of the Zionist right) were dissolved, the military parades, from which the prestate militias and undergrounds were excluded, also served to present the army as the embodiment of the statist principle and evinced BenGurion's political victory over his political rivals on the left and on the right.¹¹

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Routinization:
19501967

Shaping a Tradition

In a letter sent by Yigael Yadin in February 1950 to the commanders of the different branches of the IDF, the chief of staff asserted that "The intention is to celebrate Army Day with magnificence in order to demonstrate the power of the army both inwards and outwards." A few weeks before the actual event, however, the government decided to abolish Army Day with the explanation that it was too close to Independence Day and that it threatened the original meaning of Herzl Day. In contrast to 1949 and its myriad of national days, in 1950 the national calendar was reorganized so that Independence Day emerged as the most prominent component while other commemorative days declined (the Remembrance Day for the Fallen Soldiers was appended to the national holiday in 1951). The reorganization of the national calendar did not result in the abolishment of the military parade. On the contrary. Embedded into the national holiday and as a prestigious tradition of Independence Day, the military parade emphasized the thematic conflation of army and independence. The army was not only the guarantor of national independence but also its very embodiment by virtue of being both a signifier and sign of independence.

In 1950 the ceremonial patterns of Independence Day were formally regulated with the nomination of a special committee, headed by Zeev Sherf, the secretary of the government, to organize and supervise national ceremonies and celebrations. Among the members of the committee in charge of designing and planning Independence Day was a representative of the army, a fact that testified to the government's approval of integrating the army into the ceremonial patterns of the national holiday. Already in March 1950 it was clear to the organizers of Israel's second Independence Day that "one of the main elements of the (Independence Day) program will be the parade of the army in Jerusalem." ¹²

This committee had an extraordinary task: not only to organize the celebrations of independence but also to begin the traditions that were meant to form the ceremonial foundations of Israeli patriotic culture. This task transcended mere technical organization and amounted to cultural engineering on behalf of the state. Such a task was enormous also because it had to take into consideration both Jewish ceremonial traditions and traditions belonging to the repertoire of modern nationalism. The military parades belonged to the latter, and their merit lay in that they provided a highly popular ritual of sovereignty and in their availability. The experience of 1948 and 1949 had taught that the parades were extremely popular. Moreover, since the army was in charge of their conduct, the committee was exempted from their organization (apart from the necessary

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coordination with other authorities). The interest of the committee in the military parade was obvious, especially before other ceremonial traditions were institutionalized (a prominent example being the opening ceremony at Mount Herzl which as a state act was conducted for the first time in 1952): "If the army will further refuse (to cooperate), the void should be filled with something else" was the response of the coordinator of the celebrations to the threat made by the army to reduce its participation in the festive events of Independence Day 1953. ¹³

Inclusion vs. Exclusion

Even though changing circumstances effected different emphases, as a demonstration of military power and national independence, the fundamental messages of the ritual remained the same as before. From the perspective of the veteran population, for which the struggle for independence was a significant formative experience, Independence Day and the military parade in particular meant a ritual ratification of 'their' contribution to the historic accomplishment. In the context of the Zionist consensus, the parade reinforced patriotic solidarity.

From a different perspective, the military parade was a powerful means for the 'nationalization' of the new immigrants who arrived in Israel after the establishment of the Jewish state. The Independence Day parade provided for the convergence of two powerful nation-building mechanisms: Independence Day as the national holiday and the IDF as a people's army. In 1950 Ben-Gurion praised the organizers of that year's celebrations for their contribution to the forging of an additional instrument for the national task of the 'integration of the exiles' (mizug galuyot). The army, praised in 1949 by Ben-Gurion as the embodiment of Zionist vision of 'the ingathering of the exiles' (kibbutz galuyot) (Ben Gurion 1951: 344) and whose national-Zionist tasks were determined by the 'Security Service Law' that was enacted in 1950, was later metaphorically referred to as 'the melting pot for the tribes of Israel' and the 'school of the nation'. In a speech on the occasion of Independence Day 1955, for instance, the president mentioned the army as one of the three factors in charge of nationbuilding. As a ritual dramatization and ceremonial embodiment of statehood, the military parade was a powerful tool for introducing the state and its power to its new citizens.

A quintessential Zionist ritual and statement, the Independence Day military parade virtually excluded Israeli Arabs. Exempted from the draft, the absence of Israeli Arabs from the ritual framework displayed their ambiguous status in Israeli society. Significantly, however, the ritual text also alluded to the extension of community boundaries in the capacity of

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units of Druze and Bedouin soldiers (organized in the framework of 'minorities units') who took part in the parade. The participation of these units in the parade formation was not only an exotic addition (e.g., the camels of the Bedouin unit) to the otherwise technologically advanced presentation of military power, but also a significant statement in regard to the special relations of the respective non-Jewish communities with the Jewish state. Being also a demonstration of loyalty to the army and to the state, their participation in this highly esteemed ritual activity dramatized the official policy of promoting the integration of specific segments of nonJewish population into the framework of Jewish statehood.

"A Message Directed both Inwards and Outwards"

The Independence Day military parades served as a demonstration of a central achievement: the foundation and sustenance of a modern army. In 1950 the chief of staff claimed that the message of the parade was directed both inwards, meaning to the Israeli population, and outwards, to the Arab states. This duality was embedded in the perception of the parade as a factor contributing to national security. As a message directed to the Arab world, the demonstration of military power was an instrument of deterrence. This was specially significant when in 1954 the threats about the immanent 'second round' that would wipe out the disgrace of the military defeat of 1948 became a recurrent theme in Arab political rhetoric against Israel. At a press conference held before Independence Day 1954 the organizers explained that "At the end of a year of tension along the borders and an increase in the danger of a 'second round,' the IDF parade will demonstrate the power that defends the long borders and the shores." ¹⁴ In his festive address to the nation on the occasion of Independence Day 1956, Ben-Gurion maintained that "the army of Israel is our confidence"; an inscription on the ceremonial entrance gate at the beginning of the parade route constructed by the municipality of Haifa for that year's military parade asserted that "We are confident in the IDF because it is our shield/defender" (maginenu, which in Hebrew means both). Such references not only articulated a sense of anxiety and the need for a sense of security but also gave a rhetorical expression to the notion of unity between the army, the leadership, and the nation.

The Political Geography of the Independence Day Parade

The pattern that emerged in 1948 and 1949 was that of a multitude of parades held simultaneously in different towns. On State Day 1948, for instance, parades were held in Tel Aviv, but also in Netanya and Rehovot.

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The geographical dispersal of the rite was meant to assert territorial integrity as well as to secure a maximum of interaction between the population and the army. The central parade was the main demonstration of military force and was the one attended by national leaders, most prominent among them the president and the prime minister. These factors combined to contribute to its attractiveness as the major event of the national holiday. The peripheral parades were local events, attended by heads of local authorities. In these rites, representatives of the government provided the national aura, though the latter preferred to be present at the central parades that enjoyed a higher degree of public exposure. In 1955, for instance, the then defense minister, Pinhas Lavon, refused to represent the government at the Beer Sheva parade (that year's central parade was held in Tel Aviv). ¹⁵

In 1949 the army supported the conduct of a number of simultaneous parades, yet this positive approach changed later. The conduct of such parades meant a substantial investment of resources for the coordination of simultaneous events. Furthermore, the interest of the army was mainly in a demonstrative display of military force, which could not be provided by the smaller, peripheral parades. In 1955, for instance, the General Staff opted for one central parade, thus rejecting a former decision of the Independence Day Committee, which had decided in favor of a central parade and a number of smaller, local parades.¹⁶ The army, however, had to accept the decision of the committee in charge of organizing the celebrations, and consequently three parades were held: a central parade in Tel Aviv, and two smaller ones, in Afula and Beer Sheva, representing the north and the south of the country respectively. The misgivings of the army, however, could not be ignored, and in 1956 only one central parade was conducted in Haifa. Some 300,000 people were estimated to attend this parade, compared to the 40,000 that attended the parade held a year before in Afula.

Among the various parades, the central ones dominated the ceremonial landscape of the celebration of independence by virtue of their semiotic intensity and popular appeal. Yet unlike the almost paradigmatic French or Soviet military parades, the routes of the Israeli parades were distinctly profane. Such routes did not include significant sites of national memory and subsequently the sacred, which is exuded by such cultic sites did not feature prominently in the semiotic structure of the ritual. This particularity of the Israeli military parade was the result of the specific geopolitics of the ritual. In contrast to the universal norm, the Israeli parades were not necessarily conducted in the national capital, but rather rotated between Israel's large cities, which, with the obvious exception of Jerusalem, were distinctly profane in terms of their urban texture. (The cities themselves did feature in Zionist mythology; Tel

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Aviv, the most conspicuous example, was celebrated as the 'first Hebrew city.')

Why not Jerusalem? The place of Jerusalem in Zionist/Israeli national symbolism made it a most appropriate location for such a national rite. It should be noted that the opening ceremony of Independence Day was held at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Yet in regard to the parades, Jerusalem was a problematic location. According to the armistice agreement with Jordan from 1949, severe limitations were set on the type and number of weapons permitted in western Jerusalem. This meant that while the parade in Jerusalem could provide a forceful demonstration of military force, the absence of the air force was among its gravest limitations.

Jerusalem was officially declared as Israel's capital in December 1949. Indeed the central parades of 1950 and 1951 were held there in what was also a demonstration of Israeli sovereignty in the city and its status as a national capital as well as in defiance of the international community's policy of nonrecognition. In particular, the Jordanians considered the military parade in Jerusalem, even if in a reduced form, as a violation of the armistice agreement. ¹⁷ Accordingly, the Jerusalem parades became politically charged, especially when Israeli intentions to conduct a parade in the city, as was the case in 1958 and again in 1961, were discussed and condemned by the United Nations as a result of a Jordanian initiative.¹⁸ These objections, moreover, also contributed to the political value assigned by Israel to their conduct in the national capital. Not giving in to international pressure became in itself a demonstration of Israeli resolve and commitment in regard to (western) Jerusalem as the national capital and an opportunity to defy what Israel considered as an anti-Israeli bias of the international community. In this sense, the military parades also belonged to the politics of Jerusalem.

Political considerations notwithstanding, the number of potential spectators in Jerusalem was considerably smaller than in Tel Aviv, the metropolitan center of Israel. This also contributed to the emergence of the unique pattern, where every year another big city served as the 'host' of the central Independence Day military parade. Being a host was perceived as a patriotic obligation. In 1952, for instance, a resident of Haifa sent a letter to the Independence Day Committee in which he complained that his hometown had not yet been accorded the honor to be such a host.¹⁹ The practice of rotation meant that this prominent political ritual did not have a ceremonial center as part of its tradition. The rotation of the central parade was a practical solution that provided for an optimal equilibrium between well-defined needs and constraints. Yet a prevalent sense of dissatisfaction was articulated when in 1953 a suggestion was made by a member of the Independence Day Committee to determine Wilhelma, on the road between

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Petah Tiqva and Lod, as the permanent location of the Independence Day parade, "since this (place) is appropriate and central and easily accessible from all parts of the country." ²⁰ The idea to determine a functional location was not approved. Gradually, with the institutionalization of the rotation principle, it also became embedded into the tradition of the ritual and of Independence Day in general.

In 1952 the parade was held in Tel Aviv, while in 1953, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Israeli independence, it was held in Haifa. In 1954, for the first and only time, the Independence Day parade was held in a small town: Ramle, a former Arab town mostly populated by Jewish new immigrants and situated on the road connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The conduct of the parade in Ramle was also intended as a gesture to the immigrants who settled in Israel after 1948. The geographical location of Ramle was considered as an advantage because it could facilitate the participation of Tel Avivians and Jerusalemites, in addition to the local population. Eventually the Ramle parade proved to be a local event only. In 1955 and 1956 the central parades were held in Tel Aviv and in Haifa respectively.

The Public

Order. The popularity of the parade was reflected in the number of Israelis who made the effort to attend it. As a consequence of the failure of Independence Day 1949, the organizers applied strict measures to ensure that order would prevail and that spectators would not penetrate the area reserved for the parade. Such measures were already used on Independence Day parade 1950. The boundary was marked with four ropes; two hundred 'hedgehogs' were put in sensitive areas and crossings were blocked by concertina.²¹ Such severe measures were only eased in 1955, when the organizers of the parade came to the conclusion that "Our public learnt the secret of discipline and there no longer exists the danger of an outburst."²² Accordingly, those in charge of organization were requested to refrain from using barbed wire and use ropes instead in order to separate route from spectators.

The Popular Experience. The parade was a popular family event, and the presence of parents with their children invested the event with the atmosphere of a carnival. The parade experience included not only the display itself but also preparations and hightening anticipations. This had a special impact on children: "(On that day) I got up early, and quickly left home to secure a place to view the parade of our army. When I came there were

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already many people from out of town. With much difficulty I got a place. My parents and I and all the others were waiting impatiently for the parade. And then it began. At the beginning were the jeeps and in each a sergeant major of a unit with its standard; later the soldiers marched proudly. Thus tanks and canons passed and we saw many more weapons. With a throbbing heart I watched the multitude of weapons and I was joyful and happy because it belonged to us." ²³

As a salient ceremonial tradition of Independence Day, the military parade was not the only means of bringing together the army and the population in the framework of the national holiday. Another tradition of Independence Day was the opening of army bases for visitors that were meant to affect the temporary and ceremonial abolishment of the otherwise meticulous boundaries between the military and the civilian realms, and thus enhanced the notion of the army as a people's army. Such festive opportunities notwithstanding, it was the military parades that provided for the Jewish population an intensive experience of emotional identification with the Israeli army.

The number of spectators at the parades of the late 1950s and 1960s testified to their popularity. The number of spectators at the Tel Aviv and Haifa parades, especially impressive because of the participation of the army, navy, and air force, amounted to hundreds of thousands, about 10 to 15 pecent of Israel's population. These numbers made the ritual a popular event during which national unity was celebrated as a communal experience. The absence of television encouraged this trend, even though radio broadcasts enabled those who stayed at home to partake in the experience. In particular the voice of Nehemia Ben-Avraham, an otherwise popular sport broadcaster, contributed to the carnivalesque atmosphere with which the parade was shrouded and to its perception and experience as a festival even by those that did not physically attend.

Social Hierarchies. As a distinguished public event, the military parade also evinced social hierarchies and distinctions of status. The main distinction was between invited guests and the general public. Apart from the reviewing stand for the heads of state and army, tribunes were also constructed to provide seats for invited guests. These included tourists, bereaved family members, as well as a multitude of dignitaries. An official invitation to the parade and the seat thus guaranteed was laden with symbolic capital in its capacity as a marker of social distinction, while the spatial arrangement of the invitees on the platforms demonstrated the fine distinctions of social hierarchies. This came to the fore in the letter written in 1950 to the organizing committee by Eliezer Sukenik, a distinguished archaeology professor at the Hebrew University and the father of Yigael

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Yadin, then chief of staff, in which he articulated his misgivings in regard to the allocation of places for invited guests: "And I ask you if this is the manner in which the State of Israel honors officials, minor and senior, or the directors of agencies in charge of distributing eggs or hens . . . while scientists, writers, people of culture and veteran Zionists and others that sacrificed their family members for independence are less respectable than minor officials?" ²⁴

Climax and Decline:
19681978

1968:
The Beginning of the End

Attended by 600,000 Israelis, the 1968 Independence Day parade, the biggest of its kind in Israeli history, was also the beginning of the end of this ceremonial tradition. This parade, the ceremonial climax of the celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of Israeli independence, was an elaborate pageant of immense emotional resonance: "so exciting was the display in Jerusalem on May 2, 1968, that tears appeared in the eyes of some among the huge mass that gathered. Many others were stricken with rare enthusiasm" (Elon 1972: 7). The reason for this was that the military parade was also a national celebration of the victory in the Six Day War, achieved eleven months earlier. The 1968 parade displayed the military power and self-esteem of a victorious nation and its triumphant army. Furthermore, it was conducted in a period of Israeli history when the prestige of the military was at its zenith.

The geographical aspect of the 1968 parade was of much symbolic and political value. For the first time in its history, the route of the parade was, as a leading Israeli geographer and archeologist put it, "permeated with historical memories" of Biblical places and events.²⁵The theme of victory was manifest in that the parade was held in the reunited Jerusalem, and as such was an unequivocal demonstration of Israeli sovereignty over the entire city.²⁶ The significance of the ceremonial manifestation of Israeli sovereignty explains the intensive international pressure exerted on Israel not to conduct the parade in Eastern Jerusalem. The other side of the coin was the insistence of the Israeli government on the parade as a political statement and its resolve not to give in to the pressures of the international community²⁷

In a letter to Haim Bar-Lev, then chief of staff, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan explained this military parade as "a demonstration of military power and political independence directed towards the outer world and a source of joy and pride for our people."²⁸ Yet only a few weeks before the parade Bar-Lev himself suggested a major ceremonial modification.

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According to his view, the military parade, hitherto the central military event of Independence Day, may eventually be replaced by the final parade of the Four Day March: ''The March is to some extent a bigger experience than an organized and ordered military parade since it is a popular event." ²⁹ Even if it was later asserted that Bar-Lev did not actually suggest abolishing the military parade altogether and immediately, but rather to re-examine its form,³⁰ his announcement was instrumental in withdrawing the aura of a sacred tradition from the ritual and made it a legitimate subject of public debate. Significantly, the pledge to rethink the ritual was initiated by the chief of staff when the popularity of the military establishment and the army in general was almost unbounded.

In spite of the sweeping public enthusiasm for the parade, doubts were articulated by individuals; these were also made public through letters to the editor (cf. Elon 1972: 1112). One suggestion was to celebrate the Independence Day parade as a 'peace parade.'³¹ Another was to proclaim that year's parade as the last one "Since we turn our faces towards peace and good neighborhing, the blossoming of the desert, construction and building and the ingathering of the exiles."³²

Such views notwithstanding, the significance of Bar-Lev's suggestion was that it represented a change of mind among the military. Bar-Lev's proposal resonated with anti-parade sentiments that had prevailed since the early 1950s. The interest of the Independence Day Committee in the conduct of the military parade as the central ceremonial event of the national holiday was understandable. However, misgivings about the ritual and its prominence within the ceremonial framework of the national holiday and specifically about the 'omnipresence' of the army were voiced even by some of those in charge of fashioning the ceremonial patterns of Independence Day. In 1952, for instance, it was maintained that "the military aspect of the (national) holiday should be diluted."³³ In 1953 the army itself suggested to reduce its participation due to the prevalent notion that "the army interferes too much in the life of the citizens." This possibility was welcomed by one member of the Independence Day Council (an advisory board consisting of representatives of public organizations and state agencies) who remarked: "I don't know how often we should demonstrate our military power"³⁴ (this was said before the growing tension along the borders made this same demonstration a merit of the ritual). On the other hand, another member claimed that "the army is an important factor in the celebration of independence all over the world, and here too, to my opinion, the tradition of the military parades should be maintained."³⁵

Those in charge of the ceremonial design of Independence Day perceived the national holiday as an opportunity to demonstrate the accomplishments of the State of Israel. As the central event of Independence Day,

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the military parade highlighted the army as the main accomplishment, overshadowing 'civilian' accomplishments in areas such as industry, agriculture, the integration of the immigrants, education, and so on. At the beginning of the 1950s an attempt was made to produce a civilian 'accomplishment parade' that would demonstrate Israeli accomplishments in various, civilian areas. Official considerations and intentions notwithstanding, the problem was that the conduct of this parade was to a crucial extent dependent on the good will of civilian organizations and institutions. These, however, were reluctant to participate mainly because it meant a substantial investment of resources and organization. Eventually, the 'accomplishments-parade' that could provide a civilian counter-part to the military parade, disappeared from the ceremonial agenda of Independence Day. Another civilian ritual of accomplishment was the awarding of the 'Israel Prize' for outstanding contributions in various fields of science and culture as an official event of the national holiday. The ceremonial impact of such an event, however, could not match that of the military parade.

Another possibility for enhancing the 'civilian' aspect was to let civilians participate in the military parade. Already in 1951 the army was requested to examine this option. ³⁶ Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, who supported the view that Independence Day should mainly demonstrate the economic and social accomplishments of the State of Israel, was nominated by Ben-Gurion to head a ministerial committee to examine the matter.³⁷ The ministers were requested to make suggestions about the ceremonial patterns of Independence Day in order to reduce the prominence of the military parade in the framework of Independence Day. Significantly the conclusions of this committee were to be approved by the army, and the opposition of the Chief of Staff aborted the proposed ceremonial reform.

It is plausible that the change of mind of the military establishment after the Six Day War was rooted in the conviction that after the swift military victory the deterrence effect of the parade was no longer of strategic value. Raising the possibility of abolishing the quintessential Israeli military ritual in a period of immense popularity of the armed forces was not a paradox but evidence of the military establishment's apprehension of the ritual as a means contributing to national security rather than as an end in itself. In this case, the initiative to change the character of the Independence Day parade demonstrated the self-confidence of the military establishment and specifically the prevalent notion that another comprehensive war was virtually inconceivable.

Significantly Bar-Lev suggested to replace the military parade with the final parade of the Four Day March. If his suggestion would have been accepted, it could have satisfied the persistent demand that the central event of Independence Day should not be an exclusively military event. The Four

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Day March was initiated in the mid-1950s by the army. Seen as a secular Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem and thus echoing ancient pilgrimages to the Temple, this ritual became a prestigious popular event in which individuals, groups, and army units participated. The mix of civilians and soldiers gave the ritual its distinct character as a profoundly patriotic rite with strong carnivalesque traits. The final parade in the streets of Jerusalem that concluded the Four Day March was a colorful festive event, and therefore it seemed to provide an attractive alternative to the traditional military parade.

Already in December 1968 it was apparent that Bar-Lev's proposal was indeed officially adopted. This not only meant the abolishment of the military parade but also that the Four Day March would be rescheduled from Passover to Independence Day; in particular it was decided that the Four Day March would begin two days before Independence Day so that its final parade would be conducted during Independence Day (this, however, meant that the Four Day March was to become a Three Day March). Those in charge, however, were not aware of the fact that in its new form, the march would have coincided with Remembrance Day for the Fallen Soldiers. Meir Shamgar, the legal advisor to the government, suggested rescheduling Remembrance Day in order to prevent its temporal coincidence with the march. ³⁸ This could be supported by a substantial number of bereaved parents who opposed the temporal adjacency of Remembrance Day and Independence Day, yet since it necessitated a formal change in the Remembrance Day law (ratified in 1963) it was not a practical option. The government also examined the possibility of beginning the march on Independence Day, but this meant that it would end on the Sabbath, which was unacceptable to religious groups. The government also rejected a suggestion to mark Independence Day a day earlier.³⁹

In 1969 it was decided that Independence Day in the capital would be marked by a parade of the Gadna (Youth Brigades). As to the military parade, the government committee in charge of symbols and ceremonies decided that the military parade should not be completely erased from the ceremonial landscape but rather would be held on special anniversaries and jubilee years. Meant as a compromise, this decision was significant in that it preserved the linkage between the celebration of independence and the ritual demonstration of military force while substantially reducing the military aspect of the ceremonies in 'mundane' years, which are not invested with the special aura of a jubilee.

1973:
The Last Parade

The first opportunity for such an anniversary was the twenty-fifth Independence Day in 1973. The fact that the military parade ceased to be a

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venerated tradition also meant that its conduct, formally an implementation of a governmental decision, was open to debate and to some extent even needed to be legitimated. The government discussed the matter in August 1972 in the context of preparations for the Hebrew year 5733 *, which was a jubilee year by virtue of its being the twenty-fifth anniversary of Israeli independence. Pinhas Sapir recycled old arguments in favor of the parade when he maintained that it was important to demonstrate Israeli might mainly to new immigrants and (Jewish) tourists; the same argument was forwarded by Moshe Kol, the minster of tourism. Significantly, Moshe Dayan, the minister of defense and in this capacity a representative of the military establishment, voted against the conduct of a military parade.

The military parade held in Jerusalem on Independence Day 1973 marked the ceremonial climax of that jubilee year. The hundreds of thousands who attended the event provided tangible proof as to the continuous popularity of the parade. The masses that gathered alongside the route also demonstrated that even in an age of direct television broadcasts, physical presence at the actual occurrence, albeit as spectators, and the immediate and unmediated experience this entailed was still an attractive option for the Israeli public.

The significance of the 1973 military parade lay not only in that it was the biggest and most impressive, but also because its conduct evinced the extent to which the military parade was favored by the civilian branch of the national leadership. This despite the fact that since 1968 the military high command and the defense establishment were against the ritual. During this period, the function of the parade as a means of deterrence was not mentioned as a reason for holding it, and this could also be interpreted as an indication of a prevalent sense of profound security among the Israeli public and its political and military leadership. The 1973 War (Yom Kippur War), which broke out five months after the biggest-ever ceremonial demonstration of Israeli military force, proved the extent to which this sense of security was an illusion. It demonstrated that the deterrent effect of a military parade was dubious, and furthermore, that the sense of security it producee may even be harmful in that it eventually resulted in an exaggerated sense of self-confidence.⁴⁰

1978:
The Aborted Parade

One consequence of the decision to connect the military parade with jubilee years was that the ritual had to be reaffirmed whenever practical decisions had to be taken. The decision taken in 1969 meant, therefore, that the validity of the military parade as an unquestioned tradition was substantially

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reduced. This was already evident in 1973, but became clearer in 1977, after the government decided on July 31 to mark the jubilee year of the thirtieth anniversary of Israeli independence with a military parade. As five years earlier, the defense establishment, represented by Ezer Weizman, the defense minister, objected, while Menahem Begin, the newly elected prime minister, explained his support with the argument that "the people wants the parade, to rejoice in the celebration (of independence) and to exalt its spirit." ⁴¹ The difference, however, was that for the first time the military parade became an emotionally laden public issue. This was evident in numerous letters to the editor sent by citizens as well as articles in the Israeli press in which leading journalists presented arguments for and against the planned military parade. Moreover, for the first time the military parade was debated in the Knesset. The public and political debate provided an opportunity for questioning the meanings of the ritual, which, according to different ideological positions, also determined the extent of support or rejection of the parade as a ceremonial manifestation of Israeli independence.

The intensity of the debate should also be contextualized in the specific political circumstances of the time: the end of the political hegemony of the Labor government that had lasted continuously ever since Israel was founded. Objections to the parade provided opportunities to discredit the newly elected Likud government. In one letter to the editor it was maintained that the Independence Day parade was intended by Begin as entertainment for his voters, thereby insinuating to the 'primitive' character of the new government and its supporters. Others considered the military parade as the quintessential triumph of the new political elite and of Begin in particular: "It is natural that Mr. Menachem Begin, the new Prime Minister, is eager to stand on the platform and to ceremonially salute the IDF parade after his long tenure as the leader of the opposition."⁴²

The perception of the military parade as the triumph of the new government and as a ritual of legitimacy addressed a profound aspect of the military parade, that was often obscured by its explication in terms of national unity and solidarity. In this framework of interpretation, the effort to bring about the cancellation of the military parade was also intended to prevent the new political elite from utilizing the patriotic ceremony as a ritual of legitimacy and further to deny the right of the new government to control the symbolic resources of Israeli nationhood. This aspect was especially significant in light of Menachem Begin's pedantry in symbolic and ceremonial matters.⁴³ It should however be mentioned that the political debate did not evince obvious political dichotomies (e.g., opposition/coalition or nationalist/liberal). Significantly, Shimon Peres, the head of the Labor opposition, supported the conduct of a military parade and reminded

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his colleagues that this was in accordance with a decision made earlier by a labor government, while the National-Religious Minister Zevulun Hammer voted against the conduct of the parade when the matter was discussed by the government.

Shrouded as it was with political controversy, the public debate brought to the fore various arguments for and against the military parade. A proponent of the tradition maintained that "The army always symbolizes the political sovereignty of peoples, their power and status among the nations . . . The IDF got us our independence and maintains our sovereignty." ⁴⁴ Another argued: "I think that the IDF parade is an extremely efficient instrument to strengthen the spirit and morale of the nation and specifically of our children and of the youth."⁴⁵ It was also maintained that the military parade "provided a point of popular identification between the citizens and their state and army."⁴⁶ Against the traditional affirmation of the military parade as a nation-building measure there was another traditional view, according to which the military aspect should not dominate the celebration of independence.⁴⁷ Teddy Kollek, then the mayor of Jerusalem, even suggested reviving the 'accomplishment parade,' which had failed so miserably in the early 1950s.⁴⁸ A recurrent argument against the parade was that it meant an unnecessary financial expenditure or that it meant a diversion of military resources needed for the maintenance of national security. This argument was especially relevant in light of the substantial reduction of the defense budget and was shared by the military and defense establishment.⁴⁹

Beyond the pro or con arguments, the immediate impression produced by the public debate conducted in August and early September 1977 was that the military parade was no longer a matter of national consensus. The apparent lack of consensus undermined the efficiency of the ritual as a demonstration of national unity and further supported the military establishment in its objection to the parade. The apparent lack of national consensus supported the opposition of the defense establishment and eventually led to the decision to drop the military parade from the ceremonial agenda of Independence Day 1978.

The formal announcement about the cancellation of the planned military parade was made in the Knesset on October 18, 1977, by Ezer Weizman, the then defense minister. The alternative to the aborted military parade was a parade of veterans of the prestate underground movements, an idea of Menahem Begin, the prime minister and former commander of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, which was officially adopted by the government on September 19, 1977. The veterans parade was intended to honor the Zionist underground organizations of the prestate era. Seemingly apolitical, the veteran's parade was also a ritual of legitimacy in its capacity as a means

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for recognizing the historical role of the underground movements and the Irgun and the Lehi in particular in the struggle for independence (hitherto denied to them by the politically hegemonic Labor). For some members of the Labor-affiliated Palmah, the veterans' parade amounted to a 'rewriting of history' and some even called for a boycott of the event. ⁵⁰ The irony in the proposed veteran's parade was that it was the reverse of the first Independence Day military parade. In 1949 the parade was also meant as a ritual of statism, which was manifested in the exclusion of the representatives of the underground movements from this patriotic ceremony. In this respect, Begin's parade, though permeated with pathos and nostalgia and in different historical circumstances, was an option rejected when this ceremonial tradition was established by David Ben-Gurion.

Final Remarks:
(Re)evaluations

Integrated into the ceremonial tradition of the national holiday and a prominent feature of Israeli patriotic culture, the Independence Day parade was a prime cultural production of Israeli nationhood. Judged by its popular appeal and its salience in the ceremonial repertoire of Independence Day, the military parade resonated with and articulated prevalent patriotic sentiments. In 1984, when it seemed that the parade was a thing of the past, it was explained that "It was a natural expression of a people whose state was born in a storm of battle and is still in a state of war with all its neighbors. The military parade was first and foremost intended to deter the enemies aroundand also to infuse a sense of security among the people in Israel and in the Diaspora."⁵¹

To argue that the military parade was the result and expression of political needs and interests amounts to stating the obvious. This chapter's main contribution to the explication of the military parade as a political ritual lies in the detailed historical mapping of such needs and interests and an elaboration of the effect the dynamic interplay of competing interests had on the conduct and particular forms of the ritual.

Such needs and interests notwithstanding, the Independence Day parade provided a ceremonial convergence of the military and the patriotic in the framework of a celebration of national independence. The history of the State of Israel and the circumstances of its foundation and existence not only supported such a thematic interpretation but also to a great extent influenced official and popular attitudes toward the ritual. Even after the cancellation of the parade, the military remained a prominent thematic feature of the ceremonies of Israeli independence, most notably evidenced in the semiotic structure of the central public event of Independence Day

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the opening ceremony at Mount Herzl (for a detailed analysis of this ceremony, see Handelmann 1990).

The militaristic associations of the Independence Day parade also brought about a sense of discomfort that was already manifest at the beginning of the 1950s, when the parade was institutionalized as a ceremonial tradition. Amos Elon summed up the attitude of the opponents of the military parade who "maintained that only totalitarian states adhered to such demonstrations; military parades suit Moscow, Madrid and Cairo. The parade was described as contrasting the "true" spirit of the country, which considers the army as "an indispensable bad thing and not as a thing which is good in itself" (Elon 1972: 1112).

The arguments for and against the parade focused upon the meanings of the ritual and its ceremonial association with independence and, most importantly, with the image of Israeli society it created. The image advocated by the supporters of the parade was that of a militarily powerful and solidary society, while its opponents were also concerned with the image it created of Israel as a militaristic society. Zeev Schiff, the military commentator of the daily Haaretz who opposed the 1977 Independence Day parade, also made it clear that he "[ . . .] is not at all concerned that it will be said in the world that we are a militaristic nation. We know the truth very well" (Schiff 1977). Part of this truth was the manifest disinterest of the military and defense establishments in the ritual parade after 1967. Significantly it was Haim Bar-Lev, who as a chief of staff in 1968 proposed to replace the military parade with a civilian parade. In 1973, when the parade was discussed by the government, Moshe Dayan, the then defense minister, objected. A similar result occurred in 1977, when the conduct of a parade was deliberated by the government. In this latter case two prominent exgenerals, Ezer Weizman, defense minister and a former commander of the Air Force, and Ariel Sharon, a distinguished though contested war hero, objected to the conduct of a military parade. In this context Zeev Schiff commented that the views expressed in the government "exposed again that Israeli politicians and leaders are excited by and need the military more than Israeli generals" (Schiff 1977).

The decision taken in 1977 to cancel the military parade planned for the thirtieth anniversary of Israeli independence in 1978 signaled the end of this ceremonial tradition. Students of Israeli society may explain the end of this tradition as a sign of maturity of a society that learned after 1973 that ceremonial demonstrations of military power can be deceptive and even counterproductive. Others may argue that it was an indication for the undermining of the status of the army as it had prevailed before the 1973 War. Legitimate as these interpretations may be, the partial renewal of

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Independence Day military parades in 1993 proves that things are not as simple and that the cancellation of the 1978 parade was the result of specific circumstances and not the last word in the history of this patriotic ritual.

The renewed Independence Day parade, as it has been conducted since 1993, was different from its predecessors in that it consisted exclusively of an elaborate air show and sea display along the coast, whose focus was the Tel Aviv seashore. An important difference consisted in that these military displays were to a large extent a demonstration of military technology and know-how that did not involve a substantial number of soldiers and did not necessitate a diversion of military resources for the purpose of ceremonial display. In this sense, the renewed parade was an elegant solution to the practical reservations raised against the ritual in 1973 and 1977.

It is plausible to suggest that the comeback of the ritual, even in a modified form, was a response to the sense of helplessness that had prevailed in Israel during the Iraqi missile attacks launched during the Gulf War in January and February 1991. In this respect, the renewed demonstration of advanced military power was also meant to reassure the Israeli public that the lack of Israeli response during the Gulf War was not the result of military inferiority. The popularity of the renewed demonstration of military power was evident by hundreds of thousands who gathered to watch the display, in addition to those who followed the realtime television and radio broadcasts. After the Independence Day 1994 display, Yediot Ahronot, the leading Israeli daily newspaper, published a short editorial titled "Remorse:"

5 days have passed since Independence Day yet its magic atmospherethat joy towards air and sea displayis still singing in the heart.

And you can not but be sorry for the many years that passed without a military parade and display and not feel remorse for that we, the media, had a substantial part in the decision to abolish this tradition. In a patronizing manner we wrote that they cultivate militarism, cost much money and no one wants them.

The truth is that the public does want them. ⁵²

Notwithstanding the popularity of military displays, the demise of the 'old-fashioned', full-scale military parade was officially sealed in 1997, when the organizing committee of the fiftieth anniversary of Israel's independence announced that no military parade would be held in the framework of the elaborate celebrations designed for the jubilee year. The minister in charge of the celebrations explained that the reason was

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"budgetary problems and the desire not to interfere with the work-plans of the army." ⁵³ Ostensibly of practical nature, the explanations did not disclose any political considerations that led to the decision. However, it may be that the decision was also motivated by a desire to avoid potential public criticism, mainly among the political opponents of the Likud government, which came back to power in 1996. It may also be that the feasibility of fierce international objections to the conduct of a military parade in Jerusalem was also an argument against one. In any case, the decision not to revive the military parade despite the extraordinary significance assigned by the state to the fiftieth anniversary of Israel's independence indicated that a full-scale military parade, which belonged to the early history of Israel's existence, ceased to be a viable ceremonial option.

Notes

1. A song from an Independence Day reader for elementary school pupils, Tel Aviv 1955.

2. Quoted from Israel. Independence Day celebration 1951. Published by the National Tourist Department.

3. Oren, A., n.d., The Festivals of Israel for Children: Independence Day, Tel Aviv: Arie Publishing House.

4. In a 'talk' with Davar Sheni (November 27, 1995), Martin Van Creveld mentioned the military parade as an illustration for his thesis that "We were a very militaristic state." Interestingly enough, the military parade was not discussed at all by Ben-Eliezer in his elaboration of 'The emergence of Israeli militarism' (1995).

5. Yoel Segal, "I have seen a soldier on the street . . . ," Mishmar Leyeladim 6/24, February 8, 1951, p. 14.

6. Dvar Hayom, July 28, 1948.

7. Telegram, Yigal Alon to Colonel Zeev Milion, May 2, 1949 (Central Army Archive).

8. These details were included in the report filed by the commission set for examining the failure of the parade (Israel State Archive 5367/1011).

9. Shabtai Tevet, "Just to spite the Parade!," Bamakhane, No. 37/May 12, 1949, p.4.

10. Ibid.

11. On the insult felt by some veterans of the Hagana due to its exclusion from the parade, see Al Hamishmar, April 27, 1949.

12. Letter, Shlomo Arazi, the director of Kirya in Jerusalem and coordinator of Independence Day Committee, to the adjutant of the President, March 31, 1950, CAA. In 1949, however, before the issue of Jerusalem

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gained its political prominence, it was assumed that the 1950 parade would be held in Tel Aviv: Report, Inquiry Commission in regard to the military parade 1949 (Israel State Archive 5367/1011).

13. Protocol, Independence Day Committee, session on November 25, 1952, p.1 (Israel State Archive).

14. Quoted in Davar, April 29, 1954.

15. Protocol, Independence Day Committee 1955, session on April 10, 1955, p. 2 (Israel State Archive).

16. Protocol, Independence Day Committee 1955, session on December 1, 1954, p.1 (Israel State Archive).

17. On the intention to conduct a military parade in Jerusalem according to to the limitations imposed by the armistice agreement see Al Hamishmar, March 27, 1950.

18. A detailed analysis of the political aspect and Ben-Gurion's attitude see in: Zakki Shalom, ''The Tension About the IDF Parades in 1958 and 1961," in Avi Bareli, ed., Divided Jerusalem 19481967, Idan series no. 18, Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1994.

19. Letter to the Independence Day Committee, January 22, 1950.

20. Protocol, 2nd. session of Independence Day Committee, November 25, 1952, p.1 (Israel State Archive).

21. Letter, commander of 'Independence Day 3' Operation to Engineering Corps Officer/Central Command, March 20, 1950; March 30, 1950 (Central Army Archive).

22. Colonel Yosef Harpaz, the parade commander, quoted in Davar, April 20, 1955.

23. Romema Amrani, 5th grade, Galim, The bulletin of the Yarkon elementary school, Tel Aviv, 1955.

24. Letter, E. L. Sulenik to the secretary of the prime minister, April 27, 1950, Israel State Archive C/5367/8II.

25. On the 'historical geography' of the parade, see Yohanan Aharoni, 'Geography of a Parade.' In Routes and Sites. Chapters in the History of Israel in its Land. Tel-Aviv: Hkkibutz Hmeuhad, 1971, pp. 17782.

26. The editorial of Haaretz, for instance, referred to this parade as "an expression of Hebrew sovereignity." Haaretz, April 28, 1968.

27. The editorial of Haaretz maintained: "We are resolute not to give in to this pressure . . . and we do not acknowledge any limitation on our sovereignity in the reunited city. The military parade will demonstrate this resolve." Haaretz, April 28, 1968.

28. Quoted in Haaretz, May 6, 1968.

29. Haaretz, April 11, 1968.

30. Moshe Dayan to Yosef Tamir, Haaretz, December 12, 1968.

31. Letters to the editor, Haaretz, April 8, 1968.

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32. Letters to the editor, Haaretz, May 6, 1968.

33. Protocol, Independence Day Council 1953, November 25, 1952 (Israel State Archive).

34. Protocol, Independence Day Council 1953, November 12, 1952 (Israel State Archive).

35. Ibid.

36. Protocol, Independence Day Council 1952, January 17, 1952, p. 7 (Israel State Archive).

37. Haaretz, April 11, 1973. Yitzhak Ben-Aharon did not remember the exact details and suggested that this committee was set after the failure of the parade of 1949. In this case, however, Yitzhak Rabin could not have been the chief of staff.

38. Haaretz, March 6, 1969.

39. An account of the 'history' of the attempt to make the Four Day March an alternative to Independence Day military parade was presented by the Minister of Police on behalf of the Minister of Defense. Haaretz, March 25, 1973.

40. On this point see N. Dunevitz, "The former and the next parade," Haaretz, August 2, 1977.

41. From his speech in the Knesset, quoted in Haaretz, August 3, 1977.

42. Haaretz, August 9, 1977.

43. Cf. N. Dunevitz, "The former and the next parade," Haaretz, August 2, 1977; "To cancel the parade," Haaretz, March 4, 1973. See also Z. Schiff, "Display instead of pride,'' Haaretz, August 2, 1977.

44. Haaretz, August 7, 1977.

45. Haaretz, August 23, 1977.

46. D. Bloch, "Neveretheless a parade is needed," Davar, April 22, 1977.

47. N. Dunevitz, "The former and the next parade," Haaretz, August 2, 1977. See also his article "To cancel the parade," Haaretz, March 4, 1973.

48. Haaretz, August 9, 1977.

49. Z. Schiff, "Display instead of pride," Haaretz, August 2, 1977.

50. See Davar, October 20, 1977.

51. Maariv, May 6, 1984, p. 16.

52. A. Golan, "Remorse," Yediot Ahronot, April 18, 1994, p. 2.

53. Yediot Ahronot (24 Hours), June 25, 1997, p. 2

References

Ben-Eliezer, U. 1995. The Emergence of Israeli Militarism 19361956, Tel Aviv: Dvir.

Ben-Gurion, D. 1951. Kibbutz galuyot in the Army. In When Israel Fights, pp. 34245, 2nd. ed., Tel Aviv: Am Oved.

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Da Matta, R. 1977. Constraint and License: A preliminary study of two Brazilian national rituals. In S. F. Moore and B. G. Meyerhoff (eds.) Secular Ritual, pp. 24464. Assen: Van Gorcum 1977.

Elon, A. 1972. The Israelis, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken.

Handelman, D. 1990. Models and Mirrors. Towards an Anthropology of Public Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kertzer, D. I. 1988. Ritual, Politics and Power. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Liebman, C., and E. Don-Yehya. 1983. Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Schiff, Z. 1977. Exhibitionism instead of pride. Haaretz, August 2. (Hebrew)

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5
War, Heroism, and Public Representations:
The Case of a Museum of "Coexistence" in Jerusalem

Efrat Ben-Ze'ev and Eyal Ben-Ari

Introduction

In this chapter we examine the relations between cultural representations of war and heroism and the public space left for presentation of alternative voices in present-day Israel. We do this through an analysis of the issues that were involved in planning the renewal program of the Tourjeman Post Museum in Jerusalem. This renewal program centered on an attempt to establish a museum of coexistence in the city. We define a 'museum of coexistence' as an establishment where the narratives of two or more groups marked by confrontations are set out side by side. The juxtaposition of diverging accounts within one exhibition would allow visitors to do two things: to observe the conflicting viewpoints and to actively create their own version of the possibilities of reconciliation.

Given that the Israeli directors wanted to set up a museum depicting a "contemporary history of Jerusalem," the central story of the museum could not avoid the ongoing reality of the city. Because the focus of the museum was to deal with the meeting point between its Palestinian and Jewish parts, this narrative did not escape the history of strife and war that are part of contemporary Jerusalem. Yet the Israeli renewal attempt within a political context marked by deep conflict led to failure. Rather than focusing on the organizational or museological aspects of this "failure" (Ben-Ze'ev and Ben-Ari 1996), we seek to uncover the cultural politics of this contradictory project. ¹ In other words, we seek to interpret this project

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Beit Turjeman Museum

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in terms of the broader cultural narratives and practices of place-making in contemporary Israel. Concurrently, we examine the museum as it existed since the early 1980s.

Israel is still in the process of creating a national identity, and museumsalong with other institutional complexeshave been one of the means for doing this. Within this process the overtures between Palestinians and Jews within the peace process have opened up the possibility of mutual recognition and discussion. Accordingly we would expect that museums in Jerusalem, especially in the context of the peace process, provide territories for debate and the expression of diverging opinions. Yet the failure of creating such a museum in the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum is related, we will show, to the practices of place-making in contemporary Israel. More specifically, we contend that the museum's location, name, and modes of restoration create for visitors a powerful message of (Jewish) military heroism that allows little space for Palestinian voices.

The Setting

The building of the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum is located on the major thoroughfare linking south and north Jerusalem and running along the former international boundary between Israel and Jordan. This main road neatly divides the city between its Jewish western and Arab eastern parts. The house was originally built in 1934 by an Arab architect, Andoni Baramki, a Christian Palestinian who studied in Greece, and who purchased the land from Hassan Bei Tourjeman. The architecture that characterizes Baramki's design combines both indigenous Palestinian elements of Jerusalemite stone with Greek pillars. Tourjeman's name clung to the house for reasons that are unclear. ²

Until 1948 the neighborhood was a "mixed" one, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews who lived on peaceful terms with each other. This proximity of the houses caused the battles of the war in 1948 to be fought here literally from house to house. The new border evolved out of the armistice agreement signed between Abdalla al-Tal and Moshe Dayan (commanders of the Jerusalem area in the Jordanian and Israeli armies respectively) in 1948. Following this development the house was turned into an Israeli army post adjacent to the Mandelbaum Gate on what became the de facto border. Between 1948 and 1967 the gate was used as the sole passage between the Jordanian east Jerusalem and the Israeli west Jerusalem. It served mainly pilgrims and diplomats, as well as convoys of Israeli soldiers on their way to the Israeli enclave of Mount Scopus.

When the house was turned into an Israeli museum in the early 1980s, it was architecturally preserved as an army post, comprised of broken

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balconies, bullet perforations, reinforced concrete, and barbed wire. It was given the name "The Beit Tourjeman Post Museum" to emphasize its nature during the nineteen years it served as a military outpost. A shibboleth was added to the name of the museum, a verse from the Psalms 122: "The city that is compact together" (Ir shekhoobra la yakhdav, literally, a city that has been joined or united together). Paradoxically, the site that commemorated the border line was also to become a symbol of unification. It was shortly after the establishment of the museum that the road connecting the northern suburbs of Jerusalem with its old city was built and hence the border was revived in another manner.

The museum's situation should be understood against the background of the manifold divisions between Arabs and Jews that characterize the city. These two national groups tend to be spatially divided, separated in terms of educational institutions, and belong to different niches of the employment structure. In Romann and Weingrod's (1991) very apt formulation, these groups "live together separately": they inhabit the same city, but are actually estranged and detached from each other.

In the early 1990s suggestions for renewing the museum began to be heard from the director of the museum and the Jerusalem Foundation. ³ The wider backdrop of this period, it should be remembered, was the initial euphoria following the breakthrough in the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. The proposals for renewal were sounded due to the feeling that the museum was not successful for the following reasons: it was not drawing in a sufficient number of visitors, its design was outmoded, and its contents did not reflect the beginnings of the reconciliation between Arabs and Jews. These suggestions were tabled by representatives of a number of organizations each of which had a history of affiliation with the museum. These representatives formed part of an informal committee for the renewal of the museum. None of them came from overtly politicized offices or roles, yet since they all worked for government or public institutions they were not particularly independent in terms of expressing their personal views. Thus, one should keep in mind that although holding private views, the actors were obliged to represent their institutions. It is the interplay between these various institutional perspectives and their private opinions that interests us.

The family who initially donated money for the museum to be established in the 1980s was willing to donate another substantial sum toward the renewal. Since the donations were channeled from the beginning through the Jerusalem Foundation, this institution continued to be involved as well. The donating family and the Jerusalem Foundation contracted a professional designer (who had been employed by this institution) as a leading advisor. Since the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum is under the

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auspices of the larger Tower of David Museum (located next to the old city's Jaffa Gate), the director of this latter institution also became involved as a central member of the committee. The first author was employed as a chief researcher and as part of this informal committee. In this capacity she was an active member in the committee whose aim was to formulate the guiding or underlying "philosophy" or concept of the place.

Consensus and Multivocality

The informal committee for the renewal scheme met irregularly for discussions and deliberations for over a year. A "general philosophy" was agreed upon, but as we shall see there was little agreement as to the actual translation of the philosophy into concrete guidelines for practical action. Facing the question of how to portray conflicts that characterize Jerusalem, the group struggled with defining the basic terms for discussion acceptable to everyone. To put the matter in terms of the questions raised in the introduction, this original group of representatives appear to have been divided as to the museum's character as a place of confrontation.

A working consensus emerged around a number of rather ill-defined concepts like "the mosaic of Jerusalem," "peace," and "united city.'' Within the general agreement worked out in the informal committee, the crux of the debate focused on what could be called a central public image or metaphor of a united Jerusalem. The question was whether to append or not append a question mark at the end of the image: a "United Jerusalem" versus "is Jerusalem United?" Thus the controversy surrounded the purported wholeness attributed to the city and the possibility that in the future it would be again divided.

The stress on "Peace" was part of a much wider public effort found in Israel at that time. With the victory of the Labor coalition in 1992, schools (both elementary and high schools) were strongly encouraged to start curriculums devoted to the subject of "Peace." Indeed, one city administrator suggested that the museum consider cooperating with the Ministry of Education (specifically with the unit in charge of promoting democracy) in a project in which teachers and pupils discussed the ongoing peace process.

In general, we categorize the suggestions put forward according to how they deal with the conflictual situation: the first set of proposals focused on the Jerusalem's unique role as a universal symbol; the second set involved ideas using consensual images, which are not directly related to Jerusalem's character as such; and the third set entailed recommendations for using aesthetic means that blur the situation.

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Jerusalem:
Universal City

Suggestions belonging to the first version centered on the universal nature of the city of Jerusalem. Discussions about the renewal of the museum in this mode focused on how to portray the city as a world center of the three religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. One example was the suggestion to depict within one exhibit the variety of holy places in the city: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mosque of Omar, and the Wailing Wall. A Palestinian academic noted, in regard to a proposal to contrast the city to other "divided" cities, "In respect to comparing Jerusalem and other such cities, it would be possible to devote a small room to explaining how Jerusalem differs from other such cities. Jerusalem is special because it is holy, unlike other divided cities" (see also Azulay 1993: 82).

Another type of suggestion was to highlight the special character of Christianity as a mediating force between Moslems and Jews. For instance, a number of people suggested that the museum could screen the film about the Pope's historic visit to Israel and Jordan in the mid-1960s. The film would include not only his role vis-à-vis the peoples of the two countries but his symbolic crossing of the Mandelbaum Gate in proximity to Beit Tourjeman.

Moreover, in both suggestions the stress on Jerusalem's uniquely sacred character served to distance the museological content from the conflictual reality of the city. It was thought that bringing pictures of holy sites and sacred artifacts into the site would echo with the wider spiritual aura of the city. In this manner the holy would have been mobilized to portray the "true" nature of the city in two mutually reinforcing ways: as sacred symbols in themselves (i.e., belonging to a discursive universe of religion) and as sanctified museological objects (i.e., belonging to the discursive universe of the museum). Objects in conventional museums partakewhatever their originof a certain sacred character: they are to be looked at, viewed with wonder, and often handled in a very controlled manner. Displays are "set up as if they [are] photographs: flattened, bounded, glass-covered, to be viewed (never touched)" (Jenkins 1994: 246).

Stressing the Universal; Glossing the Particular

If the first set of suggestions could have been applied only to Jerusalem, the following number of recommendations could logically be applied to any large "world" city. These ideas centered on the universal elements that can be found in Jerusalem, with the message being that Jerusalem is like any place in the world (and conflict thereby being evaded by appealing to the ideal of "any" human existence).

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One example of this idea was to let the character of the city express itself through children. It was proposed to collect photographs of children at play in various ad-hoc games like improvised soccer with balls made of rags or impromptu races with old bicycle wheels rolled in the street. The thought behind this proposal was to portray the children of Jerusalem's two parts before and after the war of 1967. The snapshots of "poor" children playing along the walls of the border were to be contrasted with pictures of children after 1967. In terms of our argument, the appeal here was to a universal human empathy with the plight of children. By extension, the suffering of any human being is something that any visitor can identify with.

This manner of portraying the city banalizes the conflict between its two peoples: the confrontation is turned into a watered-down version of reality with little direct bearing on people's concrete lives. Moreover, by depicting the general category of "children," such an exhibition would gloss over the specific national and ethnic components of the conflict in Jerusalem. In the same vein, by representing the suffering of youngsters during the period that the city was divided and during the war of 1967 would seem to imply that today children do not suffer.

Beautiful Mosaic; Thriving City

A closely related set of propositions focused on depicting an ideal of Jerusalem as an harmonious wholea mosaic or collageof diverse ingredients. A concrete example was the idea to select pictures representing the unique character of different neighborhoods and quarters in the city: the Coptic precinct, the Armenian precinct, or various Moslem and Jewish quarters. The governing idea was to create a sort of tableau of Jerusalem: different neighborhoods and "typical" inhabitants would be juxtaposed in an aesthetic way. In the words of one Christian advisor, the suggestion was to display the variety of "local Jerusalem traditions." A municipal administrator in charge of educational matters suggested stressing the city's pluralistic quality.

These kinds of recommendations should be seen against a wider backdrop. In the intellectual circles of the West, multiculturalism has become a fashion. Thus, in stressing Jerusalem's character as an assembly of diverse elements, one finds a close parallel to the ways in which contemporary New York, London, or Paris are depicted. All such "world" cities are congregations of arrays of peoples from disparate backgrounds who live and work side by side. Stressing the multicultural nature of the city, is once again a means to overlook the problematic aspects of Jerusalem. While it is true that the city is a gathering of diverse groups, these

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groups stand in relations of inequality and sometimes conflict vis-à-vis each other. ⁴

A closely related set of submissions was to construct images of cooperation, goodwill, "joint" projects, and the "granting" of communal institutions to all of the citizens of the city, including the Palestinians. These proposals involved something entailed in public works around the world: local politicians and administrators relish parading before their constituencies various amenities and facilities that they have built. Accordingly, one proposal was to show various physical projects (like gardens or sewage works) and administrative arrangements (health clinics or Mother and Child Centers) that were the direct result of the "unification" of the city. An external Jewish advisor from a research center in Jerusalem spoke of setting up a room devoted to Jerusalem after 1967, which would applaud the achievements of the municipality and the Jerusalem Foundation. Another suggestion was to portray the Jinogli Center for Visual Arts (located in west Jerusalem) and how it had succeeded in attracting Palestinian groups there.

An important connotation accompanying suggestions for portraying the city as a prosperous one was that this prosperity had been achieved because of Israeli rule. Our interpretationand it is not one discussed by the various participants at the timeis that the underlying idea of such proposals was one of an Israeli paternalism: the city has been renewed and reinvigorated by the governing authorities on the terms dictated by the Israelis. Along these lines, all of the previous suggestions depict the prosperity of the city and thus omit its frictions and disparities. More importantly, an exhibition showing such public works and projects would be a celebratory demonstration. Such a display would resound with the assumptions of many museums about the modernizing project of the West (Jenkins 1994: 257): to put this by way of our case, the exhibition would offer visible evidence of the progress brought about by Israeli unification and rule even though the message would be a subtle one.

Aesthetics and the Blurring of Experience

Another closely related solution was the recommendation to concentrate on technique at the expense of content. The advisor specializing in design emphasized the need for multimedia exhibitionsa movie with nine screens, shifting slides and pictures, light and shadow "plays," and interactive computersand thereby circumvented their content.

There was a suggestion to juxtapose, within the same exhibition, Israeli and Palestinian artists in order to deliver a message of coexistence. Compatibility and symmetry were to be achieved as an ideal within the

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confines of the institution, in contrast to the inequality and asymmetry outside its walls. Another suggestion was to bring ceramics and paintings created by Palestinian and Jewish children and to present them at the museum. This proposal combined the universalizing and the artistic stresses. To follow Alpers (1991), these artistic productions would be integrated within the "museum effect." By being isolated for a kind of attentive looking, they would be turned into objects of visual interest in themselves apart from any relation they bore on the actual conditions of the city.

Palestinian Voices?

While all of the versions we have been depicting up until now were based on the idea of creating a one-sided perspective, we now turn to the suggestions at renewing the museum as a site of diverging opinions. The following version came up at the initiative of the informal committee (often in a rather diffuse way), but was stressed most forcefully by external advisors. It was in the words and formulations of various external advisors that the demand came up time and again most forcefully for letting the voice of the other sidePalestiniansbe expressed. All of the members of the committee and the external advisors agreed that it would be good to have Palestinian visitors to the museum, but it was in regard to their place within the exhibitions that discords arose.

People talked about the need for multiple voices in the institution: give them (us) the right to be heard. An Israeli intellectual, who established his own private research center about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contended that realizing such an aim could only be achieved if the renewal effort would be the outcome of a joint and equitable initiative of the two national groups. An Arab academic stated that "the Palestinians will come [to the museum] if they feel that they have been portrayed truthfully. The museum has to represent the two perspectives. It is important that the Palestinians be allowed to voice their opinions, and that these opinions won't be processed through the Israeli interpretation." He continued: "In the endmost rooms of the museum there is a need to distinguish between the dream and the reality. In reality, the city is not only divided but there is control by one side over employment resources, development services, and so on. It is not necessary to translate this reality into political language, but the situation has to be depicted accurately: for example, compare the housing situation of the two parts of the city." A representative of a formal political Palestinian institution considered cooperating with the museum, but clarified from the beginning her demand that the Palestinians present themselves without the mediation of the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum as an Israeli institution.

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The constant emphasis by the Palestinians that they do not want to be heard through the voices of the Israelis or of the Israeli Left is related to a wider point. From the point of view of the Jewish committee members and external advisors, the concept of bringing the Palestinians "into" the museum was based on an assumption that the Israeli authorities hold the power to allow access to the site on their own terms. This assumption was very clear throughout the various meetings of the committee. For example, a number of times members mentioned that "we need an Arab in the committee," the implicit message being the need to show off a representative of the so-called 'other' voices. ⁵

Palestinians wanted a story that had not been told before in a place such as a museum that creates national myths. For example, a Palestinian newspaper editor insisted that the museum should portray the war of 1967 from the Palestinian perspective and include pictures of corpses and shops that had been looted.

A Palestinian academic mentioned the scarcity and lack of popularity of museums within Palestinian society. Our interpretation would be that this lack should be understood within the process of Palestinian nation-building. In this process various practices are used to fuse history and memory into elements of national identity: academic research, educational curricula, documentation centers, publishing houses, and museums. This point is especially relevant given that the Palestinians have not, as of yet, begun to use such cultural institutions to disseminate their collective narrative.⁶ Paradoxically then, in their willingness to contemplate cooperation with the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum, official representatives of the Palestinian government demonstrated a willingness to use this museum as one legitimate basis for Palestinian nationbuilding.

While various Palestinian representatives could have conceivably appeared in occasional meetings or discussions at the museum, Palestinian heros would not have been allowed to make an appearance in the exhibition itself. Moreover, the committee did not even consider the possibility of depicting such controversial issues as land expropriation, or even Palestinian views of the wars of 1948 and 1967. Turning the museum into a forum implies letting the conflictual reality enter the museum as a central organizing principle. Yet time and again the various institutional forces working in and around the museum did not let this happen.

In order to understand the reasons for this situation we now turn to the museum's name, location, architecture, and the manner by which it is represented in guidebooks and the institution's brochures. We turn from an analysis of the deliberations about renewal to an examination of the context of the place. In terms of our general argument, we contend that

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these circumstances were the central factor limiting the possibility of creating a site for intergroup debates.

Contexts:
Name, Geography, and History

Saumarez Smith (1989: 18; also Ames 1992: 105) suggests that since "surveys of the patterns of museum visiting demonstrate that visitors spend extremely little time inspecting any of the contents, except in the museum shop, it is arguable that the overall environment is of greater importance that what is actually displayed." Taking off from what he then goes on to call a "symbiotic relationship between a building and what it represents" (Saumarez Smith 1989: 18), we suggest that the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum's structure, its specific geographical position, and the manner by which it has been repaired all carry particular messages about how to understand its contents.

Take a common practice found in Israeli museums. Visitors are often provided with an orientation to the museum's narrative even before entering the site itself. The central theme of the museum is thus connected to its historical, social, and geographical surroundings and location. Katriel (1997) gives an example of the museum at kibbutz Yif'at where before entering one is instructed to look at the encompassing valley and how this environment is an integral part of the institution's documentation of Zionism's pioneering past.

At the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum, visitors are advised to begin their tour of the site on the roof. It is in the panoramic view that the clash between the surroundings of the museum and its potential message of "peace" appears. For Israeli visitors the view is somewhat strange: they can identify very few of the surrounding houses and it takes an effort to recognize familiar places. The museum is located at the edge of the Jewish part of the city and in a sense remains part of the Jewish frontier, on a road built on what was previously no-man's-land. Only in the north are Mount Scopus and the buildings of the Hebrew University readily recognizable. Incomers are told about the history of Mount Scopus as an Israeli army enclave within Arab territory between 194867, and about the military convoys that transported soldiers to this position.

The external restoration of the museum echoes these stories. It is reconstructed with broken balconies, bullet perforations, embrasures and rifle apertures built with reinforced concrete. In this manner, by walking on the roof and within the building itself, visitors are invited to identify with soldiers peering out into the surroundings. All of the embrasures and apertures face East (i.e., Arab) Jerusalem.

The name given to the museum after its restoration, the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum, carries us back in time to the divided city and the role of the

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military in segregating and protecting its two parts. In this respect, a number of advisors commented about the need to change the museum's name. For example, a Palestinian from Bir Zeit University talked about the necessity of finding a new title for the place, and a curator of another museum noted that it was important that the name of the place hint at its new message.

Now let us turn to how the place is portrayed in guidebooks and the institution's own brochures. Horne (1984) describes contemporary tourists as modern pilgrims carrying guidebooks as devotional texts. These texts provide a sort of "meta-narrative" in the sense of placing the specific story told by the site within a wider series of interlinked and meaningful events. Urry (1990: 129) adds that what matters about these texts is how they guide people to see certain things in museums: what matters "is what people are told they are seeing . . . There is thus a ceremonial agenda, in which it is established what we should see and sometimes even the order in which they should be seen" (Urry 1990: 129).

One out of a few museological guidebooks to Israeli Museums is Rosovsky and Ungerleider-Mayerson's (1989) "The Museums of Israel." The Beit Tourjeman Post Museum appears in this volume as one of about thirty Jerusalem establishments. After describing its architecture the authors add,

Located at the edge of the Israeli section of the city, the building was badly damaged during the war in 1948; later, it served as an Israeli military post, standing like a sentinel over the nearby Mandelbaum Gate, which was for almost two decades the only border crossing between Israel and Jordan. In 1967, when the city was reunited and the barbed wire dismantled, The Beit Tourjeman house was partially restored by the Jerusalem Foundation. But some fortifications were left in place, and the scars of battle were not patched over, since the house was converted into a museum devoted to demonstrating the destructiveness of war and the tragedy of a city divided for nineteen years (Rosovsky and Ungerleider-Mayerson 1989: 6970). ⁷

Next, we look at the one-page brochure visitors were given upon entering the museum. This brochure contains a few sentences about the site's history, and ends with the theme of the museum, "JerusalemA Divided City Reunited." Then it suggests a tour program (we quote verbatim):

First Floorstart with the "room of the neighborhoods." It shows different neighborhoods in Jerusalem, each with its own style and architecture. From here to the roof.

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On the RoofThe lookout pointa panoramic view of northern Jerusalem, also there is an exhibition room "Jerusalema city at war 19471948"; it includes pictures and maps on the War of Independence. From here head down to the second floor.

Second FloorThe main exhibition hall is about "Jerusalem, a divided cityreunited (19471967)"; At the end of the exhibition go down the spiral staircase to the first floor and enter the "Jaffa Gate room"shows the history of Jaffa Gate over the last century.

In the Basement is the movie theater. Movies include:
1. "Is Jerusalem Burning?"
2. "Follow Me"six-day war film on Jerusalem.

The Hebrew handbill includes another short section called "The Restoration of the Structure." It states that "In the restoration process of Beit Tourjeman a stress was placed on conserving it as a military post, while featuring the external destruction to the house, so that the museum would bear testimony and be a symbol of the severe struggle that occurred in Jerusalem in the last period." There is, however, a contradiction between the texts and the reality of the museum. While the texts stress the destructiveness of war as sort of "shock" or educational means for peace, in reality war is depicted in terms of heroism. Even the words ''severe struggle" resonate with this heroism.

It seems that although the museum's direct message is of unification, in practice it shows the opposite. In the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum the orientation is toward its past and location. It still is very much a military post overlooking the Palestinian part of Jerusalem. Moreover, the texts that guide visitors all allude not only to the destructiveness of war but also to the heroism of the Israeli army in bringing about the "unification" of the city. Thus, the site is placed within a wider narrative related to Israel, Jerusalem, and military action and the ugly face of warthe orphans and widows, and wounds and deathis "sterilized."

A rather consistent message is transmitted on all of these levels: the name, location, restoration, and guiding texts all reinforce each other in establishing the museum as a site of Israeli heroism. In a provocative essay, Saumarez Smith (1989) argues that museum objects are constantly open to diverse readings. Different people in different time periods will provide multiple interpretations for artifacts. When the case of the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum is examined, however, we find a rather consistent attempt across a wide spectrum of levels of communication to prescribe a general way of understanding the site. Whether the outcome of the fragility of Israeli control or the self-assurance of the Israeli authorities (or both), the

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situation is one in which the place is designed in a manner consistent with the stress on the Israeli version of the unification of the city. ⁸ In this way, the museum attempts to limit the leeway left for visitors to offer a variety of interpretations of its meaning.

In Vergo's (1989: 48; also Ames 1992: 44) terms the building itself can be seen as a sort of contextual exhibition because what is more important than the objects displayed is that it is a token of a particular period, a representative of certain ideas. In more theoretical terms, we base our formulation on Gregory Bateson's insight that the form and not only the substance of action may teach us something about social behavior (Schwartzman 1978: 213). Bateson's insight centered on the notion that human communication occurs at various levels: that of messages (or contents) and that of meta-messages (or contexts). Metacommunicative messages act as 'frames' or 'frameworks' that provide information about how the actual message should be interpreted. In the case of the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum, the metacommunicationsthe location, name, restorationinform visitors how to understand the place. In Lavine's (1991: 81) words, they all create a powerful overall poetic and affective thrust.

Place-Making:
Museums and Memorials

Having looked at the museum's context, we now turn to an examination of its political framework. Our argument is that the museum should be seen within a set of processes that may be termed "national place-making in contemporary Israel." The museum's present location and especially its historical significance as a site of Jewish presence on the state's former borders, should alert us to its place in the central narratives of Zionism. More concretely, we suggest that the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum appears within two closely related symbolic maps of place-making practices: a map of Israeli museums and a map of military memorials.

Nation-building and museums. In the first instance the creation of the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum should be viewed as part of a decades-long link between nation-building and the establishment of museums in modern Israel. The earliest such museums were built at the time that the prestate institutions (Jewish offices and departments) were established. The common attitude at the base of all the museums in the pre-1948 period was that culture is a national treasure and that it is important to preserve it and make it accessible to the general public (Kol-Inbar 1992: 163). At the beginning there was no official policy for museums, but once in place, usually upon the initiative of committed individuals, the prestate Zionist institutions provided subsidies. Indeed, all through the preindependence

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and immediate postindependence periods, the construction of these museums came as a complement to the political construction of the state. As Kol-Inbar (1992: 2) concludes, all postindependence museums were established on the "solid" foundation of prewar museums, which were closely related to the central tenets of the Zionist ideology. Most crucially, as Kol-Inbar (1992: 169), in very sympathetic terms, says

the museums reflected to a great degree the process by which Zionism was actualized from an almost abstract idea to a real settlement (he'achzoot) of the land, and the establishment of a native society with a national identity. This actualization was carried out by the pioneers that built the country out of nothing with much vision, commitment, ideals and self sacrifice . . . When we compare the peculiarity of these museums with Jewish or more generally Western museums, we find that they were not built with an emphasis on the past, but rather with an emphasis on the present for the future. Even when these museums exhibited the far past (archeology), or the nearer past (Judaica and Jewish Ethnography), they were placed within the general contextto fit the nature of the land . . . the local art, and these exhibitions gave the museums a relevance.

The museums set up within the context of Zionism were (from their beginnings) designed to be explicitly "relevant." These were institutions far removed from the kinds of distanced knowledge, the keeping of exotica, or displaying of colonial "others" found in the early museums of the West (Stocking 1985; Ames 1992: 1524; Jenkins 1994: 24243). Two points follow from this background. The first is that Israeli museums have tendedmore like Third World museums and unlike mainstream Western institutions (Anderson 1991: chap. 10; Durrans 1988: 152)to be politically mobilized. The second is that this role of political recruitment has provided an implicit model for museums established after independence. While the use of this model for political purposes is not as overt as it was in the prestate period, it nevertheless survives in more subtle ways. The Beit Tourjeman Post Museum was constructed within a situation in which there already existed models that could be followed.

Another point underlines the historical fit of the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum with the link between place-making and Zionism. Beit Tourjeman, like many public places and spaces in Israel, is based on donations recruited from outside the country. This point includes not only the practical side of finance, but no less significantly the conception of finance as the conduit between world Jewry and Israel. In Israel there is a cultural scenario that links Zionism, money from abroad, and implementation of plans for

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building. Indeed, we would argue that this is as true of the early Zionists (Cohen 1977), as it is of such contemporaries as Gush Emunim (Aran 1991), Jerusalem's Teddy Kollek, and Baba Baruch in Netivot (Bilu and Ben-Ari 1991). In all of these cases the emphasis is on "making" or "creating" Israel on two analytically distinct levels: through transforming the country's actual landscapeby building, assembling, and creating "facts"and through pointing to sites where Israeli-Jewish culture's "key scenarios'' are actualized (Katriel and Shenhar 1991: 376). Thus from an organizational point of view, beyond the actual contents of the museum, its very conception as a spatial act can be seen as part of the Zionist ethos of place-making.

Militarism and Commemoration. But the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum is not only a museum; it also serves partially as a commemorative site. It is similar to Ammunition Hill, the Golani Museum, or the Armored Corps Museum, ⁹ all of which are even more strongly linked to the army. Like these establishments, it evokes not only a general sense of Zionist placemaking or the establishment of a gallery, but also resonates with notions of sacrifice within the central nationalistic narratives of Zionism. In this sense, it is related first to wider foundation myths of the Zionist state as a solution to the Jewish problem in diaspora (Aronoff 1993); second, to the intentional cultivation of a "new" active and combative Jew differing radically from the passive and nonresistant Jew of the diaspora (Lomsky-Feder 1992; Katriel 1986: chap. 2); and third, to the birth of the nation-state in war and on the basis of sacrifice (Sivan 1991).

Here we would argue that visits to the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum are part of the processes by which these myths and narratives are turned into a taken-for-granted matter for Israeli-Jews. In other words, along with schools, ceremonies, and the media, museums are part of a set of concrete arrangements by which these myths are circulated, reproduced, propagated, and spread. To put this point by way of example, the myth of TelHai (Zerubavel 1991; Witstum and Malkinson 1993) is an example of a heroic rendering of a key Zionist myth, but to be internalized it must be promulgated in schools and kindergartens, in the army and workplaces and in various commemorative sites and museums. In our case then, one of the means by which the myth or story of the "liberation" and "unification" of the city of Jerusalem is imparted are visits to the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum. Indeed, one of the most popular tours of this area of Jerusalem appears in a publication of the institution: visitors are encouraged to walk along the old border that divided Jerusalem between the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum and Ammunition Hill, the site of one of the bloodiest battles in the war of 1967. The museum is related in this manner to the creation of

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landscapes of national sacrifice (Handelman and Shamgar-Handelman 1997): military cemeteries, memorials, and monuments. ¹⁰

A Distanced Past or a Relevant Present. We are now in a position to examine how the museum as related to the Israeli state predicates certain relations between past and present. The present- and future-oriented museums found in Jewish Palestine did not portray the conflicts of the time, but rather were celebrations of local fare and achievements. For example, many museums pridefully displayed local agricultural products and projects and the new industries of that period (Kol-Inbar 1992: 70). The emphasis in these establishments was on validating the success of the Zionist project by directly depicting its various achievements in the present. But while the outcome in terms of a preoccupation with the present is similar in both institutions, the current stress on the affirming role of museums that the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum evinces is different from these historical examples. It is different because while contemporary museums tend to portray the past and ignore the problematics of the present on one level, the stress on the past serves as an indirect confirmation of contemporary values and meanings.

This point is underscored by the following pattern. In a recent article Tamar Katriel (1997) examines attempts in contemporary Israel to advance certain versions of history by reconstructing 'old' places. The case she discusses involves the plethora of museums now being built to commemorate and to celebrate the ideals of the country's socialist-Zionist history and the values associated with this legacy. As she shows, the construction of these museums should be seen in the context of history-making practices that inevitably construct selective interpretations of the past. What is significant to these places is that they all deal with a somewhat distant past: with the preindependence pioneers and with exemplary tales about the establishment of the state. Very little is exhibited within these institutions in regard to the present-day predicaments of the country.

But as in the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum, so in these establishments while it is a removed past that is portrayed, the very distance itself is directly related to present political circumstances. Distance serves a political purpose for it allows the depiction of the society's values in a manner unimpeded by a careful scrutiny of Israel's actual circumstances. Because Israel is still in a period of nation-building, the role if museums remains one of civic temples, places where sacred myths and symbols of the nationstate are venerated.¹¹

Indeed, barring very few exceptionsand in contrast to artistic productions such as pictures or sculptures (Ofrat 1994)museums in Israel have not generally dealt with painful national issues. Moreover, an

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attitude of avoiding traumas seems to characterize museums around the world (Hudson 1991: 458; Kol-Inbar 1992: 17273). In 1989, for example, when the Israel Museum held an exhibition on the Palestinian refugee camp in Jericho, it did so in its ethnographic section and under the guise of documenting a changing way of life (Kol-Inbar 1992: 176). Katriel (1997) notes in regard to the museums she studied that the "candid and highly troubled version of local history . . . hardly ever finds its way into the museum's public statements." In our case, we argue, one finds the same kind of situation in which painful issues are not addressed. The Beit Tourjeman Post Museum could not truly examine the conflict and disparity between the national groups in Jerusalem.

Conclusion

This chapter began by analyzing the attempts and the failure to establish a museum of coexistence in Beit Tourjeman. The discussion then led to an exploration of the role of museums in the national context. Hence, this chapter is part of the question being increasingly asked within the 'philosophy' of museums about the relationship between such establishments and institutionalized power (Lumley 1988: 2; Ames 1991: 23). As Duncan (1991: 101102) notes, museums "can be powerful identity-defining machines. To control a museum means precisely to control the representation of a community and some of its highest, most authoritative truths." By examining one museum, we showed how it is designed (again, intentionally and unintentionally) to engender certain experiences among visitors.

In this sense, our attempt was to link an analysis of the internal characteristics of an establishment to wider social and political interests. Specifically, our conclusion is that because the museum was an Israeli one, it could only include the Israeli national narrative. As Papadakis (1994: 410) notes, state histories articulated from a nationalistic point of view involve only one moral center and the denial of the experience and desires of other groups. The Israeli authorities could not accept a situation in which the city's different groups would display their views and visitors could develop their own narrative. Moreover, these limits were related to the fact that Beit Tourjeman is a military memorial connecting a physical site to the myths and celebrations of the state.

The attempted renewal project in the Beit Tourjeman Post Museum that we have been analyzing "fizzled out." It was not that the committee members met and arrived at a decision to stop the attempt to renew the museum. The project simply ceased to continue because of internal

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disagreements and the implicit contradictions accompanying the project. While there were other attempts to change the face of the museum, today it is closed and waiting for some agreement about its future character.

Notes

Acknowledgment: Thanks are due to Paul Dresch, Michael Feige, Edna Lomsky-Feder, and Jay Winter for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

1. Given the participation of the first author in the deliberations about renewing the exhibits and programs at the Tourjeman Post Museum we are in a unique position of being able to talk about a "museum-in-the-making." At that time (199394) Ben-Ze'ev participated in the project in the capacity of researcher for the new exhibition. The written documentation (protocols, letters, and interview transcripts) she gathered during this period was to be used for internal administrative objectives and not for academic anthropological aims. It was only a year later that the idea to analyze this material took shape.

2. A possible reason for the survival of the name Tourjeman and not Baramki could be that the first name can be found in Jerusalem among Christian, Moslem, and Jewish families.

3. The Jerusalem Foundation is a semi-independent body that was set up adjacent to the municipality to recruit donations and to initiate public projects in the city.

4. A related version, suggested by a prominent Palestinian intellectual, was to emphasize the mingling of Jewish and Arab elites in the past and to portray the Arab presence in West Jerusalem until 1948. In this manner by talking of a relatively distant past you can much more easily play up its positive sides.

5. This situation is similar to recent attempts by mainstream museums in the Western world to allow minoritieslike Chicanos and Native-Americansto participate in creating exhibitions under the guise of a libertarian banner of pluralism (Lavine 1991). But, as Ybarra-Frausto (1991) argues, the notion of pluralism as a political strategy for incorporating alternative voices makes a peripheral place for new possibilities without allowing them to challenge the central assumptions of the mainstream. Yet while in mainstream American art museums it is the European canon that provides the guiding assumptions for exhibitions, as we shall presently see, in the case of the Tourjeman Post Museum the mainstream rendition that alternative voices were not allowed to contest was that of Zionism.

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6. For a very rare example of a privately run Palestinian ethnological collection, see Husseini 1981. In addition, a number of small institutions have been established in Ramallah and Bethlehem.

7. It is interesting to note that "history" in this text begins during the war of 1948. In this manner, it omits the very fact that the neighborhood was a mixed one during the prewar period.

8. Thus it is no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of visitors are Israeli-Jews with a sprinkling of groups of Jews from outside of Israel.

9. All three institutions were established by public organizations and include commemorations of fallen soldiers and an explicit display of Israel's military legacy.

10. This situation is very similar to that of the Australian War Memorial: In its remembrance of the heroism of Australian troops in Europe and the Middle East (the theaters of 'real history'), this institutionintended as both a museum of the nation's military history and a shrine to the war deadenabled there to be figured forth and materialized an Australian past which could claim the same status, weight, and dignity as the European pasts it so clearly sought to emulate and surpass (Bennet 1988: 79).

11. It is in this light that the examples of the Migdal David and Bezalel museums in the process of Israel's continued nation-building should be seen (Azulay 1993: 8081).

References

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Ames, Michael M. 1992. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Aran, Gideon. 1991. Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: "The Bloc of the Faithful" in Israel (Gush Emunim). In Fundamentalism Observed, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Azulay, Ariella. 1993. With open doors: Museums of history in the Israeli public space. Theory and Criticism 4: 7995.

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Bilu, Yoram, and Eyal Ben-Ari. 1991. The making of modern saints: Manufactured charisma and the Abu-Hatseiras of Israel. American Ethnologist 19(4): 67287.

Cohen, Erik. 1977. The city in Zionist ideology. The Jerusalem Quarterly 4: 12644.

Duncan, Carol. 1991. Art Musuems and the Ritual of Citizenship. In Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (eds.): Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, pp. 88103. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Durrans, Brian. 1988. The Future of the Other: Changing Cultures on Display in Ethnographic Museums. In Robert Lumley (ed.): The Museum Time Machine: Putting Cultures on Display, pp. 14469. London: Routledge.

Handelman, Don, and Lea Shamgar-Handelman. 1997. The Presence of Absence: The Memorialism of National Death in Israel. In Yoram Bilu and Eyal Ben-Ari (eds.): Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Home, Donald. 1984. The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History. London: Pluto.

Hudson, Kenneth. 1991. How Misleading Does an Ethnographical Museum Have to Be? In Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (eds.): Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, pp. 45764. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Jenkins, David. 1994. Object lessons and ethnographic displays: Museum exhibitions and the making of American anthropology. Comparative Studies in Society and History 36(2): 24270.

Katriel, Tamar. 1986. Talking Straight: Dugri Speech in Israeli Sabra Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Katriel, Tamar. 1997. Re-making Place: Cultural Production in an Israeli Pioneer Settlement Museum. In Eyal Ben-Ari and Yoram Bilu (eds.): Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Katriel, Tamar, and Aliza Shenhar. 1991. Tower and stockade: Dialogic narration in Israeli settlement ethos. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 76(4): 35980.

Kol-Inbar, Yehudit. 1992. The History of Museums in Israel until the Establishment of the State as an Expression of the Zionist Vision. M.A. thesis, Department of Art History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (Hebrew)

Lavine, Steven D. 1991. Art Museums, National Identity, and the Status of Minority Cultures: The Case of Hispanic Art in the United States. In

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Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (eds.): Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, pp. 7987. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Lumley, Robert. 1988. Introduction. In Robert Lumley (ed.): The Museum Time Machine: Putting Cultures on Display, pp. 123. London: Routledge.

Lomsky-Feder, Edna. 1992. Youth in the Shadow of War, War in the Light of Youth: Life Stories of Israeli Veterans. In Wim Meeus et al. (eds.): Adolescence, Careers and Culture, pp. 393408. Amsterdam: De Gruyter.

Ofrat, Gideon. 1994. How Have Heros Fallen: Israeli Art Fights Heros. Mishkafaim 22: 3945. (Hebrew)

Papadakis, Yiannis. 1994. The national struggle museums of a divided city. Ethinic and Racial Studies 17(3): 40019.

Romann, Michael, and Alex Weingrod. 1991. Living Together Seperately: Arabs and Jews in Contemporary Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rosovsky, Nitza, and Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson. 1989. The Museums of Israel. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

Saumarez Smith, Charles. 1989. Museums, Artifacts, and Meanings. In Peter Vergo (ed.): The New Museology, pp. 621. London: Reaktion Books.

Schwartzman, Helen. 1978. Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play. New York: Plenum.

Sivan, Emmanuel. 1991. The 1948 Generation: Myth, Profile and Memory. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence. (Hebrew)

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Vergo, Peter. 1989. The Reticent Object. In Peter Vergo (ed.): The New Museology, pp. 4159. London: Reaktion Books.

Witstum, Eliezer, and Ruth Malkinson. 1993. Bereavement and Commemoration in Israel: The Dual Face of the National Myth. In Ruth Malkinson, Simon S. Rubin, and Eliezer Witztum (eds.): Loss and Bereavement in Jewish Society in Israel, pp. 23158. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence. (Hebrew)

Zerubavel, Yael. 1991. The politics of intepretation: Tel Hai in Israel's collective memory. AJS (American Jewish Society) Review 16: 13359.

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PART III
THE CONSTRUCTION OF LIFE-WORLDS

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6
Army and War:
Collective Narratives of Early Childhood in Contemporary Israel

Mirta Furman

We often admire, and rightly, the heroism displayed in the War of Independence by the generation that was educated in Israel during the past thirty years . . . That army, which redeemed us from the shame of exile, will be enshrined forever in the history of the Jewish peoplebut this still does not make it an educational ideal. We must distinguish between two separate matters: between its significance as a historical factor and its significance as an educational factor . . . There is no need to admire military heroism if it is essential for survival, and no reason to turn it into an educational ideal.
(Leibowitz, 1975: 70) ¹

This chapter examines how the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict is reflected in and influences early-childhood educational frameworks. The focus is on the construction and manipulation of political myths and symbols and on the exploitation of national rituals for political purposes. Kertzer (1988, 1992) contends that anthropologists must adapt themselves to their era and refer to the political context of the societies they study. This chapter tries to do so by examining the messages and rituals that are transmitted by teachers and kindergarten teachers in contemporary Israel. It spotlights two primary themes: army and war. The chapter, then, addresses itself to certain characteristics of Israeli political culture, as it manifests itself in institutions of early childhood education.

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The chapter deals with collective memory and adopts a constructivist approach. It maintains that wars and heroes of the past are sanctified and reconstructed in terms of collective memory. The historical past is constructed and reinterpreted in accordance with the problems, needs, beliefs, fears, and aspirations of the present. The collectivist ideology that was dominant in the Yishuv period and remains so in present-day Israel dictates a central collective memory. Similarly, the collectivist orientation entails political socialization from early childhood. Although diverse groups struggle to ensure their particular selection and interpretation of events, these are determined by the ruling elite of the time. However, despite all of this, collective memory is not necessarily constructed according to a clear set of rules laid down in advance or in a conscious process. As mentioned before, we adopt this constructive approach.

From its inception, Israel has been caught up in a perpetual external and intercommunal conflict involving wars, border incidents, terrorist actions, and a popular uprising. Indeed, since the end of World War II Israel has been involved in more wars than any other country in the world. ² As a result, it maintains an extremely high per capita defense budget,³ universal conscription for men and women, and military reserve duty for men until age fifty-four. Israel closely resembles the model of a "nation in arms."⁴

It is not surprising then that security has become a central theme in Israeli society, exercising a profound influence on the countryís values and institutions and on the everyday life of its citizens.⁵ Children, of course, are also susceptible to these influences. The educational system and its curricula reflect the militaristic reality and the security concerns.

A fundamental principle of Israeli society since the prestate Yishuv period has been its collectivist orientation.⁶ Internal struggles have muted that orientation in various realms, such as the economic, judicial, and educational. At the same time, the liberal element in Zionist ideology, which emphasized individualism over collectivism, moderated and offset the demands of the collective.⁷ Nevertheless, the collectivist orientation remained dominant at the political and military level.⁸ The educational system and the messages it transmits play a central role in this political socialization. Katriel and Nesher (1986) found traces of the collectivist orientation in dominant present-day educational and social ideologies.⁹ I would argue further that contemporary educational frameworks display two parallel and even contradictory trends: a collectivist orientation that prepares the child for future military roles, and an individualistic thrust that seeks to prepare the child for civilian life.¹⁰ This chapter focuses on the first trend. The first section outlines the theoretical approaches dealing with the cultural construction of collective memory. The second section considers

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the few studies that have examined celebrations and commemorations in early-childhood educational frameworks in Israel. The third and final section discusses the themes of army and war as they relate to those frameworks, presenting an analytical description of the study's findings and the analytical implications of the ethnographic report. The three sections are overlapping; the separation is only analytical.

Method

I collected my data between 19821988 when I did fieldwork and studied major events and their preparations in school and preschool settings among children aged 27. These events are also celebrated or commemorated by Israeli society as a whole. This is an urban study conducted in an Israeli metropolitan area near Tel Aviv. The educational frameworks that were studied were all secular and under the supervision of the Ministry of Education; all the children were Jewish. ¹¹ Due to space limitations the chapter focuses on a small number of events, which constitute a minuscule sample from the broad array of ongoing events which were observed during fieldwork. I have chosen to illustrate my argument through a description and analysis of four events: Independence Day, Lag b'Omer, Hanukkah, and Remembrance Day. The events are presented according to the theoretical issues of army and war that they raise rather than with respect to their chronological order in Jewish-Israeli Society.

My conversations with school and preschool teachers turned up striking similarities across institutions regarding the content of the messages that are transmitted in the events or during the preparations for them. The explanation for this similarity lies in the books and preparatory pamphlets used, and in the training of the educators. I examined material of this kind published by the Ministry of Education and Culture and by the Federation of Teachers and Preschool Teachers between 1935 and 1980 ( that is, during and after the period in which the foundations of political socialization were laid in the educational system. As already noted, from the broad array of themes which are transmitted through these frameworks, I chose to focus on two constantly recurring topics which represent a key nexus of political socialization for the Jewish-Israeli collectivity. The themes are army and war, and in practice they are intertwined.

Theoretical Approaches:
The Cultural Construction of Collective Memory

The concept of collective memory has been addressed through two main approaches which analyze the relation between past and present. While

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not mutually contradictory, they differ in their emphases. The first track is represented mainly by Durkheim (1965), Shils (1981), and Bellah, Sullivan, Swidler and Tipton (1985). They claim that in the face of incessant multiple changes, ''society" needs a sense of continuity. Unchanging, enduring memories meet this need. In their view collective memory that reinforces and reaffirms society's solidarity and integration. Thus a past anchored in "objective facts" is said to shape our understanding of the present. Collective memory is kept alive through rituals, commemorations, and ceremonial acts that evoke heroic figures. Periodic celebrations reinforce solidarity; they are a reenactment of the citizen's participatory role.

According to this school of thought, every national entity transmits to its offspring the story of its origins, efflorescence, decline, and regeneration. These milestones are considered essential for an understanding of the current historical situation and for society's continuation. The child thus becomes aware of the "community of memories" to which he or she belongs (Bellah et al., 1985: 152). Through the marking of holidays and events of national meaning the child is taught to assimilate into the national collectivity. Ceremonies teach him or her about its boundaries, its beliefs, and its central values. The primary function of ceremonies is to reproduce the past.

The second approach is represented mainly by Mead (1929), Halbwachs (1951), and Schwartz (1982). Basically they maintain that collective memory is socially constructed. The constructionist approach sees the past as a construct that is responsive to the fears, problems, needs, aspirations, and beliefs of the present. Collective memory is constructed functionally in order to consolidate and define the power relations between different groups. Myths and ceremonies are the most effective means for selecting and transmitting collective memory. The method involves the deliberate fabrication of ritual (Halbwachs, 1951). Halbwachs argues that through ceremonies the group evokes and relives the events of the past that it considers important and that this reinforces social cohesion. Concurrently, the collective memory itself is strengthened. The ceremonies transmit to children the collective memory which the collectivity considers necessary at a given time. Collective memory is thus the discourse of a particular collectivity at a specific historical moment concerning its past.

Collective memory is not consistent and continuous. Nations can extract from a reservoir of memories items that are relevant for the current situation. The battle for Masada was forgotten for two millennia but assumed a symbolic status of supreme importance in the twentieth century. ¹² This approach posits a relativistic stand toward historical events, being concerned not with facts but with selective choice. Collective memory, then, is revised, reconstructed, and transformed simultaneously with changes in the society's values and social structure (see Schwartz, 1991).

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According to Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), the "invented tradition" is an indicator of present developments and problems such as the rise of the nation-state. "Israeli and Palestinian nationalism or nations must be novel," they write, "whatever the historic continuities of Jews or Middle Eastern Muslims, since the very concept of territorial states . . . was barely thought of a century ago . . . the national phenomenon cannot be adequately investigated without careful attention to the 'invention of tradition"' (pp. 1214).

Ceremonies in Educational Frameworks
Early Childhood

From their inception, educational frameworks in Israel were perceived as instruments in the service of the state. Their mission was to render the child different from his immigrant parents. Children, in fact, were perceived as their parents' educators, possessing the ability to alter their conceptions of how one should be raised. Children were seen as mediators between their immigrant parents and the New Yishuv. Parents received close guidance on how to raise their children. This approach was reinforced after the establishment of the state in 1948. In short, both children and their parents became the objects of educators. ¹³

To the best of my knowledge, there have been no studies of army and war as focal points for early-childhood socialization. Sociological and anthropological studies of ceremonies aimed this age group are also rare. Research about collective ceremonies in kindergartens is conspicuously meager. Among the few who have examined the connection between children and the national collectivity of Israel by analyzing ceremonies that are held in early-childhood educational frameworks are Weil (1986), Shamgar-Handelman and Handelman (1986), and Doleve-Gandelman (1987). Doleve-Gandelman examined how Zionist symbols convey the concept of redemption: redemption of the nation through redemption of the land. At the underlying, metaphorical level educators convey a message in which children are perceived as mediating renewers, who are realizing in practice the transition from exile to redemption. Doleve-Gandelman's arguments, it seems to me, are relevant for the Yishuv period and for the state's early years. Today's children, though, are not renewers and do not act as mediators between state and family. This point is elaborated in the critique of the article by Shamgar-Handelman and Handelman. ShamgarHandelman and Handelman note that, according to Durkheim, formal education expresses the state's ideology and authority and that formal education is an instrument for social reproduction. However, the authors say, the purpose of education in Israel is to create an ideological blueprint that contributes to the state's creation and continuity, and only secondarily

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to reproduce the social order. In Israel the fusion between the state's political ideology and formal education begins in the preschool setting. The child is taught that loyalty and commitment to the state supersede loyalty to the family. This learning process begins at a very young age (23). To accomplish their purpose, the state's representatives need the cooperation of the parents. Despite the matching goals of these two frameworks (family and state), many areas of potential friction exist and frequently the relationship between them is charged and tense. In the view of these authors, the child in the mediator role "has . . . potentially conflicting loyalties, obligations and rightsbut these rarely are recognized by educators" (Shamgar-Handelman and Handelman 1986: 77).

Holiday celebrations in kindergarten, they say, play a central role in bridging and mitigating state-family friction. The process itself occurs gradually from kindergarten to age 18, when the young man or woman is drafted into the army, enters the service of the state, and becomes subordinate to its authority. These political messages are transmitted sharply and clearly in the many ceremonies that are held in Israeli kindergartens. By these means children internalize cultural concepts that are of crucial importance to policymakers. Shamgar-Handelman and Handelman explain that at the overt level the symbolic aspects of celebrations in kindergartens are related to the nation's history, traditions, and revival. The ceremonies emphasize the cooperation between kindergarten and parents, state and family. Through celebrations the child learns that the family is subordinate to the collectivity, here embodied in the person of the teacher. The ceremonies stress cooperation between parents and kindergarten, and in this way the child's selfhood is shaped, rooted and embedded in the foundations of the past and in the expectations he will have to meet in the future. The authors believe that collectivist values are a vestige of the past, that they were needed in the formative years of the Yishuv and the state, and must now be reexamined. They need to be overlaid with values that are appropriate for current circumstances, such as socialization for choice and the inculcation of a critical sense as against group pressures; what is needed, then, is a critical evaluation of collective goals.

I would dispute several of Shamgar-Handelman and Handelman's (1986) conclusions. First, I would not explain the worship of the collectivity as a vestige of the past and its dominant collectivist ethos (see Ben-Eliezer, 1993). Socialization for submission to the group, I would argue, meets present-day needs. Educators and policymakers have an eye on the child's future army service. Successful service entails the inculcation of a collectivist narrative emphasizing heroism and militarism, the suppression and abandonment of individualistic behavior, and submission to authority. These concepts will be illustrated in the course of the chapter. Educators

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display a sense of "ownership" toward children. They do not hesitate to intervene and to penetrate the child's private domain. For example, if a child takes an individualistic initiative, such as inviting only selected children from the kindergarten group to his birthday party, the educators immediately step in and conduct a thorough inquiry, threatening: "How will you get through the army?" ¹⁴

Second, children are no longer mediators between parents and state; indeed, most of today's parents are not immigrants but native-born Israelis. They accept the method of their children's socialization because they themselves went through a similar process. To them it is self-evident, proper, and necessary. As my earlier argument implies, the ceremonies in question do not work to mitigate conflicts between the family and the collectivity, since at this level no such conflicts exist. The parents themselves have internalized a political ideology that entails commitment to military challenges. Although they may be concerned and upset at the general situation, they are convinced that the circumstances justify the inculcation of the idea of heroism and belligerence and make it essential to prepare the child for future military service. Parents in Israel generally advocate an educational approach that will steel the child for his military future. My thesis is that ceremonies help moderate potential conflicts between groups with opposing interests: class, ethnic, ideological, and so on. This is not a case of renewers but of agents bringing about the social reproduction of the existing situation of belligerence.

In the following section the findings collected during the fieldwork are presented.

Army and War

Over a period of a few weeks during the Lebanon war, Ohad (age 5) told his friends and me about a dream that had upset him. Ohad's dream illustrates lucidly his concerns about war, persecution, and heroism. His preoccupation with these themes can be seen as a reflection of the subject matter that is the stuff of his socialization. The following is Ohad's dream, in his words:

The Roman knights were made of stone and they had swords because a thousand years ago there were no guns. The knights won because the Jews fought each other instead of fighting the Romans, that's why they won. If the Jews wouldn't have fought each other then the Roman knights wouldn't have attacked. But in the end the Jews won because they stopped fighting each other. And the knights attacked the fort, and me and all the

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children, maybe even twenty children, were inside and they all loved me. There were big children that were seven, ten, eight [years old], and they all loved me. I was in a movie on television. We were fighting and I got a medal, a funny medal, and they all loved me. They were all nice, the children, and they all shot the Arabs and got away on horses, and even, even . . . And besides, all the children loved me. The Lebanon War started a thousand years ago. Oh! What a dream, I want it so much to be true, because I deserve it, like I was really riding a horse. The stone knights attacked the Jews' fort with arrows and all the children got away on horses, big, gigantic horses. And then the Jews who were in the school shot the knights and killed them. I was at the end of Israel, I got as far as the border of Tsahal [acronym for Israel Defense Forces], and there were just those kinds of tanks. We got to the border, to the end of the State of Israel. But in the dream we spoke English. And then the Romans put me in a cage and I broke the whole jail, I turned into police, the commander, and then we got away with my mom and dad's car, all the children got away. But first I drove the tank and I saw a Syrian plane and I fired at it, I knocked it down. Then they said on television that six Syrian soldiers were killed when the plane fell, and I knew it was me that shot it down.

In what follows, classroom discussions and passages from textbooks will be presented to illustrate the raw material from which Ohad conjured his dream. The mingling of the dream's disparate elements was also given expression in children's replies to teachers' questions. For example, one kindergarten pupil claimed that the siren that is sounded to mark Remembrance Day signals the start of "summer time." To which the teacher muttered: "These poor children, they are totally confused, they can't absorb any more material."

That confusion was also noted by Nehamah, who works as an assistant in a kindergarten: "My grandson (aged 7) is so confused, he gets mixed up between the Holocaust and the war here. He doesn't grasp the Holocaust, he asks me how it could be that the Jewish soldiers didn't defend themselves. The day before that he told me that he doesn't want to go to the army, that he doesn't want to die. I told him that everyone goes to the army. And then the next day, when we were talking about the Holocaust, he asked me why I didn't defend myself and let myself be taken to a concentration camp. He is so confused, my grandson." (Nehamah is a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, to which she was taken at the age of 7.)

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Discussing Independence Day, a Grade 1 teacher asked, "Who knows how the state was created?" To which one pupil replied: "When the Greeks destroyed the Temple." The teacher responded cynically: "Yes, and Moses arrived from Egypt." To another question"Who did not let Jews enter the Land of Israel in the period before there was a state?"came the reply: ''The Romans."

Such confusion supports my thesis that despite the stereotypical presentation of wars and battles extending across two millennia and more, children certainly absorb the gist of the message: heroism, few against many, the necessity of war in the absence of any other alternative. In the events that are described herein, authority figures tell children about the history of the collective. The teachers' talks and/or the reading of textbook material generally occur about a week before the religious or national holiday. The themes of persecution, heroism, and war recurs incessantly throughout the year. Moreover, as is shown, the adults transmit their message vigorously under conditions of strict order and organization. This final section of the chapter deals with four issues: exemplary figures; the future through the prism of the past; the past: heroes, wars, and the perception of time; and formal and representational aspects of celebrations and commemorations.

Exemplary Figures

Implicit in the ethnographic material is the inculcation of the image of the warrior-hero as a figure of identification. It should be stressed that this is a masculine figure. As folktales of other peoples also show, figures from the past serve as models for desirable behavior in the present. The message generates identification, involvement, and a call to action. The subject matter constitutes a report on the past and prepares the child for future activity. The child can draw a connection between the masculine fighter from the past and his own brother or father participating in wars and reserve duty. Ohad's dream attests to this. The stories of exemplary personalities forge the emotional foundation for constructing attitudes and behavior, such as the belief in the necessity of military service and the inevitability of war. The following are examples:

Lag b'Omer (minor festival commemorating the end of a plague that decimated followers of Rabbi Akiva during the revolt of Bar-Kokhba against the Romans in Judea, 2nd century CE): In Grade 1 the children discuss BarKokhba and his revolt. They read texts in a booklet and answer questions based on the material. A Grade 1 reader contains the following text, which forms the basis for homework questions that appear in an accompanying workbook. This reader is studied in most public schools in Israel.

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Bar-Kokhba and the Lion
Many years ago there lived in the Land of Israel a hero named Bar-Kokhba. He wanted to throw the Romans out of the country. Bar-Kokhba went to the king of the Romans and told him: "Get out of this country, you and your soldiers, for this is our land!" The king replied angrily: "Who are you to command me?" Bar-Kokhba replied: ''I am a hero of Israel and I order you to leave our country." The king said: "If you are really a hero, then go and fight the lion that is in my zoo." The king ordered the lion's cage to be opened. Out jumped a huge, frightening lion. It ran to Bar-Kokhba and wanted to gobble him up. Bar-Kokhba was not frightened by the lion. He jumped onto the lion's back, grabbed its mane, and called out in a powerful voice: "Take me to the legions of Israel!" The lion bolted out of the zoo, ran over hills and mountains, and brought Bar-Kokhba to his troops. Then Bar-Kokhba went to fight the Romans. He chased them and beat them. To remember his victory we light bonfires on the eve of Lag b'Omer. [Alphoni, pp. 19293]

The children are then given multiple-choice questions. For example: "Why did the king send Bar-Kokhba to fight the lion? (a) He wanted the lion to eat Bar-Kokhba. (b) He wanted Bar-Kokhba to kill the man-eating lion. (c) He wanted everyone to see that Bar-Kokhba was a hero."

And what happened in the aftermath of the revolt? The Grade 1 reader relates: "There was once a very wise man in Israel called Bar-Yohai. Every day this wise man would gather children and teach them Torah. When the Romans heard that Bar-Yohai was teaching the children of Israel Torah they wanted to kill him. Bar-Yohai and his son fled and hid in a cave near the village of Meron . . . Only Jewish children knew the way to the cave. On Lag b'Omer the children came to visit their rabbi and learn Torah from him . . . All day the children sat in the cave and heard Torah from their rabbi. Ever since then the children of Israel celebrate Lag b'Omer" (Alphoni, 1979:194).

What motivated the revolt? Kindergarten children heard this version: "Rabbi Akiva told the people to rise up against the Romans and make war on them. He went on teaching Torah even though it was not allowed. When Bar-Kokhba, the leader of the revolt, declared war, Rabbi Akiva joined him and asked the people to come with him."

After relating the story of how Bar-Kokhba fought the lion, the kindergarten teacher summed up: "Bar-Kokhba was a hero and not a coward." She then asked about the holiday's significance, which generated a dialogue with the children on its meaning and historical basis, during which

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they burst into loud, rhythmic singing accompanied by noisy foot-stomping: "Bar Kokhba is a hero, hero, hero / Against the lion he fought, fought, fought." In the yard the children ate potatoes baked over a bonfire that was lit there and sang holiday songs to accordion accompaniment. The emphasis here is on heroism: Bar-Kokhba's courageous and triumphant stand against a powerful enemy (the lion). The idea of active self-defense against those who would impose their will is conveyed, together with the irrelevance of the balance of forces (Bar-Kokhba wins alone). The connection between time past and time present was made by a child who, by association, recalled his father's activity during wartime.

The same emphasis on heroism and on active self-defense is apparent in the celebration of the eight-day Hanukkah holiday in kindergartens and schools. (Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabees rededication of the Temple in the 2nd century BCE, after its desecration by the Greeks.) Secular elements are prominent in the ceremony, which is held with the participation of the children's families, although religious-traditional aspects are included.

About a month before the holiday the teacher told the class about Judah Maccabee and his father, Mattityahu: "He gathered all the men and all the heroes from the village, and went forth into battle. They were few, few against many, but they were not afraid. And then the revolt began. The revolt started when Mattityahu said it was time."

"Judah Maccabee and after him the whole nation went forth. They were few, but brave and heroic. They stood up against many Greeks and they won. They chased the Greeks far from the Land of Israel, far, far away. It was a great victory."

What were the motivations of these exemplary figures, according to the educational narrative? The following is a passage from a talk that took place in a Grade 1 class about a week before Hanukkah: "Maybe someone knows what was special about the Greeks?" the teacher asked. The children's replies reflected what they had been taught: "They bowed to a statue, they don't believe in God, they ate pork." To which the teacher added: "Sabbath for them is not like it is for the Jews. They wanted the Jews to behave like Greeks, to talk like Greeks, to eat pork, to travel on the Sabbath ( . . . ) A few cowards who did what the Greeks wanted. The Greeks told Mattityahu to bow to a statue, but not only did Mattityahu not bow, he broke the statue."

This dialogue implies a religious motive for the revolt. In DonYehiya's view there was a decline in the Hanukkah's political importance, and its transformation into a religious festival and a popular-family entertainment reflects a cultural transformation in Israeli society. By this he means that the politicization and secularization of traditional holidays is being rejected in favor of a return to their religious meaning. ¹⁵

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I disagree with Don-Yehiya that Hanukkah has lost its political importance since 1948. This may be true at the macro-statist level, but the holiday continues to play a central role in the educational system and in the political socialization of the country's children. Elaborate preparations for the ceremony, to which, as mentioned, the families are also invited, begin about a month before. Although religious aspects are increasingly prominent in the celebrations, the secular ethos is still discernible. In the collective narrative of the educational frameworks, Hanukkah, like Lag b'Omer, conveys messages in line with political needs that are perceived as crucially important by policymakers. The substance of the collective narrative, despite the absence of a clear and unequivocal ideological line, is central to the children's political socialization. The confusion and unclarity of the ideology heighten the message's stereotypical content: the necessity of war and selfsacrifice, heroism, the ignoring of strategic factors and their ramifications. The message is conveyed by the presentation of exemplary figures, in the expectation that they will serve as models for identification and emulation. (The soldiers of the IDF are also depicted as exemplary figures as I show in the next section.)

While undergoing socialization, children also internalize other model role figures: scientist, inventor, physician, lawyer, driver, carpenter, soccer player, to name a few. These, however, seem more related to the family's socioeconomic status and parents' expectations for their children. In contrast, the exemplary warrior figure is structurally free-floating and as such is effective for constructing an Israeli Jewish consensus. The warrior figure is a basis for cohesion; he can be identified with irrespective of class, ethnic origin, or ideological persuasion. His major trait is being Jewish and masculine.

Israel is a country of immigrants. The absence of historical continuity, combined with cultural heterogeneity and rapid modernization hindered the growth of a collective identity. The creation of a group identity is of paramount importance when the collectivity is threatened and its very existence called into question by belligerent enemies. In combination, identification with exemplary figures and a contemporaneous experience of war or the threat of war help forge a collective identity. Identification with these paragons seems to impair the ability to identify with figures that are outside the collectivity, especially when they are presented stereotypically and without a concrete context.

It is no accident that in the events described herein the hero-figures are masculine. A doll may be given a paratrooper's beret, but as everyone knows, women in the IDF usually do administrative or clerical work (see Hazleton, 1978). The selective narrative chosen for the event conspicuously avoids bitter controversies having decisive importance (see also the section

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on the past for more evidence of this.) The message is transmitted as though it were a national consensus, with no mention of conflicting or contradictory positions.

The Future through the Prism of the Past

Stories of the past go a long way toward shaping a child's perception of the future. A glut of military symbols, ceremonies, and bellicose myths construct political stands and figures with which to identify and emulate "a community of memories." In addition, they mark out the future roles in a life course including compulsory military service. At the same time they create awareness of the dangers involved in future military missions, not least an awareness of death. Memorial ceremonies for war dead are not unique to Israel; they are held in many countries, particularly in those that took part in the two world wars, wars of liberation or occupation, or civil wars. In the absence of comparative studies on young children, it remains a moot question whether in early-childhood educational frameworks other than in Israel memorial ceremonies are held inside educational institutions or organized by the political establishment for the entire population (which attends or not as it chooses). Are young children obligated to participate in such commemorative events?

In Israeli educational frameworks, memorial days are planned meticulously and are integrated (by means of a nationally sounded siren) with the general national event. The children's reactions are sharp and immediate.

Remembrance Day ceremony. ¹⁶The following dialogue took place in a Grade 1 class on the day before the ceremony.

Teacher: "Hillel, I am waiting for quiet. Tomorrow is a day of mourning."

Moran: "My uncle was killed in a war, my mother told me. He is my mother's brother."

Teacher: "When?"

Moran: "When everybody died."

Teacher: "In the ceremony there will be a siren in memory of all the soldiers that were killed in Israel's wars."

Hillel asks why the flag he sees across the way is at half-mast.

Teacher: "We lower the flag in memory of the soldiers who were killed in the wars."

Hagay:"Soldiers can't die because they have a gun."

Eran: "Soldiers can't die because they are good."

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Maya: "Do you know that you will be a soldier and it can happen to you."

Moran: "I will never be a soldier."

Gadi: "Tal and Uriel and Ronen [male names] will be soldiers too, it can happen to them when they will be soldiers."

Maya: "That's it, they will die and there will be no more Tal and Uriel and Ronen."

Henn: "Everyone always dies in the end."

Maya: "Right, because the Arabs always put bombs."

Moran: "When I am a hundred I want to be a baby again."

Henn: "I will draw a cemetery and I will write 'Henn was born dead'."

Maya: "Quiet! Don't talk about that."

Shoshana: "Itzik is crying."

The children express fear and anxiety about military service and its dangers, and they look for explanations: "The Arabs always put explosives." They even try to find an escape from or solution to death: "When I am a hundred I want to be a baby again," or "Soldiers can't die because they have a gun," and "Soldiers can't die because they are good."

The Remembrance Day ceremony was held on the following day with the participation of the entire school, Grades 1 through 8. It was prepared by the children of Grade 7 under the close supervision of a specially assigned teacher who worked from a written program. All the children wore blue and white [the national colors of Israel], were disciplined, and were quick to fulfill the teachers' orders. The atmosphere was downcast and quiet. All stood to attention when the siren was sounded and the flag was lowered to half-mast. Arrayed on the stage were the emblems of the state and the IDF and the national flag. Six torches were lit to commemorate Israel's six wars and an announcer explained the event and yoked all the wars into one framework: "The fourth day of [the Hebrew month of] Iyyar is the Day of Remembrance for the heroism of the fighters of the Israel Defense Forces who gave their lives for the revival of the nation and the defense of the homeland and who fell as heroes in the War of Liberation, the Sinai Campaign, the War of Attrition, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, and Operation Peace for Galilee [the Lebanon War]." It is difficult to say whether the six torches also evoked the six million who perished in the Holocaust.

Military service, heroism, and death also preoccupy kindergarten children. Their games include burial ceremonies or the evacuation of a dead soldier from a helicopter. Generally such games have a bemused air, with serious activity punctuated by outbursts of laughter.

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The following is a description of Remembrance Day in a kindergarten. The children wore white shirts/blouses and blue pants/skirts. The siren was to be sounded at 11 a.m.

Teacher: "You know that today is a sad day for us."

Avi: "Yes, the Germans wanted to kill the Jews."

Uri: "And the Arabs killed the soldiers."

Teacher: "What do we think about on Remembrance Day?"

Hani: "We think about hero soldiers that watch over us."

Teacher: "We think about soldiers who were killed in Israel's wars."

Bar: "Soldiers kill."

Tami: "Soldiers die."

They then begin to sing the song "Blue and White." Noam shouts in his high-pitched voice, "Blue and black, blue and black." This infuriates the teacher and she reprimands him:

"There are some things we don't joke about, you must not joke about this."

Comments such as "Soldiers kill" and "Soldiers die" elicit no response from the kindergarten teacher. However, when one boy sings "Blue and black" instead of "Blue and white" he is immediately reprimanded. The sanctity of the flag and the symbolism attributed to it by the children transcends the importance of a discussion on life and death: ''Soldiers kill""Soldiers die."

Independence Day. As Independence Day approached, the children in Grade 1 learned about heroism through texts and by doing written work on special sheets. After reading the text they reviewed what they had learned and replied to questions in writing. What is the future? And how does preparation for future tasks take place?

Who is a hero?

On Independence Day the children went to see the parade of the Israel Defense Forces. They stood on the sidewalk and they saw battalions of soldiers marching and singing. In the sky airplanes fly fast, and large tanks crawl by slowly. Ronen said: "When I grow up I will be a pilot. I will fly in a plane way up high. Only a pilot is a hero." Avner said: "And when I grow up I will be a sailor. I will be the captain of a huge ship. The ship will guard our country's shores. Only a sailor is a hero!" Uri said: "And I will be

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a simple soldier. A simple soldier is also a hero. He guards the State of Israel day and night! Who is right?" [Alphoni, p. 90]

The workbook instructs the children to "Read the story and fill in the blanks: Ronen wants to be a Avner wants to be a Uri wants to be a[. . .] I am years old. In another years I will be a soldier." Also included are drawings of a tank, plane, cannon, plow, and rifle. The pupil is instructed: "1. Write the appropriate name under each drawing. 2. Color the drawings that belong to the army" [sic] (Alphoni workbook, p. 55).

As Independence Day approaches the school and the kindergarten are decorated accordingly. Besides the flag, the emblem of the state, and a portrait of Theodor Herzl (the founder of political Zionism), toy soldiers and model tanks are displayed, along with books such as Independence Day and Father in the Reserves. Every kindergarten displays military items it deems suitable: a doll dressed in blue and white wearing a paratrooper's beret and the emblem of that corps, an exhibition of emblems of the different IDF corps, and so forth. The ceremony itself took place on a large field with the participation of fourteen local kindergartens. The children and their teachers wore white shirts/blouses and blue pants/skirts. The site was decorated with national flags, IDF flags and emblems, and state symbols. Thousands of little flags dangled on strings around the perimeter of the field and from there to the central platform. Powerful loudspeakers were dispersed around the field. The children arrived in a column to the accompaniment of martial music that was played throughout the event. Following greetings and "independence songs," the (female) moderator welcomed the soldiers who were standing in formation in the center of the field, around the flagpole.

Moderator: "We have here with us the unit adopted by our city, an Air Force unit with its arms. The soldiers will raise the national flag for us. As you can see, our flag is wrapped around the pole in the center of the field. The soldiers will march with their arms. I give the floor to the commander." The soldiers march to the flagpole to a rhythmic drumbeat. Trumpets are sounded as the flag is raised.

The next day the teacher held a discussion about the event. "Children," she asked, "what did you think about the ceremony yesterday? Were you afraid of the soldiers? No? There was a whole kindergarten that wanted to [leave] because they were afraid that the soldiers would kill them. We are not afraid of the soldiers because soldiers do not kill, soldiers protect us." To which one child responded: "Soldiers do kill." "But on the borders,'' the teacher replied, "where there is a war, not here. Here they protect us from enemies." Another child backed her up: "Yes, because not all the Arabs are

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good, there are bad ones too." The discussion went on for a time and was summed up by the teacher: "That is why, that is why, because the pioneers worked hard and they all made a beautiful country for us, we will guard it and we will not throw candy wrappers on the floor . . . and we will defend our homeland and we will not let it be taken away, we will all guard our homeland and be brave soldiers."

Almost identical discussions were held in both the nursery school and the compulsory kindergarten. ¹⁷ In the latter the following exchange took place. Teacher: "The State of Israel belongs to the Jews." Child: "The Arabs want to take our whole village but we won't let them." Teacher: "No, we won't let them, we will defend our village just like the Maccabees did.''

Basically, the Independence Day ceremony in the school resembled the event in the kindergarten. But it was also laden with verbal messages that evoked the Jewish people's persecution- and war-filled history from its beginnings until the present day. The entire school took part in the ceremony. Prepared by a teacher, the program was mimeographed and distributed to the eighth graders, who performed it. The authority figures maintained iron discipline throughout the proceedings. In both cases the children's behavior was impeccable.

What, then, are the salient features of such ceremonies? The events are given the aura of a military parade with pertinent emblems and symbols, an emphasis on values of courage and heroism, and reminders of the threats facing the country and the need for active self-defense: "We will all guard our homeland and be brave soldiers." The children's fear of armed soldiers was mitigated by playing up the theme of peace and by the teacher's remarks about the troops' protective rather than belligerent role. With reference to past history, children learn about future military tracks and roles and about the dangers they entail.

The Past:
Heroes, Wars, and the Perception of Time

The ethnographic material just presented and that is described here suggests a totemic perception of time (Paine, 1983): the positing of a common denominator for events that took place in different contexts and in different historic periods. Totemic time, as distinct from chronological time, is guided not by the principle of temporal continuity but by thematic continuityin our case, the theme of war. The thread of war runs through the whole of this history, from the Pharaonic era through the Maccabees, Haman, Hitler, and the British Mandate, and moves by inertia into the post-1948 period. Two thousand years and more do not affect the essence of the message.

All the wars are fundamentally alike. All have the same underlying characteristics: an enemy who imposes the war, few against many, the

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nation's heroism, and ultimate victory. Even the enemy is essentially the same, constituting a uniform category, whether Greek, Roman, Nazi, English, Arab, or Palestinian.

The following passages were declaimed during the Independence Day ceremony in school.

"In fact the land did not change throughout the generations. Even in the most difficult situations and conditions a handful of Jews remained who kept the spark alive."

"In 1897 the First Zionist Congress was held at the urging of the prophet of the Jewish state, Dr. Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl. [He] believed that a new and wonderful Jewish generation would arise in the Land of Israel, the Maccabees would come to life." ¹⁸ (This analogy was also evoked countless times in kindergartens: "We will defend our village as the Maccabees defended us.")

"The chronicles of the Jewish people are laden with suffering and tears. The precept 'In thy blood, live' has accompanied this nation since its appearance on the stage of history.

"- Pharaoh decided to torment them in their agony and to cast their sons into the Nile.

"- Haman ordered them to be destroyed, killed and obliterated.

"- Chmielnicki massacred them in huge numbers.

"- Petlura perpetrated pogroms against them.

"- (. . .) And what the evil regime of Hitler didthe annihilation of the Jewish people.

"- (. . .) The country's gates were closed, British soldiers watched the beaches.

"- (. . .) The Arab states, which did not accept Israel's existence, tried to undermine it and wipe it off the face of the earth (. . .)."

The readings were followed by community singing and then by declamations and explanations relating to each of the six wars, the message being that all were wars of no choice and all enjoyed a broad national consensus. This came across pungently in another passage that was read out: "On 5 June 1967 the Six-Day War breaks out and another generation joins the chain of fighters. Within six days the IDF reached the Suez Canal, and the Sinai Peninsula was once more in our hands. In this war the Old City of Jerusalem was liberated and the city was unified!

"Following the glorious and brief Six-Day War the State of Israel grew and expanded. The borders were distanced from all settlements, with the enemy on the other side. There was a sense of security, well beingof a greater Israel and all of it ours."

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The events are presented without their general context. In some cases this leads to the distortion of documented history, such as the fact that as a result of the Bar-Kokhba revolt the Kingdom of Judah was devastated and its population virtually wiped out (Harkabi, 1983; Paine, 1983, 1989). The same attitude is taken toward recent events: the War of Independence, the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanon War are all viewed as though they were substantively the same. Whether before the Six-Day War or afterward, all contexts become identical. Six torches, six unavoidable wars, the same circumstances: a persecuted people that is forced to fight; period.

The message presupposes that there is a national consensus to keep the territories that have been occupied since 1967. In practice, we know that among both the political parties and the general public there are widely divergent opinions on this issue. Do all Israelis accept the idea of "a greater Israel and all of it ours"?

The ceremony described here took place during the Lebanon War and in the years that followed, when there was a massive IDF presence in Lebanon. That war virtually split the nation in two and generated a public debate of unprecedented rancor. ¹⁹ However, the collective memory was constructed on the basis of totemic time. The manipulation achieved its purpose: transmitting a stereotypical message of war's necessity, today and at all times.

Beginning in 1992 the political constellation changed. The Oslo talks between Israel and representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were held with the aim of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and a peace treaty was signed with Jordan. Will these developments bring about a change in the historical narrative that is conveyed by the educational system?

Formal and Representational Aspects

Much has been said up to this point about the contents of the messages that are transmitted to young children. What of the formal and representational aspects of the ceremonies and the preparations that precede them? I would agree with Kertzer's thesis (1988) that ceremonies in nation-states shape political perceptions and positions and enfeeble critical thought. A ceremony creates an emotional situation that facilitates the inculcation of political messages. Earlier, Turner (1964) argued that ceremony imbues cognitive content with emotional meaning. Ceremony is above all emotional education for certain messages (Singer, 1955). This argument is especially valid for young children. The explanatory pamphlets mentioned before state explicitly that ceremonies in kindergarten and school should be emotionally stimulating. Verbal messages should be kept to a minimum.

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The events themselves rely heavily on a variety of sensory effects including music, movement, props, and food to heighten the senses to the maximum.

Ceremony, Kertzer adds, helps build solidarity in the absence of political consensus. It legitimates the power holders and their agents. ²⁰ This point, which involves the structural aspect of ceremony, was illustrated in the ethnographic findings related to Remembrance Day and Independence Day. Those ceremonies made use of audiovisual effects: music (marches, evocative songs, songs of heroism and victory, folk songs); choreography in the presentation of the state and IDF flags, torches, fire, colored lights, posters, collages, drawings, and dances; and, usually, food. The verbal messages, too, are directed at the emotions rather than at the rational faculty.

A description of the Hanukkah celebration that took place in the kindergarten lends further credence to these conclusions. For Hanukkah, the windows were decorated with colored cellophane paper, which produced an effect of mosaics. Against a background of black paper, which darkened the hall, images such as the distinctive Hanukkah lamps and spinning tops, warriors with spears, and so forth, stood out in bold relief. A large collage comprised of drawings done by many children and depicting warriors carrying torches was put up inside the entrance to the school. An exhibition of Hanukkah lamps in various styles was also mounted. Hanukkah ceremonies are always held after dark. Powerful loudspeakers were installed in the hall. The ceremony fused traditional and secular elements. The candles were lit to the chanting of the traditional blessing. While most of the ceremony was devoted to group dances and to new Hebrew songs, the traditional tunes were not neglected. In the darkened hall the children danced as they waved colored flashlights (in the past they used to dance while holding lighted torches). Finally, the traditional sufganiyot (donuts) were served and potato pancakes were prepared on the spot. In the kindergartens, besides all of the just mentioned, a giant top was lowered from the ceiling and when opened was found to be filled with packages of sweets that were distributed to the children. Torches lit the way along both sides of the path leading from the perimeter fence to the kindergarten. The ceremony went strictly according to plan. Despite the large number of participants, order was maintained and the children did as they were instructed.

Another point involving the formal aspects of ceremony concerns the relations among the participants. Weil maintains that a celebration is part of the socialization process that teaches desirable behavior. In kindergarten celebrations, she writes, children are socialized into the norms of

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appropriate behavior in Israeli society as individuals and as members of a group (1986: 329). Weil emphasizes the influence wielded by the educational frameworks in shaping the new generation from early childhood. From this point of view, the kindergarten teacher represents the society; she is the source of power, controlling the ceremonies and expressing the collective consciousness by declaiming the accepted norms and values. The kindergarten teacher furnishes the children with information about their role as members of the broad collectivity. I have no argument with this last point, which is illustrated, for example, in the ethnographic material contained in the section about the past. I would, however, contend that the messages transmitted in these celebrations have no relevance at the individual level of interpersonal relations. Indeed, there is a sharp contradiction between children's behavior at the collective and interpersonal levels. The celebrations sanctify the collectivity and are unrelated to the child's everyday experiences.

Within educational institutions two cultural messages that give expression to opposing modes of social relationships are created and transferred. Relationships between the child and the other and between the child and the collective are directed by different and even opposing principles. These two formulas oppose each other as regards the nature of social relationships and man in creation. During the process of socialization opposing expectations are simultaneously raised in the same children. At the collective level the ceremonies imbue the importance of their submission to group dictates and to their assimilation into the collective. The relationships between the child and specific others are created by way of bargaining and negotiating with adults in authority. Social situations frequently develop into clashes and conflicts having the nature of provocation and attacks directed against teachers and children. Children's behavior involves negating and profaning others. For these children, the other is an open field (see Furman, 1994).

By contrast, celebrations and the preparations leading up to them are hiatuses of order and submission to authority within the messiness of uncertainty, confrontation, and defiance of authority that constitute everyday life. The high frequency of official ceremonies enables those in the system to experience something of the unifying and the submissive, for however brief a time. As I have mentioned, during the ceremonies the educators take a decisively authoritarian approach. They adhere strictly to the schedule and permit no deviations from the norm. Perhaps in the not very distant future this unity and submission will serve as a pattern of behavior for collective aspects of life, especially in terms of calls issued in the name of the nation-state and its defense.

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Discussion and Conclusions

I have argued that in Israel the image, of the masculine warrior is inculcated in children as an object for identification and emulation. This constant message has a crucial impact on the child's socialization. The process helps perpetuate the existing order and constitutes a mechanism for mitigating potential internal conflicts. The warrior, as he is presented in the collective narrative of the nursery, kindergarten, or school is divorced from any politico-economic context. This enables a blurring of distinctions along ethnic, class, ideological, and other divisive lines. At the same time, the messages are transmitted in terms of thematic continuity, as differentiated from chronological continuity. The linking thread of this continuity is war. All wars are similar, two thousand years or more make no difference to the substance of the message; it applies equally to all wars fought in our time. Leibowitz, a prominent religious scholar, commented on this phenomenon:

There is no point trying to infer anything about Independence Day from Hanukkah. The events that are commemorated by Hanukkah derived from the force of the Torah among the Jewish people, they were undertaken for the sake of the Torah and in the name of the Torah and through them the name of the Lord was magnified and sanctified. The independence war of 1948 was not waged on behalf of the Torah, not for its sake and not in its name and not for its benefit . . . In that war we fought not for the sake of heaven but for the sake of the Jewish people in its land . . . The State of Israel was not established and does not exist out of a religious impulse or for a religious purpose . . . (1975: 92).

In contrast, the collective memory, which was constructed in Israel and is transmitted to the children, is a fusion of events that emphasize religious and secular motives, heroism, and war. At the same time it ignores other events that might contradict the collective narrative or, alternatively, expose a distortion of historical facts that could undermine the substance of the stereotypical message. The historical leaps are executed smoothly and without hindrance.

I believe that the specific context of a war must be examined in order to uncover the disparity between the message being transmitted to children and the actual historical events as they are documented in the professional literature. The theme of war, I have argued, is transmitted stereotypically in a manner that builds a collective memory and creates the illusion of national consensus.

With respect to the technique of transmitting messages, teachers, it was shown, adopt an authoritarian approach and accentuate their already

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dominant classroom status. The authority figures present themselves as the elders of the tribe who alone are in possession of the collectivity's unalterable and uncontestable story. Such authoritarianism is at odds with the patterns of behavior that prevail in everyday interpersonal relations, which are characterized by conflict, disorder, and constant bargaining.

Ceremonies and the talks preceding them are interpreted by authority figures and policymakers. The collective narrative refers to persecutions, exemplary figures, heroism, and war, but posits the children as masters of their fate and as active agents in shaping their future. With a knowledge of the past as the foundation, they also learn about future military tracks and roles. In this way young children are taught the history of a new state, which since its inception has coped incessantly with wars. The collective narrative supplies the common denominator: an illusory consensus that constitutes the basis for cohesion and for future tasks. The children's political socialization ignores or skips over problematic issues such as the nation's bipolarization during the Lebanon War, or it asserts unequivocally, for example, that after the Six-Day War "there was a sense of security, well-beingof a greater Israel and all of it ours." The descriptions of heroism, persecutions, and wars do indeed have a historical foundation. But they are compiled and presented in a manner calculated to construct the illusion of a coherent consensus, a consensus that in its turn contributes to socialization for future national missions: army and war.

The collective narrative has no clear ideological line. It mixes two elements, the secular-defensive and the religious-offensive, with the latter emphasizing battlefield heroism and self-sacrifice, taking no account of cost or consequences. Some elements of the educational narrative underscore a national-defense, secular ethos, which espouses the need to safeguard national independence, but at the same time contains a call for sacrifice and heroism based on religious motives. These elements are intertwined and only a painstaking analysis of each story can expose how historical events have been manipulated.

Relying on Tudor (1972), Don-Yehiya (1995) argues that "Modern national movements tend to make use of traditional festivals in order to nourish their political myths . . . The traditional festivities reinforce a political myth." I generalize Don-Yehiya's statement concerning the Maccabees' myth, and maintain that in order to reduce the gap between myth and facts, the defensive version ignored or blurred the causes, controversies, failure in wars, and played up instead the fighters' heroism and bravery. In the same manner the offensive version chose to ignore the Palestinian uprising and its consequences and human cost. As Roland Barthes wrote (1973), "Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them

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a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact."

In the collective narrative, peace appears occasionally as a yearning but is not adduced as a concrete possibility and is not rooted in reality. Does the bellicose narrative correspond with current events and processes? Does it prepare the children for a historic shift or does it help construct an emotional base that will perpetuate the state of war? Will children who are being raised on stories about wars of no choice be capable later of critically evaluating historic transformations that seek to break the cycle of war?

Notes

1. Horowitz, D. and M. Lissak. 1992; Lissak, M. 1990; Gal, R. 1990

2. Mintz, A. 1985.

3. Lissak, M. 1984; Horowitz, D., and M. Lissak 1992; Azarya, V. 1989.

4. See Horowitz, D., and M. Lissak 1992: 240.

5. Yishuv: The Jewish community in Palestine before the creation of the State of Israel, from 1882 to 1948.

6. On the dynamics between liberalism and collectivism, see Shapiro, Y. 1975, 1976; Kimmerling, B. 1985; Horowitz D., and M. Lissak 1992; Ben-Eliezer, U. 1993.

8. Katriel, T., and P. Nesher. 1986: 222.

9. The creche was supervised by psychologists and inspectors of a large public organization.

10. For an explanation of this phenomenon, see Schwartz, B., Zerubavel, Y. and Barnett, B. (1986); See also "Masada Syndrome," Bar-Tal (1986). About "Collective Memory" and Perception of the Past see also: Maines, Sugrue, and Katovich, 1983.

11. Fayens-Glick, S. (1956); Rabinowitz, E. (1958a, b); Katerbursky, Z. (1962); Doleve-Gandelman, T. (1987).

12. Katriel and Nesher (1986) interpret this behaviour as an expression of the strong egalitarian orientation prevalent in Israeli schools. They say that "the ethic of cohesion marks the Israeli school class as a ritual context in which an idealized image of social order as well-demarcated, solidly integrated and internally undifferentiated is played out." (1986:225). Katriel and Nesher talk about a metaphor of "Gibush" (Heb.), "Gibush" in Hebrew means cohesion, crystallization. They didn't study the tender age but primary and secondary schools.

13. An extended discussion about Hanukkah, see Don-Yehiya, E. 1995.

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14. For researches on Rememberance Day and Independence Day, see Handelman, D., and Katz, E. 1990; Handelman, D., and L. ShamgarHandelman, 1995.

15. Herzl concluded his book The Jewish State with the words: "The Maccabbees shall rise again."

16. On the decline of the consensus in Israel from 1970, see Azaria, V. 1989. On ideological and strategical trends after the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, and Lebanon War, see Horowitz, D., and M. Lissak. 1992: chap. 6; Lissak, M. 1990; Weissbrod, L. 1981. Concerning the dispute and doubts about the IDF's role as Defence force during the Lebanon War, see Horowitz, D. 1984; Linn, R. (1986); and Weissbrod, L. (1984).

17. On formal aspects of rituals, see Moore, S. F., and B. Myerhoff, 1977; On historical perspective of rituals, see Mosse, G. L. 1975.

18. A similar proposition is posed by Ben-Ari, E. According to him, reserve duty in the occupied territories "involves entering a special behavioral frame which is governed by rules different (even contradicting) from those of civilian life." 1989:37778.

19. For a discussion of these two versions, see Paine, R. 1989; Shapira, A. 1992; Don-Yehiya, E. 1995.

20. Barthes, R. 1973. Mythologies.

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Bar-Tal, D. 1986. "Masada Syndrome: A Case of Central Belief." Pp. 3251 in Stress and Coping in time of War edited by N. Milgram, New York: Branner, Bazel.

Bar-Tal, D. 1990. Group Beliefs. A Conceptionfor Analyzing Group Structure, Processes and Behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Barthes, R. 1973. Mythologies. Selected and translated by Annette Lavers, St. Albans: Paladin, p.142.

Bellah, R. 1967. "Civil Religion in America." Deadalus. 96: 121.

Bellah, R., Sullivan, W., Swidler, A., and Tipton S. M. 1985. Habits of the Heart, Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ben-Ari, E. 1989. Masks and soldiering: The Israeli Army and the Palestinian uprising. Cultural Anthropology. 4: 37289.

Ben-Eliezer, U. 1993. The meaning of political participation in a non liberal democracy. The Israeli experience." Comparative Politics, pp. 379412.

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Doleve-Gandelman, T. 1987. "The Symbolic Inscription of Zionist Ideology in the Space of Eretz Yisrael: Why the Native is called Tzabar." Pp. 25784 in Judaism Viewed from Whithin and from Without, edited by H.E. Goldberg. SUNY Series in Anthropology and Judaic Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Don-Yehiya, E. 1995 (1986). "Hanukkah and the Myth of the Maccabees in Ideology and in Society." In Deshen, Sh.; Liebman, Ch., and M. Shokeid (eds.) Israeli Judaism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Durkheim, E. 1912 (1965). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press.

Fayence-Glick, S. 1957. "Gan Ha'yeladim B'Eretz Yisrael" (Kindergartens in Eretz Yisrael). In Sefer Hayovel Shel Histadrut Hamorim (Book of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Teachers' Union). Tel-Aviv: Histadrut Hamorim B'Eretz Yisrael. pp. 132144.

Furman, M. 1994. The New Children. Violence and Obedience in Early Childhood. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (Hebrew)

Gal, R. 1990 (ed.) The Seventh War. The Effects of the Intifada on the Israeli Society. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (Hebrew)

Halbwachs, M. 1951/1980. The Collective Memory. New York: Harper & Row.

Handelman, D., and E. Katz. 1990. "State Ceremonies in Israel: Remembrance Day and Independence Day" in Handelamn, D. (ed.) Models and Mirors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 190233.

Handelman, D., and Shamgar-Handelman, L. 1995. "Landscapes of Sacrifice: The Memorialism of National Death in Israel" in Ben-Ari, E. and Y. Bilu (eds.) Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press. Pp. 85128.

Harkabi, Y. 1983. The Bar Kokhba Syndrome. Risk and Realism in International Politic. Chappaqua, NY: Rossel Books.

Hazleton, L. 1978. Tzela Adam (Israeli Women: The Reality Behind Myths) Jerusalem: Eidanim. (Hebrew)

Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger (eds.). 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Horowitz, D. 1984. "Israel's War in Lebanon: New Patterns of Strategic Thinking and Civilian-Military Relation," in M. Lissak (ed.) Israeli Society and its Defence Establishment.

Horowitz, D., and Lissak, M. 1992. Trouble in Utopia. The Overburdened Polity of Israel. Tel-Aviv: Am Oved. (Hebrew)

Katerbursky, Z. 1962. B'netivot Hagan (The Ways of the Garden). Tel-Aviv: Otsar Hamoreh.

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Katriel, T., and P. Nesher. 1986. ''Gibush. The Rhetoric of Cohesion in Israeli School Culture." Comparative Education Review. 30(2): 216231.

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Leibowitz, Y. 1975. Judaism, The Jewish People and the State of Israel. Jerusalem: Schocken (Hebrew)

Liebman, Ch.S., and Don-Yehiya, E. 1983. Civil Religion in Israel. Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in The Jewish State. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Lissak, M. (ed.) 1984. Israeli Society and its Defence Establishment. London: Frank Cass.

Lissak, M. 1990. "The Israeli Society and The Intifada." In Gal, R. 1990 (ed.) The Seventh War. The Effects of the Intifada on the Israeli Society. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. 1737. (Hebrew)

Maines, D.R., Sugrue, N.M., and Katovich, M.A. 1983. The sociological import of G.H. Mead's theory of the past. American Sociological Review. 48: 16173.

Mead, G.H. 1929. "The Nature of the Past." Pp.23542 in Essays in Honor of John Dewey, edited by John Coss. New York: Henry Holt.

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Schwartz, B. 1982. The social context of commemoration: A study in collective memory. Social Forces. 61: 374402.

Schwartz, B. 1991. Social change and collective memory: The democratization of George Washington. American Sociological Review. 56:22136.

Schwartz, B., Zerubavel, Y. and Barnett, B.M. 1986. The recovery of Masada: A study in collective memory. The Sociological Quarterly. 27: 14764.

Shamgar-Handelman, L., and D. Handelman. 1986. "Holiday Celebrations in Israeli Kindergartens: Relationships between Representations of Collectivity and Family in the Nation State." Pp.71103 in Political Anthropology. The Frailty of Authority, edited by Aronoff, M. Vol.5. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

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7
Masks and Soldiering:
The Israeli Army and the Palestinian Uprising

Eyal Ben-Ari

Personal Circumstances; General Questions

I write like a soldier
alienated from any political awareness,
and the feelings alternating during this guard shift
are wary of looking at each other.
Z. Sternfeld, Intifada Diary (1988)

From mid-April to mid-May of last year (1988) I served a month-long stint with my Army reserve unit in the Hebron area of the West Bank. During this period my battalion performed all of the "usual" activities IDF (Israel Defense Forces) units are entrusted with in the occupied territories: for example, setting up roadblocks, maintaining patrols, and carrying out arrests. A few weeks after this period of duty I helped organize a party for the unit's officers and senior NCOs (noncommissioned officers) in a Jerusalem night club. Such partieswhich take place in civilian establishmentsare held not infrequently by many of the army's reserve units. This gatheringwhich was attended by wives and girlfriendswas not held in order to conclude the period in Hebron but as a farewell party to two officers who were leaving the battalion. Having come back deeply troubled by what I saw and felt in Hebron I think that I expected the party to provide an opportunity for us to discuss, to raise questions, or at the very least to hint at what this particular period of duty (our first during the intifada, the Palestinian uprising) had "done" or meant to us as soldiers, as human beings. In short, I expected the partyset apart from the period of

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active duty in terms of space, time, and rules of behaviorto provide an occasion for reflection. The hints, the questions, let alone the full-blown discussions that I had half-hoped would be heard, were not raised at all.

The curious combination of troubled citizen and anthropologist that has guided me in the last four years when looking at my society questioned why this was so. Part of the answer lies, I soon realized, in the character of such periodic parties as opportunities for celebrating the solidarity and essential unity of a combat unit. This was not a suitable occasion, I further understood, for raising potentially divisive issues, or for openly acknowledging the personal difficulties many of us had endured during the period of time spent in the territories occupied by Israel.

Beyond such answers, however, I kept on wondering. I continued to be troubled, to be disturbed by wider issues that I would like to discuss here: how do army reservists interrelate, reconcile their experiences of serving in the territories during the intifada with those of living their "normal" everyday Israeli lives? To be sure, Israeli forces have carried out similar "missions" associated with the occupation of the territories (the West Bank and Gaza) long before the uprising (see, for example, Lieblich 1987: 322; Zucker et al. 1983). But as it sometimes happens when one is thrust into an extreme situation, one can begin to examine and illuminate many features that are ordinarily rendered invisible by the "normality" of this same situation. So it is with the intifada. The uprising raises the following question: how do people performwithin the context of their army service, and for its durationacts that are totally different from, in direct contradiction to, the way in which they behave while they are civilians?

On one level this question is a psychological or social psychological one. ¹ Here one may well ask as to the mechanisms or techniques by which people who see themselves as members of a "normal" democratic society, cope with their participation in policing activities within another society that is governed by different rules and expectations: the ways, to put this by way of example, in which reservists contend with their participation in such activities as daytime and nighttime arrests, dispersal of demonstrations, or forcing "local inhabitants" (always Palestinian Arabs) to clear away roadblocks.

Yet this question is not limited to the realm of psychology or of social psychology. It also involves issues that have to do with army service as the enactment of meanings. What I am proposing, in other words, is the need to view service in Israel's army reserves from what is perhaps a novel perspective: that is, as an activity through which different meaning systems are produced and reproduced. More specifically, I will attempt in this analysis to situate some of the more individual-centered mechanisms and small-group dynamics by which reservists cope with their tours of duty

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during the uprising, within three wider processes: the construction of (male) identities through military service, the transition between civilian and army lives, and the workings of the interpretive schemes that underlie military activities.

Before moving on to the analysis I should, perhaps, trace out the limits of the present argument. What follows is based on the impressions and observations of a deeply troubled participant. While I am by profession an anthropologist I did not carry out a piece of systematic fieldwork while in Hebron, nor did I envisage a systematic analysis of the situation while there. Along these lines, my discussion is based foremostly on my own experience during that early stage of the uprising, on a small number of interviews I conducted with some of the battalion's officers, and on a review of many articles from popular journals and newspapers that have been devoted to the subject.

The Battalion

Let me begin with a short description of the army unit to which I have belonged during the last five or so years. The battalion is part of one of the army's elite infantry brigades: it is distinguished, to put this by way of that combination of abstraction and preciseness that characterizes military parlance, by a high level of readiness and combat effectiveness. Yet it is an organization that is made up exclusively of reservists, of miluim-nicks (literally, people who fill in the gap). These soldiers and officers volunteered for one of the "crack" infantry forces ² during their compulsory term of service and upon completion of that term (usually three years) were assigned to our unit. By law every man who has completed compulsory service can be mobilized (until the age of 55) for a yearly stint of up to forty-two days.³ In reality units like our battalion are usually called up at least twice a year and for longer periods. As in other parts of the army (Gal 1986: 40) the burden shouldered by officers and senior NCOs is considerably greater than that of lower-ranking soldiers. The former are continuously involved in such matters as briefings, staff meetings, additional training, or tactical tours.

Like many reserve units in the army, the general atmosphere in the battalion tends toward the informal and the familiar. A close relationship and understanding holds officers and other ranks together. Rank is not emphasized and everyone (including the unit's commander) is called by their first name (or equivalent nicknames). All of us serve under similar conditions: the same beds and barracks, the same food and canteen services, similar clothes and equipment, and approximately the same kind of furloughs.

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The battalion is, to borrow a term often used in the IDF, an "organic unit" (yechida organit). Organizationally this implies (1) a framework characterized by a permanent membership and structure of roles, and (2) that upon mobilization the whole battalion (as one complete organizational unit) is recruited. "Socially" this term implies a military force characterized by camaraderie, a high level of cohesion, well developed primary groups, and no less importantly a sense of a shared past. Let me give a few examples.

Like the "buddy system" found in the American and Canadian armies (Kellet 1982: 99; Moskos 1975) or the "comradeship" found in the British forces (Richardson 1978: chap. 2), so too the battalion is made up of a number of close groupings that have often developed over the course of a number of years. This is clearly evident in the happy renewal of friendships that goes on at the beginning of each tour of duty. Yet it is also apparent in the attachment of nicknames used only during miluim, the emergence of "characters" within the battalion's sub-units (the company clown or the platoon's "expressive" leader, for example), or the knowledge many men have of each other's personal lives and interests.

Many of the quieter periods during reserve duty are devoted to the recollection and creation of shared experiences: the war of 1973 for a few of the remaining older soldiers, the war in Lebanon, skirmishes with terrorists, or the hardships of training endured during previous stints of duty. On other occasions parties and picnics are held either on the last day of duty or upon a return to civilian life (with people's families). It is during these occasions that the solidarity of the force is celebrated and what the British term "regimental spirit" is displayed and subtly honored.

Every year on the morning of Remembrance Day many soldiers and officers join the unit's veterans to gather at the battalion's memorial site. This sitewhich is situated in one of the hills surrounding Jerusalemwas built to honor the battalion's dead from the 1973 Yom Kippur War. During the short ceremony prayers and songs are sung, flowers placed next to the small memorial tablets, very brief speeches given, and again people meet, renew acquaintanceships, and share memories. Later some of us proceed on to other military cemeteries across the country to join smaller family services for men who have been killed in the last few years.

And myself? During reserve duty I become an army bureaucrat. I am the battalion's adjutant (shalish)a staff officerand hold the rank of captain. With the exception of a brief period during my compulsory term of service, I have been in such a noncombatant support role in frontline units for almost all of my military career. My responsibilities are varied and include such matters as helping the battalion's commander issue orders, mobilizing and demobilizing the whole unit, or dealing with personnel

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problems (soldiers who have gone AWOL, or promotions, for instance). I have been with the battalion since returning from four years of study abroad and volunteeringupon my returnfor service in a frontline unit.

Preparing for Hebron

The pitchforks in local women's hands are brown:
nails and nails,
rust and rust at their edges
and a long wooden handle
intended to pierce
the flesh of our faces,
to pluck.
Our women,
pluck their eyebrows.
            Z. Sternfeld, Intifada Diary (1988)

While being inducted a day or two before moving to the Hebron area, the special role we were to carry out in relation to the intifada became clear: we were ordered to become policemen. This was evident first of all in the nonstandard gear that was issued: rifles for shooting canisters of tear gas, special helmets, visors and shields (for protection against rocks), clubs (that were, by order of the battalion's commander, later left unused in the barracks), and implements mounted on standard rifles for shooting rubber bullets (one of those unique technological innovations that military industries continually take pride in). Next, the terms used during the preparatory briefings belonged to the world of policemen (see, for example, Reiss 1971: xiii): search and seizure, stop and frisk, squelching disturbances, or maintaining order and quiet. Finally, overlaying all of this was a heavy emphasis on the legal aspects of our activity. We were reminded that the "objects" of our activity were civilians, that all of the activities undertaken by the battalion's soldiers had to be properly (i.e., lawfully) "covered" by regulations, that the right forms (for evidence and complaints) had to be filled out at local police stations, and that all of this be done under the supervision of suitably authorized officers.

Yet this was not a smooth process. During these first few days the usual gripes about army life (or more specifically about the transition to army life) were compounded by new complaints centering precisely around our new role: army soldiers, most of the arguments went, were being taken to do police work. We were being turned from soldiers into policemen. The army, as the more sophisticated soldiers put it, is an organization entrusted with training and preparing for an attack by the forces of an external enemy.

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Here we were being ordered to become a policing force, one charged with enforcing law and order. The complaints, while not questioning the deeper issues of Israel's presence in the occupied territories, nevertheless well underscored the basic unease that many soldiers felt at having to be deployed in one of the major urban centers of the West Bank.

This unease must be understood against the backdrop of how the uprising was perceived by many, if not most, of the unit's soldiers and officers. The picture we had received of the uprising through the mass media had been one of mass demonstrations, concentrated rock throwing and tire burning, and the constant use of Molotov cocktails. This situation led, of course, to the emergence of anxieties and apprehensions at being mobilized in order to deal with these expressions of Palestinian anger and frustration. In one of the interviews I held with the unit's officers, a young commander recalled:

It looked as though the uprising was very very violent, very very difficult. That's what was shown on television. And I expected it to be very hard, that we were going to war. It was not a matter of routine. And I came with a lot of apprehensions about how one deals with these circumstances.

Compounding such anxieties were the interpretations many men gave to the intifada in terms of their experience of the war in Lebanon. ⁴ A number of men thus related to me how the uprising in the West Bank had raised recollections, triggered associations of the lawlessness and utter chaos they had encountered in Lebanon.

Having been away doing a Ph.D. in England and fieldwork in Japan during Israel's Lebanese debacle, I was spared these kinds of associations. For me, however, the thought of serving in Hebron during the intifada raised memories and fears I had thought forgotten. I found myself transported back to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when as a 19-year-old infantry soldier I was wounded by an Egyptian sniper and taken out of action for a number of weeks. The uprising had thus "succeeded" in jarring me: jarring me to the extent of experiencing anew at least some of the fears I had felt during that war.

Two soldiers refused to go to Hebron on moral grounds. Some effort was made and this is no doubt a reflection of the battalion being an "organic unit"to persuade them to come with us. They were given assurances, for example, that they would not be put in situations where contact with the "local population" was inevitable, or that their duties would be limited to guarding strictly military installations. When they stood by their decision both were sent to be court-martialed by the commander of the brigade. Both soldiers received a sentence of one month in jail.

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The treatment they received after being sentenced also reflects the atmosphere of our unit. As their trial was held late in the evening, and as they could be sent to the military prison only on the following day, both men were sent back to their companies. They spent that night, in other words, with their "buddies" and friends.

The general attitude toward these soldiers was not one of censure or of banishment. Rather it was a mix of respect for their ability to stand by their beliefs and a feeling that they were somehow misguided. Indeed, later when we were in Hebron, a number of their friends telephoned their families to find out how they were doing in prison. Others approached me for news about them (being formally in charge of discipline in the battalion I had asked for information about these two people from the brigade's adjutant who had visited them).

In mid-April, four months after the beginning of the uprising we moved into Hebron.

Masks and Disguises

Though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport,
yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.
            Plutarch, quoted in Fine (1988: 43)

Soft people
prefer to stay at the observation post . . .
Uri with the diamond earring . . .
He is the first casualty of the uprising;
I hit him with the communications gadget
(bleeding in his right eyebrow).
Does not react
One shouldn't give pleasure to the locals . . .
Uri has a soft voice
and an English accent.
He tells with a smile
how he was Charles Bronson;
Kicked the doors of night.
            Z. Sternfeld, Intifada Diary (1988)

In attempting to understand my battalion's experience during our stint in Hebron, let me suggest a somewhat unconventional viewpoint in regard to reserve duty in general, and then relate it to the case of the uprising. Essentially the argument is the rather obvious one that going into miluim involves entering a special behavioral frame (Bateson 1972; Handelman 1977), which is governed by rules different (even contradicting) from those

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of civilian life. ⁵ What is less apparent, however, are the peculiar patternings of and assumptions that lie behind these rules.

Let me try and make this clear by way of a metaphor some of my army friends use to characterize their induction into miluim. Many soldiers refer to the wearing of uniforms on the first day of reserve duty as the donning of disguises, as the bearing of masks. What I would suggest is that this metaphor illuminates how the transition to soldier involves more than a "mere" transition to a new social role and its attendant norms and expectations. This is because the use of masks or disguises involves a special potential for behavior, which is at one and the same time normatively different from civilian life and in a special sense also nonnormative.

As Honigmann (1977: 275) has shown, masquerades are often special means that facilitate a temporary separation between the personal identity of the "users" and the behavior that is being enacted. For the duration of their performances, the disguised are in a position to express hostility with impunity because they are "not themselves" (Honigmann 1977: 272; Walter 1969: 83). Along these lines, I would suggest that for the limited period of miluim the reservists cease to be the normally identified, circumscribed, constrained members of Israeli society who must be concerned with how they are regarded by themselves and by others.

On one level these circumstances work toward allowing many reservists to display "irregular" public behavior like cursing and swearing, belching and farting, urinating and spitting, or talking dirty. This situation also allows many men to freely exhibit the "macho" dimensions of their army character. This point is readily evident in regard both to nonverbal behaviorposturing, hunching of shoulders, or excessive preoccupation with guns and equipmentand verbal behaviorfree use of the imperative, barking words in a forceful manner, or the abandonment of politeness forms.

On another level, however, the disguises donned during reserve duty have had a number of implications for the way in which relations with local Palestinians have taken shape during the uprising. One prime example, noted by many people in my battalion, is how the special circumstances in Hebron allowed them to play with relatively few restraints. Some talked of chasing rock throwers as games of "hide-and-seek" or of "catch-as-catch-can." Others characterized these games as battles of wit in which each side attempts to outfox the other. One man's observations evoke Czikszentmihalyi's (1975) characterization of the "flow" element in play:

Many times it's like a game. A game of learning how to deal with it. There is a certain problem and you have to give a solution. YouI thinkcut yourself off from all sorts of thought about what you're doing, and how and what's happening here. It's a

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game like a crossword puzzle, of technique, of how you deal with a problem.

Another example was provided by the commanders of one company in developing what in their words was a game of ''bingo." At the roadblocks they manned, they looked for license plates of "hot" cars: not stolen vehicles but those owned by suspects wanted by the General Security Service.

On yet another level, the use of disguises and masks has, to state the obvious, very serious and direct implications. A company commander's words:

From what I saw many of the locals there also thought of us as partners in a sort of game until something happened, someone got hit or something like that.

Here the argument is that use of masks and disguises provides at least some reservists with a legitimate license to behave in ways that they would not normallythat is, within the bounds of their everyday civilian lifeassociate with them-"selves." ⁶ One example (about which I sensed quite a bit of unease among a number of officers and soldiers) were nighttime arrests. These forays into Hebron's urban neighborhoods or the city's adjoining villages often consisted of a similar pattern of actions: knocks on the door in the middle of the night, seizing the suspects against a background of crying women and children, handcuffing them with plastic handcuffs, blindfolding them and then moving them out to detention centers for questioning by the General Security Service. Other, perhaps less extreme but no less serious, instances of the special kinds of behavior that I witnessed were purposely making people wait for hours in the hot sun until given permission to proceed beyond army roadblocks, or, when riding army vehicles, contravening local traffic rules (going up one-way streets, or expecting a line of cars standing at a traffic light to let one through).⁷

When conceived in these terms the dynamics of military service within the context of the uprising may be better understood. Thus, reservists during their stint of duty are temporarily not themselves but people placed in special circumstances, circumstances that in themselves may allow (or more forcefully, demand) a certain type of behavior.⁸ Indeed, this kind of explanation is one that is often found at the bottom of the account many reservists give in regard to their stints of duty in the territories: highly delimitedspatially as well as temporallyepisodes during which they become an-other person (a certain "other" to themselves).⁹

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A Benign Occupation?

In the beginning there was fear,
the heart beat hard.
Then came black anger,
like a cloud of black smoke rising
and their hate clung to us.
I raised my hand to strike,
I saw nothing
until my club of anger grew heavy.
I stood in disbelief
staring through my tears
at the empty hand now strange,
at the hand that beat, until hate was quenched
and at the blood that clung to my hand.
            A. Arzi, A Cloud of Smoke (1988)

This kind of explanationof becoming an-other people in the armymay well illuminate the type of behavior found in a large number of specific situations in which soldiers find themselves. At the same time, however, it tends to deproblematicize the actual act of disguise as well as the continuing need at least some soldiers feel to somehow relate their "masked" behavior (and the behavior of their comrades) to their identity as ordinary Israeli citizens. Two examples related to the intifada and through that to one of Israel's most durable oxymoronsthe attempt to manage a "benign occupation" in the territoriesmay bring this point out.

The first example is a personal one. One day I was asked to take a Palestinian arrested that morning to brigade headquarters some four kilometers away. Before asking the man to get on the vehicle I was driving, I allowed the soldier accompanying him to take off his blindfold and the plastic handcuff on his hands, and to let him urinate. The Palestinian managed a short, tear-choked thank you in Hebrew. The second instance was related to me by one of the battalion's clerks (a soldier I am directly responsible for). He was ordered to accompany a bus load of detainees to the nearby military prison. According to his story, as the detained men were let off the bus one of the prison guards asked him: "How many pieces (chatichot) have you brought today?" When he replied that they were human beings and not things, the guard was struck temporarily dumb, only to retort some minutes later with: "Are you some kind of leftist or something?"

Both instancesand they can be multiplied many times overexemplify two interrelated processes that form part of masked behavior. On the one hand they represent a process Lifton (1973: 2067) terms resensitization:

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that is, a situation in which despite encounters with an enemy in stereotypic terms (or as an object), they are nevertheless turned into individual people. On the other hand the two examples illustrate one of the prime paradoxes of behavior in disguise: despite the disjointedness of identity engendered by the use of masquerades, one always remains (albeit to a limited extent) a human being. Hence the need I feltand according to their testimony many other soldiers feel as wellto account for our actions in terms of somehow humanizing the occupation, of somehow presenting a more humane face to the occupying force.

There are yet other mechanisms, techniques of neutralization (Sykes and Matza 1957), that individual reservists employ in order to deal with the situation in the territories: repressing memories associated with miluim, playing down the seriousness of their behavior, or isolating their experience (stating that army and civilian "lives" are essentially unrelated). Another coping strategy has been characterized by Stanley Cohen (1988: 61) as a sort of ritual incantation: people believe and account for their actions in terms of their forming part of the military effort to "restore law and order until a political settlement is reached."

For all this, however, while these kinds of explanations well illuminate the problematic nature of disguised behavior, and highlight the type of accounts people (myself included) mobilize in order to deal with the contradiction inbuilt to service in the territories they still do not suffice. This is because, as I will presently show, they still fall short of explicating the way these mechanisms that operate on the individual or small group levels are enveloped within wider processes of the production and reproduction of meaning in the army. This may be understood through referring again to my battalion's experience in Hebron.

Clean Work

As I described before, our movement into the city and its environs also signaled a movement into the role of policemen (and all that this role entails in terms of tasks, equipment, and legal terminology). What happened, however, was that in the space of a few short days everyoneofficers and soldiersreverted to the typical mode of military thinking and perception that Hasdai (1982) has called the "doer" (bitsuist) orientation. ¹⁰

This development was reflected, in the first place, in the kinds of terms people used. Terms like nikui shetach ("clean-up" or "mop-up") were in constant use: clean-up this village or mop-up that street or avenue. This expression, which is usually used in times of war or skirmishes in order to refer to the elimination of pockets of enemy resistance in a given area, was now used in regard to clearing away of "civilian" (i.e., Palestinian)

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that crept into use included not only the usual array of army acronyms or the expressions officially designated by the signals corps, but also such words as deployment (prisa), breakthrough (pritza) into houses, raids (peshita), or parallel uses of forces (avoda bemakbil).

What is perhaps of greater significance from the point of view of the present argument, however, was not only that the usual terms and perceptions used within the context of the army were infused into the policing activities of Hebron and its environs. What is of greater importance was that after a few days in the shetach (which is the way army men refer to the field) the criteria by which officers, single patrols, companies, or the whole battalion itself were appraised were the type of standards that are used in regard to regular army tasks (whether in times of war, or along the country's borders during those misnamed periods of peacetime).

Thus, for example, one set of criteria that was utilized time and again in evaluating how a certain unit carried out its mission was whether it had done "clean work" (avodah nekiya): that is, operated with minimal damage to "our" forces, efficiency, smooth execution, and no delays in the designated timetable. Two excerpts from the interviews I held may well illuminate this point. One young officer who joined our unit two or three years ago put it in the following terms:

When you're there and you've got a goalthat everything will run smoothly (yidfok) like the army wants it to runthen it really becomes a personal matter. There has to be a solution to a problem and I have to find it immediately.

Another officerone of the company commanderstold me how they had entered a village and given chase to hundreds of people who had subjected them to a barrage of rocks:

It worked really well, and from this aspect I was satisfied, from my point of view as company commander and how the people functioned (tifkedu) in situations where they were put under pressure. ¹¹

A related set of criteria revolved around the success of the commanders of a unit in exploiting the stint in Hebron in order to "solidify" or "crystallize" the unit (gibush yechidati) (see Katriel 1986: 3031). This refers to the success of officers in fostering a sense of solidarity among their soldiers and their channeling of this solidarity to the practicalities of coordination between soldiers, smooth intraunit communication of orders, or mutual help between its members. To reiterate, these are the type of

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standards that are usually applied to army units that carry out "regular" military missions: border patrols, incursions into enemy territory, or combat missions. ¹²

The use of these criteria is summarized in the words of a company commander from the paratroopers (a unit very similar to ours) who was asked in a newspaper interview about his experience in the territories (Kol Hair, February 10, 1989):

We came out better soldiers than when we went in because we saw it as a military mission. Individual soldiering, the movement of the whole company, and our familiarity with combat in built up areas all rose to a higher level.

Military Culture

What does all of this imply? Here again I would suggest looking at the army experience from a rather unconventional viewpoint: that is, viewing army life as organizational culture, as the enactment of certain meanings. When viewed from such a perspective, I would argue, the developments I have described are evidence of a process of "naturalization" (Dolgin et al. 1977: 39) that the battalion underwent during the first week or two in Hebron. In a word, given the organizational structure and rules through which the battalion operated, and given the criteria and terms through which the environment and the unit's activities within it were appraised, it is only "natural" that the uprising began to be perceived through an essentially military (as opposed to police) orientation.

The unit's reality constructors (Morgan 1986: 132), such as the officers and NCOs, because of their conceptions of "what we are" and "what we are trying to do" established points of reference that "properly" belong to the domain of the military. The argument, then, is that the interpretive schemes suited to "ordinary" army contexts formed the framework for understanding (and acting upon) the new circumstances of the intifada: that is, to a situation in which the army is in heightened contact with civilian populations, and has to react to types of resistance it is not trained to deal with such as stone throwing, flag raising, demonstrating, burning tires, or using Molotov cocktails.

Yet this is not just a simple shift from an emphasis on policing to one that has to do with the tactics of military warfare. The shift is much more subtle and has to do with the nature of the IDF as a certain kind of army. The Israeli army, like many other modern military forces, is guided by a very strong managerial ideology.¹³ As Feld (1977: 5253; see also Lang 1972: chap. 2) notes, the commanders of modern armies are often

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guided by a desire to gain the maximum utility from the machines and manpower at their disposal and inclined to employ these items according to the prevalent managerial standards rather than force them into the mold of military code and traditions.

Along these lines, it may be better understood how my battalion's commandersand I would reasonably argue that this holds for many other reserve units as wellcame to define and react to various problems posed by the uprising not only in military terms but in the special terms of military technology and organization. To borrow from Lifton's (1973: 65) remarks about another situation, the problems posed by Palestinian resistance came to be seen as problems to be solved by the application of the right technique, the proper know-how. ¹⁴ In this way the recourse to military interpretive schemes allowed for a redefinition of some of the personal (or ethical) problems involved in serving in the territories into questions of an essentially professional military nature. In a word, moral misgivings were, in effect, displaced onto an organizational plane. An analysis of the types of self-reflection that are encouraged in these circumstances may make this point clearer.

Continuities in Identity

Let us begin by way of the kind of reflection that is promoted within the context of the army itself. Here what is evident is that the process of "militarization" of the intifada operates to channel away any basic questioning of the situation. By allowing, indeed even actively encouraging, field commanders to reflect upon and to consider such tactical issues as deployment, the efficient use of manpower and other resources, or "creative" reactions to local action there is a diffusion of reflexivity on a deeper level: the level of basics such as Israeli presence in the territories or the impact of this presence on Israeli society. In other words, the promotion of reflection about "role performance"a reflection that is consistent with other facets of Israeli male identitiestends to reduce consideration of the basic legitimacy of this role.

The diffusion of a more penetrating self-analysis is reinforced by two further points. The first has to do with the fact that despite the events of the last decadeespecially the war in Lebanonfor most Israeli men participation in the army is still considered to be a reward in itself. As Horowitz and Kimmerling (1974: 265) note, such "participation defines the extent to which an individual is in the 'social-evaluative' system of Israel." Any acute self-reflection engendered by service during the uprising then by definition touches upon the right of reservists to be part of this system

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of evaluation. It may disrupt, given the tendency of military identity to be a central component of Israeli male identity (Lieblich 1987: 11), their conception of themselves as Israelis.

At the same time this situation is intensified in the case of "organic units." In units like my battalion the close primary-group ties and the "spirit" of the unit also work to channel away a self-reflection that may touch on the deeper problems of the intifada. In other words, because soldiers and officers evaluate themselves and are evaluated within the context of tight groups of important others, self-analysis may come "dangerously close" to questioning the feelings of belonging and solidarity, the sentiments of pride and unity of purpose, and the common experiences and ideals represented by the unit. ¹⁵

Against the background I have just traced out it may now be clearer how some reservists may return to their ordinary, everyday existence and account for their period of duty in terms of anotherperhaps slightly more difficult but nevertheless just anotherstint of miluim. What are thus experienced upon a return to noncombatant lifeand it is just this meaning of civilian that takes precedence in this contextare certain sentiments of empathy with the "locals," and astonishment at one's actions, but also very deep-felt emotions of pride at army missions well done, of solidarity with one's comrades, and of sharing with them another military experience. The observations of a company commander from the paratroopers that I quoted before bring this out (Kol Hair, February 10, 1989):

I have no doubt that against force you have to react with force, and that the missions defined for the army are legitimate. At the same time you see that the local population are suffering . . . and I did these things. As a soldier I am at peace with myself regarding my actions. As a human being I am not at peace with myself.

At the Edge of My Society

Stones and pebbles cannot be tamed, until the end they
look at us with very quiet, very clear eyes.
            based on Z. Herbert, Poems (1984)

When one colleague and friend read an earlier version of this article he observed that permeating my whole analysis is a deep sense of guilt (he is an ex-therapist). Yet guilt can be a "positive" motivating force. Telling this taleor more precisely relating my personal story to the more distanced analysishas provided me with a means for confronting the experience of Hebron as well as for facing some of the deeper implications of my actions

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and those of my friends and comrades. This, of course, has been far from easy. I state this in no way in order to minimize the sufferings of the Palestinians or to overstress the "psychology" of the rulers at the expense of the oppressed (Bishra 1989). Rather, I believe that in order to understand the complexity of the situation one must take into account both the patterns of thought of those Israelis who are charged with managing the occupation of the territories, and the process through which someone such as I begins to tell you such a tale.

Although I was rarely in direct contact with Palestinians while in Hebron, I found myself in a state of turmoil for weeks after my return: I did not sleep well, could not concentrate on my teaching and research, and was short with my children. Above all, however, I was very defensive about any criticism of the army and of the actions of soldiers in the territories. As I then only vaguely sensed and now more explicitly realize I took these criticisms and questions person-ally: that is, as attacks touching upon my identity as an army officer and through that as an Israeli, and as assaults upon my commitment to the army and by way of that to my own society.

These circumstances were made more difficult by the unfulfilled expectations many people had (myself very much included) that stints in the occupied territories during the intifada would affect an immediate political backlash leading to mass movements for change. If anythingas my analysis tries to explainthat I witnessed at that time (a few months after the uprising's beginning) was the basic resiliency of the situation: in other words, how the application of "double standards" to behaviors within and across the green line could continue.

It was against this backdrop that sometime in June I was asked to make a short presentation at a roundtable discussion organized at my department about the intifada. This discussion grew out of the feeling some of us held that we should and could react to the uprising as anthropologists and sociologists (ours is a joint department). At the beginning I toyed with the idea of presenting some kind of generaland of course very distancedanalysis about the microeconomics of the intifada or about its implications for territorial behavior. I sensed very quickly, however, that this just would not do and that I needed to present something that grew out of my own turmoil and as yet only vaguely defined questions. Yet this was problematic to say the least. I was one of those Israeli academics that Stanley Cohen (1988: 95) talks about:

Most of my academic colleagues have no sense of being on the edge of their society, of seeing it from the outside. As a result, they are reluctant to take a stand that might be interpreted as "disloyal" or "unpatriotic" or (worst of all) "anti-Zionist." So, even today,

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they defend an idealized version of Israeli history and culture as if it were reality.

The presentation that I did eventually givea short ten-minute talk based on some very rough noteswas trying. It was my first public attempt to divulge a deeply personal story and to analyze some of its implications, to own up to my experience and yet to subject it to the anthropological scrutiny that I apply as a matter of course to my normal subjects of research.

During the summer I spent over two months doing fieldwork in Japan. It was only at the end of this period, however, that I finally felt that I could commit my experience to writing. I had to literally travel away from my society in order to travel to its edge, to be able to look at it from an external vantage point. Yet I am still very much part of my society. These days I return home dreading to look at the post box: will a new mobilization order be there?

Notes

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank U. Almagor, Y. Bilu, E. Cohen, R. Gal, D. Handelman, S. Heilman, R. Kahane, B. Kimmerling, A. Levi, A. Lieblich, E. Lomsky-Feder, A. Seligman, and especially G. Aran for comments on an earlier version of this work. The Harry S. Truman Institute and the Koret Foundation granted me financial aid toward completing the manuscript. Translations of the poems from the Hebrew are my own.

1. Indeed, a number of Israeli psychologists (see, for example, BarOn 1988) have raised this question.

2. A description of one such force, the paratroopers, can be found in Aran (1974: 149).

3. A fuller exposition of the army reserve system can be found in Gal (1986: 38).

4. Lieblich's (1987) very sensitive account of the experience of soldiers who went through the war in Lebanon brings these points out. Some of the soldiers that she describes are the kind of men that, upon completion of their compulsory term of service, have joined our unit.

5. See Feige (n.d.) for an analysis along these lines.

6. Sutton-Smith and Kelly-Byrne (1984: 187) point out that behavior termed play or playful may often be used as masks for other forms of behavior such as cruelty or violence.

7. Indeed under certain circumstances one may well hypothesize that the wearing of uniforms induces a certain process of deindividuation: entering a state of lessened self-awareness, reduced concern over social

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evaluation, and weakened restraint against prohibited forms of behavior (Aronson 1988: 216).

8. Although very little is known about their activities I would suggest that the secret intifada committees (the invisible Palestinian government in the territories) may be analyzed along the lines I am suggesting in regard to the Israeli army. These committeeswhich function, it seems, not unlike the secret societies of West Africa (Walter 1969: chap. V)also use masks to dissociate themselves from as well as cover their public identities as individuals. Their effectiveness, however, in contrast to the army depends on mystery, dramatic intervention, and the sudden return to invisibility.

9. This situation is not unique to the situation that I am describing. First take the following account of the Poro secret society studied by Harley:

Gbana . . . was a grand old man with pure white hair when I last saw him. He always had a kiindly smile. At the height of his influence he was a judge for a total of nine towns . . . It is hard to reconcile the gory history of [his] blood stained mask with the benign clear-eyed patriarch. [Walter 1969: 85]

Next take the example of a Vietnam veteran related by Lifton (1973: 104105)

I came to be fascinated by my threatened life and to enjoy the immediacy of it, and yes, to hate it too and to hate myself for enjoying it . . . I was two of myself, one human and other inhuman . . . At a time like that you find out what man is like. You learn that this is what man is.

10. On the psychological background of this kind of mentality, see Lieblich (1983) and Lieblich and Perlow (1988: 44).

11. Later on in the talk we had this same man note how important it was to fulfill the officer's role despite any misgivings he had:

I tried to disconnect myself from the whole idea of whether we should be there [in the territories] or not because after all as the company commander I always had to tell the soldiers that we have to do it, and we have to do it well, and with a lot of motivation.

12. A somewhat less pronounced set of criteria for appraising activity can be seen as a direct outgrowth of the fire and movement emphasis that is part of Israeli tactical doctrine (Kellett 1982: 250). These criteria had to do with the degree to which actions were created and initiated by various

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commanders (pe-ulot yezumot) rather than being reactions to the initiative of the ''locals."

13. Historically, of course, many modern managerial codes were developed during the modernization of the Prussian army (Morgan 1986: 2424).

14. Sadly, later developments bear this point out. The Israeli army has, over the course of the intifada, attempted to deal with the situation through introducing a series of different "technical solutions": the use of clubs, administrative arrests, the explosion of houses, rubber bullets, plastic bullets, special canon for shooting glass marbles, and so on.

15. This kind of analysis brings out, I would further argue, how many soldiers, despite misgivings and doubts they may have, are "gently" swept into a situation that is "beyond their control." It is beyond their control not in the sense of their inability to direct the practical consequences of their actions, but on the deeper level of not controlling the assumptions that lie at the basis of these activities. Along these lines one implication of my discussion involves realizing how facile the army's future moves may be into "new" and as of yet for many Israelis unthinkable activities. If the IDF has so readily adapted to police work against Arabs, will we be witness to a relatively easy adaptation to "work" (avoda) against Israeli citizensArabs and Jewsfirst beyond the green line and then (within appropriate contexts) within it as well?

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Lang, Kurt. 1972. Military Instructions and the Sociology of War. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Lieblich, Amia. 1983. Between Strength and Toughness. In Stress in Israel. S. Breznitz, ed. Pp. 3964. New York: Van Nostrand.

.1987. The Spring of Their Years. Tel-Aviv: Schocken.

Lieblich, Amia, and Meir Perlow. 1988. Transition to adulthood during military service. The Jerusalem Quarterly 47: 4076.

Lifton, Robert J. 1973. Home from the War: Vietnam VeteransNeither Victims nor Executioners. New York: Touchstone.

Morgan, Gareth. 1986. Images of Organization. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Moskos, Charles C., Jr. 1975. The American combat soldier in Vietnam. Journal of Social Issues 31(4): 2538.

Reiss, Albert J., Jr. 1971. The Police and the Public. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Richardson, F. M. 1978. Fighting Spirit: A Study of Psychological Factors in War. London: Leo Cooper.

Sternfeld, Zvika. 1988. Intifada diary. Iton 77(106107): 9395. (Hebrew)

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Sutton-Smith, Brian, and Diana Kelly-Byrne. 1984. The Masks of Play. In The Masks of Play. Brian Sutton-Smith and Diana Kelly-Byrne, eds. Pp. 18499. New York: Leisure Press.

Sykes, Gresham M., and David Matza. 1957. Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency. American Sociological Review 22: 66470.

Walter, Eugene V. 1969. Terror and Resistance: A Study of Political Violence. New York: Oxford University Press.

Zucker, Dedi, et al. 1983. Research on Human Rights in the Territories Held by the IDF. Jerusalem: International Center for Peace in the Middle East.

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8
Militarism and the Construction of the Life-World of Israeli Males:
The Case of the Reserves System

Sara Helman

Introduction

Armies have often been the subject of sociological research. They have, for instance, been analyzed in terms of their organizational make-up (Boenne 1990; Huntington 1957; van-Doorn 1975). Other research trends have analyzed the relations between the military and the civilian establishments, while focusing on the potential threat of the military to democratic regimes or, alternatively, in terms of the conditions under which a harmonious coexistence between the military and civilian sectors of society can be achieved (Horowitz 1982; Lissak 1984; Luckham 1971). However, these trends of research have mainly focused on the professional sector of armies and have ignored regular military service. These trends have sharply divided society into two subsystems, which these researchers assume are regulated by different principles of organization and value systems, while ignoring the wider perspective of state-society relations, the role of armies in processes of state and nation formation, and the ways in which armies have been mobilized for such purposes.

Yet another important trend has been the inquiry into the relationship between military service and citizenship in modern western societies (Feld 1977; Janowitz 1976, 1983). This trend of research maintains that participation in military service has been a major antecedent to the expansion of the democratic revolution in the Western democracies. Participation in war and military service are regarded as tokens of political responsibility by

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individuals and social strata claiming inclusion and representation in the political community (i.e., struggling to be included within the boundaries of citizenship). As such, military service has been viewed as an integrative mechanism and as a medium for the expression of commitment toward collective goals (Janowitz 1983). Moreover, armies and schools have been considered to be institutional arenas enhancing feelings of national solidarity (Billig 1995; Durkheim 1992; Janowitz 1983). However, this trend of research conceives of the 'democratic western nation-states' as given entities, that groups and individuals naturally and willingly join. They tend to disregard the complex processes and institutional practices implicated in the formation of modern nation-states, and the new and sophisticated ways in which the latter have extended their power over groups and individuals. Moreover, this trend of research neglects the institutional practices involved in the processes of incorporation into armies and through them into citizenship and nationhood.

While military service has been conceived by Janowitz and his associates as an integrative mechanism and as enhancing the value of the individual vis à vis the political community (Feld 1977), authors such as Giddens (1985), Dandeker (1990), Tilly (1985, 1995), and Young (1984) consider it as one of the mechanisms through which the administrative apparatus of the state has extended its hold over subject populations. The extension of the administrative apparatus of the state over populations is considered as part and parcel of the processes of internal pacification of societies, with the monopolization of the means of violence as one of the main characteristics of the modern state (Giddens 1985; Tilly 1985, 1995; Weber 1983). The process of internal pacification eliminated violence from the conduct of daily affairs, and practices of surveillance and disciplinary control were substituted for such violence (Giddens 1985, 1987). Surveillance and disciplinary control allowed the administrative apparatus of the state to closely control the daily lives and activities of subjected populations by means of various organizations and in a range of social settings (Giddens 1987: 174).

Within this changed pattern of social relations, there developed what Foucault (1979: 22021) conceptualized as technologies of subjection, while the use of violence became an underlying sanction, 'a hidden but available threat' (Giddens 1987: 176). Military service, then, rather than being a simple antecedent to the 'democratic revolution,' may be considered both as a mechanism for the extension of the power of the administrative power of the state over different populations within the territories administered by the state, and as an instrument for the management of populations (Dandeker 1990; Foucault 1988; Giddens 1985; Tilly 1995).

Military service may also be considered as 'making up people' or as constituting individuals through an array of disciplinary practices, all of

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them geared to the attainment of uniformity of behavior and the rationalization of conduct (see: Alexander 1987; Foucault 1979: 13538; Tilly 1995: 196). These goals are part and parcel of what Foucault (1979: 184) has conceptualized as normalization or normalizing judgment:

a whole range of degrees of normality indicating membership in an homogeneous social body, but also playing a part in classification, hierarchization and the distribution of rank. In a sense, the power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix specialties and to render the differences useful by fitting them one to another.

Moreover, military service may be considered as a mechanism or as an institution constituting and signifying the value of individuals to the state or in Foucault's terms: 'insofar as [individuals] are somehow relevant for the reinforcement of the state's strength' (1988: 152).

The previous conceptualization of military service stresses the ways in which military service constitutes individuals through an array of disciplinary practices. However, it does not sufficiently emphasize the dynamics of the perception of military service as a 'homogeneous body' nor does it delve into the symbolic and social consequences of the perception of membership in it. Moreover, while this conceptualization provides some clues concerning the reproduction over time of military service, it does not ask how the homogeneous body is reproduced and how individuals are driven to enact practices that reproduce the military field. Finally, it does not ask how the military field reproduces the organizing principles of the socio-political order.

The purpose of this chapter is to tackle this particular problematique through the analysis of the military reserve system in Israel. I shall analyze the cultural construction of the reserve system and the ways in which this construction is an integral part of its reproduction (at least until the early 1990s).

My main argument is that the reproduction of the reserve system rests upon its construction in terms of a community in this case, a community of males engaged in military practices and war. This community is perceived by its participants as coextensive with society as a whole, though its boundaries are constructed through a combination of national/ethnic, gender, and military practices. Furthermore, though this community is constituted by the Israeli state and embodies the organizational and cultural logic of the Israeli state (Kimmerling 1993b), it is perceived by its members as autonomous from the state. It is through the continuous participation in the military field of practices as embodied in the reserve system and its construction in

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terms of a community, that the subjectivity of Jewish/Israeli males is strengthened and the logic ¹ of the socio-political order smoothly reproduced. My claim is that belonging to this community of warriors is experienced in terms of embeddedment in society, as a criterion of normalcy and as an entitlement that legitimizes participation in the associations of civil society.

The reserve system is considered in this context as part of military service. However, the focus on the reserve system allows me to sharpen the main arguments of this article. Moreover, while it may be sustained that regular military service initiates and instills the perceptions of military service as a community, the reserves system further reproduces and consolidates it (see: Helman 1994: 14648).

The chapter comprises four main sections. The first section briefly presents the methodology of the research. In the second, I present and analyze the main contours of the reserve system, as well as a critical review of the research dealing with it. The third section is an interpretative analysis of the construction of the reserve system as a community, and its main constituent dimensions. The last section presents an explanation of this construction and the ways in which it reproduces the logic of the Israeli state.

Methodology

Perceptions of military service were gleaned from in-depth, semistructured interviews with sixty-six reserve soldiers² who conscientiously refused their tour of duty during Israel's war in Lebanon (198285). Each interview covered such subjects as the interviewee's regular military service, reserve military service, war participation, the story of his conscientious objection, his understanding of citizenship, his understanding of the war in Lebanon, and his willingness to serve at one of the stages of Israel's war in Lebanon (198285).

The methodological strategy of a case study was adopted (Yin 1989). Of the wide range of possibilities within this research strategy, the nature of the phenomenon led to a combination of two: the deviant case analysis (Campbell 1975; Hamel 1992; Mitchell 1991; Yin 1981) and the interpretative case analysis (Halfpenny 1979). The former approach allows me to treat conscientious objection as a new and unusual phenomenon in Israel while simultaneously enabling me to understand 'normality.' My main methodological contention is that unusual and even 'singular' phenomena may bring into focus and even uncover issues that pertain to the central dynamics of the social order, issues that otherwise analyzed could remain obscure or pass unnoticed. In other words, 'singularity' or 'deviance' may

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sharpen the understanding of routine practices. The interpretative case analysis incorporates the method of thick description (Geertz 1973), allowing me both to explain the phenomenon in terms of its socio-cultural meanings and to explain the context in terms of the phenomenon. The interpretative approach assumes that contents of interviews are individual and subjective expressions of intersubjective reality (Mumby and Stohl 1991; Somers 1994). In other words, the theoretical and methodological approach underlying this study conceives of the contents of interviews as embedded in an array of social and political relations constitutive of the social world (Somers 1994: 67).

It is not usual to utilize the accounts of conscientious objectors to examine issues that pertain to the organizing principles of the sociopolitical order. This article originated in an intellectual puzzle. In the process of interpretation of the interviews, I could clearly glean two voices emerging from each interview. One was what I term "the hegemonic discourse of military service"; the other was the critical voice that resignified the main tenets of that discourse. The coexistence of both voices in the interviews brought me to the understanding that, in the process of making sense of their actions (i.e., conscientious objection), interviewees became keenly aware of the principles, rules and practices, and institutions constitutive of their identity (Somers 1994) and relied upon them to redefine their identity vis-à-vis society and themselves. By focusing on the accounts of the individuals who challenged the terms of participation in one of the main organizations embodying the logic of the Israeli state, one may attain a deeper understanding of this logic and the ways it shapes subjectivity.

The interviews were conducted five years after the war in Lebanon and shortly after the outbreak of the intifadaat a time when the interviewees were facing again reserve service in circumstances they opposed. They referred repeatedly to the general political situation and to the kind of mission Israeli soldiers were summoned to.

The Reserve System:
An Analytical Description

The Israeli army was established in 1948. The various militia formed during the prestate period (Etzel, Haganah, Lechi, Palmach) were subsumed under a single command and framework. ³ During the 1948 war (the War of Independence, as Israeli-Jews call it), as many as 100,000 soldiers were mobilized. According to Luttwack and Horowitz (1975: 76), by the end of the war it became clear that Israel would not be able to maintain an army of that dimension, especially in light of the size of the population at barely a million inhabitants. Luttwack and Horowitz's main contention was that

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the structure of the Israeli army is representative of the kind of solutions given to the conflict between two clashing goals: the release of the mobilized to the pursuit of routine civilian tasks, on the one hand, and continuous preparation for war and for coping with external threat, on the other.

The Israeli army (the Israeli Defense ForcesIDF) is composed of three main organizational frameworks: the regular army, based on the principle of compulsory and almost universal military service; the reserve army, and a smaller framework of professional soldiers.

According to Luttwack and Horowitz (1975), Horowitz and Kimmerling (1974) and Gal (1986), the reserve system was designed through the combination of two models: the Swiss reserves system and the system of the Haganah-Chish. ⁴ Reserve soldiers belong to combat, logistic, and service units. Reserve combat units focus on the training of soldiers and the maintenance of their combat skills. Gal (1986:39) claims that the reserve army has been and still is the biggest organizational framework within the Israeli army, and according to data provided by the Institute of Strategic Studies at London, 65 percent of the combat units of the Israeli army are composed of reserve soldiers. An Israeli (Jewish) male serves in the reserve system from the end of his regular service until he is approximately fiftyfive years old.⁵ In principle and by law, all capable males are summoned to the reserves once a year for a period that lasts on the average thirty-five days for soldiers and forty-two days for officers.⁶ Combat soldiers are transferred at the age of thirty-five from front line units to logistic units in the rear of the battlefield.⁷ During emergency periods, such as wars, Israeli reservists may spend months in service. It may be concluded that, on the average, an Israeli (Jewish) male devotes some five to six years of his life to military service (Horowitz and Kimmerling 1974).⁸ The reserve system applies in principle to women, who, by law, can be summoned to the reserve service up to the age of thirty-four, if they do not marry. However, the participation of women in the reserve system has been marginal (Gal 1986).

In light of its size and importance within the framework of the Israeli army, the reserve system can be viewed as an institutional arrangement that allows both for the ongoing preparations for war and the routine pursuit of what may be defined as civilian activities (Gal 1986; Horowitz and Kimmerling 1974; Luttwack and Horowitz 1975). In other words, the reserve system has been considered as one of the central mechanisms that enables the Israeli army to keep a reservoir of trained soldiers while routine civilian activities are pursued.

The central role of the reserve system within the organizational framework of the Israeli army, and yearly service of Israeli males in reserve

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units has turned it into a central experience for most of the Jewish males in Israel. However, and despite its centrality, the reserve system has not been the subject of intensive research in the social sciences. The scarcity of research is remarkable, especially in light of the extensive work devoted by Israeli social scientists to the sociology of civil-military relations.

Amongst the few studies of the reserve system, Horowitz and Kimmerling's (1974) seminal work deserves special attention. This study analyzes the reserve system from a macro-sociological and comparative perspective. The theoretical consideration framing their work is the question of the conditions under which a subsystem (in this case the military subsystem) can ensure the continuous flow of human resources or manpower resources while avoiding competition and even tensions with other societal sub-systems. The reserve system is then analyzed as an institutional arrangement that allows for the steady flow of manpower to meet the requirements of national security.

The successful monopoly that the military subsystem exerts over manpower resources is based upon two conditions, the first being the wide consensus existing in Israel regarding the importance of national security; the second condition is the effective utilization of manpowereffectiveness being always defined in terms of the organizational requirements of the military subsystem (Horowitz and Kimmerling 1974: pp. 26263). The authors go even further and raise questions touching upon the conditions for the reproduction of the reserve system from the point of view of the individual's motivation to bear the chronic burden of security tasks, especially in light of their unequal distribution. However, the unequal distribution of the burden of national security does not give rise to grievances.

The ongoing motivation of individuals to bear the differential costs of national security, is explained in terms of different degrees of closeness to the central evaluative system of Israeli society. Participation in security tasks, especially in combat roles, is itself a reward since individuals partake in the 'charisma' of the central value system. It may be concluded that individuals continue to participate in the reserve system due mainly to their inner conviction and their value orientations toward the charismatic center of society, a charisma that is embodied in the army, as the paramount representative of the central value system.

Horowitz's and Kimmerling's seminal work underestimated the fact that what they conceptualized as the military subsystem, and the reserve system in particular, are institutional areas that belong to the state sphere. Given their strong structural functional orientation and the adoption of the model of civil-military relations, their arguments followed the logic of explanation set by the just mentioned paradigms (i.e., that of two subsystems the civilian and the militarythat may hold contradictory goals and even

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compete over resources and of a society integrated by normative consensus and of legitimation flowing from the periphery to the center). However, given the dominance of the state over society especially on issues of national security, it may be assumed that consensus does not emanate from society to the 'military subsystem,' but that the state itself, through the army, has constructed 'consensus' and endowed military institutions with charisma. Furthermore, it may be argued that military service as a set of practices actively constructs commitment and legitimation to the tasks of national security and is not only an expression of such commitment and legitimation. Moreover, military service as a set of practices constitutes individuals by homogenizing, differentiating and hierarchizing amongst them. This is accomplished by means of what Kimmerling (1979a) calls the boundaries and frameworks of conscription (i.e., by establishing who is eligible for military service (boundaries) and then by distributing individuals in units that implicitly and explicitly bear differential prestige). Therefore, constitution is effected by establishing the relative value of individuals for the state. The hierarchy thus created, both reflects and reinforces the power structure of Israeli society (see Levy 1996; Smooha 1984). Moreover, if reproduction and steady motivation are contingent upon the perception of military service as relevant to national security tasks, what remains to be explained is why, despite the wide dissidence that developed during Israel's war in Lebanon and the intifada (Palestinian uprising), phenomena of active resistance to military service in general and to the reserve system in particular have never been widespread.

Ben-Ari's (1989) study represents a test case of Horowitz and Kimerling's hypothesis that the motivation of soldiers to participate in the reserve system will endure as long as they perceive their service to be relevant to national security. Through the reflexive analysis of the ways in which his military unit coped in an unusual and new situationpolicing practices during the intifadaBen-Ari disclosed the mechanisms that 'normalized1 ⁹ the changed conditions of action and the new practices themselves. Normalization was affected by the formulation and incorporation of policing practices into the discourse of combat soldiering. The latter mechanism masked the alien rationality of the situation and allowed for the smooth functioning of the military unit.¹⁰ This study clearly shows how the reserve system itself actively constructs the meanings of national security and through this construction the perceptions of the participants in it. In other words, consensus and closeness are not antecedents to military practices, but military practices and their enactment actively construct consensus, or at least grant military activities with legitimacy and thus they are perceived as relevant to national security tasks.

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However, most studies have overlooked several important aspects of the reserve system and the ways it is smoothly reproduced. They have not turned ongoing participation into a research question. Their inquiries have taken ongoing participation for granted, and do not ask why it is that individuals are ready to temporarily forego their control over personal resources such as their time, their careers, family life, and so on to engage in activities that do not immediately or directly reward them and bear some element of risk. Moreover, most studies overlook the fact that the reserve system is compulsory, and that the Israeli state, by law, temporarily appropriates the time resources and the activities of its male Jewish citizens, thereby intruding, interrupting and indirectly controlling their lives and plans. In this sense, these studies have reproduced unintentionally the very perceptions of part of the male population and the 'hegemonic cultural construction' of military service. They have not asked what the mechanisms aresocial and symbolicthat may explain the sustained participation in military activities in general, and in the reserves in particular, and through it the reproduction of the whole military system.

Military Service and the Construction of the Boundaries of the Israeli Community

To be eligible for military service (i.e., being defined as an able candidate to be included within the boundaries of conscription) (Kimmerling 1979a), is more than a formal legal act. It involves a statement that implicitly and explicitly defines the value of individuals for the state or, in Feld's (1977) terms, their civic value. It signifies who may be considered as a candidate for the enhancement of the 'collective good' and for whom the 'collective good' is conceived (see Peled 1993). In other words, the military field is a central mechanism of homogenization and differentiation. Homogenization and differentiation turn into cornerstones of the what may be called a community of fellow-strangers (Roche 1987), or an imagined community (Anderson 1983). This community is defined by the engagement in a common field of practices; it is this engagement that creates the bounds and solidarities between individuals that are anonymous to each other. ¹¹ It is the engagement in a common field of practices, that gives rise to the perception of the community as limited (i.e., as establishing a sharp divide between those within it and those outside its boundaries) (Anderson 1983: 7). However, bounds, solidarities, and the meanings attached to them are not naturally given. They are actively constructed, enacted, and reproduced through an array of symbols and organizational frameworks (Billig 1995: 24).

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The bounds and solidarities that constitute Israeliness are usually experienced through the participation in organizational frameworks. Within these frameworks, and through the enactment of particular set of practices, the hegemonic meanings of Israeliness are formed and consolidated (Horowitz 1993). Frameworks such as schools, youth movements, and the army are the fields in which hegemonic Israeliness are reproduced and the general population of Israel homogenized, differentiated, hierarchized, and even excluded. The experience of the life cycle as a continuum of frameworks and organizations is the 'always-already' constituted reality referred to by the interviewees when referring to their military service in general and to the reserve service in particular.

Izhar, a reserve soldier in the infantry corps and a history teacher, told about his life while emphasizing the spirit of the time in which he grew up. He stressed the collectivistic character of his upbringing. He pointed time and again to the ways in which socializatory frameworks 'produced' individuals who conceived of personal self-fulfillment in collectivistic terms. The ultimate consummation of personal self-realization was embodied in the participation in a military combat unit. During the interview, Izhar cynically criticized his upbringing and imaginarily appointed himself to the office of 'Sovereign.' This appointment allowed him to reflexively criticize what he considered to be the natural course of his life, and to understand the ways in which he was constituted as a subject by hegemonic discourse. The statement 'when and if I come to power,' discloses the ways in which he retrospectively perceived himself to be programmed and geared to aggrandize the power of the different organizational frameworks (the state, the settlement organizations, ¹² etc.) (Althusser 1971).

The most important part of my education was the collective realization of goals. Today I consider myself as an individualist, but I must declare myself as the product of an educational regime. It may sound contradictory, but that was the way I was. The group with whom I joined the army . . . we were programmed I would dare to say. We were very much alike, we were produced by the same assembly line, and an excellent assembly line it was. Guys with high moral standards, that were ready to join elite combat units . . . it couldn't have been better. I'm saying it again, if and when I come to power, I will produce people like me . . . It will be wonderful.

The construction of personal horizons by means of organizational frameworks, all of them geared to the construction of state and nation (Shafir 1989) and their perception as natural, was the main theme of the interview with Doron, a kibbutz member and an infantry soldier. The

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expression 'I accepted it as the truth' expresses the retrospective doubt that things could have been different. But the same sentence emphasizes the constitutive power of educational practices to the point that Doron never doubted his path or thought that there could be alternative horizons:

It was the natural succession of the membership in the youth movement. I grew into it, it was natural to join the army and then to continue into the reserve service. I know that people that were born abroad look at it differently. It was natural in my times and in the same natural way I went to the reserves. As I grew up, I hesitated, I doubted, but all in all it was natural. I can't say that one day I woke up and I asked myself why?

Avi, devoted long parts of the interview to the preordained character of his education and to the lack of alternative legitimate channels of selffulfillment. The power of hegemonic channels became evident when in other parts of interview he told that he would have been happier if he had been allowed to exchange military duties for another kind of national service, such as working in a kibbutz or in a developmental town. But, he himself stated that those activities were not a legitimate alternative to military or reserve service. The frequent usage of words such as 'education,' 'internalization,' 'it is clear,' and so on is indicative of the strength of educational practices, to the point that the readiness and motivation to join the army are turned into an emotional, cognitive, and interpretative disposition.

We were educated to go to the army. What I mean is that the army is an integral part of your life. It is clear that as you finish high school, you join the army and then you join the reserves . . . It is clear, that's what I'm telling you all the time, it is so deeply internalized . . .

The construction of the life cycle, through the different frameworks, brings about, then, the homogenization of subjects. Homogenization is attained to the exposure to institutional practices. We thus have Chanoch's inner conviction that 'everybody does it.' Everybody is exposed to the same frameworks and experiences, and as a consequence everybody goes to the reserves. 'Everybody does it' turns into the justification of the rule, 'the average to be respected' (Foucault 1979: 183).

[the reserves] is the direct continuation of secondary school, you join the army with a group, then you go to a kibbutz . . . well perhaps the kibbutz is superfluous now, and then you go to the reserves for a month every year. Everybody does it.

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However, 'everybody does it' is more than the rationale or justification for following the rule, or the discursive aspect of practices. 'Everybody does it' symbolizes the community of fellow strangers (Roche 1987) or the imagined community (Anderson 1983). Moreover, the subject is able to identify himself with others through the assumed engagement in the very same practices.

Moreover, exposure to and engagement in the field of practices homogenize while they differentiate and hierarchize. Idan, a journalist and a soldier in the infantry corps, told me during the interview about the ways he had 'paid his dues in Israel.' He felt superior to other new immigrants that had refused to go through the Israeli rite of passage, a rite he considers necessary and even rewarding. In Idan's opinion, they were inferior to him, they did not deserve to be accepted as Israelis or as members of the community of fellow strangers. Moreover, while joining 'true Israelis' (i.e., those that went through the army) Idan exiled other new immigrants from the Israeli community and stipulated that he now held a superior 'package of shares' in Israel.

I know some South Americans who have been in Israel for 10 or 15 years, and have not yet gone to the army. I don't feel that they are Israelis as I am. I don't think I could be a real Israeli if I hadn't gone to the army. I have a bigger pack of shares here, because I went to the army.

Eli, a reserve soldier in the infantry corps and a university professor, emphasized time and again his being different from everybody, and identified himself as an individualist. However, he acknowledged his immersion in Israeliness: mainly as the latter is constituted by military service and the different wars. Moreover, the participation in the common field shapes his capacity to recognize others, as exemplified by his statement: 'the persons I identify as Israelis, all of us were in the army.' The participation in military service and in war, amalgamates personal and historical time, thereby creating a classificatory scheme among participants, thus: Our war was the 'Six-Day War.' But all of them, all the participants in military service and war, are of the same 'human nature,' share the same qualities. Those sharing the 'same human nature' or all of those he identified as Israelis, participated in the army. Those that did not were automatically driven out of the boundaries of the community, were not of the 'same human nature,' and therefore could not be identified as Israelis.

Most persons I identify as Israelis and I identify with (but not those I do not identify with, such as the ultraorthodox Jews or Neturei Karta), the army is an integral part of our culture, all of

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us were in the army. Your age group is defined by this . . . Our war was the Six Days War [1967 War]. During the Yom Hakipurim [1973 War] we were considered to be old people.

Opting out of military service in general and of the reserves in particular is thought of in terms of abnormality or in terms of deviance. Michael, an infantry soldier and a student of engineering, described his military service as the path that redeemed him from the margins of society. As an adolescent he was member of a street gang. During his army service he steadily cleared his way to an elite unit. His military service was described as an experience that instilled in him the motivation to make 'something out himself.' Therefore, to opt out of military service is not only to be marginal but is interpreted in terms of being a 'parasite':

I want to belong, I want to be involved, so not to go to the army or to opt out of the reserves would be to become a parasite. I already told you, that for me the army was like a 'life belt', but part of this life belt is to belong, to go through some kind of Israeli experience. All in all, the army is an Israeli experience, is experiencing Israeliness, its part of our culture, that's the way it is . . .

Avi, who expressed a deep ambivalence toward military practices and sense of alienation from soldiering, talked about soldiering and military service as an integral part of Israeliness. To opt out military service in general and the reserves in particular is to be a deviant, or to place yourself beyond the boundaries that define normalcy. Opting out the reserves, is experienced as opting out Israel:

Army life is part of our being an Israeli . . . it is the toll you pay to be an Israeli. To be an Israeli means to be in the army and then you go to the reserves, whether you want it or not. If you opt out, you are out of this kibbutz called Israel and you are different, you are a deviant. I'm not afraid of being deviant or being different, but I want to be a part of this kibbutz called Israel.

Israel is equated to a kibbutz, a small, intimate, and demanding community. The minimal requirement to belong to the kibbutz is to abide to its rules and norms. To participate in military service and in the reserves is the minimal requirement to belong to Israel. Thus, to be an Israeli is to be a soldier, whether the individual likes it or not, whether he consciously accepts or rejects this definition of Israeliness.

It may be concluded that being included within the boundaries of conscription (Kimmerling 1979b) signifies the initial homogenization of

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individuals. This process of homogenization is the cornerstone of an imagined community. However, homogenization is not enough, individuals should actively participate in the field of practices in order to be considered as members of the community. It may thus be said that in the process of production of 'national security,' and while being engaged in military activities there develops the experience of common bonds and solidarity between anonymous individuals. This experience, gives rise to the perception of the field as a communitya community that is interpreted by its participants as embodying and defining who an Israeli is and the very content of Israeliness. Moreover, the engagement in the field of military practices and their routine enactment by individuals gives rise to a perception of simultaneity (Anderson 1983), meaning that different individuals, at different times are engaged in the same and recognizable practices. This process of simultaneity creates bonds and solidarities between individuals that are anonymous to each other. Moreover, it creates boundaries of the community. Thus, the participation in the various frameworks of the army, homogenizes while differentiating, hierarchizing, and excluding. While homogenization and differentiation take place within the boundaries of the community, hierarchization and exclusion are mechanisms that serve to sharpen the boundaries of the community. Homogenization and differentiation take place within and along generational lines as embodied in the different cohorts and periodized by the different wars (see Lieblich 1987; Lomsky-Feder 1994). The generational line further homogenizes because each of the individuals has followed the rule, though at a different time and in a different rank and position.

Thus, being included within the boundaries of conscription or alternatively being driven beyond its boundaries hierarchizes between various groups of Jews and Israelis and between Israeli-Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. The differentiation and hierarchization between Jews is done in terms of degrees of closeness to Israeliness. So, to be part of Israel means to be a soldier. Those who are excluded from the community are Jews but not Israelis or non-Jews. (Women and the Palestinian citizens of Israel are silenced in discourse. In this sense it may be said that while Palestinians are excluded, women stand at the lower echelons of the hierarchy.)

Subjectivity is thus constituted so that alternative frameworks that may be indicative of the individual's partaking in the society's geist are deemed impossible. Thus, military service and the reserves are, in the full sense of the term, normalizing frameworks, for they indicate membership in an homogeneous social body and

measure in quantitative terms and hierarchize in terms of values and abilities, the level, the 'nature' of individuals. They introduce,

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through this value giving measure, the constraints to a conformity that must be achieved. (Foucault 1979: 183).

The Reserve System and the Possibility of Communication and Presence

Ongoing participation in military service, as embodied in the reserve service, is not only experienced as the main attribute of Israeliness but also as a main condition for meaningful conversation and communication. Therefore, it is not enough to be included within the boundaries of the community, but inclusion must be reenacted time and again.

The centrality of ongoing participation in military activities, and of military experience as a meta-principle organizing nonmilitary aspects of experience emerged as a central theme in most of the interviews. ¹³

Chanoch explained at length the reasons for his ongoing participation in the reserves, even after his conscientious refusal during the war in Lebanon. Involvement in Israeli society is mediated by the ongoing participation in the reserves. To opt out of the reserves, is interpreted as emigration, or as deserting the common ground of experience or 'if I opt out the reserves I have nothing to do with those people.' Chanoch words connote the following statement: To leave the army is to become a stranger in my own country. Moreover, to leave the army means to build a communicative barrier and therefore to obstruct the dialogue with those with whom I want to talk. Chanoch's words can be interpreted as follows: the army is the social ground positioning participants in dialogue in an equal status. It is only from this position, that the individual's arguments are heard as meaningful and can be validated. In other words, the engagement in a common field of practices is the condition of possibility for difference and its acknowledgment and recognition by other participants. In Chanoch's case, difference means his particular political outlook.

If I opt out of the reserves I wont be able to discuss with people and to convince them . . . because I'm out of the game . . . If I opt out the reserves I have nothing to do here with those people . . . I'm a political activist, and I care about everything. And if you care, you care from within. I mean, if one does not care about the army . . . if he does not do reserve duty it means that he does not care about the army, otherwise he would be there . . . And if he does not care about the army, his involvement in other areas will diminish also . . . Look, I often have political discussions. But if I'm not at the same level, I cannot preach to them, I have nothing to say to them, because we do not do the same, we do not belong

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to the same society, there is no common ground, there is no relationship between us . . .

Meaningful conversation and dialogue are then conceived as possible only if individuals participate on an ongoing basis in the practices of the field, or in the 'community.' Therefore, it is not enough to be included within its boundaries, but inclusion must be reenacted time and again. Otherwise, there develops an experience of distancing and with it a feeling of estrangement.

Marek, a psychologist and an army paramedic, emphasized the dynamics that develops when an individual opts out the reserve system. To opt out the reserves, means to abandon the possibility of understanding Israeli life. To abandon the common ground, the army, is interpreted as being a tourist. Tourists do not have a deep understanding of the societies they visit, nor are they deeply interested in the daily troubles and pains of their populations. Moreover, tourists are bystanders that do not take a deep interest in changing troubling situations. Therefore to opt out of the reserves means deserting every effort to change troubling aspects of Israeli reality.

I did not want to be declared unfit though I could if I wanted. ¹⁴ I don't want to sever my links to the army. Because as soon as you sever the links to the army, there develops a specific emotional dynamics: you become a tourist. And it is important, because when you don't bear the burden of army service, that is an important part of the life burdens here [in Israel], your motivation to change things diminishes. You are free from this heavy and huge burden . . . I don't want a break from it. I want to feel, at least partially, the pangs people feel here, and to react to them in my way. It is important, because if you don't feel pain you don't shout. If only others experience the pain, but you don't, you may say, well it is really bad that you are in pain, but you don't have the inner motivation that drives you to do something, to be an oppositionist, to shout, to protest . . .

The ongoing participation in military activities, is interpreted, then, as a token of commitment and of deep involvement in areas that apparently are not related to national security.

Consequently, feelings of ambivalence toward daily life and political events admix with by feelings of ambivalence toward military service. This ambivalence, and even a deep sense of despair emerged during the interview with Elad a young and successful copywriter and a former officer in the armory corps. Elad talked with despair about a possible change in the Israeli state of mind, and even about a change in the political situation. He

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said: ''Even if things change, and a peace process is initiated, I don't believe people here will change." The interview took place in summer 1988, six months after the beginning of the intifada, and in the wake of the elections to the Knesset. His sense of despair, brought him to seriously consider emigration as a real option. While considering emigration to another country, he had already requested a transfer to a new role in the reserves. Relinquishing his combat role as an officer, and fulfilling a civilian role within the army, was considered by Elad as a step toward the final opting out of the reserve service and eventually out of Israel. In the meantime, he was sustaining a tenuous link that allowed him to remain in the mainstream until the final decision would be taken:

Two years ago I was certain that Israel was the only place I could live in. Today I'm not that sure today if I could simply not to go to the reserves, I would do that . . . Instead of that [of totally opting out], I have chosen something that requires almost nothing in terms of involvement and investment. I don't wear a uniform, I don't belong to a specific unit, I don't have any military role. What I do now is very similar to my civilian role, except that I do it for the army.

Ongoing participation in the reserves, and especially in combat roles, is experienced as a token of commitment and willingness to live a full and meaningful life in Israel. Meaningfulness is interpreted here in terms of a deep commitment to daily public issues and affairs. Moreover, meaningfulness is interpreted in ontological terms (i.e., the being in the 'already always' constituted world of Israel, a world suffused by military service). Therefore, to move to the outer fringes of the military field, as expressed by the voluntary transition from combat roles to support tasks, is interpreted in terms of a partial estrangement from Israel. Partial estrangement from Israeli reality is interpreted mainly as considering emigration, or viewing the future in other places.

Whereas Elad contemplated emigration as a real option, but had not yet implemented it, Nir, a theater director and an artillery officer, had already experienced life abroad after 1983 (right after his conscientious refusal). During the interview, Nir described his deep sense of alienation during 1982 and 1983 (two of the five years of the war) and his decision to emigrate to the United States. However, after two years he had returned to Israel. The returning to Israel did not completely eradicate his sense of alienation, but he tried to overcome it. His paradoxical existential situation that between alienation and the difficulties he experienced in severing himself from what he considered the essence of Israeliness came to the fore through his friend's story. His friend's story helped him to express his

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anger and his alienation, but it also expressed his difficulty to completely opt out through the request to be exempted from the reserves. Nir wanted to remain connected, but in his own terms:

Everybody distances himself from the system, but it is interesting to take into account the different ways people do so. I have a good friend, a playwright; he obtained a psychiatric profile and he told me, "I could get a 21" [exemption from military service based on mental unfitness]. But he did not do so. So this is one way, and it shows the degree to which a person is so angry and feels so alienated that he decides to make them [the army] believe that he is stupid. And I asked him, "Why didn't you go for the 21?" and he said, "Look, I don't want to completely burn all my bridges." . . . I don't want to do so either, so I'm trying to lower my medical profile. I have problems with my ears. And it says something about my sense of belonging. It is difficult, I don't know any other place I can live in. I tried, I really tried, and it was so difficult to be a stranger.

The close and even symbiotic relationship between military service and the ongoing life in Israel, to the point that emigration is implied in opting out of the reserves, becomes even clearer when considering Shai's story. Shai, a theater director and a sergeant in the armory corps, was exempted from the army after his conscientious refusal (he was jailed three consecutive times for a total of 100 days). He talked about his alienation from society as a whole, and about the alternative ways to continue living in Israel. The alternative rests in the contraction of areas of activity, on the withdrawal from public affairs, and the construction of a private space and a private experience. But still, he feels that by leaving the reserves, he has turned into an émigré in his own country.

I have nothing in common with 90% of the persons here. This people (the people of Israel) is going through a process of bestialization. I went to see Rambo ¹⁵ and the reactions of the audience traumatized me. I can't understand them, I feel strange, disconnected. All the processes this society is going through alienate me more and more. But there is still a difference. It is one thing when you speak of society as whole, and another thing is the place and the small things that go with it, such as the fragances, the landscape, the sea . . . My reference group, my male and female friends, my family . . . this is my group.

Therefore, subjectivity is so constituted that being in the world is always interpreted in terms of participation in military service and the reserves.

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Participation in the reserves is perceived and experienced as the most powerful mediating mechanism between the individual and society. Hence, to opt out implies at the subjective level the very possibility of emigrating, of leaving Israel in concrete terms or at best to be a tourist, or at worst to be an alien in your own country. Moreover, feelings of rage, frustration, and even alienation are canalized and expressed in terms of the possibility of opting out of the reserves or military service. Also, opting out is conceived as leaving the common ground, as relinquishing the bonds and solidarities of the community of fellow-strangers or Israel as the imagined community. Hence the sense of being thrown into a vacuum, that may require the search for new grounds of identification within Israel itself, or even abroad.

The Reserve System and the Legitimation of Opposition

Experiencing the reserve system in terms of participation and active and effective partnership in society is perceived as a prerequisite for political opposition. In Israel, political opposition is never fully legitimized in general democratic terms (i.e., as the right of each group to disagree and to hold different views). ¹⁶ This applies especially to issues of national security, which, until the 1980s were isolated from public debate (see Horowitz 1982). Since then, disagreement and dissent are always legitimated in terms of previous demonstrations of loyalty and belonging as expressed in the participation in military service (Helman 1994).¹⁷¹⁸

Doron, a kibbutz member and a soldier in the infantry corps, identified himself as a permanent dissident and as alienated from many aspects of the socio-political reality in Israel. However, he simultaneously claimed that his participation in the reserves was his 'certificate of rightness,' (i.e., it allowed him both to belong, and to permit himself a measure of criticism and even alienation). This paradoxical statement, that brings together alienation and belonging, is accompanied by a deep sense of rootedness in Israel. This very rootedness, blocks for Doron the fantasy of living anywhere but in Israel, not only in geographical terms. Doron does not want to be a political émigré in his own country, he does not want to live in a limbo, or even to stand at the edge. Within this context, his conscientious objection is retrospectively interpreted as problematic, because he feels that by severing the few and tenuous links that supported his problematic relationship to the ground of common experience, he has thrown himself into a vacuum.

Through my conscientious refusal I shattered one of the bonds, the natural bond to my Israeliness. And I'm in a dilemma. Let's

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say, that from the first moment I remember myself as a politically conscious individual, I've been on the minority side. And within the minority I was always in a minority. But I learned to live with it, and even to enjoy this position, it was not a problem for me . . . Nowadays, I feel a lot of alienation towards what is happening here, ¹⁹ notwithstanding my deep sense of belonging. The reserves were among the few things that connected me to the 'consensus,' and therefore what I did meant to shatter one of the only bonds I had to the widest possible consensus in Israel. I live here in Israel with a deep feeling that I have no other alternative. And what I did, clearly reduced my existential space.

Thus, partnership acquired through the active participation in military service (regular and the reserves) is considered as the main legitimation for dissidence and for the possibility of criticizing and even opposing policies in national security issues. This close partnership, participation, and criticism was a central theme in the interview with Ralph, a computer engineer and a soldier in the artillery corps. Ralph, a son of survivors of the Holocaust, and born in Germany, strongly emphasized his inability to remain silent in light of what he regarded as infringements of human rights. He described situations in which his intransigent and independent positions isolated him among his fellow partners. However, his independent mind could not go further than the limits established by Israeli political culture, and he felt compelled to legitimize his dissidence and his independence of mind in terms of his participation in the reserves.

Before I went to the reserves,²⁰ I used to participate in demonstrations. Years ago, I participated in the demonstrations on the issue of Ikrit and Bir'am.²¹ I think that those that go to the army have a superior right to demonstrate for that. I have some friends that have been temporary residents²² for many years, but I think that their right to demonstrate is not the same as the right of those who have already been in the army.

Political dissidence on issues of national security, then, obeys the overall logic of normalization (Foucault 1979: 18283). There is no legitimate dissidence without previous demonstration of normalcy, as normalcy is constituted by the participation in a common field of practices.

Conclusion:
The Community of Warriors and the Logics of the Israeli State

Military service in general and the reserves in particular is experienced by its participants in terms of a community. This is a community of fellow-

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strangers (Roche 1987), or in Anderson's (1983) term, an imagined community. Being eligible for inclusion within the boundaries of conscription (Kimmerling 1979a) is a necessary but not a sufficient attribute to belong to this community. In order to belong to the community individuals should actively engage in military practices. The engagement in military practices creates the bonds and solidarities between anonymous individuals, and a sense of commonality of destiny among individuals belonging to different class and ethnic backgrounds. Therefore, the process of inclusion within the boundaries of the community may be interpreted in Foucaldian terms, as normalizing, or as signifying the membership in an homogeneous body (i.e., in a imagined community or a community of fellow-strangers).

This imagined community or community of fellow strangers is perceived by its members as coextensive with society. Thus Yotam's statement: "I don't consider military service only as formal duty. Its a social duty, my duty towards the community I live in, a community I want to belong to and to influence." Therefore, the ongoing participation in military practices establishes the boundaries of society, and who is considered an effective member in it. Hence: "Israelis are only those that went through the army," as stated by Eli, Michael, Avi, and other interviewees. In other words, effective membership and partnership in the production of national security, is perceived and experienced as a token of partnership in and belonging to society as a whole. Furthermore, participation in the common field of military practices is deemed essential for the very presence of the individual in society, and for the meaningful and effective communication with other members of society. Otherwise, individuals are considered as parasites, bloodsuckers or even deviants and exiled from society in symbolic terms. Finally, the ongoing presence in the field of military practices and the knowledge attained through it, legitimizes dissidence and criticism on issues of national security. Thus Tal's statement, "Through my reserve service in a combat unit, I constantly buy my right to protest, to scream." Furthermore, it is the main certificate of 'rightness and loyalty' that allows for the participation in the associations of civil society.

The symbolic construction of regular or reserve military service in terms of a community and its subjective perception as such by the interviewees raises several sociological puzzles. Armies are fields of practices organized by the state in the pursuit of its instrumental logic: the monopoly over the societal means of violence. However, no reference to the state and to the instrumental character of the army can be gleaned from the excerpts presented. Therefore, how are we to explain that the army and its different frameworks is perceived by its participants as an imagined community coextensive with society, though it was constituted by the state for the pursuit of its organizational logics? Furthermore, how can it be explained

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that this community is perceived as autonomous from the state and noncoercive in character?

A deeper understanding of such a construction and the kind of subjectivity it has shaped should be analyzed within a wider problematic. This wider problematic considers the ways in which the state, as an organization, impinges upon society, and shapes it through its own institutional arrangements, and eventually gears individuals and groups to the production and reproduction of the state's unique interests (see (Giddens 1985; Kimmerling 1993b; Mann 1986).

The Israeli army and its different organizational frameworks belong to what may be conceptualized as the state area (Giddens 1985; Kimmerling 1993b; Mitchell 1991; Tilly 1985). As such, it is a field that obeys the organizational logic of the state, ²³ as defined by the monopoly that the latter exerts over the societal means of violence. However, the monopoly over the societal means of violence does not explain the unique place of military service in Israel, nor the terms of its construction as an imagined community or a community of fellow strangers. In order to understand the unique place of the field of military practices in Israel, one should refer to two main organizing principles of the socio-political order in Israelwar and conflict management and the management of populations.²⁴

War-making and state-making have been closely connected in Israel as elsewhere (Tilly 1985, 1995). However, war and conflict management in Israel, in contrast to other states, has not been limited to the state-making stage. War and conflict management have turned into a permanent feature of the socio-political order; the management of populations has been instrumental in increasing the capacity of the Israeli state to mobilize resources for wage war and conflict (see Ben-Eliezer 1995; Helman 1994; Kimmerling 1993a; Levy 1993, 1996; Levy and Peled 1993).²⁵

Military service as the field of military practices reproduces the instrumental logic of the Israeli state: that is the management of war and conflict and the management of populations. The ongoing mobilization of individuals to military service is one of the ways in which the Israeli state manages populations; i.e.: it appropriates and utilizes the resources of individuals for the implementation of the state's interests, among which is the management of war and conflict. This particular combination of preparations for war and conflict management, while simultaneously conducting routine 'civilian' activities, turns war and conflict management into a routine (Ben-Eliezer 1995; Kimmerling 1985) and furtherly normalizes war into the life-world of Israeli males (Lomsky-Feder 1994). This instrumental logic, however, has been cast in quite other terms, that have disguised the interests of the state.

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The construction of the Israeli army as a popular army and of Israel as a 'nation in arms,' have been instrumental in the pursuit of the logic of the Israeli state. Military service became the main institutional arena as well as the socio-political mechanism for the construction of the boundaries of the nation, and for the consolidation of the Israeli-Jewish national self-perception (Ben-Eliezer 1995; Helman 1994, 1999). Military service and war management became the main integrative mechanism in a state and society made up of settlers-immigrants. Jewishness was redefined in light of war and conflict (Helman 1994), and the army became the utter expression of the nation (Ben-Eliezer 1995).

The construction of the military service in terms of a community that both embodies and shapes Israeliness, and that mediates between the individual and society (national society), is one of the utmost expressions of the capacity of the Israeli state to shape society and to gear the population to pursuit of the state's interests. Moreover, the construction of military service is made in terms of a community that normalizes and hence is perceived as the only ground that allows for meaningful participation and communication; it is perceived as a prerequisite for the understanding of 'Israeliness' and as a means of legitimizing dissidence and criticism and is thus the main social and symbolic mechanism that reproduces the military field. This cultural construction allowed the Israeli state to maintain a welltrained and highly motivated reservoir of manpower always ready to be geared to the pursuit of the state's goals even under conditions of severe critique and opposition. Israel's war in Lebanon, which was accompanied by massive demonstrations on the homefront, is perhaps the best example of this pattern. While delegitimation of the war occurred on the homefront, the Israeli Peace Movement did not approve the implementation of such a trend at the front. Soldiers (reserve soldiers) participated in the demonstrations and even organized them, but as soon as they were summoned to their tours of duty, they joined their units and participated in the war effort. The only exception was the development of conscientious objection as a sociological phenomenon (Helman 1994, 1999). In this sense it may be claimed that the construction and perception of military service (and its different organizational frameworks) as a community that is coextensive with society, and not with the state, blurred the boundaries between state and society.

Thus, the readiness of individuals to be geared to the field of military practices, even under conditions of dissidence, should be understood in light of the symbolic and social mechanisms that ensure the continued motivation and readiness of the population to participate in the war effort. The experience and perception of military service in terms of the community

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is then an unacknowledged aspect of what Mann (1987a, 1987b) has conceptualized as citizen militarism and Kimmerling (1993a) has further elaborated as the cognitive dimensions of militarism. Both concepts refer to the ways in which war is turned into a legitimate activity and into an integral part of the social structure. The unacknowledged aspects of citizen militarism are even deeper, because by turning military service in general and the reserves in particular into the main medium that gives meaning to membership in society, or into 'the community' upon which the whole community is constructed and modeled, the state in Israel has shaped the cognitive, interpretative, and emotional dispositions of individuals or their habitus (Bourdieu 1992). Moreover, it has blurred the differences between membership in the state and membership in society, and turned opposition to state war practices into opposition to the life-world itself.

Notes

Acknowledgment. This research was generously funded by the Shaine Center at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the United States Institute for Peace. I am grateful to Eyal Ben-Ari, Nitza Berkovitch, Michael Feigue, Edna LomskyFeder, Uri Ram, Stephen Sharott, Vered Vinitzki-Saroussi, and Niza Yanai for their thought-provoking comments. I am especially grateful to the interviewees, who devoted of their time and shared with me their ideas and feelings; without their cooperation this research would have remained as an idea.

1. The concept of logic is inspired by Alford and Friedland's (1985: 11) definition: 'a logic is a set of practices, behaviors, institutional forms and ideologies that have social functions and are defended by politically organized interests. Individual actors may not be aware of this logic'. It must be added that a logic is not immediately affected by ruling elites or by changes in government, though different ruling elites may emphasize selected aspects of a logic, thereby bringing about changes in institutions and policies (see Kimmerling 1993b; Levy and Peled 1993; Shalev 1992).

2. The entire population of conscientious objectors included 130 individuals who were court-marshaled and imprisoned for periods that ranged from twenty-one to thirty-five days. Conscientious objectors to the war in Lebanon can be characterized as belonging to the dominant group or elite in Israel. Most were of Ashkenazic origin (81.8%), residents of the major cities (Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem) or kibbutz members (25%), and former members of youth movements. They comprised a highly educated group: 36 percent held a bachelor's degree, 23 percent had obtained master's degrees, and 7.5 percent held Ph.D.s (mainly in the exact and

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natural sciences); the rest were undergraduate students or high school graduates. Their military service was in combat units, sometimes elite units. After their periods of conscientious objection, most (86%) continued their yearly tour of duty in the reserves. Most of the interviewees belonged to the center-left continuum of Israeli politics; a minority belonged to the radical left.

3. The formation of the Israeli army and the abolition of the militia framework is one of the main examples of the struggle between different state-making elites.

4. Reserve systems were not exclusive to Switzerland. However, given the theoretical orientation of Luttwack and Horowitz, and Horowitz and Kimmerling (civil-military relations in Western Democratic societies) it was only natural to search for formal models of inspiration. Other case studies (such as the German Landeswehr) and socio-political contexts such as Germany and Japan, that were considered as not fitting the 'occidentaldemocratic model' were ignored. For an illuminating analysis that postulates an alternative model and interpretation, see Ben Eliezer (1995).

5. In recent years, reserve soldiers are being discharged from their yearly duty at the age of forty-five. Lately, and due to the growth in the size of cohorts of soldiers drafted to regular military service, the IDF is considering the discharge of reserve soldiers at the age of forty (see Idihot AchronotJanuary 25, interview with retired General Einhorn).

6. The length of service is contingent upon the military role, the rank in the unit, and seniority.

7. Transfer to logistic roles or logistic units is not uniform, and there is a great measure of variance in this matter. It may be the case that officers and even soldiers continue their combat front line service beyond the age stipulated by law.

8. IDF forces have reported lately a severe drop in the participation of reservists in their yearly tour of duty (as much as 50% and even a higher percent of the soldiers summoned to the reserves do not report to their units). Concomitantly, a drop in the motivation to join combat units was reported by the same sources.

9. The concept of normalization is inspired in this specific part of the article by the study of Edna Lomsky-Feder (1994). Normalization entails the incorporation and routinization of unusual circumstances in such a way that they are no longer perceived and experienced as unusual, but as the normal course of events.

10. Ben-Ari's curiosity over the 'normalcy' of what he considered as an unusual situation awakened as soon as he ended his tour of duty. During a social event organized by his unit, his fellow soldiers did not seem to feel the uneasiness he felt about the changed conditions of action.

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This initial insight led him to search for a sociological explanation of the situation.

11. The usage of community in both Anderson's (1993) and Roche's (1987) theoretical perspectives bear no resemblance to Janowitz and Shils's and Stouffer's conceptualizations of military units as primary groups. Their common thesis was that combat effectiveness rested upon the primary relations developed between soldiers. The usage of community in the context of the present article refers to a cultural and symbolic construction of common links and solidarities amongst individuals that remain anonymous to each other. Their sense of belonging, solidarity, and commonality is created or rather constructed by their being subject to the same practices or by their very inclusion in a field of practices.

12. Settlement organizations is a generic term to the cooperative movement in Israel mainly the kibbutz and the moshav. Kibbutzim and Moshavim were usually established by young people socialized in youth movements.

13. This theme was common both to interviewees who continued their reserve service after their conscientious refusal and to those who opted out the reserves.

14. Reservists attempt to opt out of the reserves through medical and psychological examinations that establish that their fitness has diminished. As there is no other alternative way to be exempted from military tasks, unfitness is usually established by medical and psychiatric judgments. However, a psychiatric discharge from the army carries with it many practical difficulties into civilian life. For instance, it can often seriously damage one's chances of obtaining employment (despite recent laws to the contrary), and is a form of stigma that is hardly ever wiped off the slate.

15. The use of Rambo is meaningful in this context. For Rambo is the archetype of pure and brute soldiering.

16. Israeli democracy has been characterized as a formal democracy and not as a liberal democracy (see Horowitz and Lissak 1989; Peled 1993).

17. For one of the sharpest reactions against protesters on one of the issues of national security, see Helman and Rapoport 1997).

18. This pattern of legitimation is deeply ingrained in Israel and is part of the taken-for-granted reality. It is commonly accepted by both members of the right and the left and used routinely in order to justify critiques of national security policies. Thus, in a public rally of the Peace Now Movement, a retired IDF officer angrily reacted against the extreme right wing by rhetorically asking: I would like to know how many Arabs those heroes had killed.

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19. The interviews were conducted shortly after the outbreak of the intifada (Palestinian uprising). The interviewees referred time and again to it, and much of their sense of alienation must be interpreted against the political background of these years.

20. New immigrants arriving in Israel after their twenties are usually drafted directly to the reserve system after a short period of basic training that lasts for up to four months.

21. Ikrit and Bir'am are the names of two Palestinian villages in the northern part of Israel. The villagers were evacuated from their homes during the 1948 under the promise that they would soon return to their villages. However, they were never permitted to return.

22. Temporary residency in Israel is an intermediate status between tourist and citizen that is granted to immigrants who do not want to automatically turn into citizens of Israel. Temporary residents are not called up for military service.

23. The monopoly over the societal means of violence has been identified since Weber as the outstanding feature of the modern state. Weber characterized the modern state as: [a] human community that [successfully] claims the monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force within a territory . . . (1983, p. 11112).

24. The management of populations is closely connected to the ways in which modern states began to be concerned with the welfare of their populations. Managing populations means gearing them to the reproduction of the state's power or, as Foucault has bluntly but precisely put it: ''The state wields its power over living beings as living beings, and its politics, therefore are bio-politics. Since the population is nothing more than what the state takes for its own sake, of course, the state is entitled to slaughter it, if necessary. So the reverse of bio-politics is thanatopolitics" (Foucault 1988: 160).

25. For the relationship between war and conflict management and the management of populations, see Dandeker 1990; Foucault 1983, 1988; Howard 1979; Tilly 1985, 1995.

26. Ben-Eliezer (1995) provides a critical analysis of the sources of the reserve system as part and parcel of the constitution of the ethnic nation through the army. His analysis represents an effort to demistify the concept of the 'nation in arms' as understood by sociologists such as Horowitz (1982); Horowitz and Lissak (1989), and Kimmerling in his earliest works (1979a, 1979b, 1985). His main thrust is to demonstrate how the cultural construct of the nation in arms militarized Israeli society. Moreover, the 'politics of the nation in arms' were central to the institutionalization of war as an existential constraint.

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PART IV
GENDER, HEGEMONY, AND RESISTANCE

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9
Gender, Body, and the National Subject:
Israeli Women's Poetry in the War of Independence

Hannan Hever

The Fallen Flesh and Blood

In one of the climatic moments of Anda Amir-Pinkerfeld's 1948 war epic Akhat (i.e., "one" n.f. [Amir Pinkerfeld 1952]), she describes the platoon of thirty-five Israeli soldiers known as the Lamed-Heh (which signifies the number 35 in Hebrew) who set out on the fourteenth of January 1948 to relieve the siege of Gush Etzion (the Etzion Bloc in the Jerusalem mountains), and who were killed before they reached their destination. In the lines that follow, she describes the remains of the soldiers' bodies, which were returned from the battlefield:

               The thirty-five, in the truck
Were brought, ripped. By some merciful hand their desecration
was covered
With a cloth soaking up blood.
Their remains were washed and honored,
Even marked, laid in rows within rows.
                                             (Akhat 182)

The representation of the cruelly slain heroes focuses on their physical details. At the heart of this epic of national bravery Anda Amir-Pinkerfeld refers to the Lamed-Heh through an explicit concentration on their torn bodies, bluntly emphasizing what remains of them: fragmented, bloodied body parts. In her poem, the Israeli national hero is reduced to his elementary physical components.

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This emphasis on the physical side of national bravery in wartime is predominant in women's Hebrew poetry of the War of Independence, appearing even in a poem like "My Country," written by the noncanonical poet Yaffa Krinkin, which glorifies the homeland. The speaker in the poem is a woman who addresses the land, also personified in the feminine:

You are one like truth, youthe motherland.
Your thornsare flowers before my eyes and my blood.
Within you all my parched fields become moist with dew
Within you a storm rages for memy blood.

Your clods call out to me from time immemorial,
For mine is their burning thirst
For your sake you have implanted eyes and living creatures
within me
So that I might echo you.

I am the echo of your longing nights,
The echo of your falling stars,
The echo of your strength is led
In the flesh.
In blood.
In the heart.
                                             (Krinkin 1948: 11)

This poem, which describes the otherwise conventional situation of longing for the motherland, culminates in the bare evocation of flesh and blood. The poem "Blood in the Valleys" by Haya Vered, a poem in which the woman extols the male warrior, similarly contains a minute focus on one of the soldier's limbs and on the blood he has shed.

In the landscapes which writhe like a scream, like a blaze
(Your corpse was a fortress to them, and the nights an obstacle),
In the sudden valleys, in the fissures of the crucible of stumbling
a jet of blood flows, digs a path.

And on the shoulders of nights they carried your youth
An astonished glance broke its way through to the blue dawn.
And my poems were afraid to follow in your footsteps,
To kiss the traces of your blood in the sand.
                                             (Vered [1948] 1956: 48)

Similar representations appear in the poetry of Ella Amitan-Vilensky, Bat-Sheva Altshuller, who was killed in one of the battles attempting to break into the besieged Jerusalem, in the work of Erela Or, Zafrira (Gerber)

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Ger, Miriam-Yalan Shtekelis, and Edna Cornfeld, as well as in the poems of more celebrated poets such as Yocheved Bat-Miryam, Anda-Amir Pinkerfeld, Fania Bergstein, and Ester Raab. These women do not represent suffering in war symbolically, but rather in a more direct and harsh manner, with an unmediated focus on blood, flesh, and bodily components.

A similar representation appears also in the anthology Shirat Russia [Russian Poetry], which appeared in 1942 under the editorship of Leah Goldberg and Avraham Shlonsky, and which served as one of the most important sources of influence on Hebrew poetry from the 1940s onward, the war poetry of three Russian women poets is represented. Anna Akhmatova's "July 1914" and Maria Shkapskaya's "Prayer" (Goldberg and Shlonsky 1942: 99100, 103) were written about World War 1, while Marina Zvyeteva "Russia Mourns Her Sons" is set against the background of the Russian Civil War. In all three poems, the female poet's/speaker's corporeal flesh-and-blood representation of the dead victims of war recurs. In "July 1914," Anna Akhmatova writes of the cry of pain of a bereaved women whose soldier-lover has fallen, and she concludes the poem with a bitter denunciation of the Almighty. Her diatribe is channeled in bodily terms, in language evocative of Jesus, the Son of God, as she draws an analogy between Christ and the fallen soldier.

In the Service of the National Subject

The Israeli women poets I have mentioned were featured and published in respected literary periodicals during the war period and immediately subsequent to it. Many of their poems were published in the army weekly Ba-Makhaneh [In the Army Camp] and in poetry collections that appeared right after the war. But despite their presence in the pages of such periodicals, the status of these female poets did not change and they continued to occupy a marginal position in the literary canon. Thus, for example, in the anthology LamagenPirkei Shira [Poems for the Defender], which was issued by the Information Department of the Executive Committee of the Israel Labor Union and which was edited by the female author Yehudit Hendel, only poems by Yocheved Bat-Miryam and Hannah Senesh are represented (Hendel 1948); in another anthology, Shirat Milhama U-Gevurah Be-Yisrael [Poems of War and Bravery in Israel], which appeared in 1958 under the editorship of Reuven Avinoam and Shlomo Shpan, only the poems of Haya Vered and Anda Amir-Pinkerfeld appear (Avinoam and Shpan 1958). Nevertheless, the participation of women poets was especially notable in women's publications such as Dvar Ha-Poelet [The Word of the Female Worker], which became a central instrument for raisingor rather, reproducingfemale ideological consciousness of the need for national

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mobilization during the war. After its conclusion, however, most of these writers vanished from the literary stage, or became writers of nursery rhymes (Anda Amir-Pinkerfeld, Fania Bergstein) and translators (Ella AmitanVilensky, Edna Cornfeld).

At the height of their activities during the war, most of these women poets demonstrated a deep commitment to the historical importance of the critical struggle for national consolidation. In the Hebrew culture of the time, war was seen as the climax of a bitter fight for national constitution, which was expressed in clear terms of life-and-death. Like other products of the Israeli culture of the time, the poems written by women had to conform with the general literary discourse generated by the war in order to participate in an overarching general effort whose main aim, in Benedict Anderson's words, was to create and sustain an "imagined national community" (Anderson 1991). To recast this in Althusserian terms (Althusser 1971: 12786), we might state that the national subject experiences wartime as a situation of extreme danger: the interpellation of the concrete individuals who weld this community into national subjectivity is threatened with failure, with the result that individuals might simply abandon their share of the burden of nationality. Thus war exacerbates the conflict between the basic, universal commitment to the value of individual life and the demand placed upon the individual to sacrifice his or her life in order to realize collective national values. Given that it is at its most extreme during times of war, this conflict threatens the integration and wholeness of the individual subject who experiences him- or herself as belonging to the nation. Wartime may disrupt the integration of the national subject, which itself is a framework within which the individual feels part of the national whole, and which provides meaning and value for the individual's actions and ideological world vision.

At the particular historical juncture of the 1948 War, Israeli women poets were required to see their contribution as bolstering the national subject threatened by the war. In order to participate, however tenuously, in the framework of the literary canon, Israeli women poets were compelled to make their poetic practice available for this cause. Indeed even women poets who had tried to dissociate themselves from this type of affiliation found themselves engaged in the fortification of the national subject. Thus, for example, even so notable a poet as Leah Goldberg, who had reiterated from the end of the 1930s onward that literature must not abandon its commitment to eternal aesthetic truth even during times of war, wrote an article during the War of Independence extolling the value of classical, nonpartisan literature in hard times as mental and spiritual relief for the soldier on the front. Regardless of her symbolist and aestheticist poetic stance Goldberg ultimately emphasized the consolidatory function of

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literature in wartime. In her article, she even goes so far as to call on women to assume greater responsibility for literary activity in times of war since this nonpartisan literature should, in her opinion, be supplied by the women back home, the soldiers' girls (Goldberg 1948).

The Constraints on Female National Participation

But despite their ambiguous presence on the canonical literary scene, women are not fully represented in Israeli war poetry. In Israeli culture, as in other Western cultures, war is perceived as a male occupation. But one should also remember that, in these cultures, the experience of war is constructed under extremely strong control over the predominant representationsthat is to say, under the rigid control of male hegemony. This hegemony also affects other features relating to class and ethnic identity, of course, and it is therefore clear that the question of acceptance into the literary canon is also influenced by these other components of identity. Notwithstanding these factors, there can be no doubt that the active forces in this hegemonic arena ascribed dominance to masculinity.

Typically, the construction of war in Western culture exhibits a clear division between that which is central (the front) and that which is at the periphery (the home front). Given such a division, the control of male hegemony, which is the control of the central over the periphery, becomes easier to sustain. Even in atypical wars such as the War of Independence, when the periphery was not clearly defined (battles were fought in the streets and the division between front and home front was blurred), control over representations through literature, communication, and all other venues of domination preserved the sense of a clear center. Since all categories of representation were channeled through the terminology of the national, the illusion of a strong center was maintained and male hegemony consolidated. Even the heroic image of Jewish women fighting on the war front (an occurrence lasting no more than a month into the War of Independence), was a myth that covered the fact that women were relegated to noncombat, secondary jobs (Sivan 1991: 3539).

Paradoxically this myth merely reinforces the underlying perception that a woman's ''natural" place is not on the front but at the home front (or in the auxiliary forces). Nevertheless, it made its way into the annals of the IDF and of Jewish resistance. The enlistment of women into fighting units in the Palmach [Pelugot Machatzor commando units] was frequently presented as an important contribution to achieving gender equality, which was a prominent and explicit component of the ideology of the Labor movement in pre-State Israel. But even this commitment, which also drew sustenance from the recruitment of Soviet women into the Red

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Army, was incommensurate with women's relegation to auxiliary functions in practicesomething that underscored the lack of equality in reality (Bernstein 1987, Kadish 1995: 118124, 23441). Only in the 1970s, after the great rupture in Israeli society and the collapse of its myth-bound and chauvinist attitude to military discourse brought about by the October '73 War (a rupture that also enabled women to participate actively in this discourse), could Netivah Ben-Yehudah begin to write the antimyth of her experience as a frontline fighter in the War of Independence. But let us not forget that her very status as a fighter earned her the nickname "the yellow demon." (Ben-Yehuda 1981). The lesson is clear: if you are a woman fighter, you are immediately demonized.

Since the construction of the experience of fighting in Western culture is based on the front / rear binary, to be a woman in an enlisted national culture is to forego the function of being a witness to the fighting, for women are not permitted access to the front. In English poetry of the First World War, the criterion of active participation in battle was an intense part of the construction of the male war-poet (Featherstone 1995, 1418). According to Susan Schweik, the question of frontline/home front relations and its weight in shaping war poetry not only attests to the representational authority invested in "those who were there"that is to say the male fighters (an authority that was inherited by compilers of English war anthologies and British literary critics of World War Two)but, additionally, attests to the attempts to erase the active presence of women as subjects in the discourse on war (Schweik 1987: 16061).

Thus, for example, we find evidence of the internalization of such attitudes in an Israeli poet like Amitan-Vilensky, who served in the British Army during World War Two, and whose poem "Batzava" [In the Army], presents a version of the "toiling female soldiers" who are differentiated from the tradition of the female biblical warriors:

In the evening, a whistle. The jaws of the
Sweaty storeroom gape open again, and we march in line
Tired out by the hamsin and the length of the day:
Female soldiers toiling.

And why do you say: Biblical characters
A chapter of poetry and heroism
Of Yael and Deborah . . .
Tired again at evening we march in line,
Female soldiers toiling.
                                             (Amitan-Vilensky 1949: 5)

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By contrast, a man who is not at the front can still write about it credibly. Stephen Crane, who based his 1895 The Red Badge of Courage (Crane [1895] 1951) partly on written reports of the Civil War is a case in point. And in recent Hebrew culture there is the example of Rami Ditzani, who wrote horrifying protest poems about the Lebanon War without participating in it (Ditzani 1984). A woman like Bat-Sheva Altshuller, on the other hand, cannot convey herself as credible despite the fact that she actually fought at the front.

Female Participation in the Metaphor of the "Living-Dead"

The relegation of women to the margins of national discourse is particularly evident in their construction as women mourning the war dead and as bereaved mothers. Their special position in this respect is based on the duality of the private versus the national spheres. This is reflected in the ambiguity of their positionto be located at the center of national experience, but at the same time to be relegated from it; to enlist in the service of the national effort while preserving their status as mothers, but at the same time to recognize that it is precisely their status as mothers that distances them from more central recruitment to national service. In her essay "Imahot Ba'oref" [Mothers on the Homefront], Devorah Netzer, a leading political activist, gave contemporary articulation to the two-faced nature of this position:

And we askHow should we live in the regime of mourning; What does the public owe the bereaved mother; How can society support her? And who should break the bitter news to the parents? In my neighborhood, I saw how a young girl, in the grip of fear and deep emotion, was called upon to fulfill this dutyto tell parents of their tragedy. I took this young girl and accompanied her. Should not such a task be imposed on close family friends?

And who will bring the bereaved mothers out of their loneliness? The tragedy doubtless strikes the fathers, too. But work outside the home and the company of other people eases his situation. And in this country, the presence of a consoling and concerned larger family circle is mostly lacking. It therefore becomes necessary to make female family friends take on their role in this case.

When our sons were sent to the army, they set off into the distance not knowing the conditions under which they would be living. Now they are in our midst. The mothers feel responsible for the conditions of their life, but no mother can afford to worry

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about her own son alone. Also, we lack State resources. And in every meeting or conversation with mothers, the question arises: What should the standard of living behind the lines on the homefront be, as opposed to that of the front-line?

The question that saws at the heart: Why only our sons and not we ourselves? During the war years [i.e., World War Two, H.H.], did not older women enlist in the auxiliary services where they were often more effective than younger volunteers? (Netzer 1948 in Katznelson-Shazar 1964: 19496, emphasis in reprint).

But despite what Netzer's intervention, and the work of other women like her, reveals about women's inability to participate fully in the representation of war, the women poets of the War of Independence could and did contribute to literary discourse on the war, and they did so in accordance with the central canonized structure of Hebrew literature of the period, that is to say within the rubric of the mythic metaphor of the "living dead" (Hever 1986; Miron 1992).

This metaphor became the essential mechanism with which the war culture confirmed the need to make sacrifices. It was designed to approve of individual death by means of conferring on it a national, collective significance (Hever 1986). A similar dynamic may be seen to be at work in the case of the military grave, which is differentiated from the civil grave as part of the cult of the fallen that legitimates the individual death of the soldier through its justification at the general or national level. The representation of the individual death is thus given transcendental status, and individual existence is erased in favor of the individual's role as a representative of the collective. Following Hegel, it is possible to argue that the individual's participation in war, and his willingness to engage in selfsacrifice cannot be understood as an act of self-defense or private interest, for war forces the individual to abstain from fulfilling the private needs of the particular individual (Hegel 1942 #324, see also Avineri 1975: 2006). Thus, the figure of the individual death is replaced with the mythic figure of collective life, which elevates the person of a soldier dead in battle to the level of transcendental national experience (Mosse 1990). According to this cultural logic, it might be said that the more the private identity of the object of memory is blurred, so the power of collective national identity is augmented. Thus, the most extensive use of this mechanism of national transcendence will take the form of marking individual death as total absence.

As Benedict Anderson shows, the most effective use of the dead soldier in the national imagination occurs through the voided tombs of the unknown soldiersthat is in the absent body. The creation of imagined

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national existence, according to Anderson, is based precisely on the simultaneous and shared existence of individuals who do not know one another personally. It is, therefore, the lack of specificity of the absent body of the unknown soldier in the tomb that engages the communal imagination and serves as a very powerful locus of national identification (Anderson 1991: 911, 1015).

The trope of the living-dead occupied a central place in the poetry of the period, especially in the influential poetry of Nathan Alterman. This figure of speech, the prosopopoeia, gives the poet the voices of those unable to speak. In his poem "Magash Ha-kesef" [The Silver Platter], which might be called the hymn of the War of Independence, Alterman describes two allegorical figures, a young man and young woman, who are the silver platter on which the Jewish State is presented to the people. The presentation takes place in an impressive ceremony at whose climax it becomes clear that "the two stood silently, showing no sign of whether they are alive or have been shot," (Alterman [1947] 1962: 15455).

Here is the trope again in the first lines of Haim Guri's famous poem "Heene Mutalot Gufotenu" [Here lie our bodies], in which Guri represents the fallen Lamed-Heh by bringing them back to life as direct speakers in the poem, and has them announce explicitly:

We will return, we'll meet, we'll come again as red flowers.
You'll know us at once, it's the silent "Mountain Platoon."
Then we'll flower, when in mountains the last yell of a gunshot
shall be heard.
                                             (Guri [1949] 1976: 6667)

Alterman's "Magash Ha-kesef," Guri's "Here lie our bodies," "Devar Ha-hayalim Ha-aforim" [The Word of Gray Soldiers] by Ain Hillel, as well as many others written during and after the War of Independence, are based on the same figurative structure, whose roots in Eretz-Israel poetry lie in the Hebrew symbolist tradition, particularly as expressed in Alterman's central work, Simkhat 'Aniyim [The Joy of the Poor, (1941) 1972]. Alterman's poetry has frequently been represented as one of the prime influences in shaping the spiritual milieu of the War of Independence in Hebrew culture in Eretz-Israel. The figure of the living-dead, which is so central to his oeuvre, has also been linked, on more than one occasion, to the need to invest the loss of life experienced during the period with meaning and significance at a national level (Tzurit 1974: 101). The main component of this figurative structure is the private casualty who is returned to life in the national collective memory, or whose personal death in battle is seen equivocally. This is clearly evident in Ain Hillel's "Devar Ha-hayalim Haaforim," where the soldiers state: "There is a threshold, which we shall

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reach after all the blood has been shed / We will reach it in our bodies but not in their being" (Hillel 1967 [1949]: 55). But the nationally hegemonic use of the figure of the living-dead operates chiefly within the preserve of male hegemony. Thus, the use women poets made of this central trope is related in most cases to the duality of their literary status: it places them within the canonical literary representation of the period, but at the same time it does not permit them to overcome their position as women in subaltern roles, women denied access to the firing line and, therefore, inferior.

This double position calls for special measures on the part of the woman poet. This ambiguity that I have been describing, or this distancing from the battlefront as inferiority turned back on itself to become a source of strength, is at the very core of the woman presence as poet. In Edna Cornfeld's volume Einayim Baleylot [Eyes in the Nights], the woman's duality structures the work. On the one hand, it contains a poem like "Aval Meiteinu Lo Yad'u Sinah" [But Our Dead Knew No Hatred] (Cornfeld 1952 [1950]: 14), which uses the language of humanism to describe the moral superiority of "our dead": "The day will come. Around us, all is enmity. / But our dead knew no hatred." The poem continues by making the Biblical Abel, now resurrected, into an allegorical representative of the weak nation that is fighting for its freedom. The metaphor of the livingdead can now also assume its place as worthy conclusion to the poem:

And Abel arises,
And he is very solitary,
And he marches
Over the ashes of dreams.
And he stands in readiness, sword in his hand,
And sorrow sanctifies his footsteps.
                                             (Cornfeld 1952 [1950]: 14)

But the companion poem to this text, which precedes it in the collection, undermines the resoluteness of the poem's progress from a description of the surrounding evil and enmity to the description of the pure and noble victim sent to combat them. In this poem, "Chava Mevakha Et Baneiha" [Eve Laments Her Children], the speaker is Evethe archetypal and absolute biblical Mother. One might have expected Eve-as-Mother to be totally committed to the good of the Nation in peril, for the allegorical family structure of a nation fighting for its existence usually invests the First Mother with the supreme task of raising warrior sons and of caring for their welfare. But in the poem, it soon becomes apparent that Eve is not the mother of the Israeli soldier alone. In a move that distances her from the actual events, she is represented as the mother of Cain and Abelsimultaneously the mother of both rivals. After a diatribe against God, a

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monologue where Eve threatens to kill Him if he does not desist from His silence, Eve recounts the narrative of the war through the allegorical vehicle of the story of Cain and Abel. But, in contrast to the fixed allegorical use of the Mother as Mother-of-the-Nation, Eve is located far above the national conflict:

And the silences stood tense as knives.
The mother stood, awaiting her children Eve stood at the side of the road
And her eldest son approached her and spoke.
And he said: I killed him.
                                             (Cornfeld 1952 [1950]:13)

How exactly do women poets handle such a dual situation? What are the mechanisms that they employ to constitute their identity in a situation of canonical national commitment on the one hand, and distance from this commitment, on the other? Ultimately, Israeli women poets would meet this challenge through the use of special, specially ambiguous measures of their own.

But to understand these special measures one should first look more closely into what it is exactly that these women participate in when they perpetuate the metaphor of the living-dead. And in order to conduct such an inquiry, considerations of gender should be added to a reading that has, until now, portrayed the metaphor from the hegemonic point of view. When I shift positions and read the trope through gender, the exclusion of women from the representation of the living-dead becomes not only a double exclusion but even a triple one. Not only are they excluded from the act of representing the living-dead, since they are not granted the position of serving as witnesses to war, they are also excluded from the very representation itself, as the figure of the living-dead does not include their agency. Additionally, the very metaphor functions further as an act of exclusion since in the new birthing of the dead into life, men appropriate the power of giving birth from women, investing it in themselves.

The first exclusion relates to women's inability fully to participate in the metaphor of the living dead. Not being fighters, women cannot speak directly in their name. There is an unbridgeable gap between women poets and the living dead: the full constitution of the living-dead is reserved for men only, for those who actually served at the front or are permitted, by virtue of their gender, to represent the war or the battle from the position of those at the front. As for the figurative structure itself, women are indirectly implicated to the extent the living-dead are often represented as the husbands or fathers of young women.

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But although indirectly part of the scene, women are still subject to a second exclusion here, since they cannot be full agents in the act of creating or becoming the living-dead. In the most formative text of the period, Alterman's Simkhat 'Aniyim, we find a characteristic representation of this dynamic. The love and devotion that the husband shows for the wife of his youthwho is consistently addressed as "my daughter"is nurtured by the husband's status as one of the living-dead, one who has paid the bodily price for their joint sufferinga suffering which belongs both to him and to herbut this sacrifice only augments his power and sharpens his desire for her. Their joint suffering, which preceded his death, as well as the subsequent death, lend him the authority of the victim. It is his private, bodily death that invests him with the power and spiritual meaning by virtue of which he is able to confront his wife from the authoritative position of one who has rejected the conclusion that "all is vanity," and seeks to establish criteria for meaningful life instead:

Not all is vanity, my daughter.
Not all is vanity of vanities.
But my contract with money is broken,
I have also strewn my days to vanity.
It is only you that I followed my daughter
Like a neck after the rope.
[. . .]
And illness struck, my daughter.
And poverty covered our faces.
And I called illness my home,
And called poverty, our son.
And we were poorer than dogs, my daughter,
And dogs fled from us.

And then the iron struck, my daughter.
And struck off my head from you.
And nothing was left, save
my dust which pursyues your shoes.
But iron can break, my daughter
And my thirst for you never will.

Strength has no end, my daughter,
Only the body ends, broken like a shard.
My house knew no happiness
And already the earth is my cradle
But on the day my house will rejoice
My eyes will also rejoice from out of the earth.

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The day of joy will yet arrive, my daughter
We too shall have a share and portion in it
And when you fall prostrate on the earth of my covenant
They will lower you to me with a rope.

Not all is vanity, my daughter.
Not all is vanity of vanities.
                                             (Alterman 1972 [1941]: 15152)

The day of mutual joy of the couple will happen when the woman will be buried. Only when she dies she will reach the man's positioning and will enable their mutual joy. From the very inception of this dynamic in Alterman, questions arose with respect to its use. As early as 1944, the important critic Rachel Katzanelson, in her article on Alterman's Simkhat 'Aniyim and Shirei Makot Mizreim [Poems of the Plagues of Egypt], wonders openly at the passivity with which Alterman invests the female figure (the young woman and the wife) in his poems. In cautious and implicit terms, the critic points to the exclusion of the woman from the national arena. For in the symbolic process whereby "allegory and referent are intertwined" and in whose framework the father's love for his wife-daughter stands in for the love of the nation, the women's love is not incorporated in equal terms at a national level:

For this father is not only a private father, but he is the father of the collective, the father "who will not die," whose love will be ever present. Juxtaposed to him is the figure of the mother-the wife of his youthcradling in her arms the son who has escaped from destruction to "great deliverance." Is this the comfort of a persecuted and decimated nationonly the love of the father and the offspring who has escaped destruction? Where are other sources of hope in these poems? (Kazenelson-Shazar 1964 [1944]: 181).

The third exclusion becomes apparent when gender is added to the Andersonian reading. In Anderson's writings, the imagined community regenerates individual events and the individual's private death as a source of continuity for the national future. Nationality, following religion, "concerns itself with the links between the dead and the yet unborn, the mystery of regeneration," "it is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny" (Anderson 1991: 1112). But a critical reading of this position reveals that Anderson's formulation of individual death and national birth reduplicates the hegemonic thrust of the national narrative as a linear progression of synchronic states. As Homi Bhabha argues, the hegemonic and synchronic aspects of the story of the national time of the imagined

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community serve in Anderson merely to occlude the heterogeneous and conflictual nature of the welding together of incommensurate time scales (Bhabha 1994: 15761). By virtue of this occlusion, Anderson's story of homogeneous nationalism marginalizes alternatives accounts, such as stories of caste, class, ethnicity, and others. In the specific instance under analysis, the figurative structure of the living-dead as a homogeneous national narrative chiefly occludes the female story that recasts the national narrative as a tale of power and birth. Looking back at Anderson, it is apparent how his formulation represses any account that might seek to show how the power of giving birth has been transferred from women to men through the workings of male national hegemony, which is also a homogeneous story. The power of bringing life into being is now reallocated to men through the metaphor of regeneration and rebirth, to the exclusion of women. The exclusion occurs not only in the canonical forms of national representation, but through them in the representation of the position of gender in national culture. Thus women's entry into national hegemonic war culture as secondary players whose presence is mediated by men leads to the distancing of women from control over birth and its representation.

When representation is thus controlled by male hegemony, active participation in war necessarily excludes the possibility of being a mother. The act of giving birth excludes participation in war, and vice versa. "Girls are taught"Nancy Huston claims"that only motherhood can make women of them; boys are taught . . . that only war can make men of them." (Huston 1986: 132). Making war and making children are opposites. A woman cannot do both; since she gives birth, fighting becomes a man's domain, through the representation of which he subsequently appropriates the act of giving birth to himself. If a woman does becomes a warrior she remains a virgin; the Amazons (who abandon their male offspring) come to mind, as does Joan of Arc.

The representation of the living-dead is ambivalent, intended as it is to resolve the basic contradiction between the private individual's commitment to life, on the one hand, and the commitment to a collective, to a nation, on the other. The metaphor of the living-dead "resolves" this by blurring the border between life and death. The living-dead is an oxymoron that unites opposites: the private victim receives meaning and national life. It is based on an obviously male tradition that includes Isaac's rescue and Christ's resurrection. After death, the male returns to life in a transcendental process, a process that has a divine, metaphysical, religious, or national justification. Nationality or religion ultimately legitimate the dead casualties of war. The specific, private death signifies collective, allnational meanings and thus creates a meta-historical dimension, which

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makes the concrete, particular living-dead into an allegorical signifier of the larger national whole. The nation, like the individual, is a dead being, brought back to life, suffering but not extinct, a being that death cannot claim.

The central ideological mechanism of the living-dead consists in a twofold blurring of categories. On the one hand, the mechanism provides a dimension of lifealbeit national, collective, spiritual, and no longer concretefor the individual soldier who falls in battle, and includes him in the pantheon of national saints. On the other hand, it introduces death into life: life itself is actually death in advance. As a defense against the fear of death, death is internalized as part of life. The metaphor, then, creates life: a certain kind of lifean existence that merges the culture of death with life. Like the mythic mechanism of choosing Casket and its psychoanalytic analysis (Freud 1958 [1913]: 93101), the mechanism of the living-dead brings death into life. The choice of Bassanio, Portia's third suitor in Shakespeare's A Merchant of Venice, whereby he opts for the third of the casketsgold, silver and leadgains him Portia as wife. But the inverse of this choice in myth is Lear's third choice, his choice of his youngest daughter the rebellious Cordelia, a choice that brings disaster upon himself and all who surround him. What this choice has in common with the choices made by the protagonists of myths and fairy tales, argues Freud, is that to choose the desired and redemptive female figure is also to choose speechless and annihilation. The link between femininity and death exists beyond cultural difference (Bloch 1982), and therefore enables the appearance of the motif of choice in the myth of the three sisters to be seen as a form of wishful reversal:

Choice stands in the place of necessity, of destiny. In this way man overcomes death, which he has recognized intellectually. No greater triumph of wishfulfilment is conceivable. A choice is made where in reality there is obedience to a compulsion; and what is chosen is not a figure of terror, but the fairest and most desirable of women . . . Lear carries Corodelia's dead body on the stage. Corodelia is Death. If we reverse the situation it becomes intelligible and familiar to us. She is the Death-goddess who, like the Valkyrie in German mythology, carries away the dead hero from the battlefield. Eternal wisdom, clothed in the primeval myth, bids the old man renounce love, choose death and make friends with the necessity of dying. (Freud 1958 [1913]: 299301, emphasis in reprint)

Given such assumptions, it is possible to see the tendency of the Israeli poets of the War of Independence to represent death-in-life in their poems

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as a survival and redemptive mechanism whereby death chosen voluntarily makes the living warriors into dead soldiers in advance: in order to protect themselves from the fear of death, they incorporate death into their lives and make it a part of them. The mythic metaphor of the living-dead thus merges the culture of death with the culture of life. But just as it is possible to perceive the gendered aspects of the choice of death in Freud's depiction of this mythical structure, so, too, in the case in hand, a gendered reading will show how the choice of death-as-redemption involves the selection of a female figure whose power to give birth is appropriated, and thus necessarily implicates the women as life-giver and redeemer in the service of the male-national confrontation with death. The mechanism of mythic substitution that Freud identifies stands revealed as a mechanism that substitutes the Goddess of Death with the Goddess of Love who serves the perspective and interests of male-national culture.

The ideological mechanism of the living dead provides ambiguous representation for a situation of crisis loaded with conflicts and contradictions. And again it is significant that Netivah Ben-Yehudah dedicated her book on the War of Independence ''To all the dead who were left alive" (Ben-Yehudah 1981, 37). In this provocative dedication, Ben-Yehudah reverses the appropriation and reclaims the power to give lifenow, from her belated '70s stance, by exposing this other side of the metaphor: that which creates life by turning life into death. Thus, she exposes the ideological apparatus, which was incorporated into the state ideological apparati: that is, the metaphor of the living-dead, which enacts a male appropriation of birth also necessarily integrates death into life.

Criticizing the Myth

Women poets, then, both joined the canonical literary practice and represented the figure of the living deadand also changed it, so as to position themselves differently and reclaim that which was appropriated from them: birth. These changes were part of a process of criticism, aimed at the metaphor itself.

Criticism, though, was not the domain of women poets alone. The mythic power of the living-dead metaphor did not last long: already during the war and immediately thereafter, doubt was expressed concerning its mythic validity (Hever 1986. Miron 1992). But even when men poets rebelliously dismantled the metaphor, the women poets did not follow exactly the same move. In most cases, poetry written by men challenged the metaphor within the limitations of the metaphorical representation of the dead person who is also alive. Parody represents one example of this, as a form that accepts the metaphor as a point of departure, but concretizes it in order

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to subvert it, that is, to show that it is only a metaphor, only a myth, while simultaneously revealing the mental price it exacts. Basically, parody tries to show the limitations of the metaphorical representation of the livingdead along the diachronic axis. What it does is to reveal how invalid the representation really is for the dead, who have actually died, and experience no continued or alternative existence. Beyond the festive-attire of the metaphor, parody of the living-dead structure reveals that, ultimately, the warrior is really dead leaving him no alternative mode of transcendental existence. A characteristic example is the poetry of Amir Gilboa, whose monologue of the silent brother undermines the metaphor of the livingdead from within in order to show its limitations. Gilboa's main intervention, which he shares with other male poets critical of the figurative structure, is to claim that the dead cannot actually be resurrected by means of the metaphor of the living-dead, which thus loses its validity. Instead its manipulative functionality as the ideological invention of national culture is laid bare in Gilboa's poem and elsewhere (Hever 1986):

My brother came back from the field
dressed in gray. And I was afraid that
my dream might prove false, so at once
I began to count his wounds. And my
brother said nothing.

Then I rummaged in the pocket of
the trench-coat and found a field-
dressing, stained and dry. And on a
frayed postcard, her namebeneath a
picture of poppies. And my brother
says nothing.

Then I undid the pack and took out his
belongings, memory by memory.
Hurrah, my brother, my brother, the
hero, now I've found your decorations!
Hurrah, my brother, my brother the
hero, I shall proudly hymn your name!
And my brother said nothing. And my
brother said nothing.
                                             (Gilboa [1950] 1953:18.
                                             Translated by Carmi, 1981: 559)

In another poem he wrote at the time Gilboa actually dismantles the oxymoron of the living dead:

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Alive the living and dead the dead
Whether he shouts or is silent.
                                             (Gilboa 1953: 72)

Another well known example is Yehudah Amichai's poem, "Geshem Bi-Sdeh Krav" ("Rain on a Battlefield"), written in memory of his friend Dicky, who fell in battle. The memory of the friend is represented by the distinction that the speaker in the poem makes between the living, "who / cover their heads with a blanket," and their dead comrades ''who / cover themselves no more." (Amichai 1972: 21) Amichai differentiates between two time axes. Along the axis of the living, life exists; along that of the dead, it does not. The poem takes the basic structure of the metaphor of the living-dead and undermines it, showing that it has lost whatever validity it may have had as a representation seeking to merge or transcend the separate temporal axes, a representation that purports to enable the simultaneous and separate existence of the dead and the living. But both the transcendence of time, which predominates in the mythic production of war poetry, and its parody, which predominates in the anti-mythic variant remain firmly within the rules and preferences of the male world. In this male world, women do not play an active role in establishing the relations between the world of death and the world of life. In Amir Gilboa's poetry, the relations between life and death are indexed only in the relationship between the two brothers, and the name of the beloved is present merely as a trace inscribed on a postcard lying under a pile of corpses. In Amichai, the memory of the fallen friend is mediated through the male speaker's relationship with his fellow comrades-in-arms.

In contrast, women's confrontation with the metaphor of the livingdead migrates from the axis of time to that of space, and particularly the space of the body. In many cases it seems that they not only contest the status of the temporal axesthe axis of the living, the axis of the dead, and the relations between thembut contest the status of the dead as complete physical subjects. They do not accept the individual figure of the livingdead as given, dead or alive, but rather redefine its outlines as a physical subject. To do so, they create an immediate, intimate contact, which fragments the body of the dead into its discrete components.

The Dual Strategy

The representation of war in women's poetry of the War of Independence is founded upon a dual strategy. Its first, most overt, procedure consists in the incorporation of the living-dead at the level of the national metaphor: that is to say, fusion with the representation of the living-dead in hegemonic discourse. In her poem "Levaya" [Funeral] Ester Raab portrays the living-

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dead at the level of the national metaphorthat is she articulates the representation of the living-dead warriors through the voice of hegemony:

All our dear dead:
The living and the dead
Follow us in procession!
And the echoes of their footsteps
Are woven in the sound of our quivering paces.
                                             (Raab 1988: 99)

But simultaneouslyand in contrastshe also reacts to the other positioning, that of her exclusion. This conflictual position of both canonical inclusion and exclusion, witnessing without being positioned as a witness, results in a special discursive practice leading to a somewhat different perspective on the living-dead: the metaphor of the living-dead is now also seen as a metonymic representation, that is, as part of the continuum of a familiar reality which is represented as fragmented into its physical components. And indeed, later in the same poem, Ester Raab writes:

A wizened hand sent
Like a sign hung above:
And one vein, thin, red
Like a startled chameleon
Suddenly turned gray
And slowly crawled into warm hiding-places
                                             (Raab 1988: 99)

From the metaphor of the living dead who march behind the mourners at the funeral, Raab proceeds to the metonymy of the flesh itself. A similarly dual progression marks the text entitled "Ba-Ovdan" [In Loss]: a poem cycle composed by Erella Or in memory of Abraham Dubno who died in the War of Independence. The fallen soldier is portrayed as coming back to life through the enumeration of his physical components:

And a voice speaks
From the dwellings of the past,
And he sits, his whole being still alive,
As in times past.
The same hand, the same voice,
The same light in his eyes.
The same desire to live forever,
And still to hear violins
In their spilling forth like water
                                             (Or 1952: 29)

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The turn to the flesh, to the body, becomes understandable when it is contrasted with the mechanism of the living-dead. The metaphor of the living-dead in the service of hegemony delivers the individual into the realm of the eternal, makes of the individual an immortal soul, in Anderson's terms. From the collective description of the living-dead's marching feet, the speaker in Raab's poem moves to a representation of one limb, a single hand, and then not only to a hand but to a single vein, via a specific description of its color and of the sudden change it undergoes from red to gray, that is, from life to death. Thus we encounter simultaneously both the confirmation of the hegemonic function of the metaphor of the living-deadwhich consists mostly of the buttressing and strengthening of the national subject by subordinating the private death to national spiritual continuationand, paralleling this, the fragmentation of this metaphoric continuation into the metonymy of flesh, which emphasizes the unique, personal, physical death, one that is not superseded by an allegorical salvation of the soul. This is how women poets placed themselves within the "normative" representation of Hebrew war poetryand at the same time created their own space, where they could survive the impossible situation in which they found themselves as women in a war culture, whose national representations are controlled by male hegemony.

The peculiar ambivalence of this positioning is evident even in a text by Bat-Sheva Altshuller (who, as we have already mentioned, fought as a soldier on the front line). In her poem "Hu Haya Tankist" [He served in the Tank Division], dedicated to "The Memory of M.Z., the Battle of Yahudiyah," Altshuller assumes a dual position with respect to normative representations of the living-dead, as she bluntly stresses the fallen soldier's corporeality:

Just one more remained
Lying in the tunnel.
This is a body fashioned in flesh [literally "meat" H.H]
Someone among the blackened survivors had also bothered
To remove his shoes,
The blackened body, spotted with blood.
Surrounding the speechless, no adornment of color
Where is the gold of ears of corn?

Where is the fire-gold of the fighters?
From the tunnel,
He is the burnt offering
A bloody moan of grief
He fell there among the fallen

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And he served in the tank division. [as a tank crew man]
                                             (Altshuller 1949: 35)

A particularly arresting example of the dual strategy is evident in Haya Vered's poem "Sha'at Ha-Effes" [The Zero Hour], which is clearly a parody of Alterman's "Magash Ha-Kesef" (Vered 1956: 15862). On the one hand, Vered makes direct use of Alterman's text. But she undermines its mythical relevance on the other hand through redefining the ''silver platter" by means of its reduction to human limbs. The critical concretization and blunt articulation of the myth of the living-dead channel the poem's progression:

You,
Land of a blood-spot on the map,
You, the threadbare, wallowing in soot and ashes,
A small plot of land for the living,
The tombstones keep witness
At every crossroads and on every road-side
And far, far from any road.
[. . .]
And the living diligently pursue the business of eating and
drinking,
Marrying women and giving birth to children,
And time spills from their hands
And from between their covetous fingers.
And they do not want to know,
That it is necessary to dig out of the earth
The heart's blow
Which measured time in split seconds,
And rememberd, rememberd the zero hour.

The dead,
Why did you die?
Why did you not die alone?
You, and only you?
                                             (Vered 1956: 15859)

This concretization does not stop at the boundaries of the individual subjectas if pre-givenbut it deconstructs the subject limb-by-limb, limb-into-limb, alongside a resolute deconstruction of the figure of the living-dead as well as the image of the silver tray:

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The love which, on its dead fingertips,
The silver platter bore
Is my people's platter of silver.

A gate has been opened on the blueness of our seas
And brothers
Tens of thousands, like an expelled ocean,
Bearing the side-curls of the Jews of Yemen,
The humble grace of the Indian Jews,
The fiery eyes of the Jews of Morocco, Tunisia and Algiers,
The fire scalded into the arms of the Jews of Lithuania, Holland
and Poland.
Tens of thousands, a map of the entire world.
                                             (Vered 1956: 159)

Later in the poem, two deconstructive mechanisms merge. On the one hand, we find the living-dead concretized in the figures of deformed and handicapped people, on the other hand, the symbolic silver platter becomes actual coin: buying power

The silver platter:
Hearts like the strings of an organ,
Hot legs caressing stone,
Cliff, path of thorns.
Youth
Generous, giving, wasting

[. . .]

Sinews stride in the streets,
The fear-struck eyes of clerks,
The lucky blind who have a dog to lead them
And the seeing eyes which see only money
And the fingers which dig only in the money
     of the silver platter:
Onions, and garlic, and sweatmeats
And on the silver platter:
De Luxe Refrigerators
The rot and carrion of conscience
And you
A wounded girl-child aged five
Mourning the soul
And the wind that strikes the sails.
                                             (Vered 1956: 16061)

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Authority and Female Power

The alternative female model reaches its sharpest manifestation in a genre that is at once conventionalized and dominantbereaved mothers' writings about their fallen sons. Even in a genre that is emphatically not a professional one; a genre whose principal schemes position its writers as mothers and women rather than as authors, we still find the type of duality that we have just analyzed with reference to more canonical texts. A recurring pattern of representation in the writing of bereaved mothers emphasizes the intimate, immediate connection of the mother to her son's body. This is, of course, a representation that is based on the immediate connection between the mother's body and the fetus. Let us consider the following example by the mother of Jimmy (Aharon Shemi), who writes in one of the best known memorial books in the culture of Israeli bereavement and memory:

We were among the rare parents who had the privilege of seeing their son during the days of battle, and of accompanying him on his last journey. They sent for us from the battalion. They did it for Jimmy's sake . . . I came to Abu Gosh. I removed the blanket from his pale, marble face. It was beautiful and proud like the face of a young eagle. As though he was proud of this death he had died . . . Only his half-open eyes looked from under the long eyelashes with a frozen expression, deep, deep down, into a terrible abyss . . . Thus he was engraved in my memory with a deep chisel, and thus he accompanied me wherever I went. The impression of the face I saw in Abu Gosh drove from my memory the image of the live Aharon for a long time. I could not bring him to mind whole and complete. He would appear dismembered in my imagination, in broken movements, but never whole. His eyes, the smile of his lips, would float out of an abstract, disconnected space. Slowly, time returned his living image to my memory, and sometimes I would feel him so, the warmth of his body, sitting next to me on the sofa, and breathing on my hair; I would be afraid to move, lest I lose the illusion; or he would follow me in the street. (1952: 22829)

Only after she fragments his body does the mother fuse with the mythical metaphor. But in order to reclaim control over the representation, she replotstells afreshthe narrative of the living-dead. She uses the narrative which transforms the private dead into a living national image, and renarrates it so as to reappropriate it as a woman and a mother. This she does by fragmenting her son into his basic physical components and then

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reconstructing him. She gives birth to him again, shethe motherand not male hegemony. She rebuilds her son as a living-dead figurethus participating in the hegemonic figurative structure, that isshe symbolically gives birth to him anew, out of reach of patriachal hegemony. But she does so only by means of the limbs of the physical body, whose fragmentation and reconstruction she controls:

There are those that say, paralyzed people say this, that sometimes they feel the severed limb, the arm and the legs, as if they still had them. The nerves that worked these severed limbs still exist and function and they create this illusion. Some nerves and capillaries, slight and tenuous, still tie and connect the mother to the son who is gone. And with his departure they awaken to intensified activity to restore him within her anew, as though to give birth to him for a second time. And if it is fated that death is a final and total cessation, then this final cessation occurs to the son when the mother dies. And only then does it come to them together. (ibid.: 299, emphasis in reprint)

When men wanted to subvert and redefine the metaphor of the living dead they did so in the name of the concrete immediacy of their connection with death. Amichai wrote his poem from the position of one who had fought, from his position as a witness to the final moments of his dead comrades. This is the source of his authority for rejecting the metaphor of the living-dead as a fallacious myth, for he himself witnessed the dying of the dead. The mother's authority, on the other hand, comes from seeing the dead after the battle: she either goes to see him in person, or, like Devorah Dayan, the mother of Moshe Dayan and Zohar (Zorick) Dayan, instructs messengers as to what they should see (on her behalf) on the body:

 . . . And when they went to identify his body I told them: "It's not hard to find marks on Zorick's body, scars . . ." On his face he had a large scar. They came of mischief and daring exploits. (Dayan 1952: 259)

She becomes an eyewitness, toomediated or unmediated. But her strength comes not from imitating the fighter-witness and directing her own gaze on the dead: it comes, rather, from the added touch. This is implied in a text entitled "La'Ben" [To the Son], in Bi-Yoked [Burning], a memorial book by Yehudit Maletz, mother of Rafi Maletz who was killed in the Battle of Nebi Samuel:

My son fell far away on the battlefieldand my hands were not privileged to touch him. For that too is a privilege: to touch the

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son's body before it is buried, to cover it with endearments, to wash it with tears (Maletz 1949: 191).

Raya Golani, the mother of Itamar Golani killed in a parachute accident, reconstructs her son's death without having witnessed it. Her account is anchored in the biblical symbolism of the of Isaac's binding. But this allusion is subordinated to the representation of the son's corporeality:

There were hundreds, thousands of witnesses to the event: the parachute became tangled up in the airplane. The eyes of the witnesses saw the struggles of the body suspended in space, thrown from side to side, trying to cling to the edge of the plane. For twenty long minutes, [my] son flailed about in the ropes, caught between heaven and earth. What occupied his thoughts then? Did he know it was the end? Did the faces of his loved ones pass before his eyes? His eyes always sought out the heavens, and how he loved the rebellious and stormy sea. But here is an airplane wandering through space, and my son, caught in the thicket of ropes, struggling, and the chasm beneath. This is the picture I have fashioned in my soul, in my heart I have sealed it. (Golani 1950: 159).

Golani's concluding emphasis falls on the act of representation itself. Thus is she able to seal and confirm her control over the representation of the death of her son, a representation that shenot having herself borne witness to the eventfabricates. Ra'aya Golani, Devorah Dayan, and Yehudit Maletz do not merely gaze on the dead bodies of their sons, nor merely yearn to do so. They also construct a representation of the fallen son, which is channeled through the modality of touch. Their reconstructed touching of the bodies of their sons dismantles the fallen soldier's subjectivity as a warrior, which is a preliminary stage toward his rebirth-throughrepresentation. These mothers not only seethey also fragment, and then reconstruct. They not only gazethey create the components needed for the reconstruction of the fetus, the prebirth stage that can never be appropriated from them by those who lack a womb. The bereaved mothers' manipulations of the schema of the "eyewitness" is thus confirmed by the concrete bodies of their sons. Since they cannot aspire to the authority of having "been there" on the battlefield, they derive authority from their presence in the field of the body.

The cultural construct of national war has been replaced in this poetry with the cultural construct of the body at the stage before it enters the discourse of the battlefield and national discourse. Both male and female

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poems talk of the dead, but one talks of the dead soldier in the sphere of national struggleon the battlefieldhereas the other talks of the dead flesh in the physical spherethe field of the body.

In her commemoration of her son, Zuzik, after his death, Yocheved Bat-Miryam articulates this dynamic with rare precision. Yocheved Bat-Miryam, the foremost female poet in pre-State Israeli poetry, brings her professional literary status into sharp conflict with her positioning as mother:

Zuzik
Would that I could burn all that I had written!

Would that I could erase my name from the annals of
literature!

[. . .]

As for literature. Literature, as contained in those vaunted
publications of mine, is merely decorative words, high-sounding
adornments. [My] writings are like kohl and rouge on a wizened
face, the whole business of publication a mere hagglewhom do
they sell, God of the Universe, God of the Universe?

And transgression brings transgression in its wake. Even
this act of writing is, for me, a sin. A sinbut since I cannot erase
my name, here I find myself writingwriting to my son, my
Zuzik, writing about Zuzik, my son, Zuzik, but there is no great-
ness other than Zuzik, no truth without his truth, his justice and
honesty.

Zuzik
The last time my son found an invitation from the Writers'
Association inviting me to lecture at one of the army bases, he
read the letter and said: "If you can go, go, because it is very
important. The fools send all kinds of rags to the soldiers, with-
out understanding that soldiers long for the very best. I answered
"Zuzik, I am no longer Bat-Miryam, I am simply Zuzik's mother"
(Bat-Miryam 1948 in Yaffe 1989: 28).

Later Bat-Miryam appends a poem of her own:

The flash of a dense flame, the smell of water and sand
The smell of a human body become continent,
The heavens, heavens covered with smoke like a plain,
Fatigued from trying to prevent being dried out.

 [. . .]

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You will be a temple and its midnight prayers
The destitute man waiting at its doors.
The melody hidden in the secret-places of mirrors
Suddenly appears like a face from the mirror.

Until you are bent to dust, from loneliness and silence
Like a fountain in the mountains of ice
Pouring forth to bruise the earth
The absence of your footsteps crosses the road
                                             (Ibid.: 30)

But she immediately glosses the poem:

This touching of his face: Even the touch now is like touching a chilled stone on the roadside. Piercing and mute is [the mother's] scream from within, as if  she were suspended on the edge of an abyss. Here, here, she [the mother, but the word for "stone" is also feminine giving rise to semantic oscillation, H.H.] is about to slip and plungeabove her as if leaning over is the face of her son, Zuzikhis mouth open and his eyes screwed up, watching, seeing something from a distancehere is the smile"So what was it you said?"a kind of seal to his thoughts. His voicemy son, my sonI tear out my eyes. This tearing out of eyes, as if trying to comprehend, to assimilate the fact that Zuzik is no more!I am torn from my foothold as rock and I plunge into the abyssmy son

[ . . .]

My son, my son Zuzikthis call goes unanswered"Y-e-s"This voice inside which is heard in its voicelessnesshis face floats before my shut eyes untiluntil my voice becomes the voice of a woman in laborI am wrenched in an agony of pain and grief here, this is the stake-like focus of my pain.

Deathin every breath of your breathsthe emptiness of oblivionand you [feminine singular, H.H.] get up, comb your hair, look in the mirror-far, far back there, behind the body of your sonyour face floats. Bread and water in the mouth like the taste of ashes from his grave. Grave? Zuzik's grave? And I, I am the grave, my son is entombed in me, and that is why I walk so, so slowly and moderatelylike a mourner accompanying my own body in a funeral procession to the grave.

Your are my son Zuzik to the fullest extent of your being with me here, your face which first appeared at 4 a.m. in a Paris nursing homeyou are Zuzik, Zuzik, my Zuzik to the fullest extent of silence and terror and sorrowAnd my voice will not

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touch your head raised to throw the grenaderaised and fallen, eyes will not open to see your extinguished face, will not caress nor wipe away the blood, the blood of the woundmy son, my son: your night which you compressed for me in a letter "The work is hard and tiring, food is insufficient and the night is cold." My son! The sin, the transgression in this very cry, in my love for you which stood far away, impotent and blind

Cursed am I! On the threshold of that night, I shall remain standing until darkness gathers me in.

Mothers of the world, mothers, though your honesty and truth be diminished, may your sons magnify this hint, this intimation, seventy-sevenfold, seventy-sevenfold, until sparkling and radiant it dawns before you, hidden and secreted away until the end of time, the source of the legend, the root of all that is wonderful, of hope.

Mothers, mothers of the world, be like a wall to shield and guard your children, for without them there is nothingwithout them death stalks your cold and silent bodies. (Ibid.: 3032, emphasis in reprint).

In the light of Bat-Miryam's commentary, the vague symbolist formulations in the poem are revealed to be a code for direct representation, for the mother's unmediated touching of the body of her dead son. This touch is revealed to be a substitute compensating for the unbridgeable distance that divides her from the death of her son in battle. Bat-Miryam's commentary on her poem proceeds through her efforts to control the reservoir of possible interpretations of the poem she writes about her son. At its core, there unfolds the skeleton of a story that links the physical death of the son to the moment of his birth.

Popular Mourning and Canonical Mourning

This kind of utterance produced by mothers is widespread in many Israeli memorial books. Such writing, which is produced in institutions of popular and semi-popular culture, merges with the high cultural modes of women's war poetry. But it seems that the more popular the genre is, that isless representative of the national literary canonthe more exposed is the subversive political practice. When the text is more canonical, for example Tzefrira Ger's poem "Mavet," [Death], collective death in times of war will be described, but in a manner that blurs the boundaries between death and birth. Birth, which in popular texts appears as part of the arsenal of literal description, here appears figurativelythe collective death is portrayed figuratively as an act of giving birth:

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Let us die all together
And we shall not die kneeling in the trenches
Let us die with no fear
Because for us it is onlythe beginning.

Big deathwe are little (children)
Call us out loudwe answer.
                                             (Ger [Gerber] in Yaffe 1989: 35152)

This juncture is yet another point at which the hegemonic male perspective might be exposed in its propensity to lump all that which is "Other," all that which differs from the center, into a unified body, whether it be the Palestinian Other or the Israeli Jewish woman Other. This unification collapses when various solutions (separately relevant to different classes, races, or genres) are entertained within the same conflictual framework. In the opposition between the canonical and the popular, the popular tends more to expose the public side of mourning, whereas the canonical will construct itself as more secretive. The bereaved mother turns the small, the intimate, and the hidden into the public. The experience of mourning becomes conflictual: the very private act of mourning is also a very public oneso as to place it at the service of the national causeand the mothers navigate constantly between the public and the private. They survive this contradiction of national mourning by creating a situation that is entirely public, on the one hand, but that, on the other hand, manages within this publicity to retain the element of secrecy. The differentiation between the popular and the canonical is the discursive manifestation of the inner contradiction in women's discourse: they reappropriate birth via the private and secretivebut admit the necessary publicity of this process. The kind of authority that Devorah Dayan accesses is the authority of a mother who has known the body of her warrior son, with intimate familiarity, since childhood. But when the representation of the living-dead is under discussion, as was the case in Nathan Alterman's popular and theatrical text "Magash Ha-Kesef," the bereaved mother turns the hidden and the intimate and the minute into something public. Hereby, the mother succeeds in transforming her authority so that secondary, marginal, weak, or secret aspects of womanhood become a public source of external power. The canonical, then, will be, discursively speaking, the most intense figurative expression of a more secretive tendency. The ambivalence whereby modest inwardness become external public utterance stands ultimately revealed as a means of representation whereby the woman author, fashioning the representation, emphasizes time and time again her control over representation-as-act. In this respect, Devorah Dayan's description parallels that of Jimmy's mother, whose depiction of her son as a living-dead figure emphasizes her

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role in putting together this constellation. The metaphor of the living-dead son cannot be naturalized as pregiven or intelligible in its own terms, but is to be seen as a deliberate strategy on the part of the mother: the work of her hands. The constitution of the figure of the living-dead from the women's point of view results from her action: she brings him into being and his being ceases with her. Mourning is represented as an act of accumulating power.

The Female Secret and Power

The difference between popular and canonical women's writing expresses the internal paradox of women's discourse in times of war. In popular genres, the woman derives her strength from that which is rendered public and externalized. In canonical poetry, on the other hand, where she derives her power from reappropriation of the act of birth, she does so through quite a large measure of adherence to a figurative framework within whose confines she expresses her power in a more covert and secretive fashion. In poetry, the figure of the living-dead is also revealed to be the product of the mother: she brings the living-dead subject into being and his existence terminates with her death. In poetry, too, strength is derived from the rendering public of the private and secret. But here, the representation of mourning as an act of accumulating power takes place behind a dense linguistic cloak, sometimes expressed as the secrecy of the situation being described in the poem. This is the case, for example, in Fania Bergstein's poem "Akhoti" [My Sister], published during the most intense phases of the wara text that transforms the secret into a linguistic symbol in its own right:

My good sister, you pace to the light,
Beloved sister, your tread is a hymn.

You strike sparks from mourning blackness,
Uncuffed in the face of the maturing day.
 [. . .]
For in every letter and word you spoke,
Without asking, an answer you gave.

It is a secret, sister, between us two,
A mysterious secret between us.
                                             (Bergstein 1954 [1948]: 224)

The female secret is the secret common to both women, in fact to all women, and it expresses a common female point of access to power; this is

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where they have power, even though they are not present on the battlefield, even though they are absent; even though they ''only" grieve. The uncuffing, the liberty achieved, is power; the secret is the power that releases them and then empowers them by virtue of its very secrecy.

The female manner of accumulating power from the secret privacy of mourning precisely through the act of publicationwhich brings the secret out into the light of dayis also apparent in Anda Amir-Pinkerfeld's text "Akhat." Ada, the mother, mourns her daughter Rachel who fell in one of the battles over Jerusalem. But the fact that Rachel has fallen as a fighter (Amir-Pinkerfeld 1952: 197) does not ultimately alter her placement as a woman in the discourse of war. Toward the end of this epic poem, in the chapter entitled "Ne'ilah Akhat" [One Closure] both the mother and the daughter concretize the epic narrative of Zionist heroism and rebirth, in general, and the epic narrative of the War of Independence, in particular, as a saga of female heroism, the heroism of women whose strength is derived from their confrontations with grief for the fallen on the one hand, and with the secret that they share and that is common to them, on the other hand. To this end, the mother's grief over her daughter is presented as highly personal but also as extremely rare and special:

Even Sarah
Did not dare to tear apart the borders of her grief, to break the
restrictions of her confinement.
The grief of grief, there is no other grief in Ada's bereaved
grieves.
Became extinct together with Rachel, her roots have been torn out
and she is lost in her loss.
                                             (Amir-Pinkerfeld 1952: 201)

But this confinement in the self of the bereaved mother is revealed merely as the starting point of her reentry into the public space of national military engagement, which is controlled by men. Mourning is displaced into the public arena of shared tears:

When her 'sons'fighters of the outpostreturned to her as if to
a mother
Standing broad, long-haired and with mustaches, she saw them
[. . .]
And one of them dared to begin in his bear's voice
Saying "We have come to call you: Come home, many are
waiting for you.
The post is cold without you, comeMotherto your sons"
[. . .]

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Then and only then did the weeping of horror burst and spill
from within her
And all wept in response, they did not stop their tears, they tore
the silence,
And cried thus for a long time until the tears subsided and were
stilled.
And Ada, calmer now, said "I will return in a mere matter of
days."
                                             (Amir-Pinkerfeld 1952: 2012)

Confronting grief is the first stage in the establishment of the "one" as a national symbol fusing the mother, the daughter and women in general. Their shared public existence enables them to internalize the very earth of Israel as an organic, private and public part of the national symbol of the "one." Toward the end of the text, the mother revisits her daughter's writings and tries to use them to restore her to life. Rachel is transformed by her mother into a figure of the living-dead, a female living-dead subject, who joins the men in endowing the nation with the capacity for rebirth:

For it has surely not been in vain. In every corner of the land,
The lives of Rachel and Gad and of the other young women andmen are blooming and bearing fruit
And the mother will pace in her footsteps, collecting Rachel from
the paths,
Glorifying her life, enriching the paths with life.
                                  And you must understand:
                                        No more Rachels will be snuffed out
For this land, and the Mother and the Daughter, they are all One.
                                             (Amir-Pinkerfeld 1952: 204)

The presence of the two together, Mother and Daughter, is the source of strength. But this strength is also secret since it is the strength of those who are supposedly absent from the battlefield; and since mourning possesses a power that is supposed to be hidden. The woman who is defeated in advance, as it were, in the battle over languageover the livingdead as metaphoris victorious on the bodily plane. In her contact with the bodily subject and the net of linguistic signs she weaves around it through a type of physical contact that is not part of the representation of subjectivity of the male-as-warrior, the mother produces a form of authority born from the contact with the flesh. A special authority particular to the woman-mother, who is not a fighter. However, in opposition to the female contact with the fleshwhich is her secret strength, private in its essencethe male

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writer fashions his discourse of war, his narrative of contact with death and loss of life, his constructions of the figure of the male fighter and the dead soldier who is resurrected, as a substitute for that which he lacks: power over the touch of birth, the life-giving contact of the womb with the fetus. The second necessary step in the female accumulation of power takes the private, the secret, and renders it public. This is a source of female power denied the male fighter on the battlefield: to touch the flesh and flagrantly to display this touch as the very essence of the woman's existence as mother.

After the death of the flesh, the private, the fetal, the intrauterine, is exhibited publicly, arrangedas in Anda Amir-Pinkerfeld's epicin the rows of the fallen exposed to view. In such representations, the regular position of the female body in male culture is reversed. That position, as we know it, consists of the female body presented and exposed, and therefore also powerless. Now, however, power resides in the female, motherly gaze: the Mother lays out the limbs of the body in a public display, row after row, and thus makes public what is most private: her immediate contact with the flesh that was once an embryo in her. In this way she does what is customarily denied to her in culture: now is she able to combine what culture has disjoined for herthe private (in both senses: what is unique to her, and her internal physicality) and its public representation. Now, when her son or daughter are dead, she may represent him. This is the source of her power, which is the secret she also has in common with other women.

But even these strategies are circumscribed by the parameters of the national discourse that imposes itself on women poets. The representations of the female experience of war produced during the War of Independence are conducted within a bounded and well defined Jewish national discourse. Women's displacement of representation from the field of battle to the field of the body indeed carves out a subversive space for them within which they break silence, and even permits some interrogation of questions of ethnic identity that was so rigidly conceived in canonical Hebrew poetry. But, at the end of this process, the "feminization" of death, the reconstruction of the body, the blunt and palpable presence of the body and of deathall these do not detract from the aura of sanctity surrounding the war. On the contrary. In the final analysis, these strategies lead to a type of "nationalization" of woman, teaching her to come to terms with the sacrifices she has madethus ensuring that she continues to play a role in the national war economyand in the male economy of the representation of war.

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Maletz, Rafi. 1949. Bikod, Michtavim Meet Rafi Maletz [Burning, Letters from Rafi Maletz] (heb.). Tel Aviv: Meshek Ein-Harod and Ha-Kibutz HaMeuhad.

Miron, Dan. 1992. Mul Ha-Ah Ha-Shotek, Iyunim Be-Shirat Milhemet HaAzmaut [Facing the Silent Brother: Essays on the Poetry of the War of Independence] (heb.). Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Ha-Universita HaPtuha Keter.

Mosse, George, L. 1990. Fallen Soldiers, Reshaping the Memory of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Or, Ariela. 1952. Min He-Afar [From the Dust] (heb.). Tel Aviv: Mahbarot Le-Sifrut.

Raab, Esther. 1988. Kol Ha-Shirim [Collected Poems] (heb.). Tel Aviv: Zmora Bitan.

Schweik, Susan. 1987. "Writing War Poetry Like a Woman" in Politics and Poetic Value. Edited by Robert Von Hallberg, pp. 15983. Chicago and London: The University Press.

Sivan, Imanuel. 1991. Dor Tashah, Mitos, Dyokan Ve-Zikaron [The 1948 Generation: Myth, Profile and Memory] (heb.). Tel Aviv: Maarchot, Zahal, Misrad Ha-Bitahon.

Tzurit, Ida. 1974. Ha-Korban Ve-Ha-Brit: lyunim Be-Shirat Nathan Alterman [The Victim and the Covenant: Studies in Nathan Alterman's Poetry] (heb.). Tel Aviv: Dvir.

Vered, Haya. 1956. Shirim Al Herev U-Meitar [Poems of Sword and Chord] (heb.). Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibutz Ha-Meuhad.

Yaffe, A., B. (Ed.). 1989. Nichtav Be-TashahMivhar Shirim Ve-Sipurim SheNichtevu Bi-Yemey Milhemet Ha-Azmaut [Written in 1948A Selection of Poems and Stories Written in the Days of the War of Independence] (heb.). Tel Aviv: Reshafim.

Yalan-Shtekelis, Miriam. 1978. Haim U-Milim [Life and Words] (heb.). Jerusalem: Kiriat-Sefer.

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10
Filming National Identity:
War and Woman in Israeli Cinema

Anat Zanger

Introduction
Cinema Machinery/Social Machinery

Cinema is not simply an industry or a set of individual texts; it is above all, a social institution. As Christian Metz writes in "The Imaginary Signifier" (1975), "The cinematic institution is not just the cinema industry (which works to fill cinemas, not to empty them), it is also the mental machinery another industry-which spectators 'accustomed to cinema' have internalized historically and which has adapted them to the consumption of films" (ibid: 18, emphasis mine). The war film genre is part of the mental machinery through which the cinema industry, in the darkness of the theater, injects meaning and accustoms its audience to the dominant national or group norm. If there is any place at all where group identitytoday usually nationalis a necessity, it is the military space, the military experience; National definitions, their component explanations, boundaries, wondering, fears and anxietiesall converge in war films.

Contextualizing war films as expressions of national identity, this chapter delineates a transformation in representations of the female by Israeli-Jewish ¹ war movies. It refers not only to the presence of female protagonists but also to various manifestations of the 'feminine principle' (Jung) inscribed in these filmsin its composition, mise-en-scene, editing, sound (dialogue and music), and narrative economy. I concentrate especially on war films from the 1960s as opposed to those of the 1990s. I suggest that the transformation of the feminine principle is in accordance with the demythologization of one of the central cultural, or "tutor," codes of Israeli

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societythe binding motive, involving the father's (Abraham's) willingness to sacrifice his son (Isaac) ("Ha'akedda").

The first part of the chapter presents the normative structural features of conservative Western war films and explores their implementation in the Israeli cinematic institution. In doing so it focuses on the representation of the collective versus the individual and the masculine versus the feminine. The second part outlines the main features of progressive Western war films, construing them as deconstructions of the above, classic oppositions. Looking at these deconstructions as they appear in Israeli cinema, I then conclude with what I see as a shift in the cinematic presence of the female principlefrom metonym to the "abjected" one, conected to the change in the tutor code within Israeli culture.

National Identities in Conservative Films
"The Imperialism of the Same"

On the face of it, my ambition to trace the feminine presence in Israeli war films would seem to address itself to what is known in mathematics as an "empty group." War films, which are standardly defined in terms of their focus on combat, center as such on the male group. To paraphrase Colin McArthur, women may be in wars but they don't wage them. (1982) I will argue that while war films focus on the male subject, they cannot define the male without the feminine principle. Thus, definitely discernible in war films, the feminine principle against which the masculine is formulated, is both manifested and latent, accessible and inaccessible. I shall be concentrating on this absence-presence and its military disguises in order to explore the feminine in the national context of war. I first offer a characterization of the most notable structural features of war films, in terms of narrative and gender, using the model of the Hollywood war film with its crucial and formative effect on the periphery.

The military experience, involves two cardinal oppositions (see also Rose-Kane 1976; Swanson 1983; Parker et al. 1992).

The first is the opposition of the individual/collective. Nations presents themselves as communities "because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship" (Anderson 1983, cited in Parker 1992: 5) Thus, in the positioning of individual versus collective, tensions and contradictions concerning national identity are elaborated and mediated mostly around the relationship between them and us, the enemy's forces versus ours.

The second opposition is that of the feminine/masculine principles. The opposition between feminine and masculine identities is usually

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described in phalogocentric society as the binarism of the masculine (+/-). However, nationality too "is a relational term whose identity derives from the inherence in a system of differences." (Parker et al. 1992: 5)

In the war film, the opposition of collective versus individual is intertwined with, and partially conflated with, contradictions of gender. ² As the following analysis will suggest, the relations between these two oppositional sets, are essentially defined and distinguished in classic, conservative war films, while their boundaries are violated in "postmodernist," progressive war films. Along with the violated borders between them/us these also introduce a rupture of the usual feminine/masculine relationship.

Narrativization of the Individual into the Collective

The conservative, classic war film depicting World War II evolved in the years following the war and established the prevalent paradigm of cinematic representations of war. Its structure illustrates Todorov's model (see in Rose-Kane 1976) of an initial equilibrium (usually well back from the front line); "a location safe and stable," which serves as an extension of the homeland, followed by a disequilibrium, moving into combat, to an experience of loss and sacrifice, and finally concluding in a new equilibrium, with the combat over and maturity gained. (See for example: "A Walk in the Sun" /L. Milestone, 1946, USA; "The Cruel Sea" /Frend, 1953, England; "The Dam Busters" /Anderson, 1955, England; or ''Every Bastard is a King" /U. Zohar, 1967, Israel.)

Four structural narrative features identify the war film (Rose-Kane 1976; McArthur 1982):

Narrative focus on the platoonas the central group, with half a dozen figures preeminent in it. According to Kane-Rose the social profile of the group is as diverse as possible, but all the members will overcome this diversity for the sake of the national mission and pure survival. Usually, the group is further composed of individuals classifiable according to five traits: race, religion, age, rank, and attitude to the war. These traits may be understood through either the plot or the dialogue but are also signified by dress, casting, accent, and argot. The differences thus established individuate characters and form the most common grounds for conflict within the group. This, however, is overridden and solved by the external conflict that the group will eventually face. Through the conflict, the individual passes a kind of "rite-du-passage"³ that turns him into part of the community. For example, Finnegan, the English policeman, or Goldman, the American immigrant, in "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer"/Thorold Dickinson, 1955, Israel, which focuses on one battle during the siege on Jerusalem in

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Palestine prior to the Israeli War of Independence, or Uri, the kibbutznik who decides to join the military underground (Palmach) in the course of the War of Independence (1948), in "He walked through the Fields"/Millou, 1967, Israel, a much later film. In both films the heros are eventually killed as a result of their decisions to join the community.

Several scenes portraying a large-scale battleconcentrating on a single, or small series of, specific military engagements. For example, an attack on a hill (as in "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer"), a house, or a bridge (as in "He Walked through the Fields").

The almost total absence of enemyexcept as a faceless, amorphous, opposing force, something "foreign" that viewers are kept from 'knowing', as, for example, in both: "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer" ⁴ and ''He Walked Through the Fields," where, on screen, the enemy occupies an invisible land and is assigned almost no representation time. Or, for example, in: "Every Bastard is a King" where enemy land is seen only through the combat waged against it in the desert, is alternated with a representation of space through the abstract signification system of the maps drawn by "our forces."

No critique of the represented war per se, although individual soldiers may experience acute fear or breakdown. The cardinal function of the conservative war film is to justify the military act, the rationale of this justification running something like: if you have suffered enough, the war is justified. "This is our secret weapon: no choice," says one of the Israelis to the English policeman in "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer." In other words, this type of war film applies only to acts of defensive war. Predictably then, the originators of critique in such films, if any is at all present, are always outsiders; foreigners such as Roy Hemmings, the American journalist, in "Every Bastard is a King," or women such as Eileen Hemmings, born in Haifa but living in the United States, or Mikka, in "He Walked through the Fields," the hero's lover, a WWII refugee who has recently joined the kibbutz.

If nations, following Anderson (in Parker 1992: 5), are indeed imagined communities "because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each live the images of their communion," then the central aim of classic war films can be appropriately discerned as blurring tensions and covering up contradictions, in order to keep the communion image circulating in the addressees (of both the films and the image).

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Gendering National Identites
Femininity versus Masculinity

I now turn to a discussion of the second opposition characterizing the experience presented by classic war films. The opposition of femininity versus masculinity is manifested in three aspects of such films.

Home is where the heart is. Classic war films locate the feminine option at a safe place on the home front. Here, the woman figure is either the mother, sister, or beloved, representing the imaginary anchor to whom the male subject yearns to return. The woman is the constant element in an unstable world. As Swanson has observed, "in terms of the narrative organization the female roles function as a pointer towards the eventual fate of their men" (1983: 8 emphasis in original). Thus, the unfaithfulness of Eileen, Roy's wife ("Every Bastard is a King"), as the unfaithfulness of Ruthka, Uri's mother ("He Walked through the Fields''), indicate fault lines in each hero's psyche and prefigure his death.

The underside of the front. Women figures who are located at the front, typically function in classic war films in secondary jobs, assisting and supporting the man's performance. They are nurses ("Hill 24 Doesn't Answer") or telegraph operators ("He Walked through the Fields"). If they somehow happen to be officers, they will still be placed near the receiver ("Every Bastard is a King"). ⁵

Romantic agony. The woman's most permanent role, her unchanging, inevitable place and function involves the romantic subplot of the narrative. War film women function as a romantic attraction for the hero ("Hill 24 Doesn't Answer," "He Walked through the Fields," "Every Bastard is a King").

The stability-giving role of this function is overturned when the object of desire is from the "wrong" side. The woman from the other sideJapanese, Vietnamese, or Palestinianincarnates forbidden exotic sexuality, for the white, Western male. That "dark hole" in the map, which Freud has called the "dark continent,"⁶ represented by Woman, dramatically increases the conflict between them and us, when it takes on the guise of sexual conspiracy (see for example: "Frieda"/Basil Dearden, 1947, Great Britain; "Sayonara"/Joshua Buttons, 1957, or "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer").

Enemy or Woman
Subaltern Identities

The strategies employed by conservative war films to depict and characterize women have much in common with those used to portray the enemy. National politcs is a narcissist one (Levinas 1961), aiming to define

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the self only. Hence, the characterization of the otherthe enemyin such films, that both embody and nurture national politics, is always indirect, fragmented, and stereotyped, taking on the form of "fetishized metonymies" as Bhaba (1983) would have it. Significantly, these same features serve as strategies for the characterization of women in these films. On the face of it, the narrative functions of women and enemy would seem to be totally different (adversary, rival, threat vs. supporter, lover, healer). Although this holds for the manifest, the films' latent level representations of Woman, like those of the enemy, are subordinated to the male subject. Both these "others" are deprived of the right of speech, which confirms their "subaltern identity'' (Spivak, 1987: 13453).

National Identities in The Progresive War Films
The Abjected

Uterus/womb usually signifies a mythical area of archaic,
undifferentiated sensations prior to subjectivity and
outside the order of any possible symbolization or even
discovery.
Lichtenberg-Ettinger 1992:197

Now turning to what I have termed 'progressive' war films, I look at what they do with the "fetishized metonymies" of both enemy and Woman. I ask whether in their case, as opposed to that of classic war films, different textual and narrative procedures encapsulate either a manifest or a latent critique of war's necessity.

The war in Vietnam has been defined by Frederic Jameson as the "first terrible postmodernist war" (1988 cited in Selig 1993: 2). In any case, many of its visual representations definitely were. These, much like the Israeli portrayals of the so-called "Peace-for-the-Galilee-War" (Israel's 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon), are among the few "filmed" wars that are characterized by the absence of the cluster of popular archetypes usually used to relate 'the amazing resistance and courage of the home community in face of foreign invasion.' In the absence of a consolidated, narrativized ideological paradigm, these films have recourse to icons made traditional by the 1960s and 1970s.

In progressive war films, the military group still serves as the narrative center. However, embedded within it here is a discernible critique of the war, entailing a blurring of the borders between us and them. Many of these films still attempt to present a dominant "Grand Narrative" (Lyotard's term, 1984 [1979]) through the traditional discourse of the war genre, with the intention of reestablishing the domination of the male subject, while their narrative in fact explores its absence. The deep structure of the classic

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war narrative can be claimed to focus on the Oedipal configuration, through which the soldier overcomes the obstacles before him thus reinforcing the (patriarchal) order. ⁷ In contrast, the deep structure of the progressive narrative explores the subject's inability to do so. Though the narrative does occasionally focus on the process of young men's transition to soldiers, this "rite-du-passage" does not end successfully in such films, and the denoument is typically ambivalance toward war rather than a definitive solution. Such a breakdown of the rite-of-passage and the Oedipal configuration is evident in "Green Fields"/Yeshouroun, 1989, Israel, for instance. The hero's graduation from basic training unites three generations of family only to embroil them all in heated family conflict right in the middle of the Palestinian countryside. The first generation, the grandparents are clearly assigned the role of representing "the Israel of the founders" and hence the 'invisible center' of the narrative, relative to which the film evaluates the depicted current events. Revealingly, the founders' message cannot be voiced anymore by the grandfather, who has suffered a stroke and retains only partial control of his mind, mouth, speech, and limbs, thus taking on the role of the film's "ill conscious." His only son, who has emmigrated to the States, has failed, on his current visit to Israel in negotiating with his family, with the Israeli soldiers escorting them, and with the Palestinians. The third generation, represented by Rami, the hero, finds his ideals succumbing to the emotions aroused by the terrifying circumstances he faces. Thus, three male generations, each in turn, has lost control. In the absence of a common perception, the ''imagined community" fails to claim its members, and the borders between us and them are blurred. (See also "Full Metal Jacket"/S. Kubrick, 1987, USA; "Good Morning, Vietnam"/ Levinson, 1987, USA; "Paratroopers"/Judd Ne'eman, as early as 1977, Israel.)

The narrative of progressive war films often unfolds from the point of view of one of the young soldiers, as his subjective "voice-over" accompanys the camera. (See for example: "Full Metal Jacket" or "Green Fields"). The plot follows the soldier's missions in enemy territory as the enemy's world increasingly invades the screen, and along with it, the criticism. (See "Ricochets"/Cohen, 1987, Israel; and "Cherry Season"/Buzaglo, 1991, Israel).

The cinematic represetations of the female have also been transformed in these films. While Woman is still assigned the role of the "fetishized metonymy" of the male-subject narrative, she has also acquired another symbolic function. Through editing, mise-en-scene, and dialogue, the cinematic writing of progressive, "post-Vietnam" or Israeli "post-Lebanon" films exposes the dissolving borders between the poles of the two cardinal oppositions constructing the classic films: individual versus collective and feminine versus masculine. And this in turn undermines the classic identification of the feminine principle with the enemy. One of the most common

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procedures through which this is effected is the "displacement" of the female principle and its inscription within enemy territory. Such displacements of the female body are implemented both in its linguistic representations and its visual writing in the cinematic spaces.

De-Lauretis describes the obstacle(s) that male figures must overcome on their journey to maturity, proposing that while it is not necessarily a woman, it is necessarily 'female', as the passage of the hero into subjectivity involves his "entry into a closed space" interpreted as "a cave," "the grave," ''a house," "woman, whatever its personification [as] morphologically female." (1984 in Selig 1993: 7) Thus, for example, the Israeli army vehicle tries to find its way through the long, narrow streets of an isolated settlement somewhere near Hebron, while the Arab music playing on the local radio provides the background sound ("Green Fields"), or the female morphology is evident in the closed, cavelike, space in which the military reserve unit is bivouacing or in the breastlike silhouette of a lonely Moslem tomb in the Lebanese, enemy zone ("Cherry Season").

In this case then, an actual homology is created between two entities, the two "others" discerned by the classic films: the feminine and the enemy. While conservative films exclude these entities from the narrative center, they keep them distinct. These films, however, dissolve the separately excluded categories into each other, at least in part. And although the explicit level points out the difference between the woman and the enemy, the cinematic language and the topographic similarities expose both, perhaps unwittingly, as the "desired object." In the conservative classic films the male subject succeeds in achieving his positioing vis-à-vis the nationalism of the "imagined community," keeping the patriarchal order in place. This order is also addressed by the progressive films, but in these the writing of the female body within enemy space hints at an unaccomplished, frustrated process; the threatening feminine presence lays bare the masculine loss of control. In "Full Metal Jacket" this presence overtly incarnates such a threat, as the platoon is being stalked by a female sniper (who is eventually killed under the spectator's gaze). ⁸ In "Ricochets" it is the beautiful Lebanese girl who functions as informer while pretending to flirt with one of the Israeli soldiers. Both in "Cherry Season" and "Green Fields" the female figures are actually present in the battlefield.

The women depicted in these films are situated and presented in a manner that would suggest a much more central and active role than that of the classic "homefront" woman. Joanna, the American TV director in "Cherry Season," is looking for a special angle on the war in Lebanon. She is the active agent who choses Miki Gour to star in her reportage, she is the one who follows him into Lebanon. The discourse is presented as hers. Dana, in "Green Fields" is the one driving the Israeli vehicle through the

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middle of the occupied territories, toward the inferno where the Israeli family will confront itself. However, in both these films, as the narrative unfolds, this active promise is neutralized and the women are returned to their traditional, marginalized status. In the deep structure of the narrative, the "repressed," the unconscious male fear of female dominance, has found its way out.

Male anxiety in face of the female threat is expressed through the cinematic space, through the dialogue and through cultural affinities to other texts (intertextuality). These ennunciate a new opposition suggested by the films: that of the pure versus the impure. The confrontation and intermingling of these poles is what Kristeva (1982) has called the abjected. ⁹

The abjected is that which does not respect borders, positions, or rules; that which, "disturbs identity, system, order" (Kristeva 1982: 4 in Creed 1986: 45). The abjected is the locus at which the signification system has collapsed due to a tension between two orders maternal authority and the law of the father, or to use the Lacanian terminology (1966) the Imaginary order versus the Symbolic¹⁰ order. In the first developmental phase, the Imaginary pre-Oedipal one, the child acquires its "primal mapping of the body." In this phase, mother and child are are perceived by the latter as fused and their relationship is experienced as semiosis. In the Oedipal or Symbolic phase, however, along with the acquisition of language, the child learns the paternal laws and its taboos. The acquired orders of both phases confront each other in the abjected, in various forms, some of them involving biological functions (food or excrements) and others, social functionsreligious as well as secular (incest, burial and mourning).

In this context, war becomes a ritual by which societies examine their relations with their own "symbolic goods" (Bourdieu 1971). Similarly, the abjected functions within patriarchal societies, "as a means of separating the human from the nonhuman and the fully constituted subject from the partially formed subject" (Creed 1986: 45). The figurations of the abjected indicate the interrelations of the maternal order vis-à-vis the paternal one.

Therefore, the military space functions as the abjected locus where the borders between order and disorder, life and death, body and its excrements threaten to dissolve. In "Full Metal Jacket," for instance, as well as in "Apocalypse Now" (/Coppola, 1975, USA), the Vietnamese world is literally described as a "world of shit.''¹¹ In "Cherry Season" one of the soldiers in the unit protests to God. Covering his face, he chants,

"Who gave you the right to bring me here?
To this mud mess, to this craziness?
Do you know who I am? Do you recognize me?

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No. I'll tell you why. I'm everyone."
Later he says,
"Who am I defending here?
Us? The Arabs? The sheep?
Six hundred dead, 1,200 eyes calling out to you from the earth.
Motherfucker. [addressed to God]
How can I go on living after all this shit?"

The characteristic features of this dunghill are a blurring of distinctions between life and death, between body and bodily excrements. In the abjected state, where the male subject can no longer accept the paternal law and can no longer return to the maternal one, the female body becomes a site of contradictory desires. Thus, a fantasmagoric moonlit female-formed silhouette, appearshallucinatory perhapsin the hero's view during a night patrol in the dark fields of Lebanon ("Cherry Season"). Joanna in "Cherry Season" is the desired woman but also, at the same time, the agent tempting Miki Gour toward his death in Lebanon.

My argument is that the shift perceivable in the feminine representations offered by post-Lebanon Israeli war films can be explained in the context of a general break of Israeli society with a central cultural code (i.e., with the symbolic order), that of the mythologization and demythologization of the binding (Ha'akedda) motive. Reflected and recorded clearly in Israeli culture at large, the traces of this rupture are evident in the war films produced by that culture. I now go on to look at its manifestations in some of these films.

The Binding Command and the Abjected

According to Althusser (1979), the theory and strategy of interpretation subsume that the invisiblethat which the symptom indicatesis none other than the systematic logic of ideology, which is by nature unconscious. In other words, texts are products of cultures dominated by ideologies (both consciously and unconsciously). Symptomatic reading then, explores the unconscious stratum of the text, identifying its cultural preferences. In the previous parts of this paper I have suggested a symptomatic reading (in Althusser's sense, 1979) of a few Israeli war films and especially "Every Bastard is a King," "He Walked through the Fields," "Green Fields,'' and "Cherry Season." According to this reading, representations of women in Israeli war films have moved from the status of "fetishized metonomies" to the that of "abjected" ones. As stated, these transformations derive from a more pervasive and general shift occuring in the cardinal code of the binding. ¹²

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The biblical story of the binding of Isaac has been repeatedly identified as one of the central codes through which Israeli society communicates itself to itself. As both Hillel Weiss and Gidon Offrat have observed, literary texts and works of visual art depicting father-son relationships in Israel very rarely avoid some form of subordination to the model of Isaac's binding. The myth of the binding, in Genesis 22, is that of the sacrifice of the son, equipped with a teleological explanation that assigns the son the status of victim through the act of substitution. The sacrifice is thus transformed from a mere arbitrary fact, aimless and useless, into a religious trial, an intentional act of belief. But there is a salient asymmetry between the binding myth and the modern variants provided for it by Jewish history, as modern Isaacs are usually not replaced by innocent rams. Secular attitudes, as Kerton-Blum points out (1989) substitute: "God who commanded the trial of binding, with another less clearly defined essence, whose beginning lies in what may be termed Jewish history, and whose end lies in total emptiness, as if the binding were never a commandment at all, but a wholly purposeless and meaningless existential act." [translation mine] God who commands has been replaced by what might be described, after Hillel Weiss (1991), as the Israeli nation's recognition of binding as constituting its ontological situation. ¹³

Israeli society and its dialogue with the binding myth have been documented and described in plastic art, poetry, prose, and cinema. Studies of these¹⁴ allow a delineation of this dialogue as follows:

The founding generation of prestate Israel perceived the binding as the collective destiny of the Israeli nation. The late 1930s and 1940s witnessed a shift from binding as a collective experience to binding as a personal one. Emphasis moved to the actual personal suffering of the individuals facing violence and death, and later yet to the justification and meaning of this suffering, which became increasingly obscure. The Six-Day War of the 1960s, as well as Yom Kippur War of the 1970s, then functioned as a catalysts for the demythologization of the act of the binding. The 1980s and the early 1990s saw the Lebanon and Gulf Wars and rising protest against binding as a metaphor for existence and the resulting endless choice of war and death.

The Six-Day War (in 1967), particularly, is perceived in Israeli historiography and sociology as a crucial turning point after which a different socio-cultural order was constituted (see, for example, Erlich 1993, Horowithz and Lissak 1990, Kimmerling 1989, Levy and Peled 1993, Medding 1990). Socio-economic and political processes in Israeli society are commonly characterized as "pre- or post- 1967." This turning point was prefigured in films such as: "Hole in the Moon/Zohar, 1964; Three Days and a Child/Zohar, 1967; or "He Walked through The Fields"/

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Millou, 1967, ¹⁵ which both recorded and nurtured the demythologization process of the 1960s.

I will now illustrate the shift in the dialogue between the biblical myth and Israeli society, revealed through the relations between object and space, subject and narrative, in two Israeli war movies, one from the 1960s and one from the 1990s: "Every Bastard is a King" and "Cherry Season."

The combat scene in "Every Bastard is a King" (Uri Zohar, 1967) has been described by Yigal Bursztyn (1990: 109) as emphasizing an identification of the screen with the order of the Symbolic father:

The cannons on the tanks are raised into the frame, phallus-like erections in the dust of the Sinai desert, in a series of close-ups. A huge close-up of the steel cannon barrel is taken through a wide lens, with the cannon pointing straight at the lens. In the background, at the other end of the cannon, is the tiny figure of the cannoneer. Galloping tanks are filmed from varying angles, some through a distortion camera. Close-ups of sections of the flat, pale helmets of Egyptian tank-corps men are seen from behind. Quick cuts. Medium shot of an Israeli soldier. Unlike the Egyptians he is filmed from the front and not from the back, but the shot is so rapid that his facial features are barely discernible. Attention is centered on the phallic guns moving in the foreground. Rapid zoom-ins onto the cannons, which are also moving in towards the camera, reinforcing the erotic sense of coitus in steel and fire. A close-up distorting the face of the radio operator shouting into the mike. The face of a blond woman-soldier bent over a mission map in the command tank is taken through the handle of a huge coffee cup in the foreground. The cannon barrels are spitting fire. Tanks are exploding. Close-ups of heads are taken from the back, faces move into the frame for split seconds, as they fall back spurting blood. More explosions. Wide lens close-ups with the blond face of the woman-soldier (Tami Tzifroni) one of the protagonists of "Every Bastard is a King" (1967, directed by Uri Zohar, script Uri Zohar, Eli Tavor). A national orgy with steel sexual organs. A human face giving the orgy its sexuality.

However, as the binding command is drained of content and belief fails in the commanding father's, "Come, let us go," the subject can find no way to inscribe himself within the Symbolic order and his anxiety in face of demonic, archaic powers surfaces. Thus, Miki Gour, at the begining of "Cherry Season," lays his body in an open tomb-womb in the military graveyard. Joanna appears with her television crew and they exchange

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looks, while the dialogue rings intertextual bells, as Joanna's question ("Do you know who we are?") echos that of the "princess of death" in Cocteau's "Orphee" (''Orpheus")/1950. Orphee will answer his princess, "Yes," but she demands, "Say it." And he answers, "My death." Miki Gour only nods his head, but the end of the film is foreseen at its begining. Nearing the denoument, following the death of his best friend, Miki Gour protests against the binding code. In a desperate moment, he pierces his own body with a war decoration. Bleeding little red drops, he makes love to Joanna, after which his vehicle will blow up on the bridge, on his way home from the front.

The narrative concealing the fears and anxieties of which it was woven, has been undone by now. Beneath, the abjected feminine is whispering. Given the expiring validity of the binding command, the male subject cannot return to the Symbolic order of the father. Neither, however, can he totally reject or fully adopt the maternal authority. He is thus doomed to wallow in images of blood, vomit, pus, shit, dismembered internal organsall "imago" of the great archaic mother, of the twighlight zone of the "abjected." Banished from the Symbolic order, he no longer belongs to the Imaginary one.

I have tried to deliniate changes in the prevailing norms of national discourse as manifested in Israeli war films. Two parallel perspectives reveal an apparent dichotomy between conservative and progressive war films: the narrativization of individuals into the collective; and the presence of the 'feminine principle.' It should be emphasized that this description does not conform to a strict evolutionary or historical model. Elements of both conservative and progressive films may be present simultaneously in individual texts. My distinction is grounded on the dominant of each text, the focal element organizing the individual work. ¹⁶ The cinematic institution as a whole is also governed by shifting dominants that are, in turn, subject to exceptions. However, by and large, the Israeli cinema moved from a conservative dominant in the 1960s towards a more contradictory and sometimes progressive dominant in the 1990s.

The Israeli cinematic institution is a system in itself while, at the same time, intersecting with other, broader systems: the international cinematic institution,¹⁷ the discourse of contemporary nationalism, and the Israeli cultural system. Israeli cinema is affected by all of these, navigating and negotiating their various norms. Beyond these traces of international systems, my "symptomatic reading" of Israeli war films has revealed the transformation of the feminie principle, in its conformity to a significant transformation in Israel: the demythologization of the binding motive, one of Israeli society's central codes.

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Appendix
Brief Summaries of the Israeli Films Discussed by this Paper

(Based mainly on Meir Schnitzer, Israeli Cinema, 1994, Kinnereth, and Igal Bursztyn, Face as Battlefield, 1990, Hakibbutz Hameuchad.)

Hill 24 Doesn't Answer/Thorold Dickinson 1955

The film included three episodes from the time of the Israeli War of Independence, representing the stories of three fighters on the way to take a hill that is dominating and blocking off an important road in a battle that will cost the three of them their lives.

Episode one: relates the love story between a British Secret Service officer (Finnegan) and a Jewish underground fighter (Miriam Mizrahi). Episode two: tells of Goldman, the American Jew, who decides to join the struggle and is wounded in the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem. Episode three: is about a fighter in the "Palmach" (the commando units of the mainstream, Jewish, paramilitary forces, prior to Israeli independence), involved in battles against the Egyptians in the Negev (the southern Israeli desert) in the course of which he captures a German, ex-Nazi officer, fighting on the side of the Egyptians.

He Walked through the Fields/Yossef Millou 1967

It is 1946 and the Jewish community (the "Yishuv") in Palestine is embroiled in the battle for its independence. Uri Kahannah has finished his studies at the Kaduri Agricultural High School and returns to his kibbutz. There, however, he feels restless, alienated, and empty due, in part, to the marital problems emerging between his father, a central leader of the illegal Jewish immigration movement ("ha'apalah"), and his mother, who has filled the father's absence with a growing relationship with another kibbutz member. Uri meets Mikka, a Holocaust survivor brought into Palestine as one of the "Teheran children," smuggled into the country in a rescue operation directed by Uri's father. Mikka and Uri fall in love but the growing national crisis draws Uri into service. He joins the "Palmach'' commando forces and leaves Mikka alone and pregnant. Commanding the demolition of a strategic bridge, carefully guarded till then by the British army, Uri is killed and his son is later named after him.

Every Bastard is a King/Uri Zohar 1967

On the background of the tense waiting period, on the verge of the 1967 Israeli-Arab war ("Six-Day War"), an American journalist (Roy Hemmings),

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his ex-Israeli wife (Eileen), and their Israeli guide (Yoram) tour through Israel. Their journey involves each of the three in confrontation with their identities. On the way they meet Raffi, an ex-fighter pilot, who is trying to bring peace by flying solo to Egypt. War breaks out regardless and Yoram rushes to join his reserve unit and there, on the battlefield, finally finds his place and his love (Anat, a kibbutznik officer). When the fighting is over, Roy Hemmings starts his journey back home, stopping to take a last photograph of the land. But the pasture he chooses turns out to be a mine field and Roy is killed. The whole of the narrative unfolds from this point, the moment of Roy's death, in the form of flashbacks.

Paratroopers/Judd Ne'eman 1977

A training trek made by a platoon of paratroopers on their way to be awarded the "red beret" of IDF paratroopers. An extended clash has been confronting commander Lieutenant Yair, representative of the collective army tradition, with a young recruit, Weismann. Weismann has become the victim of continuous bullying and sadism, which finally lead to his death, when he leaps in front of a grenade in either an accident or an act of suicide. An investigation is held and the death seems to lead the commander to reassess his goals and views, but this process is cut short by a general alert that swiftly returns him to military routine.

Richochets/Elli Cohen 1987

A military unit is spending its last weeks in Lebanon, on the eve of the IDF retreat. The film focuses on the newly appointed officer (Gaddi) and his men, who are torn between their understanding of, and their suspicion toward, the local Lebanese population. Humanistic sentiment among the soldiers, romantic attraction to a pretty Lebanese girl, or fatherly feelings toward a Palestinian child, are foiled when it turns out that the two were being used to bait the soldiers into a trap. The film was produced by the Training Service of the Israel Defense Force, in a Lebanese village under Israeli military occupation.

Green Fields/Yitzhak (Tzepel) Yeshourun 1989

All three generations of the Braverman family assemble en route to the grandson's (Rammi's) graduation from boot camp. His father (Shmuel) is an ex-Israeli now living in the United States and currently visiting Israel with his second wife (Cathy). The grandfather (Meir) has found it extremely difficult to forgive his son for "desertion."

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The family misses the army-sponsored bus to the ceremony, to be held in the Israeli occupied West Bank. Catching a ride together on a minibus, they are stoned on the way and attacked with firebombs. A military ambulance that picks up the family then loses its way. While all this is happening, the grandfather has a stroke, the father runs amok and shoots a passerby, an Arab, while the grandson, Rammi, finally decides to take responsibility for the killing.

Cherry Season/Haim Buzzaglo 1991

A summons to military duty in a reserve unit in Lebanon, causes a Tel-Aviv advertising executive (Mikie Gour) the frightening feeling that death awaits him. He researches the IDF procedures for soldiers killed in action and visits a military cemetery. When he enlists, his unit is joined by an American news team. The reporter (Joanna) chooses to center her program on Mikie and meanwhile an erotic tension builds up between the two of them in the surrounding fearful atmosphere. Sniper and exploding charges turn the Lebanese enclave into a valley of death, the mounting sense of terror is coupled with a marked absence of any sense of logic or consent to the Israeli presence in Lebanon. With the unit's term of duty over, Joanna's camera records her summary of the retreat from the land of the cherries. Meanwhile, the southbound troop carrier hits a land mine and Mikie is killed.

Notes

This article is based on a lecture presented at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, December 1993.

1. As opposed to Israeli-Arab.

2. Both contradictions are often intertwined with contradictions of class, ethnicity, and so on, which I do not address in the present discussion.

3. For an anlysis of this subject from a sociological point of view, see Lomsky-Feder 1992.

4. See also Shohat, Ella 1991 (1989) pp.6274 and Bursztyn 1990 pp. 7579.

5. This representation of women as the underside of the front is only an illustration of a deeper conflict posed by women's status in the Israeli army. While military service is obligatory for women in Israel, making for a massive female presence in the army, and despite the broadening spectrum of jobs open to them, women are nontheless excluded from a large number of military roles and especially those seen as parts of direct combat.

6. See Cixous and Clement 1986: 68.

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7. The connection between general narrative, desire, and the Oedipal configuration has been emphasized by Raymond Bellour 1975 and DeLauretis 1984; in the war context by Jeffords 1984, Selig 1993, and others.

8. See in Selig 1993.

9. The concept of the 'abjected' was first presented and elaborated in the context of widows in Israeli cinema by R.M. Friedman 1986.

10. Despite clear differences between the two theories, I nevertheless see a strong affinity between the analyses offered by Kristeva and Lacan. According to Lacan the subject perceives and experiences reality through a movement between three orders: (1) the imaginary, which governs by the wishes and desires represented mostly through the dyadic relations with mother; (2) the symbolic, which governs by the law and language inherent in culture and ultimately represented by the Father and the Phallus and (3) the real, which is the result of a constant dialectic between the imaginary and the symbolic, and hence remains elusive.

11. See also ibid, page 8.

12. See also Zanger 1990, "The Binding Motive in Israeli Cinema," which this section is based on.

13. Kimmerling's observations (1993) on cognitive militarism illuminate the same phenomenon.

14. Gidon Offrat (1989), Ruth Kerton-Blum (1989), and Hillel Weiss (1991).

15. Nurit Gerz emphasizes in her reading significant changes in the film adaptation to Shamir 's novel from 1948. In Gerz, 1993: pp. 6394.

16. See the dominant as defined by R. Jakobson (in Matejka, 1971: 35). This observation has been elaborated and implemented in relation to Modernism versus Postmodernism by McHale (1987: 711). it is in this context of paradigmat rather than diachronic principle that I am using here the concept of dominant and shifting dominants.

17. In this sense I can agree with Andrew Dudley who has asserted that, "from the standpoint of ecomics, there is not but one viable national cinemaHollywoodand the world is its nation" (1995: 54).

References

Althusser L., and E. Balibar. 1970 (1968). Reading Capital. London: New Left Review.

Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Bhaba H.K. 1983. "Difference, Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism" in The Politics of Theory, edited by Francis Barker et al. Colchester, University of Essex.

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Bourdieu, P. 1971. Le marche des biens symboliques" in L'Annee Sociologique 22: 49126.

Bursztyn, Y. 1990. Faces as Battlefields. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Ltd. [Hebrew]

Creed, B. 1986. Horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection. Screen 27(1): 4469.

De-Lauretis, T. 1984. Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Dudley, A. 1995. Appraising French images. Wide-Angle 10(3).

Erlich, A. 1993. Israeli Society: Critical Perspectives ed. Uri Ram. [Hebrew] Tel-Aviv: Breirot Publishers, pp. 25374.

Freud, S. 1919. "The Uncanny" in Standard Edition, Vol. 17, pp. 21952.

Friedman, R. M. 1986. "La Grande Tendance du Cinema Israeliene" in CinemAction 37: 23648.

Gerz, N. 1993. Motion Fiction - Israeli Fiction in Film ( esp. pp. 6397.) TelAviv: The Open University.

Gross N., and Y. Gross. 1991. "War Films in Israel" [Hebrew] in Chapters in Israeli Cinema History. Jerusalem, Israel. Published by Author. pp. 26880.

Horowithz, D., and M. Lissak. 1990. Distress in UtopiaIsraelAn Overstressed Society [Hebrew]. Tel-Aviv: Am-Oved.

Kerton-Blum, R. 1989. "'From where these sticks in my hand'The Binding as a Test Case in Hebrew Poetry" [Hebrew]. Me'oznaim 52: 915.

Kimmerling, B. 1989. "Boundaries and Frontiers of the Israeli Control System: Analytical Conclusions" in The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers, edited by B. Kimmerling. Albany: State University of New York Press.

. 1993. Militarism in Israeli society [Hebrew] in Theory and CriticismAn Israeli Forum 4, 12340.

Kristeva, J. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

Lacan, J. 1966. Ecrites: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications.

Lévinas, Emmanuel. 1971. Totalité et Infini Essai sur l'exteriorité. Martinus Nijhoff. La Haye.

Lyotard, J. F. 1984 (1979). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Levy Y. and Y. Peled. 1993. "The Break that Never Was: Israeli Sociology Reflected Through the Six-Day War" [Hebrew] in Theory and CriticismAn Israeli Forum, vol. 3. pp. 11528.

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Lichtenberg-Ettinger, B. 1992. "Matrix and Metramotphosis" in Differences: A Journal of Feminist Studies, vol 4(3).

Lomsky-Feder, E. 1992. "Youth in the Shadow of WarWar in the Light of Youth: Life Stories of Israeli Veterans" in Adolesence, Careers, and Culture, edited by Wim Meeus, Martijn de Goede, Willem Kox, and Klaus Hurrelmann. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyer.

McArthur, Colin. 1982. "War and Anti-War" The Movie 45.

McHale, Brian. 1987. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Mehuen.

Metz, Christian. 1975. "The Imaginary Signifier" trans. by Ben Brewster. Screen 16(2), pp. 1476.

Offrat, Gidon. 1989. The Binding of Isaac in Israeli Art [Hebrew], a catalog of Ramat-Gan Museum of Israeli Art.

Parker A., M. Ruso, D. Sommer and P. Yaeger (eds). 1992. Nationalism & Sexuality. New York and London: Routledge.

Rose-Kane, K. 1976. A Critical Analysis of the World War Combat Films 19421945. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa.

Selig, M. 1993. "Genre, Gender and the Discourse of War: the A/Historical and Vietnam Films" Screen 34(1). pp. 118.

Spivak, G.C. 1987. (1983), "French Feminism in an International Frame" in Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen.

Swanson, Jillian. 1983. "Women and National Identity." British Film Institute Summer school 1983. [unpublished]

Weiss, H. 1991. "Comments towards a Study of 'the Binding of Isaac' in Contemporary Hebrew Fiction as Topos, Theme and Motive" in Fathers and SonsMyth, Theme and Literary Topos edited by Herman Zvi-Levy. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University. [Hebrew]

Zanger, A. 1990. "The Binding Motive in Israeli Cinema," a lecture given at the AJS conference, December, Boston.

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11
Engendering the Gulf War:
Israeli Nurses and the Discourse of Soldiering

Meira Z. Weiss

Introduction

During the Gulf War, in the beginning of 1991, many Israeli nurses found themselves caught up in a paradoxical situation. Whenever the SCUD attack sirens were heard and citizens all over the country locked themselves in the sealed room (prepared inside the home in case of a gas attack), the nurses drove to the hospital. There they waited for possible mass casualties as a result of chemical warfare, which, fortunately, did not take place. In a war that did not entail the regular mobilization of military forces, these nurses found themselves on garrison duty. They, and not their men, went to "the front," leaving behind husbands and children. A split was therefore created between these women's identities as mothers and nurses. As national and professional commitment replaced the more traditional, domestic one, this split was also turned into a temporary locus for a new rhetoric of soldiering, previously reserved for men only. How this rhetoric came into being, how it was gendered and how it died out, is the subject of this article.

The Gulf War spelled a new kind of military experience for Israel (Shaham and Ra'anan 1991; Werman 1993). It did not entail the mobilization of forces, army reserves or the like, but rather the demobilization of Israeli society, which was put into sealed rooms to wait for instructionsa passive situation previously unfamiliar to Israeli society. I focus here on the mobilization of nurses during the Gulf War, examining how it was perceived and adopted by them, and how their rhetorics of war unfolded

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according to a professional gender struggle as well as a national script of militarism. In the following section I review the subject of women and the military. The introduction then moves on to describe the experience of The Gulf War in Israel, with an emphasis on its gendered discourse. A methods sections then leads to an analysis of The Gulf War from the nurses' point-of-view. Finally, the conclusion brings together the subjects of gender relations in Israeli society, status hierarchies of nurses and doctors, and the meaning of military experience in constructing, and engendering identities.

Women and War

As Segal (1995: 758) wrote, "The military has been defined traditionally as a masculine institution; it may be the most prototypically masculine of all social institutions." The experience of war is dominated by the image of men in arms and women at home (Carrol & Hall 1993: 20). Many nations currently conscript men, but few require women to serve in the military (see Segal 1995; Howes & Stevenson 1993; Enloe 1988). Where women are drafted, their obligations are often different (Janowitz 1982). In Israel, women are required to serve a two year term but have exemptions if married, with children, or religious (see also Bloom 1982 for an overview of Israeli female soldiers). The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) established The Women's Corps (CHEN) in 1948 as an administrative cadre governing training assignments and military careers of women. Incidentally, it is no coincidence that "Chen" (standing for ''Chel Nashim," "Females Corps" in Hebrew) also means "charm" in Hebrew; in the words of the IDF spokesman, "Chen adds to the IDF the grace and charm which makes it also a medium for humanitarian and social activities" (cited in Yuval-Davis 1985: 663).

The definition of female-soldiers as "non-combatants" has been widely shared cross-nationally, for example in Germany (Tuten 1982; Segal 1995: 760), the UK (Goldman & Stites 1982; Campbell 1993), and the U.S. WASPs (Women's Airforce Service Pilots, see Holm 1992). "When the armed forces need women," argues Segal (1995: 761), "their prior military history is recalled . . . There is, however, a process of cultural amnesia of the contributions women made during emergency situations. In the aftermath of war, women's military activities are reconstructed as minor (or even nonexistent)." This amnesia, like the definition of women as "noncombatants," is man-made. It allows society to maintain the myth of "men in arms and women at home" (Cooke 1993: 178).

The history of female nurses in the military reflects and re-affirms this patriarchical order of the military and society. After World War I, civilian nursing leaders throughout America mounted a campaign to commission officer status for army nurses; The War Department and Surgeon General's

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office fought against it, contending that it "would be improper to give women rank that might give them hierarchical superiority to male officers" (Kalisch & Scobey 1983: 220). The overlooking of the war contribution of nurses, as happened for example in the Vietnam War or in the Gulf War, is part of that male dominated order. The Israeli nurses working during the Gulf War were not part of the military corps. They were civilian professionals doing their emergency duty. To speak about these nurses as "soldiers" is therefore to speak metaphorically, using the nurses' own metaphor. Why these nurses thought about themselves as soldiers, and in what ways did their situation resemble that of soldiers, is the subject of the following analysis.

The Gulf War from the Nurses' Point Of View:
A (Hi)story of National/Professional Commitment

Israel's Experience of the Gulf War

The Gulf War became known as the war that turned "the rear into the front" (Ben-David and Lavee 1992; Danet, Loshitzky, and Bechar-Israeli 1993). However, "the front" was used differently by different people. For men, this view expressed the impotence of Israel; instead of being conscripted and confronting the enemy, they had to passively await inside their home. "This war has changed everything," later wrote a famous Israeli psychiatrist, ''instead of being in the front, we were in the rear. You are stuck in your own home and you must wait, wait . . . Suddenly you recall experiences you have long managed to forget, experiences belonging to our personal and collective past in Europe in the 40's" (Stern 1992: 53). This male speaker was arguably voicing the men's view. Israeli women were already used to the experience of "being stuck in your home and waiting, waiting" during wars. It was arguably that masculine "shame" associated with the Gulf War that led to its systematic deleting from the Israeli media almost as soon as the Coalition forces left Iraq. The cultural amnesia regarding the war efforts of the nurses was arguably also part of that specific masculine discourse of the Gulf War in Israel. The "home front" metaphor had other meanings, however, for Israeli women. For them, it meant a new responsibility for war preparation, a responsibility usually reserved for men. For nurses, it was the hospital that became a "second front," where they went during the crisis, leaving their families behind.

Staging the Gulf War

I conducted open, one-on-one interviews with fifteen nurses, three times: in January 1991 (before the outbreak of the Gulf War), while it took place

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(December 1991), and after its termination (April 1991). The interviews lasted about one hour and were conducted and taped in the nurses' room inside the ward. In addition, I conducted participant observation on nurses' work in a high-risk zone (Tel-Aviv) during the war. All interviews were conducted in Hebrew.

The nurses' experience of the Gulf War was divided by them (in my April 1991 interviews) into three periods: before the war, while it took place, and after its termination. The period before the war was mostly characterized by rumor and panic. The nurses, previously unfamiliar with the consequences of chemical warfare, participated in a series of training lectures and were presented with video films of gas casualties. They were then assigned emergency posts at the hospitals, and were instructed to go there immediately upon hearing the SCUD attack sirens. The possibility existed that Iraqi SCUDs, according to Sadam Hussein's warnings, were armed with a chemical head. The period in which the Gulf War took place, in contrast, was dominated by a soldierlike discourse of commitment. In the last period, after the war was over, this discourse was replaced with rhetoric of betrayal and frustration. The following amalgamated narrative summarizes the changing circumstances and rhetoric of one interviewed nurse, Miri, a head nurse in the nephrological ward.

First, (before the war), the uncertainty was bewildering. Military experts told us about bio-chemical warfare, political commentators told us how mad and unexpected Saddam Hussein is. He (Saddam) actually voiced his threats against Israel on our TV. There were bio-chemical emergency drills at the hospital, and we were told that we are found in a "high risk zone." Until then, I thought Tel-Aviv was in the rear. Missiles, that's all we heard of. He's got missiles that can fly straight from Baghdad to Tel-Aviv.

Then, during the war itself, it was different. We had to leave our families behind and go to the hospital whenever a missile attack occurred. It was a different feeling. We were doing something important, like soldiers. Our husbands were not called upon (to move to their army reserve units). It was only the missiles and us, and we found ourselves defending the rest of them. The hospital was a great place to be in, it really gave you a feeling of pride and responsibility, unlike the home where everybody just listened to the TV and the radio. Then, the Iraqi missiles and the sirens also became a routine. Those missiles usually missed their targets. And they had no chemical heads, as it was called.

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After the coalition forces won the war, again it was different. People began to say that it wasn't really a war. Were there mass casualties? Was there an invasion? It was like waking up from a bad dream that did not materialize. People were quick to forget all about it, and we felt like we were forgotten, too.

Miri's experience and the changing rhetorics she adopted to understand them was common among the interviewed nurses, as the following analysis demonstrates.

Stage 1
Before the War

As the Coalition forces gathered around the Persian Gulf and Sadam Hussein's threats to launch a missile attack on Israel were publicized in the media, Israeli society began a chaotic process of preparation. Citizens were instructed to construct a "sealed room" inside the home and to equip themselves with gas masks, which were distributed to the public at special delivery posts. Several large hospitals were prepared for the possibility of mass casualties following a gas attack. Showers were constructed in these hospitals along the parking lots' pavements, specific rooms and wards were designated to receive the gas victims, and nurses as well as physicians were assigned war duties.

Miri told me the following just before the war:

At the end of each working day I walk near the showers built for the gas attack and recall my mother's stories of the Holocausthow they were all stripped by the Germans and washed in the showers . . . It makes me shudder. It was decided that my ward, which is located in the cellar, would be turned into a large emergency room. Life support systems were put nearby, oxygen masks, atrophin1 in large quantities, all that stuff. I feel like a second holocaust is approaching.

These comments were echoed by other nurses. Malka, working in the newborns' ward, told me that her greatest fear was

from the chemical danger . . . I was practically not afraid of death, but if I was to be injured by the chemicals, if something would get complicated, how would I look afterwards, who will take care of the children . . . This was more frightening than death.

Panic in times of uncertainty is commonly nourished by "horror stories." These unauthorized, unofficial, subterranean rumors are presented as true and are widely believed but lack factual verification (see Best 1989; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994: 10812). In the case of nurses, these rumors

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included stories about unavoidable and disastrous chemical warfare, Sadam Hussein's madness and the unprepared Israeli population. The Holocaust image was frequently used in order to articulate the fears felt by nurses. The Holocaust was also used, however, to propel the nurses into action. It was therefore different from the image of passivity placed upon Israeli men. In the case of nurses, their responsibility was to make sure that such a holocaust would not happen again. In contrast to the continuing usage of the Holocaust image among men during and after the war, nurses used it only in the first stagebefore the war, as Nira of the gynecology ward and Gila, a midwife, report.

What scared me the most was the speech of the hospital's head. I recall one particular sentence of his: "you will encounter thousands of casualties, but first take care of those who have the highest chance to survive. Those who do not stand a chance must be given less priority, even if they are children." The idea that I would have to take part in a selectionin deciding who has 'high chances' and who does notgives me many nightmares. Chemical injuries are different from regular ones. We have no experience in chemical injuries. Nevertheless it islike any other soldiermy national, professional, human, and social duty to come to the hospital and take care of the people. I am a soldier.

This final sentence combines both the fears of the first stage and the rhetorics of commitment that replaced them during war itself.

Stage 2
During The War
The Soldier-Nurse

"During the war we were the state's soldiers." This was the nurses' most common phrase when asked to sum up their war experience. Practically what did the nurses do during a war that had (almost) no casualties? Upon hearing the SCUD attack sirens, nurses had to put on their gas mask and walk/drive to the hospital, leaving behind, in many cases, their "sealed" husband and children. In the hospital itself, however, work was fortunately lacking. No mass casualties from chemical warfare arrived. In fact, those who did arrive were usually the victims of "false injections" (as nurses referred to them)namely persons who panicked and injected themselves with too much atrophin. The fears of the period before the war gradually faded. Many nurses began to refer to them as ''something disseminated by the media." Instead surfaced an alternative rhetoric of pride, commitment, and duty.

Dina: I am like everybody else. 12 hours. From 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Like a soldier. (What about the children?)The big one watches

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over the youngsters. My husband helps . . . (How does it feel to be 12 hours in the ward?)It gives me confidence . . . The hospital is like a bunker. Being with everyone all the time . . . We make gorgeous meals, play cards, domino . . . We even sleep together. There is a very strong feeling of commitment, of patriotism. We do it for the Land of Israel.

Pola: I feel like the hospital is the place for me to be during the war. This is my front . . . If I did not come because the kids at home need me, it would be like deserting my post. I must help those who need me. I am a soldier nurse.

The rhetorics of soldiering adopted by the nurses is part of a larger, national script of militarism in Israel (Ben Eliezer 1995; Gal 1986; Lieblich 1979). The militarization of civil society has characterized Israel ever since its formative pre-state years (19001948) and during its existence through seven wars. Although it occasionally glorifies the symbol of "female fighters," this overall male-dominated militaristic script obviously has far-reaching gender repercussions. I deal with this cultural script in the conclusion, while this section focuses on describing its temporary adoption by the nurses. Several nurses told me how they brought their children with them to the hospital. This often resulted in improvised kindergartens of up to 120 children. When asked why they brought their children to the hospital, nurses emphasized what they perceived as the relative security of the hospital compared to the "sealed room" at home. Many of them said that they would rather come to the hospital during SCUD attacks than stay at home. At home, they said, the ambiance of war was stronger. This made sense because during SCUD attacks, the home often became a chaotic information centerradio and television loudly playing, relatives and friends phoningwhile at the hospital, order was maintained. As Rina explained:

At home I was much more pressed, here at least I felt useful. At home I was like paralyzed, looking out through the window and seeing no one. One time, the taxi driver who took me to the hospital in the middle of the night told me that I was crazy to go out in a time like this. I told him: "I am a nurse."

Sara: I was proud to be a nurse and to have to come to the hospital. My husband stayed at home with my mother and our childrenand it was the first time I did not worry about them.

The hospital was dually constituted during the war as both a second home and a front. It was at the hospital that nurses "felt more secure," and it was also at the hospital that nurses (to use their own terms) "fought" and

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"protected the homeland." The two conceptions of the hospital served two purposes. Considering the hospital as "a front" cultivated the patriotic feelings of nurses and helped them make their case to their husbands and the rest of Israeli society. But the hospital was also a 'second home,' a place where one spent twelve hours a day, cooked meals, played and talked with friends. The hospital was also arguably safer. Another nurse, Hagar, said she thought of the nurses as some sort of a "rescue team in the middle of danger, a . . . Rambo to whom nothing can happen." "Upon hearing the sirens we would go to the battle, each where posted" said another nurse. A typical interview with the "soldier nurse'' sounded like this:

I: When you had to leave home during darkness or missile alarm, were you not scared? Didn't you think about yourself? About taking such risks?

Shoshi (age 45, head nurse, married with two children): No, I did not think about it. I thought about other Israeli soldiers, like Trumpeldor, who said, "It is good to die for our Land."

I: During missile attacks, whom did you feel committed to? First to the patients? The family? Yourself?

Shoshi: I feel that my first duty is for the Land of Israel.

I: How did your husband react to the fact that you're going to work in a time like that?

Shoshi: He did not complain. It was clear that this was part of my duties. At times he got angry, but I did not care. I explained to him that I deserve now his support for going to army reserves (milu'im) in his place.

I: And the daughters? (Shoshi had two girls, ages 8 and 14)

Shoshi: They wanted me to stay. But acted perfectly when I left.

Other nurses spoke about a feeling of "being chosen," a feeling of uniqueness and common destiny. Another version of the soldiering discourse accentuated the strictness of duty. "All I did was follow orders" was a common phrase. It should be noted that several nurses pointed out to me that they were warned that a punishment of up to three months in jail was waiting "deserters" (a term taken directly from the military's jargon) who did not show up for work. This threat (like Sadam Hussein's) later proved to be false, which elicited anger and disbelief from many nursesfeelings to which I will return later.

During the war nurses also accentuated the ambiance of "togetherness" at the hospital. The solidarity they praised could be found in combat units around the world (see Higonnet et al. 1987) as well as among Israeli

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fighters (see, for example, Gal 1986; Katriel 1991). In the case of nurses, these feelings of solidarity and togetherness were constituted as a 'sisterhood of fighters.' Furthermore, if wars are rites of passage, than these descriptions of the second stage of the war could be compared to the liminal, intermediate phase of transition rites (see Van Gennep 1960), where those undergoing 'the rite' experience a strong feeling of solidarity, a state of "communitas," in Turner's (1969) terms. Many nurses said that they felt like the status differences separating them and the (male) doctors became insignificant. Mina, a head nurse, said it was

wonderful. People with whom you worked for twenty years and did not develop more than a superficial personal contact suddenly lost their distance and became closely attached. Like one big family. I came to know people inside and out during the war and this itself was a reason for celebration.

Not only gender and professional but also national boundaries were dissolved. Talila, an Arabic nurse, told me how during the Gulf War, when she left her home in an Arab village in the middle of the night and headed for the hospital, cars of the Shabac (the Israeli internal security services) which were patrolling nearby would point their lights so that she could better observe the darkened road. Before the Gulf War, Talila said, these cars would "point their lights at my eyes in order to dazzle me."

When asked about their "real" home nurses denied any conflicts during the war. After the war, however, other perspectives surfaced. Chani, working in the children's ward, reported:

Whenever my husband was at home with the kids there was no problem concerning my work. The problem arose when he had to be out for his own work. Then I was in a conflict, torn between my professional and national commitment and my duties at home. As a nurse I was committed to come to the hospital where people needed my help, but as a mother my child needed me just as badly. Finally I had to leave my kid with the neighbors.

The home/work, home/front conflict is, of course, a gendered one. Israeli male fighters, it seems, have been traditionally exempted from such a conflict. In a well-documented PhD thesis examining the war language of Israeli veterans (Lomsky-Feder 1994), interviewed veterans seldom referred to such a conflict. In their (and Israeli society's) eyes, their absence from home was a necessary and negligible by-product of their military career "in the service of the nation." However, when the nurses attempted to appropriate this script, their voice was silenced. Israeli society did not

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recognize them as the soldiers of the Gulf War, and their story was covered by the national, male-dominated text, which denied the fact that this war ever existed.

The home/work conflict (expanded to home/front in the case of nurses) was always present in the interviews. One nurse referred to it by saying that when she was "in the front," her children were undergoing "army basic training" (tironut in Hebrew), meaning that their staying behind at home was a sort of a strengthening "rite of passage" for them (notice, again, the appropriation of militaristic jargon). Several nurses expressed a sense of shame for being more secure at the hospital than their family was at home. Most important, many of the nurses told me that their husbands did not "really approve'' of their absences from home. This frustration became particularly evident when it was gradually realized that no casualties were arriving at the hospitals. The rhetoric of commitment and soldiering, therefore, were also needed as a justification for going to work and leaving the children at home under the responsibility of the father. The discourse of soldiering was no doubt chosen since it was both called for by the circumstances and already constituted as part of the normative order of Israeli society. In addition, the commonly heard phrase during the war "at last our value (as nurses) is recognized" should also be read against the historical background of the low-prestige, gender-specific profession of nursinga topic I will return to in the conclusion.

Stage 3
After The War

The end of the Gulf War provided a brief catharsis followed by a sense of frustration. This was true both in Israeli society and world-wide (see Kellner 1992; MacArthur 1992; Mowlana et al. 1992; Taylor 1992). The war had ended, but Saddam Hussein quickly re-established centralized control over rebel areas and probably resumed nuclear production. Radical critics of the Bush administration resumed their criticism. In the summer of 1991, USA National Public Radio acquired temporary financing from a group calling itself "The Gulf War. Triumph without Victory" (see Cooke 1993: 181). In mid-January 1992 Saddam celebrated the anniversary of his "victorious war." Contrary to Baudrillard's (1991) assertions, the Gulf War did take place; and it was very real as far as the Israeli public was concerned. A war took place and it had profound implications on Israeli life, entailing a loss of faith in the military, the political leadership, and the illusion of national independence (Israel was completely subjected during the war to American interests and prescriptions).

The frustration felt by nurses after the war should therefore be considered in the general context of the war's aftermath. The following quotations should serve to illustrate this sense of frustration.

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Gila, a gynecological nurse: How do I feel after the war? I feel empty. As if I was completely emptied, and then left alone. A feeling of exploitation. I refer to the system, which demanded that I work during the war, while completely ignoring the fact that I was a woman and a mother, recently married and with children.

Orli, an emergency room nurse: It was a tough and difficult time. I don't like to recall it. I don't like to discuss it. What I want is simply to close down this chapter of my life, and forget it ever happened.

Naomi, vice head nurse: It was chaos. My dream about a strong and omnipotent Israel was destroyed.

While the last remark could have been heard from any other Israeli citizen after the war, the others disclose feelings peculiar to the nurses. In the interviews conducted after the war nurses accounted for their frustration as stemming from the fact that "no one appreciated our tremendous efforts." This lack of appreciation was related by most of them to the "general dismissal of the nursing profession in Israeli society." A small number of nurses associated it with the general frustration felt by the Israeli public after the war: "in a situation where everyone's frustrated, no one pays attention to the other's sacrifices," they said. Many nurses complained that as things were "back to normal," no onetheir husbands, the male doctors, Israeli society in generalseemed to remember what they had been through. They were especially angry with the doctors, who "immediately resumed their arrogant ways and looked at us from above.''

Conclusion:
Nursing, Soldiering and Subversion

The war myth of "men in arms and women at home" is one of the most prevalent in human cultures and histories. Like all myths, however, it is a fictiona fiction, as usually is the case, told by men. The case of the Israeli nurses in the Gulf War could be made to question this fiction and to shed light on some of its premises and consequences. Miriam Cooke (1993: 182) suggested that the Gulf war is a "postmodernist war" in order to highlight her claim that

Whereas wars previously codified the binary structure of the world by designating gender-specific tasks and gender-specific areas where these tasks might be executed, today's (postmodernist) wars are represented as doing the opposite. Postmodern wars highlight and then parody those very binarieswar/peace,

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good/evil, front/home, combatant/noncombatant, friend/foe, victory/defeat, patriotism/pacifismwhich war had originally inspired.

This general assertion needs to be further located in the Israeli context, particularly in regard to the local meaning of the cultural script of soldiering. Israel is used to having recurrent wars which interrupt its social order. This abnormal-cum-routine phenomenon was termed "the interrupted system" by the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling (1985). Within the constantly interrupted Israeli system, war and peace are (or at least have been) constructed not as a binarism but rather as a complementary reality. This no doubt had immense socio-psychological repercussions in terms of justifying militarization (Ben-Eliezer 1995) and propagating a 'siege mentality' or "Masada complex" (Ben-Yehuda 1995).

As a result, military service is a "key symbol" (Ortner 1973) in Israeli society, denoting manhood and legitimizing male superiority. Lieblich (1979: 15), who studied the ethos of Israeli soldiers, quotes them as saying that

War is an integral part of our life in the country . . . At war, men in arms risk their lives in order to defend the citizens . . . Women, elderly and children must stay behind and worry about the fate of their relatives. This is how it must be.

The militaristic script arguably provides the larger context for gender construction in Israel. Military service, traditionally a male domain, still largely defines the extent to which an individual is in the 'social-evaluative' system of Israel (Ben Ari 1989; Gal 1986; Horowitz & Kimmerling 1974). The significance of military service as a mechanism of exclusion and inclusion is further demonstrated by the fact that Israeli-Arabs are not drafted and women are not allowed to serve in combat units.

Wars (postmodernist or otherwise) often create a state of emergency and "communitas," thus enabling role (including gender role) reversals. The example of the Gulf War nurses is a recent illustration. However, Israel has a long tradition of "female fighters," from the Palmach (pre-state elite troops) to present-day IDF tank instructors. Nevertheless, these women's roles were generally bracketed as exceptional and symbolic (Yuval-Davis 1985). While the quote from Cooke illustrates how fluid and resurgent definitions are, the militaristic script of Israeli society can explain how the residues of gender still remain largely unchanged.

Furthermore, the term "role reversal" is a biased and incomplete description of what happened to the Gulf War nurses. These nurses took on many additional tasks as mothers, wives, nurses, and soldiers. To

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merely describe this as a "role reversal" enabled by the war would be subscribing to the male view, stating that women can be either (normally) at home or (abnormally) at the front. What actually happened, in contrast, was that nurses did a "double shift," at home and at workas usually is the case with women, particularly working mothers (Hochschild 1989). Given the propensity of men to take for granted women's "double shifts," as well as the construction of soldiering as a male domain in Israel, it is not surprising that the Gulf war nurses were largely forgotten by Israeli society. As Yuchtman-Yaar, Peres and Goldberg (1994: 7) observed,

Israel's passivity in the Gulf War was especially frustrating to the male reservists who, instead of being called for active military duties, found themselves waiting in sealed rooms together with their families, having little to do except for complaining about their illfate as unused fighters. This sense of humiliation was probably reinforced by the observation that the main active duties during those times were typically performed by the women rather than the men of the family. Thus, for the first time in their war-laden history, Israel's incapacitated men were watching their wives undertaking most of the responsibilities for protecting the safety and welfare of the family.

The silencing or overlooking of the war contribution of nurses has parallel examples elsewhere, the most notable being the American nurses in Vietnam (Norman 1990). Many nurses (estimates range from 4,000 to 15,000, according to Norman 1990: 4), most of them serving in the Army Nurse Corps, were stationed between 19651973 in over thirty hospitals and intensive care units in South Vietnam. No official record of this group was kept together; "no one thought that researchers would be interested in this group" (Norman 1990: 4). Official large-scale research on Vietnam veterans, such as the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, indeed omitted nurses (Norman 1990: 134). Until the mid-1980s, the nursing profession did not acknowledge the Vietnam veterans in its ranks. Moreover, to many of these nurses the war provided a time of responsibility and authority, and it was difficult for them to surrender afterward to the male-dominated medical system of the civilian world. The overall similarity with the Israeli case highlights the issue of gender. In peacetime, each gender typically performs specific roles; in wartime, nurses could take on roles previously reserved for men.

The appropriation of the masculine discourse of soldiering by nurses during the Gulf War should therefore be seen as an adoption of a culturally available rhetoric that could make sense of their changed circumstances and experiences. Once adopted, some of the nurses no doubt also recognized

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this rhetoric as a means for garnering prestige. This latter usage is supported by a "conventional" feminist critique of nursing as a profession embodying "passivity, self-sacrifice, devotion, and subordination . . . all unambiguously locating it within patriarchally constructed femininity" (Gamarnikow 1991: 110). "The physician or surgeon prescribesthe nurse carries out": This phrase, originally written by the founding mother of modern nursing (Nightingale 1882: 6) is still a binding one. "Faithful servants we should be, happy in our dependence, which helps us to accomplish great deeds'' (Former Matron 1906, cited in Gamarnikow 1991: 118). Such a discourse of obedience and service is not very different, in principle, from the discourse of soldiering. The characteristic features of nursing (low pay, low prestige, unsocial hours, high turnover of personnel, low income, and lack of job autonomy) are determined by a single feature of its practitioners, namely their gender (see also Ehrenreich and English 1976; Game and Pringle 1983; Turner 1987: 14750).

In interviews, the nurses clearly spoke about the low prestige of their profession and the need to "rehabilitate" the nurse's image. This realization was widely shared by nurses and arguably reflects a "group consciousness" derived from similar educational background and work conditions. Academic education for nurses was introduced in Israel in 1968, first as postbasic for registered nurses followed by continuous academization of most schools of nursing. A master's program for nurses was opened in Tel-Aviv University in 1982 (see also Shuval 1992). This group consciousness, despite frustration caused by the low prestige and low salary of the nursing profession, can also give rise to idealistic notionssuch as "soldiering." Ben-David (1972) showed that attempts at the improvement of working conditions and salaries by Israeli nurses were regarded as immoral efforts "to raise the price of an essential service and turn what ought to be a mission into a business" (cited in Bloom 1982: 158). In Ben-David's (1972: 36) interpretation, "The only way the supply of manpower can be maintained, given such a set of circumstances, is by using cheap female labor and appealing to certain kinds of idealism to which women are sensitive." This is true not only in Israel. The images of nurses used in America on war recruitment posters, for example, always emphasized the saintly, spiritual image of the wartime nurse (sometimes in a pose identical to the famed Pietà; see Kalisch and Scobey 1983: 221). Never in American history did legislators raise the issue of exposing nurses, even civilian, to the high risks of combat areas; the implicit assumption made was that women, "by virtue of being nurses and because of the exigencies of war, were exempt from prevailing protective attitudes about the utilization of women in combat areas" (Kalisch and Scobey 1983: 238).

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The rhetorics of soldiering, however, is also part of a national militaristic script that serves as a functional means to promote the enlisting of the citizen for national goals. A complementary reading could therefore regard the discourse of soldiering as a pragmatic means employed by nurses to justifyin their own as well as husbands' eyestheir absence from home during the war. After the war, as national pride faded away and there was no time for any discourses of soldiering, this rhetoric was no longer instrumental. Nurses began to question the very legitimacy of the country to "send them away from home." When denied the symbolic capital related to the manly script of war, which their rhetorics appropriated, many nurses turned their postwar frustration into a critical reexamination of the key symbols and key scripts of Israeli society. This disillusionment with the fundamental postulates of collective life is perhaps a characteristic of periods following unvictorious warsas was the case after the Korean and Vietnam Wars in the US, or the 1973 October War in Israel (Livne 1977).

In sum, nurses adopted the masculine rhetorics of soldiering given the availability and instrumentality of that discourse, as well as the absence of another set of symbols. "Soldiering," judging from what seemed to be an authentic enthusiasm during the war, was also something the nurses have indeed felt with all their hearts. It would have been only "natural" had the nurses chosen the image of the "national mother," derived from the motherly ethos of nursing and caring, as their symbol of commitment during the war. No doubt they could follow Ruddick's (1989: 132) dictum of ''maternal thinking" and generalize "the potentiality made available to activity of women, that is, caring laborto society as a whole." However, nurses adopted another imagethe militaristic image of the soldiernurse.

All in all, the situation of The Gulf War nurses was rather similar to that of the Israeli female soldier in general. Both receive a double messagethey are, on the one hand, involved in war, but are also, on the other hand, denied the "privilege" of being "real soldiers." Women's life, as nurses or soldiers, are socially circumscribed to allow them "military service" after which they must return to society understanding their role as a woman. Bloom (1982: 157) sees this situation as stemming from the Jewish tradition, going back as long as Biblical times:

It's good for Jewish women to be strong and aggressive when the Jews are in danger and she's acting in the people's interest . . . If we go through the Bible and legends carefully we see that whenever Jewish survival is at stake, Jewish women are called upon to be strong and aggressive. When the crisis is over, it's back to patriarchy.

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The militaristic script, although usually regarded as differentiating Israel from the Diaspora, the new Sabra from the "old" Jew, is therefore also part of the larger Jewish tradition, which has always separated the roles of men and women, designating the public domain for the former and the domestic for the latter (Heilman 1983; Sered 1990,1992). War has long been a male space and its stories and meaning were therefore told and decided by men alone. This chapter attempts to retell the war story in a different, gendered voice.

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12
Epilogue

Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari

The beginnings of this volume lie in a series of papers presented at the annual meeting of the Israel Anthropological Association in December 1994. The meeting was held in the Judean Desert in Ein Gedi, a kibbutz located not far from Masada. The mood at the meeting was directly influenced by the hope and optimism generated by what seemed at the time to be rather promising developments in the peace process. The Masada story and its meaning for the collective memory of Israeli-Jews was chosen as the theme of the central panel discussion held on the eve of the meeting. As the participants gathered in the hall, the mood was much more festive and exciting than in any of the previous meetings we had attended. The place and the time contributed to these sentiments and to the lively discussion that ensued. Through a focus on how the Masada story has been used in contemporary Israel, members of the panel explored our society's nationalistic character just at the period when it appeared to be weakening in face of voices calling for peace. Like an angry prophet, one of the presentersour colleague, Gideon Aranargued that nationalism and terror were an integral part of the Jewish experience throughout the ages, and not a rare and peculiar chapter that was expressed in the Masada story. Less than a year afterward, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by a right-wing extremist who yearned to stop the peace process.

Today, upon completing this book, we are in the midst of a faltering peace process accompanied by violence and terror, and internal conflicts and struggles that appear to have reached their peak in Rabin's murder. This internal strife divides and cleaves Israeli society, has undermined many of its traditional bases of social consensus, and has forced many Israelis to grapple with issues and questions that were taken for granted in

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the past. During the past decade or so, notions of peace and war, of the Israeli soldier and of military service have become central to public debates about the identity of our society, and the meaning of "Israeliness," Zionism, and nationalism in our national context.

It may be too early to explore these issues or to reach some long-term conclusions for we are in the midst of a constantly changing reality and in the middle of a complex process of identity-formulation. At the same time, we would like to consider a number of 'voices' being heard lately in Israeli debates about war and the military. In this way we hope to complement our editorial introduction both by drawing together a further number of implications of the volume as a whole and by relating it to recent developments in Israeli discourse and experience.

One of the most prominent voices heard in recent years expresses the private pain accompanying war, and the high personal price demanded by military service. Since the 1970s public discussions of war and the warrior-ethos have dealt more with their traumatic aspects than with their sublime or glorious "face"; such deliberations have stressed the individual at the expense of the Israeli "collective," and personal burdens rather than contributions to society (Bilu and Witztum 1997; Keinan 1997; Ofrat 1991; Schwartz 1995; Shaked 1996; Shochat 1991; Sivan 1996). In the past decade this trend appears to have strengthened through the special emphasis placed on articulating private mourning and personal pain. Difficult pictures of troopers depicted as victims, of soldiers with shocked faces crying at funerals for their friends, and the wailing and screaming of family members on such occasions accompany us daily through personal participation or (more commonly) through portrayals of the media. This trend, touching many groups in Israeli society, reached its climax in what is known in Israel as the ''Disaster of the Helicopters" (Ason HaMasokim), in which tens of soldiers died on their way to deployment in Lebanon and which was declared a national day of mourning.

But the situation is more complex than a simple move from public to private modes of expression. What appears to be happening is that in place of a situation in which personal bereavement was silenced so that collective bereavement could be expressed, what we now see happening is the expropriation of private mourning from families. Personal, intimate expressions of bereavement have been turned into something national and collective. Prime examples of this trend are the voices of families, relatives, and friends who talk and reminisce about fallen soldiers but do so in the context of national-public fora (television and radio programs, or extended newspaper profiles, for instance). We do not argue that the peace process is the direct and only cause of this trend. Nevertheless the deep disappointment with the faltering peace process, exhaustion and fatigue from

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exposure to (and experience of) fatalities and casualties that have been accumulating over years, and the strengthening of the media (and the competition between them) have come together to intensify a trend that had begun earlier.

The image of the soldier in public debate is becoming more dependent, more vulnerablemore childlike. "Honey, The Soldiers Have Shrunk" warns Doron Rosenblum (1994), a publicist with a biting sense of humor, in the title to a newspaper item dealing with this issue. In the past few years, an array of protective and sheltering elements in representations of soldiers are emerging alongside the ethos of the young hero. This situation is the result of the growing importance of psychological and therapeutic models in dealing with situations of pressure and crisis and of the greater involvement of parents in the army. If during the Lebanon War and the intifada it was soldiers' moral stances and attitudes that were questioned, now it is their emotional strength that is constantly brought up in public discourse and in the anxieties of parents. During the disaster of the helicopters, for example, parents complained (through the media and through regular military channels) that commanders did not allow psychologists into the units that were harmed so as to aid their sons in grappling with the tragedy.

A major in the reserves who served as a mental health officer in combat units (a general term denoting psychologists or social workers), explains the resistance of field commanders to the use of therapists in their units: "If you allow the use of mental health officers, it is perceived to be a sort of admission of weakness. It's part of Israeli machismo that maintains that one is not allowed to cry, to talk, to say one is frightened" (Zohar 1997). As if to echo his words, an ex-fighter in Israel's sea commandos, and himself a television reporter, commented after a tragedy in Lebanon in which a large number of this unit's soldiers were killed:

This is a skilled fighting machine that naturally leaves very little place for psychological vicissitudes and for self-meditation and the expression of emotions. It's not in the unit's character; it's not in the character of its men; they're not built for it, and the unit does not especially encourage it. (Segev 1997)

Is there a psychologist in the unit? The interviewer questions him:

In my opinion they won't need any rehabilitation. With the character of the men as I know them, they will get organized and go out to action tomorrow without a second thought . . . I remember from my period in the unit, during reserve duty, that the psychologists never had any work in our unit. Their role

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begins and ends with the classification and grading of the men upon enlistment. (Segev 1997)

In this way, this ex-fighter renounces the image of the vulnerable fighter who needs support and to express his emotions during crises. The task of the psychologist, moreover, is limited to locating those individuals who are best suited to handling emotional ordeals and tests without professional help. Yet the very existence of these kinds of discussionsover the need for mental health officers and the qualities demanded of combat soldiersexpresses basic dissensions over the essence of the warrior-ethos and over the nature of (Jewish) Israeli masculinity. A colonel in the reserves and an ex-commander of the IDF's Department of Mental Health describes the contradictory forces at work within the army:

It may well be that in the past few years, with the emphasis placed on personal distress and the propensity to 'over-psychologize' soldiers' behavior, there was a certain message of emasculation of the commander's role. Mental health officers and psychologists began to do what was expected of commanders to do. That is, there was an over-emphasis on the distress of the individual at the expense of a message that young enlisted people [are expected to] perform in the face of the stresses and pressures of the army. If the message of over-psychologizing was exaggerated, then the message of the commander who sees himself working without a mental health officer is also exaggerated. The truth is in the middle. The commander is in need of help and counselling, and soldiers who are stressed and that are (as I mentioned before) a minority, must have professional treatment. (Zohar 1997)

The ethos of the warrior has thus become much less coherent, is now more confusing, exposed to multiple and often contradictory discourses. So far has this trend developed that combat soldiers themselves have begun to demand the return of their 'heroism.' A soldier in the elite Golani infantry brigade who is serving in the "security belt" inside Lebanon states: "[W]e are fighters. That's why we enlisted, and all of you stop getting depressed everytime a soldier is killed." (Maariv 15 August 1997)

Parents, as we have stated, are major actors in the social discourse on war and the military. Their present involvement in the IDF is especially noticeable in comparison with the early years of the state. Parents are involved in such matters as their children's enlistment, influencing their choice of units and roles, and in providing emotional and material support when their sons or daughters are in the army or on leave at home. They, the parents, use a variety of formal means (like the IDF ombudsman or

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appeals to members of the Knesset) or informal practices (such as letters and telephone calls to commanders) in regard to the conditions under which their children serve (Hanna Herzog, n.d.; Katriel 1991; Lieblich 1987). Parents are also using the judicial system to make legal claims dealing with deaths due to accidents, means of personal commemoration allowed by the Ministry of Defense (Weiss 1997), or ownership of fallen soldiers' bodies (Handelman and Shamgar-Handelman 1997). In the political sphere their activities are expressed and organized in protest movements initiated during Lebanon War"Parents Against Silence"and (later) the Intifada"Parents Against Burnout" (Herzog n.d.)and in support of Israeli military activity through "Mothers for Israel'' encompassing mothers from Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The most prominent actors in these social and political activities are parents from secular middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds, the very groups that feel most alienated from contemporary centers of power and most fearful about the future of the peace process.

It is not surprising then, that all of the military authorities that have spoken in public about the decline in willingness to serve (the head of the adjutant branch of General Headquarters, the chief education officer, and the head of the behavioral sciences department) have pointed an accusing finger first of all at parents, and by implication specifically at mothers (Bernheimer 1996; Kapra 1996; Rotem 1996). In fact, the most protective voices are those of mothers who strive to improve the conditions under which their children serve, while fathers tends to be torn between loyalty to the military organization and loyalty to their families. In this manner, one can certainly argue that the Israeli mother continues to fulfil what has always been her major purpose in the civilian sphere: to be a mother (Berkovitch 1993). Yet what we are witness to now, are changes in the contents of motherhood to fit the demands of a more individualistic and less ideological society. From a mother who gave her son to the army on the basis of an agreement or acquiesence with the decree that the good of the nation-state takes priority over the good of the family, we increasingly find a mother who insists on the safety of her children and places personal interest before collective ones (while this mother is usually secular middle-class, mothers from the national-religious camp tend to continue the traditional-collective pattern). It is important to stress that while anxious and critical voices of parents began to be heard during the 1970s (Sivan 1996) and were magnified during the Lebanon War and the intifada (Ezrahi 1997), today they are sounded most forcefully and (at times) harshly. From a situation in which parents accepted the social mandate regarding the role of the soldiers to protect the state, they increasingly voice demands that the state protect its soldiers.

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Yet not only is the emotional strength of soldiers up for debate, today it is also their very commitment to serve in the army and specifically in combat units. Over the years, the social, political, and cultural processes that eroded the once mighty warrior-ethos have reached their climax in the penetrating public debate over the theme of motivation to serve (see Bernheimer 1996; Gazit 1996; Harel 1996; Kapra 1996; Lebel 1997). Without entering the heart of the discussionis there a real crisis in motivation or not? is it limited only to reservists or does it cover the IDF's standing army?the very fact that this discussion is taking place is indicative of the way in which willingness to serve is no longer a taken-for-granted matter in wide segments of Israeli society. In his speech honoring the first anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's death, the IDF's chief of staff allowed that "the evasion of service in the IDF is no longer a stain on the dodger, and [conversely] volunteering out of a recognition [of its importance], out of a wish to contribute no longer earns suitable admiration." (Yediot Akharonot 29 October 1996).

Lowering rates of motivation are directly linked in public discourse to the peace process and to a decrease in the feeling that the IDF is necessary. Alongside considerations related to a contribution to society, families and individuals increasingly voice public reflections about the "benefits" of service ("what's in it for me?") (Bemheimer 1996; Miller 1997). "The change is from a notion in which the individual serves the establishment and ideology to one in which the role of the ideology and the establishment is to serve the individual'' says an ex-head of the IDF's behavioral sciences department who was the first to raise the issue of motivation (Lebel 1997).

These trends are increasingly accompanied and reinforced by another set of processes. During the past twenty years, an assortment of businesses have mushroomed in and around arrangements for (and support during) military service (Gilat 1997). These include commercial books and manuals aimed at new recruits, and stores specializing in military gear. The appearance of these services and products in the Israeli marketplace does not signal a growing militarization as much as a growing commercialization and individualization of Israeli life (Birenbaum-Carmeli 1995). But there is more here. In recent years, some private, money-making programs charged with preparing youngsters for military service have been established. These undertakings (directed almost exclusively at males) include physical training, team work, and talks about different military units. The unexpected effect of this pattern, we would argue, is what may be termed a privatization of attitudes to the military. Embodied in such expressions as "sayeret o nayeret" (roughly translated as "an elite unit or a cushy job"), the notion is that if the army does not meet one's expectations about self-actualization then one can withdraw and invest in other activities (e.g., a "cushy" job

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allowing individuals to pursue university studies or to enter the labor market). What we see emerging here is a sort of exchange relation between individuals and families and the military: when the IDF does not meet people's expectations then they may withdraw emotionally and physically (both are important) and look for other frameworks (higher education, workplaces, leisure activities, for example) where their desires can be met. For many young men, and increasingly women, representations of the military and the status and authority of serving in certain roles are interpreted according to their personal aims. While they may replicate, at one level, the hegemonic relations (continuing to serve in combat units), at another level they grant different meaning to collective service and willingness to sacrifice (see Levy-Schreiber and Ben-Ari forthcoming).

A closer look at the debate about motivation reveals that Israeli society is actually preoccupied with the ambitions and enthusiasm of a specific social sector: secular, highly educated, Israeli-born men. In other words, the preoccupation is with the motivation of members of the hegemony, or more correctly, with members of the hegemony who are losing their power. For example, from data analyzed by Reuven Gal who heads the Carmel Institute for Military and Social Research, there is a serious drop in motivation among secular youths and a rise among youths from the national-religious camp. The specific problem is a decrease in rates of volunteering for combat units among youths from secular high schools and from kibbutzim (Miller 1997). Penetrating questions about the motivation of other groups such as religious youngsters, new immigrants, young women, or disadvantaged youths (whatever their actual motivation) have not directly become part of public debate.

The situation related to reserve soldiers is even more troubling and has only recently entered public discussion. Accordingly, while most of the debate has centered on the lack of motivation among soldiers before or during their compulsory term of service, the problem with reservists seems much more acute (Levitzky 1996). According to data published in media reports, only two out of eleven potentially eligible males serve as reserve troops (Ringel-Hoffman 1997). While it is probably true that only a minority of "able-bodied" men ever served in the IDF's reserve forces, current circumstances represent something nearing a crisis. On the one hand, the fact that so few men serve has led to descriptions of reserve troops feeling that they belong to an ever-dwindling number of men who share the national burden. On the other hand (and reinforcing this trend), the growing number of evaders from service offer a variety of role models for younger men who have completed their compulsory term of mandatory service. Indeed a new and independent lobby, "The Forum of Battalion and Brigade Commanders in the IDF" was recently set up to press for

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greater recognition of the role of reservists and for improving their conditions of service (Ringel-Hoffman 1997).

It is impossible to understand the "crisis" in motivation without taking into account the political and social context of Rabin's murder and the "thrusting aside" (out of the political center) of groups supporting the peace process. This push out of the center has not resulted (as it did during the Lebanon War) in active political participation by supporters of the peace process aimed at influencing and changing the political agenda. Rather, the trend has been for them to retreat into the private sphere, relinquishing public arenas to the right and thereby further reinforcing the perceived decrease in motivation to serve. An example is the voice of a father in an article entitled "Let Others Go to Fight." In it an ex-combat pilot, a lieutenant colonel, says that with a heavy heart he will suggest to his children to avoid combat service: "We have been killed enough. Now let those who believe that we must fight for a tunnel fight" (Rabin 1996).

In this way not only have the contents of the warrior-ethos changed over time, but no less importantly, its importance among different groups of youths has also been changing. If during the Yishuv and first few years of the state youths from kibbutzim and secular youth movements were identified with the ethos, in time this link weakened and the ethos began to apply to other groups. As of late it has come to apply especially to members of the national-religious camp (Bernheimer 1996; Meisels 1995; Rapaport et al. 1995) who tend to be marked by rather strong nationalistic attitudes (Bar-Tal 1996). Indeed the link between national-religious youths, nationalism, and the military reached its apex when charges about attempts by the national-religious camp to take over the army as part of its struggle over centers of power in Israel began to be heard. For example, the spreadheading to an article in the weekend edition of HaAretz stated:

Circles in the religious Zionist camp are trying to gain control over power centers in the IDF, and the lowering of motivation among secular enlistees is playing into their hands. That is the diagnosis reached by Dr. Reuven Gal who was the chief psychologist of the army and today carries out research about attitudes of youths. Is a religious putsch in the military possible? Gal: "At this moment this sounds like little more than a wild hypothesis, but only for now." (Miller 1997)

Indeed, secular elites often use the very conspicuousness of national-religious youths in the IDF as one reason to justify the need for "their" youngsters to volunteer, so that this sphere will not be abandoned to them.

Alongside large numbers among the national-religious camp who actualize their nationalism through military service, another trend, marked

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by what may be termed nationalism-without-military-service, is fast increasing in strength. This phenomenon is found primarily in the ultra-religious camp (haredim) many of whose members are exempt from service yet hold nationalistic attitudes toward Arabs and other non-Jews. Despite low levels of enlistment, members of this camp are showing much greater political involvement than in the past and are actively cooperating with the government of the right. This pattern of high political participation and low military enlistment rates underlies the intensity of the debate about drafting yeshiva students. It is our impression that sentiments about the basic lack of social justice in and around this issue are being voiced by a variety of groups in contemporary Israel (Yemini and Rapaport 1997).

Another group that is interesting for its pattern of nationalism-with-limited-military-service are immigrants from the former Soviet Union (Horowitz 1997). This group too is characterized by generally nationalistic voting patterns. Yet, at the same time, their motivation to serve in the army is not very high, and their rate of participation in combat units is lower than comparable Israeli-born groups with similar educational attainments (Bernheimer 1996). It seems that from Israel's beginnings immigrant groups were characterized by lower rates of volunteering in comparison with Israeli-born groups for whom military service was always a taken-for-granted matter. But today, in contrast to earlier periods, immigrants from the former Soviet Union have clear and substantial political power (with a party based on a significant electoral base), which they actualize through participation in a right-wing government. Moreover, their limited commitment to the IDF derives from and supports the conditional attitudes to the army that are the result of Israel becoming more individualistic and commercialized.

In conclusion, while we are witness to an intense public debate about the character, erosion and transformation of military service in Israel, we must understand that military service is still strongly supported and accepted by most of its Jewish population (Meisels 1995; Lomsky-Feder 1998). Take two examples. The first is a letter sent by reserve soldiers to the prime minister in October 1996, which criticized the activities of the government and the erosion of the fighting spirit. It was signed by soldiers from combat units (Rabin and Vertner 1996; Rapaport 1996; also Verter 1997). The second example is the storm and debate that followed the public pronouncements of Aviv Geffen, a famous popular singer who did not serve in the army and who articulated rather strong views against war and military service (Eisenhandler 1997). The public's condemnation of his views was swift and firm. While there is much more room for public representations of private pain and mourning, for vulnerable and sensitive images of contemporary soldiers, and for a far wider array of attitudesinstrumental,

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supportive, or criticaltoward the IDF and national service by different social groups, critical voices in Israeli society are still conditional on meeting the standards set by the ethos of the warrior.

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Berkovitch, Nitza. 1993. "Motherhood as a National Mission: The Construction of Womanhood in the Legal Discourse in Israel." Paper presented at a conference on Israeliness and Womanhood: Feminist Scholarship and National Discourse. Jerusalem: The Van Leer Institute.

Bernheimer, Avner. 1996. "Profile 96." Yediot Aharonot 19 April. (Hebrew)

Bilu, Yoram, and Eliezer Witztum. 1996. "Transformations in the Construction of War-Related Loss and Suffering in Israeli Society." Unpublished Manuscript.

Birenbaum-Carmeli, Daphna. 1995. A Good Place in the Middle: A Residential Area as a Means of Constructing Class Identity. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Eisenhandler, Eran 1997: Scandal. Maariv Lano'ar 19: 1819. (Hebrew)

Ezrahi, Yaron. 1997. Rubber BulletsPower and Conscience in Modern Israel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Gazit, Shlomo. 1996. "A Society Without Motivation." HaAretz 1 November. (Hebrew)

Gilat, Zvi. 1997. The Israelis. Maariv 26 September.

Handelman, Don, and Lea Shamgar-Handelman. 1997. "The Presence of Absence: The Memorialism of National Death in Israel." In Eyal Ben-Ari and Yoram Bilu (eds.), Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Harel, Eitan. 1996. Soldiers Have Already Been Slaughtered Because of Lack of Motivation. HaAretz 31 October. (Hebrew)

Helman, Sara. 1993. Conscientious Objection to Military Service as an Attempt to Redefine the Content of Citizenship. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (Hebrew)

Herzog, Hanna. n.d. Enlisting Moms: Military-Family Relations as a Genderizing Social MechanismThe Case of Israel. Unpublished manuscript.

Horowitz, Tamar. 1997. "The Political Emergence of ImmigrantsFrom Passive Citizenship to Active Citizenship." Paper presented at the Twelfth Congress of Jewish Studies. Jerusalem, August. (Hebrew)

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Kapra, Michal. 1996. "The Other Side of Motivation." Maariv 6 September. (Hebrew)

Katriel, Tamar. 1991. Communal Webs. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Keinan, Idit. 1997. "Patterns of Mourning in Israeli Society." Paper presented at the Twelfth Congress of Jewish Studies. Jerusalem, August. (Hebrew)

Lebel, Udi. 1997. "Rejected by the Army Because of Lack of Suitability." Yediot Aharonot 4 April. (Hebrew)

Levitzky, Naomi. 1996. "The IDF Shut It's Eyes." Yediot Aharonot 22 September.

Levy-Schreiber, Edna, and Eyal Ben-Ari. Forthcoming. "Body-Building, Character-Building and Nation-Building: Gender and Military Service in Israel." Studies in Contemporary Judaism.

Lieblich, Amia. 1987. The Spring of Their Lives. Tel Aviv: Shocken. (Hebrew)

Lomsky-Feder, Edna. 1998. As If There Was No War: The Perception of War in the Life Stories of Israeli Men. Jerusalem: Magnes. (Hebrew)

Meisels, Ofra. 1995. "An Army in the Process of Liberation." Paper presented at a conference on An Army in Light of History: The IDF and Israeli Society. Hebrew University of Jerusalem. June. (Hebrew)

Miller, Idan. 1997. Armies of God. HaAretz 24 January. (Hebrew)

Ofrat, Gideon. 1991. The fading of the khaki. Studio 27: 611. (Hebrew)

Rabin, Eitan. 1996. "Let Them Follow Me and Fight." HaAretz 31 October. (Hebrew)

Rabin, Eitan, and Yaron Vertner. 1996. "Two Fighters Have Taken Their Signature Off the Letter of Dissent to Netanyahu." HaAretz 14 October. (Hebrew)

Rapaport, Amir. 1996. "Sorry, In the Next War We Simply Won't Be Able to Fight." Yediot Aharonot 13 October. (Hebrew)

Rapaport, Tamar, Anat Penso, and Yoni Garb. 1995. "It's important In Erets-Yisrael to contribute to the collective": Young religious-Zionist women contribute to the nation. Teoria Vebikoret 7: 22333. (Hebrew)

Ringel-Hoffman, Ariella. 1997. "The Misgivings About a Surprise: The Reserve Army." Yediot Aharonot 17 October. (Hebrew)

Rosenblum, Doron. 1994. "Honey, The Soldiers Have Shrunk." HaAretz 4 January. (Hebrew)

Rotem, Erez. 1996. "Head of Personnel, IDF: The Parents and the Education System are Responsible for Evasion of Service in the IDF." Maariv 17 November. (Hebrew)

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Segev, Amira. 1997. "Return Dive." HaAretz 12 September. (Hebrew)

Shaked, Gershon. 1996. "Literature and History: The Historical Context of the Literature of the Late Fifties and Sixties (The New Wave 19571980)." Paper presented at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. June.

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Verter, Yossi. 1997. "About a Hundred Ex-Fighters from the Elite Reconnaissance Unit to Netanyahu: It is Hard to Believe that You Were Once One of Us." HaAretz 28 October. (Hebrew)

Weiss, Meira. 1997. Bereavement, commemoration, and collective identity in contemporary Israeli society. Anthropological Quarterly 70(2): 91101.

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Myron J. Aronoff is professor of political science and anthropology at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Manchester. He is the author of Frontiertown: The Politics of Community Building in Israel (1974), Power and Ritual in the Israeli Labor Party (1977a completely revised edition of which was published in 1993), Israeli Visions and Divisions (1989 and 1991), and The Spy Novels of John le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics (St. Martin's Press 1999). Aronoff has edited six volumes of scholarly essays. He is the past president of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology and was founding president of the Association for Israel Studies. He is currently vice president of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. He was a Fellow in Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 19741975 and 19961997.

Maoz Azaryahu is a lecturer in the Geography Department of the University of Haifa. His recent book is State Cults: Celebrating Independence and Commemorating the Fallen in Israel, 19481956 (The Ben-Gurion Heritage Center and the Ben-Gurion University Press, Hebrew). He has studied the cultural geography of national identity in Germany and in Israel focusing on such issues as the renaming of streets in Berlin, the Hebraicization of the Israeli national map and the history of Mount Herzl, Israel's national cemetery in Jerusalem. He also studied Israeli war memorials and the transformation of Tel-Aviv's Kikar Rabin into a spontaneous site of national mourning in wake of Rabin's assassination.

Eyal Ben-Ari is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His most recent books include Body Projects in Japanese Childcare: Culture, Organization and

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Emotions in a Preschool (London: Curzon), Japanese Childcare: An Interpretive Study of Organization and Culture (London: Kegan Paul International), and he has a just published a book entitled Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit (Oxford: Berghahn Books). He has carried out fieldwork on Japanese white-collar suburbs, Japanese kindergartens, and the Japanese community in Singapore. In Israel he has done research on saint worship among North-African immigrants and on social and cultural aspects of the Israeli military.

Nachman Ben-Yehuda is full professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Jerusalem, he graduated from the University of Chicago in 1977. Ben-Yehuda specializes in studying deviance. His most recent books are The Masada Myth (University of Wisconsin Press), Political Assassinations by Jews (State University of New York Press), and (with Erich Goode) Moral Panics (Blackwells of Oxford). His is currently working on a new book on truth, deception, and trust that focuses on archeology and politics and treason and researching patterns of meaning of deviance among ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Efrat Ben-Ze'ev is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her master's thesis, which was awarded a prize by the Israel Anthropological Association, dealt with the oral history of a Palestinian village near Jerusalem. Her research focuses on memories of Palestinian refugees from three villages that were uprooted in 1948.

Dr. Mirta Furman is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and in the School of Education of Tel-Aviv University. She has recently published a book called The New Children: Violence and Obedience in Early Childhood (Hakibutz Hameuchad 1994, Hebrew). Two articles that she has completed are to appear shortly: "Patriotism and Heroism: Child Socialization" in Israeli Patriotism: Culture, Education and Politics (in Hebrew) and "Violence: Ambiguous and Implicit Messages in Childhood Socialization" in Education for Peace and Non-Violence (in Hebrew).

Sara Helman is a lecturer in political sociology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ben Gurion UniversityBeersheva. Her fields of interest are political sociology, the sociology of citizenship, and the sociology of individualism. She has published in the British Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, and Citizenship Studies. Her doctoral

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dissertation was awarded the Ben Halpern Award in Israel Studies for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in the Study of the Yishuv, Zionism, and the State of Israel. She has done research in Israel on conscientious objection, gender, and politics, and her current research is on the politicization of motherhood in Israel, the emergence of new patterns of Israeliness, and women in the Israeli welfare state.

Hannan Hever teaches in the Department of Poetics and Comparative Literature of Tel Aviv University. Among his books are Poets and Zealots: The Rise of Political Hebrew Poetry in Eretz Israel (Mossad Bialik, 1994, Hebrew), Captives of Utopia: An Essay on Messianism and Politics in Hebrew Poetry in Eretz Israel Between the World Wars (Ben Gurion University Press, 1995, Hebrew), and Minority Discourse in Modern Hebrew Fiction (New York University Press, forthcoming).

Edna Lomsky-Feder, a qualitative sociologist, is a lecturer in the School of Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her areas of research include war and military studies, the sociology of youth and adolesence, migration and cultural transitions, collective and personal memory, and life stories and personal narratives. Her book As If There Was Never A War: Life Stories of Israeli Men was published (Magnes Press, 1998).

Meira Z. Weiss works in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests include embodiment, social suffering, images of parenthood, medical anthropology, and bereavement. Among her publications are "War Bodies, Hedonist Bodies: Dialectics of the Collective and the Individual in Israeli Society," which appeared in the American Ethnologist, "Narrative of Embodiment: The Discursive Formulation of Multiple Bodies" in Semiotica, and "Bereavement, Commemoration and Collective Identity in Contemporary Israeli Society" in the Anthropological Quarterly.

Anat Zanger is a tenured lecturer at the Film and Television Department of Tel-Aviv University where she teaches and carries out research on intertextuality, postmodernism, science fiction, women and myths. She has written and published essays on Israeli cinema, cinematic semiology and remakes for such journals and anthologies as Semiotica and The Genre of the Israeli Cinema and its Accessories. She is currently completing a book on Film Remaking.

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INDEX

A

Abjected, 27073

Adulthood, 9, 13

Agency, 1012, 2122

Air force, 89, 100, 112, 15556, 308

Aliyah, 43

Anderson, Benedict, 115, 199, 202, 204, 211, 216, 228, 23233, 23738, 244, 262, 264

Antagonists. See Enemies

Arab-Israeli conflicts. See Wars

Arab citizens of Israel, 24, 4245, 48, 97, 204, 292, 309

Arab Parties, 44

Arabs, 1, 98, 11920, 135, 15658, 187. See also Palestinians

Archeology, 65, 79, 83, 131

Armaments. See Weapons

Armed forces and society, 1, 3

Armored corps, 13, 26, 6769, 71, 73, 76, 8081, 132, 206, 208

Army, 18, Chap 3, 93, 95, 98, 102, 127, 132, Chap 6, Chap 8. See also Military

Army service. See Military service

Aronoff, Myron, 15, 24, 40, 42, 4950

Artillery, 207

Autobiography, 12

AWOL (Away without leave), 173

Azarya, Victor, 4, 10, 59, 164

B

Basic training, 67, 267, 290

Battles and battlefields, 163, 235, 239, 24749, 252, 255, 264, 268, 288

Battle shock, 18, 25

Beduin, 98

Begin, Menachem, 3941, 1089

Ben-Eliezer, Uri, 6, 113, 146, 164, 21213, 287, 292

Ben Gurion, David, 6, 75, 93, 95, 9798, 103, 110

Benign occupation, 17879

Bereavement, 102, 24753, 255

Bhaba, Homi, 17879, 266

Binding principle (Ha'akeda), 22, 249, Chap 10

Biographies, 10, 12, 18

Bishra, Azmy, 45, 184

Body and bodies, 2021, 160, 176, Chap 9, Chap 10, 3056

Boene, Bernard, 191

Bonding. See Cohesion

Bravery. See Courage

''Buddy system," 172

Burk, James, 3

C

Camaraderie. See Gibush

Career, 199, 289

Carnival, 1012, 106

Casualties, 22, 4243, 48, 233, 238, 281, 28486, 303. See also Death

Cemeteries, 7, 133, 272

Ceremonial landscape, 99, 106

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Ceremonies, 1213, 15, 6769, 7173, 8081, 94, 96, 100, 105, 11011, 132, 144, 15257, 16061, 163, 172. See also Rites

Chemical weapons, 281, 284

Children, 1619, 49, 66, 71, 109, 123, Chap 6, 235, 269, 271, 282, 28586, 289, 3045

Cinema. See Film

Citizenship, 9, 19, 45, 104, 178, 187, Chap 8

Civil religion, 90

Civil society, 5, 10, 142

Civilians, 170, 181

Palestinian, 173, 179

Civilian life, 171, 179, 212

Civilianization, of the armed forces, 14

Civil-military relations, 47, 1012, 105, 191, 197

Cognitive militarism, 3, 14. See also Militarism

Cohen, Stanley, 179, 184

Cohen, Stuart, 4647

Cohesion, 16364, 17273. See also Gibush

Collective representations, 1, 7, 1112, 1415, Chap 5, 229, 303

Combat, 9, 196, 230, 263

troops, 19798

units, 9, 170, 196, 200, 307, 309

Combat reactions, 9. See also Battle shock

Command and commanding, 79, 182

Commemoration, 8, 96, 120, 13233, 144, 149, 305

Commemorative site, 15, 80

Community, 19, 98, 134, 192, 195205, 212, 228, 266

Community of memories, 144, 153

Community of warriors, 21014

Compulsory service (Khova), 9, 19, 172, 3078

Conflict, 2, 5, 15, 24, 235, 263, 289

Conscientious objectors, 9, 19, 195, 207, 21314

Conscription, 47, 142, 2034, 282, 304. See also Compulsory service

Consensus, 210

Contextual constructionism, 5859, 83, 14243

Counter-hegemonic. See Resistance

Courage, 157, 163, 225, 231, 266. See also Heroes

Critical sociology, 67, 18, 25

Cultural critique, 1, 6

Curricula, 142

D

Dandeker, Christopher, 192, 217

Dayan, Moshe 7879

Death, 21, 43, 129, 15355, 228, 32124, 23742, 244, 24850, 252, 254, 257, 27071, 273, 285. See also Killing

Defense, 142, 151, 157, 161. See also Security

Demilitarization, 21

Democracy, 25, 38, 19192, 216

Diaspora, 15, 24, 4546, 78, 93, 110, 132, 141, 145, 295

"Disaster of the helicopters," 302

Dissidence, 5, 198, 213. See also Resistance

Doctrines, military, 1, 98

Dominguez, Virginia, 7, 24

Druze, 43, 98

E

Education, 47, 59, 67, 105, 120, 126, 129, Chap 6, 201, 294, 307

Ehrlich, Avishai, 1, 56, 271

Ein breira, 38

Elites, 34, 14, 3940, 135, 215, 308

Embodiment. See Body and bodies

Emigration, 205, 2079

Emotions, 18, 79, 1023, 108, 154, 15960, 174, 18384, 192, 2089, 236, 256, 265, 288, 3034

Enemy and enemies, 156, 179, 26468

Ethnic groups (Jewish), 24, 45

Ethos, 15, 17, 22, 152, 163, 302, 308, 310

Etzel. See Underground movements

Exclusion, 19, 91, 93, 97, 204, 234, 23637, 243

Exile. See Diaspora

Page 319

F

Faith. See Religion

Families and family life, 8, 73, 1012, 14546, 172, 175, 199, 267, 269, 289, 302, 3056. See also Parents

Fathers and fatherhood, 21, 231, 237, 269, 27172, 305, 308

Founding fathers, 92

Fear. See Emotions

Feeling, 192. See also Emotions

Female power, 24752, 257, 273

Femininity, 239, 257, 26265, 26768

Feminist theory, 20, 294

Fieldwork, 142, 171, 284. See also Methodology

Fighters (lochamim), 293. See also Warriors

Film, 2022, 49, 64, Chap 10

Flesh. See Body

Flow, 17677

Food, 160, 171

Four day march, 1056

"Front," 6, 22, 22930, 234, 263, 265, 268, 273, 281, 283, 28890, 292

Funerals, 41, 302

Fussel, Paul, 7

G

Gabriel, Richard, 3, 9

Gadna, 8183, 106

Gal, Reuven, 9, 25, 171, 185, 196, 287, 289, 3078

Gender, 12, 6, 1011, 19, 2024, Chap 9, Chap 10, Chap 11. See also Manhood

Gibush (cohesion), 164, 17172, 180, 288

Giddens, Anthony, 5, 11, 192, 212

Graves, 23233, 272. See also Cemeteries

Guilt, 183

Gulf War, 2324, Chap 7, Chap 11, 303, 305

Guns. See Weapons

Gush Emunim, 15, 3940, 132

Gush Etzion, 275

H

Haganah. See Underground movements

Handelman, Don, 7, 14, 91, 133, 14546, 165, 175, 305

Haredim, 4447. See also Ultra-orthodox Jews

Hebrew University, 127

Hegemony, 812, 2024, 3941, 44, 48, 195, 200, 229, 23435, 238, 242, 244, 307

Helman, Sarit, 9, 1819, 49, 194, 209, 21213

Heros and heroism, 12, 1415, 18, 21, 41, 6367, 6971, 76, 7880, Chap 5, 126, 129, 136, 144, 14647, 149, 15152, 15759, 163, 216

Herzl, 92, 9597, 100, 111, 156, 158, 225, 255, 267

Holidays, 14, 81, 90, 92, 96, 99, 104, 146, 151

Holocaust, 24, 76, 79, 148, 15455, 210, 274, 283, 286

Horowitz, Dan, 4, 18, 24, 164, 182, 191, 19596, 200, 209, 215, 217, 271, 292

Human rights, 210

Humor, 15455

Huntington, Samuel, 3, 191

Husbands, 23, 23536, 28688, 29091

I

Inclusion, 91

Identity and identification, 2122, 24, 45, 81, 102, 149, 152, 163, 179, 18284, 195, 2023, 211, 23233, Chap 10, 281, 301

Imagined community, 18, 45, 199, 2002, 204, 209, 211, 216, 228, 23738, 264, 26768

Immigrants, 14, 4748, 72, 105, 107, 147, 152, 202, 309

Independence Day, 7, 1214, 3839, Chap 4, 8990, 92113, 143, 149, 15557, 160, 162, 165

Individuals and individualism, 12, 1013, 19, 145, 147, 161, 197, 200, 202, 228, 233, 238, 24445, 26263, 3056, 309

Infantry, 17, 171, 202, 209, 304

Ingraham, Larry, 8

Injuries. See Casualties

Internalization. See Socialization

Page 320

Interrupted system, 45, 26

Intifada (Palestinian uprising), 1718, 38, 47, 142, 163, Chap 7, 195, 198, 207, 217, 303, 305

Invented tradition, 145

Israel Museum, 134

Israel Prize, 105

Israeli Arabs. See Arab citizens of Israel

Israeli case, 23, 59

Israeli identity, 7, 18, 45, 72

Israeli-Arab conflicts, 1, 6, 141. See also Wars

Israeliness, 45, 200, 2025, 207, 209, 313, 302

Izraeli, Dafna, 6, 10

J

Jabotinsky, 41, 43

Janowitz, Morris, 3, 19192, 282

Jerusalem, 1415, 39, 45, 6062, 6566, 74, 96, 99101, 103, 109, 113, Chap 5, 158, 226, 263, 274

Jerusalem Foundation, 12021, 128, 135

Jewish people, 13, 60, 65, 76, 78, 119, 122, 131, 141, 15758, 162, 204, 213, 301,

Jewish tradition, 45

Jokes and joking. See Humor

K

Keegan, John, 18

Katriel, Tamar, 15, 127, 13233, 142, 164, 289, 305

Key scenario, 132

Kibbutzim, 127, 2001, 203, 209, 216, 264, 3078

Killing. See Death

Kimmerling, Baruch, 1, 36, 10, 14, 16, 2526, 164, 182, 193, 196, 19899, 2034, 21112, 214, 215, 217, 271, 292

Kindergartens, 1819, 132

Korean War, 295

L

Labor Party, 3941, 44, 48, 108, 121, 229

Latrun, 80

Law of return, 45

Lebanon War, 9, 1819, 24, 38, 42, 46, 14748, 154, 159, 163, 165, 172, 182, 185, 19495, 205, 213, 231, 26668, 27071, 275, 303, 305, 308

Legitimation and legitimacy, 6, 2324, 4243, 46, 91, 95, 1089, 194, 198, 201, 20910, 213, 232, 264, 295

Lehi. See Underground movements

Lieblich, Amia, 9, 13, 18, 170, 18586, 204, 287, 292, 305

Life stories, 9

Life worlds, 2, 810, 12, 1620, Chap 8

Likud Party, 39, 41, 4344, 48, 108, 113

Liminality, 13, 22

Lissak, Moshe, 4, 10, 18, 24, 59, 16465, 191, 21617, 271

"Living dead," 21, Chap 9

Lomsky-Feder, Edna, 910, 49, 204, 212, 215, 289, 309

Lustick, Ian, 24

M

"Macho," 176, 303

Male anxiety, 269

Mann, Michael, 5, 212, 214

Manhood, 6, 13, 16, 1920, 33, 182, Chap 8, 235, 238, 24142, 244, 28687, 29293, 306. See also Masculinity

Masada, 1213, 26, Chap 3, 144, 164, 292, 301

Masculinity, 6, 9, 18, 2324, 149, 152, 171, 176, Chap 8, 229, 25657, 26265, 268, 282, 290, 295, 304

Masks, Chap 7

Media, 64, 89, 91, 102, 1078, 126, 132, 229, 283, 28586, 3023, 307

Melting-pot, 14, 97

Memorials and memorialization, 15, 43, 5859, 130, 13334, 136, 25254

Memory, 17, 12, 16, 22, 45, 46, 48, 5759, 99, 103, 14245, 159, 162, 172, 179, 233, 24752, 301

Meretz Party, 44

Methodology, 63, 84, 135, 143, 171, 19495, 284

Meyerhoff, Barbara, 91, 165

Militarism, 23, 57, 14, 16, 1819, 90, 111, 13233, 142, 146, 179, Chap 8, 287, 29596

Page 321

Military, Chap 1, 37, 39, 95, 102, 182, 261, 290, 302, 3045. See also Army

Military administration, 17172

Military casualties. See Casualties

Military culture, 18182

Military doctrines, 6

Military service, 2, 910, 13, 19, 22, 44, 48, 147, 149, 154, 170, 19194, 199205, 208, 21213, 295, 301, 3067, 309

Military socialization, 8, 59. See also Socialization

Military technology, 182

Miluim. See Reserves

Minority units, 98

Mobility, 10, 70

Modernization, 152

Moskos, Charles, 3

Mosse, George, 232

Mothers and motherhood, 21, 73, 23134, 24753, 256, 265, Chap 11, 305

Motivation to serve, 17, 197, 3058

Mount Scopus, 119, 127

Mourning, 25255. See also Bereavement

Movies. See Film

Multiculturalism, 127

Museums, 7, 12, 1415, 26, 80, Chap 5

Myth and myths, 7, 13, 15, 2526, 44, Chap 3, 126, 13234, 141, 144, 153, 163, 22930, 22942, 245, 24748, 27071, 273

N

Nahal Brigade, 27

Narratives, 9, 18, 4546, 48, 57, 59, 6468, 70, Chap 3, 12628, 13033, Chap 6, 23738, 247, 255, 26367, 273, 284

Nation, 21, 79, 90, 9394, 108, 14445, 163, 192, 213, 22930, 232, 23435, 23739, 26263, 271, 281, 289, 302

Nation-building, 3, 6, 14, 20, 8384, 97, 109, 126, 13033

Nation-state, 13, 18, 93, 159, 161, 305. See also State

National calender, 96

National holidays, 9092, 99

National identity, 70, 80, 119

National imagination, 232

National-Religious camp, 41, 44, 48, 109, 305, 3078

National revival, 94

National security. See Security

National service, 8, 19, 22, 201, 231. See also Military service

Nationalism, 93, 96, 145, 268, 273, 3012, 309

"New Jew," 15, 132, 296

Nicknames, 172

Noncombatants. See Civilians

Nuclear bomb, 77

Nurses, 20, 2224, 49, Chap 11

O

Occupied territories, 39

Officers, 47, 181, 18384, 207

Organic unit, 172, 174, 183

P

Pain, 309. See also Suffering

Paine, Robert, 1718

Palestine, 83, 133

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 4445, 159, 180

Palestinian uprising. See Intifadah

Palestinians, 45, 17, 24, 27, 38, 45, 117, 120, 12428, 13435, 145, 15859, 184, 265, 267

Palmach, 13, 6771, 95, 110, 229, 264, 274. See also Underground movements

Parade, 1314, 26, 3839, Chap 4

Parents, 247, 3045. See also Fathers, Mothers

Participant-observation. See Methodology

Passover, 106

Patriotism, Chap 4, 184, 292

Peri, Yoram, 4, 10

Permeable boundaries, 4

Pilgrimage, 67, 106, 119, 128

Play, 17677

Poetry, 2021, 64, Chap 9

Page 322

Policing, 169, 17374, 18081, 198

Politics, Chap 2, 2056, 20910, 212, 252, 266, 290, 305, 3089

Post-modern military, 2223, 48, 29192

Power, 56, 20, 90, 134, 160, 238, 25357

Practice, 100

Preschools. See Kindergartens

Prisoners, 25

Private sphere, 25355, 257

Privatization, 306

Professionals and professionalism, 1920, 23, 48, 28391

Protest movements, 305. See also Resistance

Psychiatric casualties, 3, 9. See also Battle shock

Psychology and psychologists, 10, 30310

Public event, 91, 102, 110

R

Rabin, Yitzhak, 25, 38, 306, 308

Rambo, 208, 216

"Rear," 6, 22, 230, 28384

Reconciliation, 117

Redemption 145

Religion, 24, 4546, 122, 163, 282

Remembrance Day, 96, 106, 143, 148, 15355, 160, 165, 172

Research. See Methodology

Resensitization, 17879

Reserves and reserve service, 1819, 47, 49, 142, 156, Chap 7, 175, Chap 8, 268, 281, 284, 293, 3068

Resistance, 1, 5, 1012, 14, 1924, 4041, 144, 117, 195, 20910, 214, 24042, 264, 295

Rifles. See Weapons

Rites and rituals, 78, 13, 19, 4344, 90, 99, 141

Rite of passage, 13, 19, 42, 202, 263, 267, 290

Rubin, Nissan, 7

S

Sacrifice, 18, 26, 132, 152, 163, 232, 263, 307

Schild, E.O., 25

Schools, 26, 63, 71, 76, 132, Chap 6, 2001

Schwartz, Barry, 7, 12, 5758, 144

Second World War. See World War Two

Security, 1, 67, 18, 20, 3940, 47, 89, 98, 105, 107, 110, 142, 163, 19698, 204, 211

"Security belt," 304

Security landscape, 15

Semiotic structure, 91, 99, 110

Sexuality, 265

Shamgar-Handelman, Lea, 16, 133, 146, 165, 305

Shas party, 44, 46

Shooting. See Weapons

Sivan, Emmanuel, 8, 15, 229, 305

Six-Day War (1967), 37, 80, 103, 105, 123, 126, 129, 13233, 154, 15859, 163, 2023, 271, 27475

Skirmishes, 4. See also Engagements

Socialization, 8, 16, 26, 59, 7072, 8082, Chap 6, 2001, 230

Soldiering, Chap 7, 203, Chap 11

Soldiers, 2, 21, 59, 91, 93, 143, 15256, 173, 183, 203, 23940, 250, 267, 271, 286, 292, 3023, 306

Solidarity, 97, 108, 111, 160, 170, 172, 183, 192, 199, 209, 211, 216, 289. See also Cohesion

Sovereignty, 9293, 96, 103, 200

State, 1, 57, 1011, 1819, 24, 37, 44, 7778, 90, 9395, 9697, 1024, 129, 131, 13334, 14546, 148, 15657, 160, 163, 19193, 195, 199200, 2104, 217, 23233, 240, 3045

State-making, 211

Statism, 40, 95, 110

Subversion, 29196. See also Resistance

Suffering, 227, 265, 302

T

Tanks, 15556, 272. See also Armored corps

Tel Hai, 132, 137

Television. See Media

Territories, 37, 159, 16970, 174, 184

Terrorism, 37, 142, 178, 301