1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910819623503321

Autore

Rejwan Nissim

Titolo

Israel's years of bogus grandeur : from the Six-Day War to the First Intifada / / Nissim Rejwan ; foreword by Nancy E. Berg

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin, : University of Texas Press, 2006

ISBN

0-292-79570-X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (273 p.)

Disciplina

956.9405/4092

B

Soggetti

Jews

Jews - Israel - Identity

Jews, Iraqi - Israel

Israel Ethnic relations

Israel History 1967-1993

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword. Israel: The Teen Years -- Prologue -- Chapter 1. ''Contacting the enemy'' -- Chapter 2. In the wilderness -- Chapter 3. The morning after -- Chapter 4. An assortment of concerns -- Chapter 5. Encounters -- Chapter 6. The majority-minority syndrome -- Chapter 7. Uses and abuses of history -- Chapter 8. Recoupment -- Chapter 9. Jews and muslims -- Chapter 10. Orientalism revisited -- Chapter 11. The ''who is a jew?'' charade -- Epilogue -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

On the eve of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel was nineteen years old and as much an adolescent as the average nineteen-year-old person. Issues of identity and transition were the talk among Israeli intellectuals, including the writer Nissim Rejwan. Was Israel a Jewish state or a democratic state? And, most frustratingly, who was a Jew? As Nancy Berg's foreword makes clear, these issues became more critical and complex in the two decades after the war as Israel matured into a regional power. Rejwan, an Iraqi-born Jew whose own fate was tied to the answers, addresses the questions of those days in his letters, essays, and remembrances collected in Israel's Years of Bogus



Grandeur. Israel's overwhelming victory in 1967 brought control of the former Palestinian territories; at the same time, Oriental Jews (i.e., those not from Europe) became a majority in the Israeli population. The nation, already surrounded by hostile, recently humiliated Arab neighbors, now had an Arab majority (Jewish, Muslim, Druze, and Christian) within its borders-yet European Jews continued to run the country as their own. Rejwan wrote tirelessly about the second-class status of Arab Israelis (and especially of Arab Jews), encouraging a more inclusive attitude that might eventually help heal the wounds left by the Six-Day War. His studies in sociology at Tel Aviv University informed his work. For his cause, Rejwan lost his job and many of his friends but never his pen. Through Munich, Entebbe, political scandals, economic crises, and the beginning of the Intifada, Rejwan narrates Israel's growing pains with feisty wit and unwavering honesty.