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There is a consensus within the ethnic return migration literature that ethnic migrants experience difficulty integrating into the ethnic homeland due to (1) state policies that inhibit permanent settlement and upward mobility and (2) social marginalization from the native‐born community. Absent those experiences, one would expect that ethnic migrants would smoothly integrate and be a successful example of nation‐building for the homeland. This paper examines lone soldiers in Israel (immigrants who do not have immediate family in the country) as an example of an immigrant group that is provided with substantial government support for integration and is publicly heralded by Israeli media as model citizens. Based on 52 interviews with former lone soldiers, this paper argues that even in an "extreme case" of state‐ and society‐supported ethnic return, lone soldiers feel marginalized due to their disillusionment with Israeli state politics and linguistic, behavioural and cultural boundaries between themselves and Israelis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the National Liberation League (NLL), a Palestinian Arab communist movement which operated in Palestine between the years 1943–1948. The paper examines its short‐lived history in light of the relevant three contexts in which it operated: the local Palestinian national context; the regional context of communist activity in the Middle East and the external‐internationalist context of the Soviet Union. The paper further discusses the activities of the NLL during the period of the 1948 War in Palestine, as well as in the first period of military rule, imposed on the Palestinian citizens of Israel. An analysis of the NLL during the late Mandatory period and the early years of the State of Israel allows a close examination of the ways by which concepts of identity, nationalism, class and ethnicity were conceptualised, debated and contested during times of a national conflict and anti‐imperial struggle and brings to the fore tensions between ideology and practice, nationalism and internationalism. The NLL offers an important opportunity to look into the complex matrix of communist movements that combine anti‐imperial struggles with struggles for national liberation in the context of a national conflict and to examine their dilemmas and what may seem as internal contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why and how does national identity reopen for contestation? Existing theories argue that institutional design, social ties or elite manipulation alter the saliency and nature of national identity. These theories view the ethno‐nation as homogenous and shaped vis‐à‐vis other groups. However, I argue that we should examine the re‐emergence of nationalism as an intra‐national struggle between groups with different saliency and understandings of national identity: new issues can raise the importance of national identity for some members of the group but not others. Moreover, members develop diverging understandings of fundamentals of national identity such as citizenship, borders and the role of religion. To support the theory, the paper utilises original not yet studied archival materials to show that struggle over Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories led to contestation of the saliency and meaning of Jewish Israeli national identity. Specifically, I analyse letters individuals sent to leading government officials in the early days of the settlements and show that settlement supporters tied the issue to Zionist ethos, injecting new content into Zionist identity. Meanwhile, national identity did not rise in importance or alter in meaning for settlement opposition. The method reveals individual understandings of national identity and points at broader societal divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the concept of 'land‐centred' nationalism and suggests that it is important for distinguishing among different types of nationalism and for better understanding the role of land and place in this ideology. In order to demonstrate what land‐centred nationalism actually means, the article examines Zionism as a case study, arguing that some of the leading, early intellectual schools of this national movement (cultural, socialist, and religious Zionism) tended to underscore the role of the Land of Israel in collective identity rather than the role of the political community. Despite many differences in their general outlook, these schools all celebrated the land's spiritual role while neglecting or even opposing the idea of a Jewish state. This devaluation of the bond among citizens in favour of the bond of a people with their ancient land contributed to Zionism's contemporary difficulties and manifests the dangers of land‐centred nationalism more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are few dozen areas in dispute around the world, where the borders have not been agreed by the involved parties or by the international community. The dispute over the Israeli border is particularly complex as it not only presents disagreement between the opposing sides in play but also in the international arena and within the Israeli political system and society. This paper examines one way in which the State of Israel is trying to define its borders through postage stamps. The argument raised is that Israel issues stamps that deal with disputed territorial areas in accordance with the ideology of the ruling party of a certain period, as well as the respective social consensus surrounding a particular area. Our findings support this argument and find three meta-messages incorporated into the stamps, including the historical connection between the State of Israel and the land of Israel, unified Jerusalem, and the Christian connection to Jerusalem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Replacing a banknotes series is meaningful for politicians and the general public even today, while most transactions are executed through virtual means. The choice of images carried on banknotes represents the limits of the State's sovereign border and becomes a means of banal nationalism. Moreover, by utilising scopic regimes, the hegemony portrays the cultural and political borders: historical figures from the country's past on one side, and an imagined or physical border, expressed through the illustrations on the back. This paper addresses the latter and examines the case of the State of Israel. The analysis of sites and landscapes that appear on national banknotes can decipher the construction process of a 'territorial identity' which, along with struggles for maintaining identity, provides the basis of the nation-state. Using Williams's typology of selective tradition, we argue that Israeli banknotes demonstrate a mixture of residual and new cultural content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public and researchers alike view global/humanitarian and local/national logics as based on different, and even contradictory, regimes of justification. In this paper, however, I argue that these logics are complementary in the case of refugees. By asking ‘who is a refugee?’ within the Israeli case study, I empirically ground the claim that nationalism and humanitarianism should be grasped as Glocal. Content analysis of the Israeli case reveals how the Israeli establishment ‘translates’ the universal notion of humanitarianism. Humanitarian discourse does not offer an answer to the refugee problem by invoking a universal identity, nor is it just a euphemism for particularistic interests. On the contrary, the humanitarian logic is in fact based on the national order, and does not attempt to replace it. The political meaning of the term ‘refugee’ is an endless transcription of the national logic, and thus cannot be cosmopolitan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the construction of a sense of Israeli identity which is not deducible from the public political discourse. It analyses common verbal representations of 'being an Israeli person', namely, what people in contemporary Israeli culture repeatedly say about Israelis, and how they position themselves vis-à-vis the commonsensical agreements they exchange, assuming that the massive use of such clichés in certain contexts creates a discursive routine that has 'a life of its own', through which people constantly negotiate their self-images and their sense of belonging. It investigates the ways these representations create solidarity or demarcation and how such current popular representations relate to canonical veteran images of Israeli identity, notably that of the pre-state 'Native Israeli' (Sabra) archetype. The analysis is based on 295 anonymous open responses to the question 'What makes one an Israeli' published weekly in the Weekend Supplement of Maariv, the second largest newspaper in Israel, between 1996 and 1998. The analysis has led to the following observations: (1) Instead of the most expected grand ideological (ethnic, national, religious, etc.) issues of conflict, the responses reveal a 'pursuit of culturedness', using an implied scale of mastering good manners and possessing a 'genuine culture' which form the dominant parameter of judging the 'Israeli person'. (2) A tension between mainstream and marginalised groups is shaped by a 'chase and flight' dynamic of embracing and rejecting the mythological Sabra image (in asymmetry with these groups' assumed political stances), which image is believed to be a symbol of the once hegemonic veteran elite. (3) This tension paradoxically contributes to the persistence of the canonical image of the Sabra that is currently delegitimised by much intellectual discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]