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This article explores Jewish-Israeli attitudes toward human rights (HR) activism and patriotism, based on responses to a questionnaire answered by 503 people. We examined how Jewish-Israelis percei...

This study explored attitudes of 501 Israelis – Jews and non-Jews – and Jews and others from western countries concerning Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and the Palestinian Academic and Cu...

This qualitative study explored the long-term significance ofaliya(Jewish immigration) to Israel for 32 immigrants/refugees who settled along the Israeli-Gaza border. The participants shared their life stories and discussed life in this war-torn region. We found that the interviewees presented three major meanings ofaliya: (1) Zionist ideology, sustained throughout life; (2) the need for finding a safe haven, and seeing their region as such a place in spite of the rocket attacks; and (3) immigration as a forced choice, connected to feelings of discontent with how their lives evolved. We conclude that by better understanding the long-term psycho-social meaning of immigration for Israelis, we can also better understand why and how they continue to live in an area marked by ongoing political conflict, and use this knowledge to inform individual and community resilience and socio-political policy.

A largely neglected area of study in the field of trauma and its effects is the way a collective trauma of a majority group influences a minority group that lives in the same region. Such an investigation is especially relevant within the context of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict concerning the Holocaust—the defining trauma of Jewish Israelis. This pilot study focused on the thoughts, feelings, and interpretations concerning the Holocaust of 56 young adults, Palestinian citizens in Israel. The semi-structured questionnaires and interviews demonstrate that the young adults express an inherent conflict when dealing with the Holocaust—one that emanates from the tension that exists between universalistic and particularistic interpretations of the Holocaust within the Palestinian narrative. At the universalistic end of the continuum, the Holocaust is acknowledged as a crime against humanity; whereas, at the particularistic end of the continuum, the Holocaust is interpreted through political lenses of the Isr...

This study assessed how Jewish Israeli young adults perceive the impacts of the Holocaust on themselves, their family and Israel society. The written responses of 180 respondents, 90 of which were grandchildren of Holocaust survivors (GHSs) and 90 which are not grandchildren of survivors (NGHSs), connected the Holocaust with issues of security, education and culture, and the impact, or lack of it, on family and self. These responses also suggest that NGHS relate to the Holocaust only through sociocultural mechanisms and that GHSs are influenced by the same sociocultural mechanisms, yet are also divided by the perceived impact of intergenerational processes on their personal and family lives. The overall results of the study suggest that regardless of family connection to the Holocaust, in Israel there are sociocultural mechanisms at work that impact the perception of the Holocaust on the third generation of Holocaust survivors as a cultural trauma.

This article describes a method of data collection and analysis that was developed for the tracing of processes of identity construction and perception of others among young Jewish adults – citizens of Israel. In order to learn how young adults perceive different ‘others’ and construct their sense of collective identity, a semi-structured interview was developed that was comprised of five moral dilemmas concerning internal as well as external others that contribute to the construction of Jewish-Israeli identity. This article traces the process of instrument development and presents the types of analyses that were used in interpretation of the dilemmas. We then demonstrate the analyses by presenting examples from four interviews with Jewish-Israelis. Based on the results of our study, ideas for future research and utilization of the research method are offered.

��� This article examines the attitudes of a group of Jewish Israeli adolescents who participated in a Holocaust seminar that included an optional trip to related sites in Poland. The authors sought to determine whether youth who participate in such a seminar still consider Jewish Israeli identity important, which lessons of the Holocaust they value, and whether belonging to a survivor’s family makes a difference when considering these lessons. The results show that, regardless of participation in the trip and affiliation with Holocaust survivors, the youth hold a strong sense of Jewish Israeli national identity and tend to support Jewish and Zionist lessons more than universalistic ones, although a complex interplay exists between identity and those lessons. Adolescents whose family members included survivors connected a more “power-oriented” interpretation of the Holocaust to a strong sense of national identity; participants not related to survivors developed a more complex frame of reference that combined both power-oriented and humanistic lessons of the Holocaust. Researchers working inside and outside Israel have studied empirically the issues of Israeli identity and the “lessons of the Holocaust.” The topics, though separate, are closely linked, scholars have pointed out. To date, however, few efforts have been made to assess how and if belonging to a family of Holocaust survivors affects the lessons learned and the sense of national identity. In this article, we look at this threeway connection by beginning with a review of literature on Holocaust education within Israel and on lessons of the Holocaust. We then turn to the topic of national identity within Jewish Israeli society and a short review of the literature to date on the “third generation”—the grandchildren of the survivors—before presenting our research results.

This article examines the ways in which one's perception of the other contributes to processes involved in the construction of collective identity. This study presents analyses and comparisons of semi-structured interviews using a dilemma concerning ownership of a house that was undertaken with 20 Jewish and Palestinian university students, citizens of Israel, who participated in a 1-year seminar that dealt with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Analyses of the entire sample showed that, during the year, all of the participants enhanced their self-awareness of the complexity of the conflict. Each group emphasized the processes that reflect the role of the conflict in the construction of its collective identity. The Palestinians appeared to be in the process of constructing their identity and the Jews in the process of deconstructing theirs while trying to cope with their need for security during the on-going conflict. In-depth analyses of interviews with 2 women students highlighted the processes of ident...

The construction of identity is a central issue that has been discussed in theory and in research over the last 30 years (Tajfel, 1981; Rosenthal, 1997). In Israel, researchers deal with the issue from the perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Suleiman, 1997; Bar-On, 1999), by emphasizing inter- and intra-group processes (Bar-Tal and Rouhana, 1998; Maoz, 2000). This chapter focuses on the processes involved in the construction of personal and collective identity in Israel from the perspective of perceptions of the Palestinian Jewish ‘other’. We hold two basic assumptions concerning the construction of identity which have their roots in the study of group identity. The first is that identity is multifaceted, composed principally of individual identity and collective identity. The latter is based on social factors such as group membership (Tajfel, 1981). The construction of personal and social identity is a dynamic process that develops and changes over the life course of the individual. Identity is perceived as a means by which people connect the real to the imagined and the concrete to the symbolic, as they perceive their personal and social world (Bhabha, 1990). An example is how people perceive themselves as being part of a national or ethnic group and the thoughts and emotions that this identity evokes.

In this article, the author looks at the use of the methods of life stories or biographical interviewing in research on personal and social identity. She presents the rationale behind the use of the method and its basic procedures and then moves on to a discussion of the concept of identity. To demonstrate the relevance of this method for the study of identity construction, she presents examples from three life story interviews with Jewish Israeli young adults, all born in the mid 1970s. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of using life stories for understanding an individual's sense of identity.