The book in English can be purchased here . This book is an invitation to an anthropological journey to the politics developed around the professional therapy of PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Through four years' fieldwork (2004-2008) at two nongovernmental organizations — NATAL ("Israeli Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War") and the ITC ("Israel Trauma Coalition") — the chapters of the book examines how clinical questions of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the disorder intersect with collective markers of group identity and with political questions of ethno-national power-relations within the framework of the Israeli nation-state. How Israeli experts and their donors (most of them from Jewish-American federations) negotiating mental suffering against one bio-medical category, PTSD, but in relation to different military and political situations, from the uprising of the Second Intifada (October 2000), to the "Disengagement Plan" (August 2005) until the Second Lebanon War (July 2006)? Which symbolic struggles do therapists engage in over the meaning of trauma and its social boundaries within this highly politicized context? What practical agreements have been reached regarding aid interventions and the allocation of resources within deep religious, ethnic and demographic stratification, from Jewish-Israeli citizens who exposed to Palestinian terror attacks in the center of the country, many of them first and second generations of immigrants from East-Europe ('Ashkenazim') to the ongoing threat of rocket fire against Jewish-Israeli citizens who lived in the South of the country, many of them first and second generations of immigrants from North-Africa ('Mizrachim') and later from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia ?

This book deals with the social history of workers in Ofakim, since the time of its founding (1955) and up to the partial closing of its biggest factory in 1981. The book traces the development of a new town in the middle of the desert, from the decision to establish and populate the town, to the harsh social and economic vacuum faced by the new inhabitants, and on to the shaping of the local labor market. With industrialization, Ofakim became permanently characterized as a place where labor was a matter of national priority, often lacking a solid economic rationale. The state 'guaranteed' the residents full employment, and therefore came to be perceived as responsible for their social and economic degradation. The book describes the dynamics of the relationships of the town's residents with each other and with the outside: encounters with bureaucrats, capitalists and factory managers; the relationship between local workers and workers from the Gaza strip; and the relationship between groups within the town, such as men and women. Through their emergence and reshaping, these relationships gave rise to social boundaries that influenced the status of workers in the labor market and beyond. The book also sets forth a collective biography of residents and local leadership coming together to create a community for themselves. This project was at times limited and shaped by decisions and actions of national leaders and external institutions, but ultimately this local community came to provide the people of Ofakim with a sense of pride and belonging. This discussion highlights the tight interrelationships between community, labor and the economy. The last part of the book tells the story of labor struggles waged by local workers against the closing of factories, which may be termed 'closure strikes'. It describes the unfolding of a closure strike, and the factors that influence it by way of a comparative analysis. This form of workers' protest illustrates the power of communities, with their internal coherence, to provide solidarity for the workers. This leads to a discussion of economically-motivated popular protests and the struggle of Israeli citizens against economic liberalization.

Israelis on the Move tells the story of young adults from the Former Soviet Union as they beat a path to Israeliness Based on analyses of their immigration stories, the book offers a new perspective in immigration studies that sees belonging as achieved not through the adoption of foundational national ethos of the new place, but rather through participation in local debates about this ethos . More particularly, the book examines the way in which the young immigrants shape their belonging to Israel through a reading of the homecoming ethos that awards them automatic citizenship. Based on an interpretation of instantiations of the homecoming ethos in everyday life, they form an affinity to their new home, construct their identity, and locate themselves within Israeli society. In doing so they are concerned with decoding, interpreting and critiquing the building blocks of the ethos: the memory of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, military service, the new Jew, and allegiance to their new place. The book shows how the immigrants hold onto an ethos that promises them recognition and inclusion within the ethno-religious nation. At the same time, they resist the total demands Imposed by the ethos, and criticize Zionist premises that are considered as taken for granted . We term this double, interrelated movement critical belonging, a concept that suggests that the immigrants’ belonging to the new place does not entail the unconditional acceptance of local ethos, while at the same time implying that their critique does not entail their rejection of the new place or a retreat into socio-cultural enclaves.

Based on four years of ethnographic research the book offers an intimate, textured and rich depiction of contemporary life in one marginalized development town in the Negev . Placing the stories of five women at the center, the author (herself a Mizrahi woman born in a development town) depicts the creative strategies used by each woman in dealing with the multiple exclusions - gendered, ethnic, class-based, geographic marginalization - that these women have to deal with. The five paths include daily struggles to make ends meet and escape social isolation by one single mother who raises two children without the help of her drug addict partner; the investment in an increasingly more religious-observant lifestyle by another woman. The life stories of two other women are dramatized using texts these women wrote about their own lives. Experimenting with a range of writing styles we get a closer understanding of patterns of feminist rebellion at the margins and of a way of life that resists, adopts and refashions centrist narratives of what it means to be Israeli woman today. Readable, engaging and at the same time theoretically informed the book is a sustained reflection about the ways in which gender, class, ethnicity, and religiosity are mutually produced in contemporary Israel and about how the center can be understood from its margins.