The articles compiled in this volume are studies by Jacob (Kobi) Metzer, which examine economic and political-economy issues in the Mandate era and the State of Israel. Most of the studies were originally published in scholarly journals and collected volumes in English. Their revision and publication in Hebrew under one volume is aimed at making them more accessible to the Israeli readership. The book consists of nine chapters, grouped into three parts. The first part includes four chapters that present the main socio-economic attributes of the Arab and Jewish populations during the Mandate period and examine them in broad comparative frameworks. The three chapters of the second part take up ethno-national aspects of land and settlement in Mandatory Palestine and Israel, and analyze them in comparative perspective. The third part deals with patterns of immigration and employment of Jews as individuals. It contains two chapters. One documents the socio-demographic profile of the immigrants to Palestine in the first decade of the British Mandate, and compares it with the international migration of the time. The other chapter examines comparatively the patterns of Jewish self-employment in the Diaspora and in Mandatory Palestine and Israel, from the early twentieth century onward.

Aron Menczer (1917-1943) was an active member of the Zionist youth movement Gordonya. After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, he became deeply involved in the efforts of the Youth Aliyah to enable Jewish youngsters to emigrate from Austria to Palestine. Menczer postponed his own Aliyah in order to continue to work for the exit of Jewish youth from Nazi Austria, and became in September 1939 the director of the Youth Aliyah in Vienna. His absolute devotion to the emigration efforts and to the educational work with the remaining Jewish youngsters in Vienna made him their recognized leader. Menczer was deported to Ghetto Theresienstadt in September 1942, where he continued his educational work. In October 1943 he was transported to Birkenau with a group of 1196 children, who were brought to Theresienstadt from Bialistok, and with 52 adults who, like him, volunteered to take care of them. They were all murdered there. The personality and deeds of Aron Menczer are the center of the book. A couple of chapters deal with the historical background: the Nazi policy of pressuring Jews to exit the country, prior to the phase of deportation and murder, and the efforts by the Youth Aliyah and other organizations to rescue them. The book is based on the original German version edited by Joanna Nittenberg und Benjamin Kaufmann. Two new parts were added to the current Hebrew version, edited by Jacob (Kobi) Metzer. One is a comprehensive introduction which examines Menczer’s activity in light of some general issues raised in the research literature. The other part consists of archival sources which were added to the book for additional insights.

The book examines the connection between the health system and the National Health Insurance Law and the change processes in Israeli society, as well as connections between economics and politics. The book discusses whether the National Health Insurance Law is part of the political factors, which are partial to the values of individualism and competition and are gaining strength in Israel.

Two opposite arguments are heard in political and academic discourse in Israel about the status of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF): One argument is that the IDF possesses too much power and that military thought governs political thought. Others contend that the military is over-supervised by civilian groups such as parents, civil rights groups, and other organizations, thereby limiting its space of operation. Can both these arguments be right at the same time? How can the contradiction between them be reconciled? This is the problematic at the heart of this book. In Who Governs the Military , Yagil Levy proposes a distinction between two modes of civilian control over military affairs: control of the armed forces – focused on military doctrine, weapons systems, operational performance, recruitment policies and the resources allocated to the military – and control of militarism, which focuses on political culture and the level of legitimation it awards to the use of force. Levy argues that inverse relations have developed since the early years of the state; namely, increase in control of the IDF dovetailed with a decrease in control of militarism. This distinction is useful in analyzing key issues that have attracted scholarly attention in recent years, among them: - The political implications of changes in the social composition of the IDF. - The sources and implications of casualty-averse policies. - The impact of extra-institutional control; namely, the actions taken by social movements and interest groups, in the public and judicial arenas, in an attempt to restrain the military. - The significance of the military's permeability to the market society. - The complex role played by the press in controlling the military.

Reinventing a Nation: Palestinian Intellectuals in Israel , focuses on a comparison of three generations of Palestinian intellectuals and idea producers and disseminators in Israel. The book displays the ways that these intellectuals struggled to make meaning and contextualizing of their national catastrophes (Nakba) and to cope with it by building some alternative social and political identities, while also attempting to preserve their relative elite and preferential positions. The research is based on qualitative content analysis of the works of major writers, poets, journalists and essay writers - from 1948 and onward - who were active in Israel, at least for a part of their lives.

Why did the Israeli cinema disregard the Holocaust for many years? Why did it represent the Holocaust survivors as a homogeneous group of passive, detached and problematic people and ignored their enormous contribution to the prosperity of Israel? Was there any change in these representations from the late 40's until the present time? These questions are the center of the book Two Faces in the Mirror , that depicts the representation of the Holocaust, the Holocaust survivors and their rehabilitation in Israeli fiction and documentary cinema during 1945-2009. It is well known that films do not reflect reality, however they reflect cultural and social atmosphere – influence it and are influenced by it. The analysis of Israeli fiction and documentary cinema reveal two different paths of memory, two faces in the mirror: A society that ranges between shallowness and in-depth views, between strengthening superficial stereotypes and shattering them, between implanting distorted narratives and multi-cultural openness towards the "other".

What drives certain Bedouin women to fight for their right to higher education? Are they a rising power in their communities? What price are they forced to pay? These questions and others are discussed in Excluded and Loved , which delves into the world of the Bedouin women who have chosen to attain higher education in Israel. The book touches upon their private and community lives, telling the story of their pain and strength. It depicts a broad picture of the relationships between men and women in the southern-Israeli Bedouin communities, unraveling the changes that occurred over the last decade. The stories of the interviewed women are interwoven in the personal story of the researcher, one of the first women in her tribe to seek higher education.

The Temple Mount is the most sacred site in Judaism and the third most sacred site of Islam in, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. The sacred nature of the site has made it one of the main foci of tension and friction in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Jewish fundamentalism and the Temple Mount is original and pioneering research on a number of radical and messianic movements in Israel that wish to, and at times, are making preparations to rebuild the Temple. The manuscript examines the theological roots and historical circumstances that have given rise to the movement of Temple Builders. It places the different movements within larger political, social and religious developments, offering the readers a context to understand the place of such groups within the larger Israeli, and global realities of our time. The research is described in the context of the fundamentalist phenomenon – a wave whose ramifications go far beyond the context of the Middle East. The research gives special attention to the connection between Jewish Temple Builders and Christian fundamentalist supporters and presents the theological exchanges that have taken place. The Book points to the Six Day War as a watershed event that has given rise to messianic interpretations of the Israeli victory and its significance for Jewish history. Israel’s’ overtaking of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, resurrected and enhanced messianic convictions of Zionist Orthodoxy. However, the crystallizing during the 1980s-2000s of contemporary Messianic groups and their Temple oriented Messianic beliefs has driven not the euphoria of victory, but form the fear of disappointment. Those aspiring to build the Temple are afraid of an imminent loss of the territorial gains of made in the Six Day War, due to the peace process, and the theological implications of such setback to their messianic hopes.

This book is the most comprehensive and complex study of reading that has taken place in Israel.

Literature for children written in pre-state Israel played a major role in shaping the young generation's values, experiences and conception of the world. Up until the 1940s, the hegemonic current of this literature's related the tale of the Zionist-Socialist accomplishments and presented the Hebrew generation growing up in the country as the opposite of the Diasporic Jew. During World War II, with the arrival of the news of the Holocaust transpiring in Europe, as well as at the period of conflict with the British, the story for children had changed dramatically. This shift has left a considerable mark on Hebrew culture as a whole. In her book From the School Desk We Were Taken Yael Darr describes how writers for the young committed themselves toa new story, focusing on the battle and sacrifice of youths. In this new narrative the Hebrew children were portrayed as skillful fighters serving role models even for the parents' generation. Yet, Darr also suggests that the literature for children did not ignore the news about the destruction of the European Jewry. While it might be expected of literature aimed at young readers to spare them exposure to such a catastrophe, it was in fact precisely that literature which was quick to tell the story of the disaster. Furthermore, in its varied and numerous references to the Holocaust the children's literature even preceded the Holocaust literature for adults. Darr's book recounts the military-national story as well as the tale of the devastation of the European Jewry in all its complexity. The writer also shows how some of the literary forms dealing with the Holocaust during the British Mandate were abandoned, when towards the founding of the state the children's literature fused the heroism of the country's youth and the story of the Holocaust weaving them into a pronounced national lesson. The book uncovers a wide range of literary works for children and youngsters written in the nineteen forties both by mainstream, center-stage, authors and by those in its margins. It closely analyzes several establishing works of fiction thus shedding light on the society and culture of those years while undermining conventions concerning the position of the Israeli based Jewish community concerning the Holocaust and its survivors.

This book examines the construction of gendered identities within the Israeli army and their relationship with the conceptions of citizenship. Based primarily on interviews, the book explores the different construction of gendered identities amongst four distinct groups: combat soldiers, soldiers in blue-collar roles, soldiers in white-collar roles and women soldiers in “masculine" roles. The author argues that during their military service, soldiers in varied military roles construct different conceptions of masculinity and citizenship, both of which are constituted through an ongoing dialogue with the hegemonic masculinity of the combat soldier, which is also identified as the “good citizen”. Therefore, these multiple gendered and civic identities reflect and reproduce social stratification along the lines of gender, ethnicity and class.