Post-zionist critique on Israel and the Palestinians part I: The academic debate

Abstract

This three-part article describes changes in how Israelis-scholars, writers, poets, film makers, and others on Israel's cultural scene-view themselves and the "Other. " Part I presents the scholarly debate on Israel's past and present that laid the groundwork for the transformation of the cultural discourse described in the second and third parts. The debate, launched by new findings in the Israeli archives and encouraged by an ideology critical of Zionism, also was influenced by sociopolitical and economic changes in Israeli society in the wake of the October 1973 war. The various aspects of the post-Zionist critique-the challenge by the "new historians" and "critical sociologists" not only of the Zionist interpretation but also of the role of Israeli academia in providing the scholarly underpinnings of this interpretation are examined.