Peled, Shimrit: Ha-ribon ha-Yisra'eli  : ha-siaḥ ve-ha-roman, 1967 - 1973; 'iyun be-yetsirotehem shel Amos Oz...  = The Israeli sovereign; the novel and the discourse 1967 – 1973. Jerusalem: Magnes Press , 2014 . - 237 S.
ML-182
By Sandra Goldstein
In the past couple of decades, the Israeli society has been undergoing massive identity crisis and fragmentation. Israeli society is redefining the Zionist Ideology or rather integrating multiple narratives in its discourse. This is the background to Shimrit Peled’s book The Israeli Sovereign: The Novel and the Discourse 1967-1973. 
Shimrit Peled is a lecturer at the Hebrew University in the department for Hebrew Literature and the book is based on her doctorate research. In this study, she investigates the discourse in Israel during the years 1967 and 1973, between the so called Six Days War and Yom Kipur War. During these years, that followed decades of formation, Israeli national identity gained its distinct characteristics.  Peled’s research is based on literary representations, in novels and essays as well as in daily papers and periodicals, that were written and published during this span of time. Among the writers considered are Amos Oz, Yehudit Hendel, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, Sami Michael, Shimon Balas, Aharon Appelfeld, Yoram Kaniuk and Shulamit Hareven – all major contributors to defining Israeli identity, and representatives (if in different ways) of the hegemonic narrative. 
Rereading Modern Hebrew literature, Peled tells the history of the State of Israel during the third decade of its existence. Each chapter deals with one aspect that, according to Peled, defines and determines Israeli identity in its ‘national space’, namely, in the biblical Land of Israel. She analyses the society’s ethnic structure, in particular the formation of the Ashkenazi versus Mizrahi Israeli identity; she discusses the Jews’ and Arabs’ territorial problem, with one side living within its sovereign territory and the other residing in a space across that border. The chapter about gender and nationalism deconstructs major myths in the Israeli society related to the role of women in the building of the nation. The influence of Exile and sovereign existences on the formation of Israeli identity is discussed in the fourth chapter. The fifth and last chapter is devoted to the relationship between secular Israeli nationalism and religious nationalism. 
Post-modern, post-colonial, and feminist theoretical models enable Peled to reveal the basic conviction of the society during those years, namely, that the Land of Israel is a Jewish Israeli space under threat of extermination by the Arabs, and to show that all other aspect of Israeli life have developed out of this perception.
To illustrate her point of view, I should like to look briefly at the chapter, which deals with the construction of the Israeli identity or rather an Ashkenazi versus Mizrahi Israeli identity. Peled applies post-colonial perspectives (Benedict Anderson and Franz Fanon, for example) to the reading of the texts. In there she notices a pattern according to which Ashkenazi Jews were comfortably situated in the centre of space and society, while the Mizrahim were placed on the borderline. The literature reveals, on the one hand, the wish of the Ashkenazi Jews to feel at home, but on the other hand their concern to lose their (European) identity in the vast Arab space. It moreover relates the struggle of the Mizrahi Jews to fully belong to society. The Mizrahim wished to become Israeli and to integrate into the hegemonic Ashkenazi society, but were also reluctant to let go of their Mizrahi identity. Even though Mizrahi Jews were perfectly willing to distance themselves from the Arab world, which was considered as “primitive”, they were in fact allotted the role of intermediary between Arabs and Zionists, between the oriental space of the Middle East and the diaspora mentality of the Ashkenazi Jew. The result of those contradictory ascriptions is an ongoing tension between these two groups.
The book, although situated in the third decade of Israel existence, deals with topics that are of extreme importance in relation to today’s disintegrating national narrative of Israel.  

Dr. Sandra Goldstein is a cultural historian with emphasis on Jewish Cultural history and Israel Studies. She is a lecturer at the Jewish Studies Department (Institut für Judaistik), University of Vienna.