Assignments

The table below lists the course assignments and their percentage of the final course grade. For more detail, click on the corresponding link.

ASSIGNMENTS	PERCENTAGES
Readings’ assignments (4)	40%
Staged Israeli-Arab-Palestinian peace conference	15%
Classroom presentation	15% (bonus)
Final paper	45% (or 30% if the presentation was good )

The presentations are done periodically throughout the term and are mainly related to the specific topic discussed during a session.

Possible Topics

Israel’s political system
Israel’s educational systems
Israel’s military
Globalization and Israel
Israel’s municipal and regional systems
The post-Zionism debate
The Israeli economy
Israel’s settlement projects and colonialism
How Jewish is the Jewish state?
The Holocaust in Israeli identity
The Israeli Diaspora
Jewish-ethnic groups in Israel
The ultra-Orthodox sub-culture in Israel
Civil society in Israel [NGOs, etc.]
The Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel
‘Ethnic democracy’ versus ’ethnocracy’
‘Jewish and democratic’ versus ‘a state for all its citizens’
Israeli popular music as a reflection of the country’s identity
Israeli literature and Israeli identity
Israel and the Jewish-Diaspora relations
The development of Israel’s culinary as an expression of its identity

The final paper is an independent research project on a topic agreed upon between students and the instructor. It should be based on about 6–8 scholarly articles, or on their equivalent (like books’ chapters), and on additional material if needed.

Topic, paper’s outline, main argument, and the bibliography will need to be discussed with the instructor in advance and agreed upon before you begin writing.

There is no required range of pages for the final paper. Once you feel that you have covered and discussed the topic in all its aspects, as they are presented in your bibliography, and that you have also addressed the main argument as it was agreed upon, then it is a good sign for you to stop writing. However, 8–18 pages, double spaced, font 12 can serve as a good measure stick for the length of the paper.

As mentioned in class more than once, the instructor will also be happy to read draft papers before the final submission.

Possible Topics

Israeli Settlements, 1967–2019
The Palestinian National Movement
The Israeli Occupation
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
The Holocaust in Israeli Identity
The Haredim
Jewish Religious Radicalism: The Movement to Build the Third Temple
The Israeli Military
The Israeli Economy
Israel’s Hi-Tech and Startups Industry
Israel’s Security Industry
Israel’s Aerospace Industry
Israel’s Higher Education System
The Arab Citizens of Israel
Israel’s Popular Music as an Expression of Israeli Identity
Israeli Architecture
Israeli Literature
Israeli Film and Israeli Identity
Is Israel a Militaristic State?
The Israeli Diaspora
US-Israeli Relationships
The BDS Movement
The American Jewish Community and Israel
Or any other topic that you want to explore

Student Examples

“The Establishment, Perpetuation, and Rejection of Normativity in Israeli Cinema” (PDF)

“The Shift in Israeli Identity Towards Nationalism and a More Religious State” (PDF)

These examples appear courtesy of MIT students and are anonymous by request.

Assignment #1: Civil Religion of Statism (Mamlachtiyut)

The period of Statism in Israel roughly corresponds to the first three decades since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Some scholars limit this period to only the first two decades, between the 1948 war and the 1967 war. However, for reasons to be explained in class, we will consider this period as encompassing the years from the 1948 war to the 1973 war (the Yom Kippur War).

We will treat this period as the formative years of Israel, in which its core identity was established, accompanied by the establishment of corresponding political, social, and cultural institutions, as well as by the construction of the state’s main cultural and ideological tenets.

When you think of the questions below, please take these basic outlines into consideration.

Please read Liebman and Don-Yehiya’s excerpts from their book Civil Religion in Israel.
Please sum up in no more than half a page their main argument about Israel’s Civil Religion of Statism.
Then, (a) Please explain the differences between traditional and civil religions; (b) Define the concept of “Statism” in its application to Israel’s formative years (You may also want to incorporate the essence of the above (a) + (b) observations into your half-page summary of Liebman and Don-Yehiya’s main thesis); amd (c) Give three examples of how Israel’s Civil Religion of Statism was disseminated to the general public.
Then, please reflect freely on both Liebman & Don-Yehiya’s thesis and text, and on the excerpt from Moshe Shamir’s novel. Please appraise the two pieces’ relation to the notion of Israel’s Mamlachtiyut.
Please limit your entire paper to no more than two and a half pages, double spaced, font 12.

This assignment is due during Module 2.

Assignment #2: “No More Sabras”

Please read the two mandatory readings: (a) Rubinstein’s scholarly discussion about the decline of the Sabra ideal; and (b) the excerpts from Eli Amir’s autobiographical novel.
Please reflect freely on these two readings. Feel free to comment on the readings themselves or on the issues they address, or on both. Please also try to reflect on the relationships of these two readings, and what they discuss, to Mamlachtiyut (Statism).
If you have questions about the material itself or about the issues discussed in it, please write them down as well. We will try to address these questions and the observations in class.
Please limit your entire paper to no more than one and a half pages, double spaced, font 12.

This assignment is due during Module 4.

Assignment #3: 1948

Please read the mandatory readings (Morris, Rabin, Shapira, Kanafani).
Please summarize Morris’s main argument(s), and support your summary with at least two examples from the article.
Please reflect freely on the issue of 1948 and on the four mandatory readings. The reflections are open but still need to address the 1948 war, its consequences, and the four works we were asked to read about it.
Please limit your entire paper (questions 2 and 3) to no more than four pages, double spaced, font 12.

This assignment is due during Module 6.

Assignment #4: The Role of Emotions

Please read the mandatory readings and watch the mandatory YouTube episodes for Module 7:
- Chapter 6 from Bunton’s book
- The two short (documentary) stories from David Grossman’s 1988 book
- The two YouTube episodes (linked)
- The assigned pages from Roger Petersen’s book
Please sum up Petersen’s main argument in about ¾ of a page (double spaced, font 12).
Please reflect on Petersen’s thesis (for example, is it convincing? Are there other factors that you believe he does not emphasize enough? etc.). Then, and based on our readings and discussions in class so far, please also appraise whether his approach on the centrality of emotions can be applied to our topic. This can be about the inner cultural and social encounters inside Israeli society, or also about the conflict with the Palestinians. Please try to limit your discussion of this part to about one and a half to two additional pages (on top of the above three quarters of a page).

This assignment is due during Module 7.

Students are expected to be well-versed and familiar with their specific topic of “expertise” and to also be familiar with the other delegations’ narratives.

Core Issues

Jerusalem = The future of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. Namely: who will have sovereignty over this site and who will control it? Similarly, who will have control and/or sovereignty over Jerusalem’s Arab and Jewish neighborhoods?
1948 Refugees = Will they have the right to return to their original homes in Jaffa, Haifa, etc., and to about 450 villages, most of them are now destroyed?
Palestinian State and settlements = Will it be established at all? And if it will, what its future borders will be? And—what will happen to Israeli settlements and their inhabitants that are now located within the future borders of a Palestinian state, once such a state will be established?
Other important issues = security arrangements for both sides, economic cooperation, water rights, air rights, travel between the West Bank and the Gaza, etc.

Each delegation needs to form an overall position towards a possible agreement, one that will not violate its basic interests.