The Invention and Decline of Israeliness. Baruch Kimmerling

      Acknowledgments

      This book is a summary of an approximately ten-year process of professional and intellectual discussions, debates, and sometimes bitter controversies with friends, colleagues, students, and rivals. I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by highly stimulating intellectual environments in the offices, faculty clubs, and corridors of the Hebrew University and the University of Washington at Seattle. I have also been supported and spoiled by a vivid global exchange through the wonders of the Internet and the electronic mail system. The names of those who have contributed to these environments are so innumerable that, with the exception of the late Dan Horowitz, I shall refrain from listing them. The final version was rewritten following very thoughtful, wise, and constructive comments of three anonymous peer reviewers of the University of California Press.

      I would like to thank my devoted students and assistants who have aided me throughout all these years and made possible the implementation of this mission: Jon Simons, Matthew Diamond, Lauren Erdreich, Michal Laron, Hagit Schwartz, and Keren-Or Schlesinger. I also am pleasantly indebted to the Eshkol Center of Israel Studies and to the Silbert Center for Research of Israeli Society and Director Arieh Schachar for their generous support in funding the research demanded by the present volume. I am deeply grateful to Malcom Reed and Cindy Fulton of the University of California Press, who handled the manuscript so carefully, and special thanks to Peter Dreyer for his excellent editorial work.

      Parts of this volume are based on previously published material. Chapter 2 is based on “State Building, State Autonomy, and the Identity of Society: The Case of the Israeli State,” published in the Journal of Historical Sociology 6, 4 (1993): 397-429. Chapter 4 partially relies on “Between Hegemony and Dormant Kulturkampf in Israel,” published in Israel Affairs 4, 3-4 (1998): 49-72. Part of chapter 5 derives from “The New Israelis: Plurality of Cultures without Multiculturalism,” Alpayim 16 (1998): 264-308 (in Hebrew). Chapter 6 is adapted from “Religion, Nationalism and Democracy in Israel,” published in Constellations 6, 3 (1999): 339-63. Finally, chapter 7's main source is an essay titled “Political Subcultures and Civilian Militarism in a Settler-Immigrant Society,” published in Security Concerns: Insights from the Israeli Experience, edited by Daniel Bar-Tal, Dan Jacobson, and Aharon Klieman (Stamford, Conn.: JAI Press, 1998), pp. 395-416.

      I am grateful to all the publishers who so generously granted me the right to use the material. Nonetheless, all these papers served only as foundations for the present chapters of this volume. Most were completely rewritten to include (or sometimes exclude) new material and ideas and to present a coherent narrative.