Identity politics on the Israeli screen

247 Pages·2002·4.162 MB·English

by  Loshitzky, Yosefa

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Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen
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Identity Politics
on the Israeli Screen
Yosefa Loshitzky
university of texas press, austin
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Copyright © 2001 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2001
Requests for permission to reproduce material from
this work should be sent to Permissions, University
of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.
(cid:2)(cid:2)The paper used in this book meets the minimum
requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997)
(Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Loshitzky, Yosefa.
Identity politics on the Israeli screen / Yosefa
Loshitzky.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-292-74723-3 (alk. paper)—
isbn 0-292-74724-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures—Israel—History. 2. Jews
in motion pictures. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–
1945), in motion pictures. 4. Jewish-Arab relations
in motion pictures. 5. Arabs in motion pictures.
I. Title.
pn1993.5.i86 l37 2002
791.43(cid:3)095694—dc21 2001017137
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To the memory of the thirteen Palestinians, citizens of the State of Israel,
who were killed by the Israeli police in October2000
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Contents
ix Acknowledgments
xi Introduction: Hybrid Victims
chapter 1
1
Screening the Birth of a Nation:
ExodusRevisited
chapter 2
15
Surviving the Survivors:
The Second Generation
chapter 3
32
Postmemory Cinema:
Second-Generation Israelis Screen the Holocaust
chapter 4
72
Shchur:
The Orient Within
chapter 5
90
In the Land of Oz:
Orientalist Discourse inMy Michael
chapter 6
112
Forbidden Love in the Holy Land:
Transgressing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
chapter 7
154
The Day After:
The Sexual Economy of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
169 Conclusion
173 Notes
215 Index
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the following institutions for their financial support: the Au-
thority for Research and Development at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and especially Shula Woltz and Ofer Kela, who were very helpful in obtaining
and securing this support; The Levi Eshkol Institute for Economic, Social and
Political Research, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Hebrew University, and its
director Yoram Bilu; and the Shaine Center for Research in Social Sciences,
Faculty of Social Sciences at the Hebrew University, and its director Michael
Shalev. I also thank the following institutions and persons for lending me
stills: Israel Film Archive/Jerusalem Cinematheque, its director Lia Van Leer,
and head of research and library services Costel Safirman and his deputy Nirit
Avni; Tsipi Reibenbach; Havakuk Levison, Amos Gitai, and Ilan Moscovitch;
Yehuda (Judd) Ne’eman; Dani Setton and Set Productions; Nissim Dayan;
Shmuel Hasfari, Hanna Azulay Hasfari, and Yoram Kislev, H.L.S. Ltd.; Dan
Wolman; Nicole de Castro; Daniel Wachsmann and Amnon Rubinstein.
I am also deeply grateful to Haim Bresheeth for his support; to Levana Nir
for allowing me to use her interesting work; to Jessica Bonn for her intelligent
comments;toAmyKronishforherhelpfultips;andtoMarilynKulik,director
of the Spielberg Archive, Hebrew University, and Hillel Tryster, her deputy,
for their help and generosity. Special thanks goes to John Downing for his in-
valuable insight and perceptive reading and to Jim Burr, the Humanities Ed-
itor of the University of Texas Press, whose faith in my project and persistent
support brought this book into being.
Some of the material used in this book has already appeared in print in
somewhat different form and appears here courtesy of the following publish-
ers. The analysis ofDon’t Touch My Holocaustappeared inThe Politics of War
Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structures, and Dynamics, edited by
T. G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper (Routledge, 2000), and
inVisualCultureandtheHolocaust,editedbyBarbieZelizer(RutgersUniver-
sity Press, 2001). A slightly different version of chapter 4 appeared under the
ix