Editors' Note

editors’ note We write this only two weeks after the 2015 Israeli elections, as newly re- elected Prime Minister Netanyahu is starting to put together his new gov- ernment. Although reams of journalistic prose have already provided all sorts of analyses, many more months of research are needed before significant academic papers analyzing the election campaign and outcomes will be published. Thus, we offer some preliminary observations on the election and its larger significance. In spite of the fact that a number of voters moved from smaller parties back to the traditionally larger Likud and Labor (running this year as the Zionist Union), fragmentation of the political system is still evident. The fact that the two largest parties together received only 54 seats, and no other party received more than 13, shows that fragmentation is still a significant issue. The demise of political parties over the past two decades is a well-known phenomenon and has been subjected to extensive academic research, particularly in Europe, but also in articles in ISR. Such a weak party structure not only makes it dif ficult to establish a stable and sustainable govern- ment, but also may erode Israel’s democracy. There is an urgent need for a political overhaul. More significant is what could be described as the privatization of Israeli politics. In the past, it was generally only within the Haredi sector that one or more leaders, generally rabbis, decided who would be on the Knesset list. This year, there were also three non-religious parties (Yisrael Beiteinu, Yesh Atid, and Kulanu) that allowed one person to determine the list, without any democratic process, in addition to three religious parties (Shas, Ha’Am Itanu, and United Torah Judaism). In other parties, even when real elections do take place within the party institutions, the leader is able to place a few of his or her candi dates in safe positions on the list, bypassing elections or any wider input. Out of habit, we continue to describe these lists as ‘parties’. In fact, they are not really political parties in the usual sense of the term, but rather lists of candidates put together by individual leaders. These leaders have Israel Studies Review, Volume 30, Issue 1, Summer 2015: v–vii © Association for Israel Studies doi: 10.3167/isr.2015.300101 • ISSN 2159-0370 (Print) • ISSN 2159-0389 (Online) vi | Editors’ Note written the statutes of such parties, including the articles that ensure their own privileged leadership, not only for the coming election, but for the next one as well. The result is that each of these parties is no more than a group of people who are chosen primarily for their loyalty to the party’s leader and/or personal popularity, and who often lack any other common denominator, political ideology, or platform. Totally dependent on their leader’s whims, these potential Knesset members are politically sterile, while the parlia- mentary group lacks cohesiveness or sustainable solidarity. It is no wonder that many of these parties disappear after only one term or occasionally two. This was the fate of Yigal Yadin’s Dash, Avig- dor Kahalani’s Third Way, and the lists of Rehavam Ze’evi (‘Gandhi’), Raphael Eitan, and Tommy Lapid (father of Yair), to mention just a few. The fact that about half of the members of the 20th Knesset have been elected without any genuine democratic process or political mechanism such as elections or a nominating committee, but solely as a result of a personal decision made by the party’s leader, is a destructive phenomenon that should not continue. Perhaps even more important as a gauge of the health of the Israeli political system is the undeniable fact that public discourse has continued to deteriorate and reach new depths of calumny. Accusations of treason, incitement, and ad hominem attacks are commonplace, and delegitimiza- tion of one’s opponents seems to constitute the new normal. Of course, these are a reflection of changes in the general political culture that have the potential to seriously damage Israeli society. In addition to the weakening of the party system and the privatization of politics, other negative phenomena are visible in this election as well. As a consequence, many Israelis have reservations about the political process and express feelings of aversion, disgust, and alienation toward political institutions. All of these developments are worthy of study and hopefully will be the focus of research in the near future. We will be happy to host the best of such studies in future issues of ISR. And what awaits you in this current issue? Like everyone else, the announcement of this election caught us by surprise, and we did not pre- pare for it. Nevertheless, our first two articles focus on politics or political theory. Avi Bareli examines the memory and reputation of Mapai, the forerunner of Israel’s historic Labor Party, which is often referred to as ‘Bolshevist’ in current discourse. Bareli’s article shows that Mapai was in fact anti-communist and democratic and that, for their own reasons, the Israeli left, right, and center, as well as old ‘Mapainiks’, share a common interest in distancing themselves from it, distorting and even vilifying the party’s memory. Editors’ Note | vii Shay Hazkani examines the political indoctrination of the first IDF soldiers in the 1948 War. He shows how persuading the soldiers to coun- tenance killing the enemy, especially through the use of elements from Jewish tradition, was a major preoccupation of the fledgling Education Department of the IDF, formerly, the hasbara (propaganda) department of the Haganah. Hazkani especially focuses on the writings of poet and Vilna Ghetto survivor Abba Kovner, then an education officer, whose diatribes were particularly graphic and brutal. Israeli men are scrutinized in two unrelated articles in this issue. Steven Fraiberg and Danny Kaplan discuss Israel’s only men’s lifestyle magazine, Blazer. They show how the magazine, with its carefully cultivated image creation, represents a skeptical and cynical generation by subtly mocking Zionist mythology and icons of the Zionist pantheon. In their article, Zipi Israeli and Elisheva Rosman-Stollman investigate the identity of the Israeli soldier as presented in the media, showing how the public perception of IDF soldiers shifted during the period 1980–2010. The traditional media approach tended to show soldiers collectively as grown men. In the 1990s, this changed to representing them as vulnerable boys, while in the 2000s, the imagery has become more mature, but nuanced and complex. The authors examine this transition in the context of a national and global shift in the perception of masculinity. Finally, we have two articles that look at the representation of the kibbutz in Israeli media. Nurith Gertz examines how the kibbutz has been por- trayed in films and books and identifies which aspects of its complex story have been emphasized. Amir Har-Gil and Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler look at the portrayal of the landscape and architecture of the kibbutz by examining five films and television segments filmed on Kibbutz Yakum. They show how these depictions strongly emphasize the heroic age of the institution, largely ignoring the major changes that have transformed it since the 1980s. We also feature a review essay by Samuel Peleg, who discusses three books that examine different aspects of the political right in Israel. In addition, we include reviews of books on the usual wide variety of subjects: The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers, Paths to Middle-Class Mobility among Second Generation Moroccan Immigrant Women in Israel, Mo(ve)ments of Resistance: Politics, Economy and Society in Israel/Palestine 1931–2013, and Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East, a new text- book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among others. As always, we urge you to send us your articles and are happy to receive your comments about ISR. We look forward to seeing you at the Associa tion for Israel Studies meeting in Montreal in early June. — The Editors.

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