The origins of Israeli mythology
Subtitle: neither Canaanites nor crusaders
By: David Ohana ; [translated by] David Maisel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781107014091
Subjects: Social life and customs; Identity; Jews; RELIGION / Judaism / General; Israeli National characteristics
Work titles: Lo Kenaʻanim, lo Tsalvanim
Description: "This book examines Israeli identity by exploring its historical narratives, such as the crusader and Canaanite challenges and proposes a new meta-narrative - Mediterraneanism"--

"We claim that Zionism as a meta-narrative has been formed through contradiction to two alternative models, the Canaanite and crusader narratives. These narratives are the most daring and heretical assaults on Israeli-Jewish identity, which is umbilically connected to Zionism. The Israelis, according to the Canaanite narrative, are from this place and belong only here; according to the crusader narrative, they are from another place and belong there. On the one hand, the mythological construction of Zionism as a modern crusade describes Israel as a Western colonial enterprise planted in the heart of the East and alien to the area, its logic, and its peoples, whose end must be degeneration and defeat. On the other hand, the nativist construction of Israel as neo-Canaanism, which defined the nation in purely geographical terms as an imagined native community, demands breaking away from the chain of historical continuity. Those are the two greatest anxieties that Zionism and Israel needed to encounter and answer forcefully. The Origins of Israeli Mythology seeks to examine the intellectual archaeology of Israeli mythology, as it reveals itself through the Canaanite and crusader narratives"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; 2. The Promethean Hebrew; 3. The Canaanite challenge; 4. The nativist theology; 5. The crusader anxiety; 6. The Mediterranean option; 7. Epilogue: looking out to sea.