Reconceptualizing Israeli identity: Post-Zionism as conflict resolution

This study is a deconstructionist critique of the role of Zionism in Israeli society. It suggests that Zionist nationalism is a form of identity management, a synthetic "structure of feeling" that mediates and controls the collective self image of most Israeli Jews. It provides conceptual and practical approaches for Israeli citizens to resist such efforts through the creation of an alternative social sphere which acts independently of, and can neither be removed nor co-opted by, ideological apparatuses of the Israeli state. It identifies existing identity alternatives in Israel to be the sources of this new social formation and submits that the post-Zionist Israeli identity emerging out of this formation may aid in the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.