Good ArabsThe Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 19481967

Experiences of Urban Militarism: Spatial Stigma, Ruins and Everyday Life

“…In addition to the use of border police and undercovers, the official discourse that frames the Arab districts as dangerous zones to be tightly controlled also justifies the active, if invisible, presence of the General Security Services (GSS, the main Israeli security agency) with its network of informers. 11 While, historically, the GSS has monitored the political activities of Palestinians (Cohen, 2010) in the city's Arab districts, it operates at the intersection of crime and political control. Take the case of the confiscation of illegal guns in the Arab districts.…”

“OperationExodus”: Israeli government involvement in the production of Otto Preminger's FilmExodus(1960)

“…In 1960, the large Arab minority in Israel enjoyed voting rights but was still living mostly under a controversial and highly resented military regime that restricted their lives and free movement. 76 Government officials and military officers in Galilee spent a great deal of effort helping Hartuv to bring about the cooperation of local Arab dignitaries and villagers in Kfar Kanna, chosen to represent the Arab village of Abu Yesha. The peaceful, cooperative relations between Abu Yesha and the children's village Gan Dafna, and their disruption in the 1948 war, were an important final theme in the film.…”

Media culture as counter-hegemonic strategy: the communicative action of the Arab minority in Israel

“…Due both to the pressure the government exerted on the opposition Communist Partya political home for many of the Arab citizens at the time -and to the fact that only a small percentage of the population was literate in Arabic, Al-Ittihad was oftentimes reduced to a very small circle of readers, limiting its influence. In an atmosphere of fear and defeat, and especially in light of a developing collaborator culture -that is, Arab citizens who collaborated with the Israeli military and the General Security Services (Shabak) (Cohen, 2006) -most members of Arab society did not dare openly reveal having listened to radio programs broadcast from Arab countries or having read Al-Ittihad (Ozacky-Lazar, 2006).…”

“…All these ploys were contrived to justify the cultural, political and military colonization of Arab society and its geographic space (Shafir and Peled, 2002). Further, the aim was the construction of a new 'Israeli Arab' citizen, whose identity and consciousness would be disconnected from the historical and ontological past (Cohen, 2006;Rouhana, 1997).…”