Yonatan Mendel is a Research Associate at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the Director of Projects of the Mediterranean Unit at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel. He is also a Teaching Fellow at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His research area is the sociology of language, specifically the influences of political conflict on the study of, and attitude to a language and the way in which research on language contributes towards understanding deep social and political processes.

"This is the most comprehensive and well-documented study, examining Arabic studies in Israel in relation to security considerations. This important book is a contribution to sociolinguistics in general, and Arabic studies in particular, and also to the fields of political and social sciences, employing language to shed light on sociopolitical conflicts." (Muhammad Amara, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 145, Winter, 2016)

• Preface: Arabic, Security and Me Introduction: Arabic and Security in Israel 1. Rooting Security in Arabic Soil: When Zionism Met Arabic 2. Whose Language is it, anyway? Arabic in Israeli-Jewish Schools, 1948-1967 3. Recruiting Arabic to War: The 1967 and 1973 Wars' Influence on Arabic Studies in Israeli-Jewish Schools 4. Israel's Army of Arabists: 1976 and Beyond 5. Giv?at-?avivah and Ulpan-?A?iva: Arabic Studies independent of the Ministry of Education Conclusions