Wrapped in the Flag of Israel

Smadar Lavie spent nine years as a tenured professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic Studies and a visiting professor at the Institute for Social Science in the Twenty-First Century at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the author and coeditor of several books, including The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule. The first edition of Wrapped in the Flag of Israel won honorable mention from the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies and was a finalist for the Clifford Geertz Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. Lavie won the 2009 Gloria AnzaldÚa Prize from the American Studies Association.

“Thick, accusative, and critical, Wrapped in the Flag of Israel is indeed a must-read for all.”-Anne de Jong, American Anthropologist “Important and provocative. . . . Recommended to researchers, postgraduate students, and undergraduates who are interested in Israel/Palestine, political protest, discrimination, and the anthropology of the state.”-Tobias Kelly, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute “Incredibly insightful conceptually but also powerful politically. It does not merely challenge conceptual frameworks and academic canons but actively undoes them through shifting and diverse modes of writing.”-Adi Kuntsman, Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies “Engaging and insightful. . . . The book makes an important contribution to the literature, demonstrating that throughout the history of Israel, the Jewish immigrants of European descent have retained their privileged socioeconomic position and maintained claims to cultural superiority over communities coming from Asia and the Middle East. Wrapped in the Flag of Israel is an important ethnography of Mizrahi women and an excellent addition to anthropology of Israel.”-Yulia Egorova, American Ethnologist “Lavie’s study is solid, scrupulously researched and documented and has the ring of truth that comes from the personal experience of a researcher who has had to live through her fieldwork situation in a manner that few anthropologists experience. . . . Lavie has created a text whose insights and analysis extend far beyond her admirable Israeli study.”-William O. Beeman, Anthropological Quarterly “Lavie raises important questions about victimhood and agency pertinent to the study of the subaltern. . . . This book is not just a unique contribution to understanding gender and race in state bureaucracy and the operations of nationalism in the Middle East; it will interest anyone studying the disenfranchised and their everyday life, something that almost always involves ‘bureaucratic torture.’ . . . Wrapped in the Flag of Israel exposes how inhumanity can be normalized and can thrive in any modern liberal democracy.”-Sealing Cheng, Asian Anthropology “Lavie’s meticulous ethnographic work and pointed theoretical analysis explain the hopelessness of social protest and problematize the concept of agency in the context of intra-Jewish conflict in Israel; in this Lavie also addresses the ramifications of Mizrahi marginalization on the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”-Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, Cultural Studies “Lavie illustrates how asking difficult, troubling questions that disturb taken-for-granted silences can be an important strategy of resistance. In doing so, Wrapped in the Flag of Israel offers theoretical and political insights that extend beyond Israel’s undeclared borders.”-Simona Sharoni, Journal of Palestine Studies “Lavie has written a brave and scholarly auto-ethnography using an extended case study method, of a social movement in contemporary Israel. . . . With theoretical sophistication and granular accounts of day-to-day struggles of her own and other single mothers’ efforts to survive and gain access to resources and entitlements as Israelis . . . This is a painful account well worth reading. Social workers from many nations who are involved in difficult macro- and mezzo-practice would find illuminating the many elements of social movement activity and peer-group support that Lavie characterizes and theorizes so powerfully.”-Barbara Levy Simon, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work “At the crossroads between a coursebook, a piece of writing about life and a feminist manifesto, Wrapped in the Flag of Israel . . . [is] both an enlightening insight into Israeli intra-racism and an original and valuable connection between two seemingly unrelated concepts: bureaucracy and torture.”-Sorina Georgescu, Hypercultura

• Note on Transliteration    Introduction: Marching on Jerusalem with Israel’s Single Mothers     “Reaganomics,” Ḥok HaHesderim, and the Oslo BoomtimeThe HudnaKnafonomics: Vicky and IOn Ethnographic DataWrapped in the Flag of Israel’s Bureaucracy: A Road MapChapter 1. Left Is Right, Right Is Left: Zionism and Israel’s Single Mothers     Ḥad Horit: Notes on the Hebrew Etymology of Single MotherhoodThe Typology of Israel’s Single MothersOn ZionismWhy Mizraḥim Support the Right WingWhy Mizraḥi Feminists’ Hands Are TiedChapter 2. Protesting and Belonging: When the Agency of Identity Politics Becomes Impossible     Figurations of AgencyProtesting and Belonging: An Argument in Six PartsCapturing and Conveying Elusive Bureaucratic TortureChapter 3. Take 1: The GendeRace Essence of Bureaucratic Torture     Classificatory Schemes of Bureaucratic LogicNegative Communitas: Bureaucracy’s “Tough Love”The Plus-Minus Model of TortureThe Zone of Repulsion: Plus-Plus Relationships of PainDocuments as Implements of TortureBureaucracy’s Essence: GendeRaceResponse to Bureaucracy: BracketingImpossible Articulation, Impossible AgencyChapter 4. Take 2: Ideology, Welfare, and Single MothersChapter 5. Take 3: Diary of a Welfare MotherChapter 6. The Price of National Security     Knafoland-The EndThis Is Exactly What We DidEpilogue: Israel, Summer 2011Afterword(s): Gaza 2014 and the Mizraḥi Predicament     Bureaucratic Torture: When Agency Becomes ImpossibleAgencyTortureOne People One Heart: The War on Gaza 2014The New Black Panthers, or HaLo NeḥmadimḤok HaHesderim 2014Labor Hill B-JamusinThe Ḥamas Salary FiascoOperation Brother’s KeeperThe War on Gaza-Protective EdgeUnder the Smokescreen of WarElections 2015: The Center Moves Further to the RightThe Mizraḥi Cultural RenaissanceThe Steady Drumbeat of Eternal ReturnAcknowledgmentsNotes    Glossary of Hebrew, Arabic, and Yiddish TermsReferencesIndex