If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, ’Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’

- Romans 11: 17-19

The exhibition ”Forbidden Junctions” introduces a multi-directional thought process pointing at fluid, stratified cultural realities which challenge deep-seated identity labels anchored in collective cultural memory. The show features artists from several ”Middle Easteran” countries (Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran) whose works address issues pertinent to the political, cultural, and dynamic reality in which they live. All the featured works, some created especially for the exhibition, present intercultural junctions where various groups adopt certain symbols, while relinquishing others. The term ”forbidden junctions” (or prohibited hybrids), originating in the Mishna, refers to the five negative precepts included in the Pentateuch: the prohibitions regarding the mixing of species or commingling of different kinds1 (kil’ayim2). In the context of the exhibition, the term has been borrowed to indicate questions arising from cultural syntheses, acknowledging that culture is never static and never evolves along a single, set route, thus incongruent with the modernist practice of classifying and categorizing. 

In the context of the identity discourse—and without elaborating on the argument that culture and history are rationally structured to serve political interests—cultural conditionings become an inevitable object of study as an organized, directed project. Each of the works in the exhibition opts for a single identity label over others, spotlights a certain cultural aspect, and represents a specific point in time, which evades the cultural space defined by the Orientalist project, while acknowledging its own ocular limitations. The artists often visually incorporate the historical experience of their people in their works,3 hence their reading underscores the intricate nature of collective-cultural memory, bringing to the fore the dynamic relations between image-language-history.

In different places throughout the world, and certainly in the case of the Middle East, the categories classifying identities and cultures as discrete, autonomous chapters are being dissolved and challenged, for not only does the opposition between ”East” and ”West,” ”Orient” and ”Occident,” become blurred, but a multi-faceted, hybrid cultural reality is enhanced.4 This constant transformation can reinforce the essence and nature of a given culture, rather than interfere with its ”authenticity.”

The exhibition ”Forbidden Junctions” does not adhere to the discourse condemning every Western influence whatsoever on Eastern cultures; instead, it wishes to delve into the cultural wealth generated by a ”forbidden” inter-cultural and multi-cultural encounter. This is not to refute the argument that artistic, architectural, and other expressions of Eastern culture have often remained a part of a paradigm of sign appropriation, ostensibly intended to present the ”East” as equal, while in fact doubly disregarding it.5 In this context it ought to be stressed that, rather than marketing uniformity (the ”prohibitory” dimension), colonialism and imperialism introduced hybridity as an option and not only a prohibition; as a possibility which was present long before the advent of postmodernism.
In the absence of a better term, the definition of the region in which the participating artists operate as the ”Middle East” embeds a Western terminological demagogy. The definition of the ”East” as ”Near,” ”Middle,” or ”Far” is always made in geographical relation to the ”West” as the center.6 The ”East”—that relative horizon ostensibly moving in relation to Central Europe—has been subordinated, as part of the limitation of language, to a Eurocentric perception. Thus, literature pertaining to the ”East” has faced many philological and methodological challenges. Despite the prevalence of binary notions, such as ”East,” ”Orient,” ”Orientalism,” ”Oriental studies,” etc., their very use should be questioned.

The last decade has seen a considerable number of studies about art from the ”Middle East” by European and American scholars, historians, and curators, attesting to a growing ”Western” interest in the region’s aesthetics and cultures.7 Vis-à-vis these trends, the exhibition ”Forbidden Junctions” sets out to deconstruct the binary perceptions regarding ”East”/”West” relations. Its staging at an art center supported by a municipal body which operates as an integral part of Israel’s quasi-Western art world, was accompanied by many internal conflicts. The physical space in which the exhibition is presented places all the participating works in this context. In view of European colonialism and Jewish nationalism, the presentation of an exhibition addressing the identity of ”Eastern” cultures in Israel’s territorial space introduces the issue of intercultural relations between dominant groups—whether in terms of number, or in military or economic terms—and minority groups, necessitating a tour along the changing, imaginary borders of the regional historical conceptualization, both the local-Zionist and the Palestinian. The State of Israel, which, under a modernist narrative, possesses a Western national identity and adheres to Western terminology within a region called the ”Middle East,” raises intricate questions by its very existence; all the more so, since the majority of its inhabitants are not of European origin, but rather Arab-Jews and Palestinians. As opposed to the claim of the Zionist narrative, Israel did not really emerge ”ex nihilo.”

Here I must add a personal note: As an Arab-Jewish artist and curator whose language of expression is that of contemporary Western art and theory, the Western exhibition space functions, to my mind, as a necessary platform for exploring the duality dichotomizing ”East” and ”West,” ”Jew” and ”Arab,” ”Ashkenazi” and ”Mizrahi.” This realm of confrontation seems to introduce the ability to examine representations of cultural hybridization in a concentrated, acute manner. Thus the show, which critically addresses the exotification and folklorization of the East (and, in some respects, of the West as well), challenges the Western exhibition space, using it as a sounding board which takes part in the struggle for visual representation as a political struggle. The modernist ”aesthetic” experience indeed often elicits alienation between the viewer and that which is presented to him. Still, one must also acknowledge the advantages of the ”white space” whose contents tend to strike the viewer with awe upon entering.

While the postmodern era let the voice of the ”other” (the ”black,” ”Mizrahi,” ”gay/lesbian,” etc.) be heard, it also reinforced the dichotomy between the ”enlightened” ”white Westerner” and all those ”others,” revalidating the colonialist modes of observation, naturally occurring in the language of art as well. Much has been written about the ”mysterious” Orient and its treatment by the West, wishing to pattern it and forcing an ”inferior,” ”black” identity upon it; the post-colonialist discourse has become prevalent, almost hackneyed, in the academic and contemporary art world. Edward Said applied the term ”Orientalism”—a critical notion which has become deeply established in the past three decades—to the relationship between the ”Occident” and the ”Orient.” According to Said, standardization and cultural stereotyping of the ”Orient” have intensified the hold of its demonology to Western eyes.8 Indeed, while various cultures in the West identified diverse perceptions under the canopy called ”West,” they continued to regard the ”Orient” as a uniform, static place. The deconstruction of the colonialist gaze must not be deemed an attempt to deny the existence of shared cultural elements founded on a long history common to cultures from the part of the globe thoughtlessly called ”East,” and ones shared by cultures located in the ”West.” Recognizing the danger inherent in reinforcing those divisive modernist practices which perpetuate hierarchical oppositions between ”East” and ”West,” on the one hand, and existing stereotypes, on the other—calls for great caution.

The cultural and artistic appeals arising from the realities mirrored by the works in ”Forbidden Junctions” are dual and swathed in contradiction: the ”Western” and ”Eastern” spaces often become coherent spaces, where the invention of the ”East” and the invention of the ”West” form a part of a comprehensive iconographic array. As part of the exhibition, the Western ”super-culture” likewise becomes an object of investigation, and the local is often deemed as hegemonic as the ”modernist.”

• • •

Scandar Copti’s video installation CFJ1 (College des Frères, Jaffa) presents four Christian Arab men who grew up in Jaffa, the artist included. Their common feature is the fact that as children they attended the French Christian School. The building was erected in 1882 to disseminate French culture in the region, and continued operation in situ, insisting on a European curriculum and schooling system, despite the dramatic changes undergone by the community which it serves: the 1948 war, the deportation of part of the Palestinian inhabitants, the entry of a new Jewish population, introduction of the Israeli educational system, and the dwindling of the Christian population within Palestinian society in Israel. Through the conversation of these four men, Copti unfolds the school’s story as an island of stability, on the one hand, and as a dull mirror reflecting the transformations endured by Jaffa and the Christian-Arab community, on the other.

Similarly, Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour’s video piece The Mondial in Me’eliya addresses the place of the Arab-Christian minority in Israel. It shows how the Christian minority forms its cultural identity by documenting the inhabitants of the village of Me’eliya in northern Israel during the World Cup. The Roman Catholic inhabitants of the village identify mainly with football teams from the ”Western” world, accordingly hanging the flags of their respective nationalities and painting their faces and houses in matching colors. The flags of Middle Eastern, North African, and East Asian countries are conspicuously absent. The uniqueness of the Christian-Arab community in Israel as a Christian minority within an Arab minority, challenges the sustainability of the nation-state as a cultural phenomenon, introducing the volatile affinity between culture and nationality. Through a socio-graphic prism, many minority groups try to find their place within the national ”collective memory.” This is particularly evident in Israel, where classifying thought processes and enforcement of non-hybrid orders are the norm.

The Christians in Israel confront two ”majority” groups with which they ”negotiate” their identity: Israeli Jews and Muslim Arabs. Their historical and geographic national definition as Arabs ascribes the members of this community to the Muslim-Arab world in general, and specifically to the Muslim Palestinians and the Muslim Arabs in Israel. Characterization and definition of the contexts in which cultural and social customs of majority groups are assimilated by minority groups, is a complex task, especially in the case of minorities which negotiate with two majority groups.9 In order to guard their uniqueness and protect their identity, the Christians in Israel display a dual attitude toward both majority groups to which they belong: on the one hand, they attest to their will to integrate, especially in the Israeli Jewish majority; on the other hand, they display a clear tendency to maintain their ingroup identity and set themselves apart, mainly from the Muslim-Arab majority. Only a small percentage of these Christians consider assimilation into one of the groups as a possible alternative, and this option with regard to either larger group is considered equally negative. Both Jewish society and Muslim society fail to understand the versatility of the Christian minority, as well as its religious, social, and cultural needs as a differentiated ethnic group. Nevertheless, the Christians display an equally pluralistic view toward either group, the ”Western” like the ”Eastern,” tending to accept both. From the position of a ”minority within a minority,” perhaps the Christian Arabs in Israel have no other option but to accept the different majority positions with extra tolerance, and to form their identity vis-à-vis these groups.

Turkish artist Köken Ergun’s video installation, Wedding, explores cultural memory. For eight months the artist photographed more than forty wedding ceremonies of Turkish immigrants in Berlin, documentary footage which he edited repeatedly. The work presents the documentary information as a cultural mirror reflecting the displacement of cultural customs. Frame by frame, from the visit to the bridal salon, the artist creates a fictive documentation of a ”typically Turkish” wedding, as it were. In this way, not only does he deconstruct and decode the cultural characteristics of the Turkish community, but he also reconstructs the way in which identity is manifested through changing ritualistic codes. Ergun avoids the ethnographic (colonialist) obstacle which results from romanticizing the ”object of research,” thus creating, with calculated craftiness, an imaginary narrative elusive to foreign eyes, introducing collective cultural memory to be reconsidered.

In her video installation Perfectly Suited for You, Iranian artist Solmaz Shahbazi addresses cultural stereotypes and the construction of a new identity by the emerging upper-middle class in the city of Istanbul. Turkey’s nouveau riche have in recent years moved to houses in prestigious, self-enclosed neighborhoods (”gated communities”) in the city’s affluent suburbs. The idea of a gated community originated in California, and has been gathering momentum in the Middle East. Both the architects and the inhabitants of these new neighborhoods fantasize about a ”new order” and a quiet, comfortable life detached from the city and the local population. As part of the artificial structure of these enclosed communities, inhabitants ”enjoy” a sterile, ostensibly protected life style. The work examines how the new homeowners exert themselves to acquire a new identity, both as a group and as a class, setting themselves apart from the local population to which they belonged prior to their acquisition of wealth. The installation consists of a television screen presenting a videostill taken in a gated compound, reminiscent of a Hollywood set. One of the compound dwellers is heard in the background, explaining her choice of such a neighborhood to maintain a ”safe distance” from the city inhabitants. She reiterates the ease and practicality of such a life, the fact that one doesn’t have to leave the complex, where the global-cosmopolitan modern image is underscored in contradistinction to the local image. Residence in a gated community becomes a status symbol, and the property buyers also acquire a new status for themselves. Screened next to the television is a video piece reviewing different compounds of ”gated communities” throughout Istanbul. The architectural division, whereby the newly affluent gather in ”safe” spaces, is presented as a solution to the city’s ”security problem.”

Future Architecture is a project by the London/Bethlehem Architectural Studio directed by Palestinian Sandi Hilal, Italian Alessandro Petti, and Israeli Eyal Weizman. The current exhibition presents a stereoscopic video documentation made as part of the project, Future Architecture: Psagot/ElBireh, where architects Armin Linke, Francesco Mattuzzi, and Renato Rinaldi propose a new use for evacuated Israeli settlements and military bases in the Palestinian Authority’s territory. The project uses the language of architecture to articulate the spatial dimension of a process of decolonization (colony/settlement ”liberation”). Two disparate video works refer to two different sites: the Jewish settlement Psagot established in July 1981 as part of the ”compensations” for the evacuees of Yamit in the Sinai, and the military base Oush Grab adjacent to Beit Sahour, evacuated by the IDF in May 2006. The settlement Psagot was selected as the first ”laboratory” for architectural conversion. With a populace of 1,700, consisting mainly of American Jews, it was selected due to its strategic spatial location, on a hilltop towering to 900 meters, overlooking the entire area. Prior to its occupation by Israel in 1967, the hill was intended as a tourist resort. The architects acknowledge the fact that the settlements are one of the sorest spots of Israeli domination, yet their proposal is not intended to find solutions for the demands of either side. Therefore they avoid the terminology often used in the political discourse in order to find a ”solution” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The use of the term ”deconolonization” does not imply the forced transfer of inhabitants and communities, but rather offers consensual physical intervention which is intended to open new horizons for change, as part of which Palestinian and Jewish citizens will be able to integrate. The second video piece refers, as aforesaid, to a project already performed in situ. The former military base was erected in the northern entrance to the Palestinian city Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, in the Mandatory period. Between 1948 and 1967 it functioned as a Jordanian army base, and from 1967 to 2006—as an IDF base. Its evacuation by Israeli soldiers was swift, carried out in the middle of the night, and by morning, the Palestinians entered and emptied it of the remaining equipment. As part of the evacuation agreement with the Palestinian Authority it was agreed that the place would not become a police station, but would be transferred to the hands of the Beit Sahour Municipality to serve as a public space. Thus, the new outline plan for the base environment includes a future residential neighborhood, a hospital, and a public park at the foot of the mountain. A playground has already been built on site, as well as a restaurant and an open air reception area, exemplifying the functional conversion of the compound and its adaptation to the needs of the local Palestinian community.

Iraqi artist Waffa Bilal presents The Ashes Series, a cycle of photographs featuring miniatures model of his own construction which trace photographs uploaded online, documenting the ruins in Baghdad in the wake of the war in Iraq. At the heart of Bilal’s photographs, amidst the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s house, stands a chair the likes of which may be found in European palaces. 21 grams of human ashes mixed with organic ashes were scattered on the model. The photographs, documenting the construction of the recreated model, explore the impact of the destruction on domestic spaces expropriated from the private domain following their exposure by the media, pointing at the violent act that took place in them. Bilal examines the alienation generated by the language of art in general, and the language of photography in particular, indicating the indifference of those viewers to the horrifying photographs due to their vast quantity. The act of reconstruction brings the viewer closer to the intimacy of these rooms, while exposing the horror that has taken place in them. The spaces form a symbolic reminder of the repression involved in political conflicts and cultural dichotomies, such as George Bush’s speech which divided the world into those who belonged to the ”axis of evil” and those who did not. According to Bilal, an Iraqi refugee living in the United States, the photographs represent his attempt to find logic in a destruction resulting from cultural clashes, and to preserve the beauty inherent in the moment after the storm, once the violent act has ended and the ashes settle.

Palestinian artist Reem Da’as’s work, A Brief Time in Iraq, consists of the scanning of an album of photographs taken by two adventurous tourists who drove their car from East Jerusalem to Iraq on the eve of the US-British invasion in March 2003. The ”tourists” documented the calm in Iraq, before it became a distant memory, when the colonialist vision of the neo-conservatives in America was replaced by an awakening into a nightmare. Created consciously and ironically, their photographs imitate the touristy custom to have one’s picture taken with familiar sites as the backdrop, a practice which originated in the late 19th century, when European tourists started travelling beyond the boundaries of the continent. The two documented the damage caused by the invasion, when it was still possible to wander freely, to photograph the empty streets, and visit sites later closed to journalists. The two ”tourists” assimilated among the American soldiers who were neither apprehensive of the lens nor attributed an unusual significance to the presence of the two. Without consideration of composition, lighting, or technical aspects, their attention was mainly directed at conveying their impressions, and their point of view was oriented toward documenting the events. The sense of irony elicited by this work and the sense of alienation with regard to the prevalent perception of presenting photographs in a gallery underscore the photographs’ referent and the horror they expose.

The installation Neighborhood by Israeli artist Eli Petel’s Neighborhood discusses the relationship between an image and the reality it represents. The installation comprises a digitally manipulated color photograph from 2005 and a video piece created three years later, for the exhibition. The photograph and the video present a residential quarter built in 1954 in Ramat Gan’s Ramat Hashikma neighborhood to house Yemenite Jews, former inhabitants of the Salame, Kheiriya, and Saquiya transit camps. As part of the urban renewal project, a sign was hung on the building in 1977, presenting the redevelopment architectural plan intended for the neighborhood. It remained in place ever since as a testimony of the project’s resounding failure. The gap between the reality of neglect and the faded promise is further emphasized in view of the sign’s dilapidated state. In the photograph Petel uses the sign as a painters’ palette: he samples colors from it in Photoshop, adding trees and skies to the building. The video screened next to it presents the same frame of the neighborhood at present, reconstructing the still photograph without the artist’s digitally painted additions. In this work Petel alludes to several spaces: the territorial space of a residential area, the architectural counterpart of the housing block in Holon seen through the Gallery’s glass wall; the museum space as representative of the Western artistic narrative; the space in which the exhibition is presented, which strives to dissolve dichotomous cultural representations; and the space between photograph-reality-viewer. While following the timeline of a single site, the installation Neighborhood strives to highlight acts such as reproduction, renewal, reconstruction, empowerment, intervention, and resistance as concepts and forces at once identical and antithetical, arising from a preoccupation with the historical/political, as from the artistic act.

Joseph Dadoune’s sound work, Universes, sets out to form an alternative musical space attesting to his rejection of the crude classification of various musical styles as ”Oriental music.” In the local-Israeli context, the de-Arabization process applies to all the social and artistic apparati, and is also manifested in the exclusion of ”Mizrahi” music from the dominant cultural narrative in Israel as part of the overall exclusion of the Arabic language (”the enemy’s language”) in favor of the ”Westernizing” Hebrew. Dadoune challenges this tendency, incorporating in his work excerpts of classical music and polyphonic Mediterranean singing. He frequently employs vinyl records, moving the record slowly to distort the sound and generate an archaic, blurred, deep sound. The ”world music” genre indicates the globalization of the music industry in recent decades and the way in which the incorporation of ”Eastern” manifestations often serves as a mere cover for a process of appropriation. Dadoune’s work may be construed as representing a political stand, as it reflects a quasi-Western setting, albeit Universes is not necessarily such. Despite its elusive title, the work does not really fall into the category of ”world music.”

The work of Israeli artist Nurit Sharett, Moon on Mount Gerizim, sums up eighteen months of work during which the artist followed the Samaritan community during their religious festivals and holidays in their two major centers in Israel: Holon and Mt. Gerizim near Nablus. Sharett conveys her cumulating impressions of the customs and rituals of the Samaritans who invited her to join them, and some even opened their homes to her. As an onlooker, she outlines the cultural space unique to the Samaritans without being able to decipher it, much like cemeteries located around ancient cities, marking the disappearing city’s borders. Acknowledging her limited abilities, Sharett’s position oscillates between curiosity, expression of an opinion, impressions resulting from appearances, and admitting her partial knowledge. Thus her work illustrates the ways in which art introduces questions about the limitation of vision and the restricted ability to decipher cultural codes. Sharett’s work is encapsulated in the sentence repeatedly confessing her limited knowledge at the outset of the project: ”730 men, six surnames, three languages, two neighborhoods.”

• • • 
The works in the exhibition thus raise reflections about the interaction between cultures in contemporary global civilization. Globalization, as an outcome of modernity, makes for an intercultural encounter, yet its political exploitation by dominant interested parties has interfered with local singularities and weaker communities. It is precisely those who challenge the random, sterile assertions, such as minorities within minorities or ethnic groups foreign to the national identity of the state in which they live, who manage to escape this dichotomous cleansing and threaten the cultural and social system of classification. In this context, it is precisely the academic discourse of ”Oriental studies” that might outline arbitrary imaginary cultural borders in order to be differentiated and maintained, thus embedding the danger of double stereotyping—self and ”external”—with regard to the dominant group. Separatism might, sometimes, suffer from blindness due to its tendency to mark those who differ from it as the ones who must be fought.

Moreover, it ought to be acknowledged that not every encounter with Western cultures results in a cultural wound manifested in the form of political strife or a violent conflict. Although the intercultural encounter is sometimes underlain by ruler-ruled relations, such as 19th century European colonialism, and despite the fact that the financial and military power relations still conclusively lean toward the ”West,” the cultural encounter inevitably must also have enriched cultures and generated new hybrid expressions. Furthermore, one must bear in mind that just as the ”Eastern” cultures were defined as uniform, the Western cultures were also perceived similarly. Today one may see that not only is the ”East” explored by its colonizers, but the ”West” too is being examined by other cultures. In the last century, the world media (television, cinema, the press, and internet) have encoded information into patterns at accelerated speed; hence the stereotypical perceptions of both ”East” and ”West” are intensified. The call voiced by scholars, artists, and intellectuals from the ”East” to ”reinstate olden glory” remains an irrational aspiration, whose feasible realization is doubtful. The grief accompanying the forbidden combination attests only to the unwillingness to confront the hybrid cultural reality that has existed around the world from time immemorial. One cannot ignore the fact that the Orient has undergone Orientalization and, as aforesaid, even adopted some of the stereotypes directed against it. Sometimes those demanding their ”lost” identity have no other option but to recreate it through a fictive, elusive prism, often by internalizing the myth of cultural inferiority.

Today more than ever, cultural identity seems to lack a single constant essence, and it seems to be based on the demand of a given subject or group to belong to a temporally defined idea. In this sense, the cultural conditioning forbidding hybrid crossing is paradoxical, since any culture by its very essence is a dynamic junction. The exhibition strives to reflect this situation where arbitrary borders are constantly dissolved.

Dor Guez 


1. The five prohibitions refer to sowing a field with two kinds of crops; grafting two different species of trees; mating two different species of cattle; performing agricultural work with two different species of harnessed animals; and wearing a cloth that combines two types of material (sha’atnez). These prohibitions are repeated on several eoccasions in the Pentateuch (see: Lev. 19:19; Deut. 22:9-11), yet remain unexplained.
2. See: Mishnayoth, trans. Philip Blackman (New York: Judaica Press, 1964), p. 177.
3. See: Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage, 1996), p. 44.
4. Homi K. Bhabha refers to hybridity as a ”third space,” which enables the emergence of other positions, new states, and not as two original conditions which engender a third; see: Rutherford Jonathan, ”The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,” in: Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), p. 211.
5. The West’s identification with the Orient indicates a cultural phenomenon which is described in Western culture as ”going native.” According to Hannah Naveh, this implies ”relinquishment of the Western cultural markers of identity and adoption of the markers of local indigenous (non-)culture. The inferiority of this process to Western eyes is also indicated by the equivalent idiom—’going primitive’ … conveying scorn and disaffirmation from an ostensibly enlightened, culturally-developed position, deeming the process a reprehensible phenomenon.” See: Hannah Naveh, Women and Men Travelers: Travel Narratives in Modern Hebrew Literature (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2002), pp. 188-89 [Hebrew].
6. Many alternative names were proposed for the area spanning the territory where three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—meet, and whose borders ”expand” and ”contract” in keeping with the speaker. In political circles as well as the world media no other terms have prevailed as alternatives.
7. These issues were also addressed in the local art world in several exhibitions, among them ”To the East: Orientalism in the Arts in Israel” (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1998; curator: Yigal Zalmona) and ”Mother Tongue” (Museum of Art, Ein Harod, 2002; curator: Tal Ben Zvi), whose catalogue was combined with an instructive collection of essays edited by Yigal Nizri, entitled Eastern Appearance: A Present that Stirs in the Thickets of its Arab Past (Tel Aviv: Bavel, 2004).
8. See: Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991 (1978)).
9. Gabriel Horenczyk and Salim J. Munayer’s study examines the attitudes of Christian adolescents in Israel toward the Israeli-Jewish and Muslim-Arab majority groups, serving as a basis for the discussion presented here. See: Gabriel Horenczyk and Salim J. Munayer, ”Acculturation Orientations toward Two Majority Groups: The Case of Palestinian Arab Christian Adolescents in Israel”, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 38, no. 1, 76-86 (2007)

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Forbidden Junctions

If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, ’Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’

- Romans 11: 17-19

The exhibition ”Forbidden Junctions” introduces a multi-directional thought process pointing at fluid, stratified cultural realities which challenge deep-seated identity labels anchored in collective cultural memory. The show features artists from several ”Middle Easteran” countries (Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran) whose works address issues pertinent to the political, cultural, and dynamic reality in which they live. All the featured works, some created especially for the exhibition, present intercultural junctions where various groups adopt certain symbols, while relinquishing others. The term ”forbidden junctions” (or prohibited hybrids), originating in the Mishna, refers to the five negative precepts included in the Pentateuch: the prohibitions regarding the mixing of species or commingling of different kinds1 (kil’ayim2). In the context of the exhibition, the term has been borrowed to indicate questions arising from cultural syntheses, acknowledging that culture is never static and never evolves along a single, set route, thus incongruent with the modernist practice of classifying and categorizing. 

In the context of the identity discourse—and without elaborating on the argument that culture and history are rationally structured to serve political interests—cultural conditionings become an inevitable object of study as an organized, directed project. Each of the works in the exhibition opts for a single identity label over others, spotlights a certain cultural aspect, and represents a specific point in time, which evades the cultural space defined by the Orientalist project, while acknowledging its own ocular limitations. The artists often visually incorporate the historical experience of their people in their works,3 hence their reading underscores the intricate nature of collective-cultural memory, bringing to the fore the dynamic relations between image-language-history.

In different places throughout the world, and certainly in the case of the Middle East, the categories classifying identities and cultures as discrete, autonomous chapters are being dissolved and challenged, for not only does the opposition between ”East” and ”West,” ”Orient” and ”Occident,” become blurred, but a multi-faceted, hybrid cultural reality is enhanced.4 This constant transformation can reinforce the essence and nature of a given culture, rather than interfere with its ”authenticity.”

The exhibition ”Forbidden Junctions” does not adhere to the discourse condemning every Western influence whatsoever on Eastern cultures; instead, it wishes to delve into the cultural wealth generated by a ”forbidden” inter-cultural and multi-cultural encounter. This is not to refute the argument that artistic, architectural, and other expressions of Eastern culture have often remained a part of a paradigm of sign appropriation, ostensibly intended to present the ”East” as equal, while in fact doubly disregarding it.5 In this context it ought to be stressed that, rather than marketing uniformity (the ”prohibitory” dimension), colonialism and imperialism introduced hybridity as an option and not only a prohibition; as a possibility which was present long before the advent of postmodernism.
In the absence of a better term, the definition of the region in which the participating artists operate as the ”Middle East” embeds a Western terminological demagogy. The definition of the ”East” as ”Near,” ”Middle,” or ”Far” is always made in geographical relation to the ”West” as the center.6 The ”East”—that relative horizon ostensibly moving in relation to Central Europe—has been subordinated, as part of the limitation of language, to a Eurocentric perception. Thus, literature pertaining to the ”East” has faced many philological and methodological challenges. Despite the prevalence of binary notions, such as ”East,” ”Orient,” ”Orientalism,” ”Oriental studies,” etc., their very use should be questioned.

The last decade has seen a considerable number of studies about art from the ”Middle East” by European and American scholars, historians, and curators, attesting to a growing ”Western” interest in the region’s aesthetics and cultures.7 Vis-à-vis these trends, the exhibition ”Forbidden Junctions” sets out to deconstruct the binary perceptions regarding ”East”/”West” relations. Its staging at an art center supported by a municipal body which operates as an integral part of Israel’s quasi-Western art world, was accompanied by many internal conflicts. The physical space in which the exhibition is presented places all the participating works in this context. In view of European colonialism and Jewish nationalism, the presentation of an exhibition addressing the identity of ”Eastern” cultures in Israel’s territorial space introduces the issue of intercultural relations between dominant groups—whether in terms of number, or in military or economic terms—and minority groups, necessitating a tour along the changing, imaginary borders of the regional historical conceptualization, both the local-Zionist and the Palestinian. The State of Israel, which, under a modernist narrative, possesses a Western national identity and adheres to Western terminology within a region called the ”Middle East,” raises intricate questions by its very existence; all the more so, since the majority of its inhabitants are not of European origin, but rather Arab-Jews and Palestinians. As opposed to the claim of the Zionist narrative, Israel did not really emerge ”ex nihilo.”

Here I must add a personal note: As an Arab-Jewish artist and curator whose language of expression is that of contemporary Western art and theory, the Western exhibition space functions, to my mind, as a necessary platform for exploring the duality dichotomizing ”East” and ”West,” ”Jew” and ”Arab,” ”Ashkenazi” and ”Mizrahi.” This realm of confrontation seems to introduce the ability to examine representations of cultural hybridization in a concentrated, acute manner. Thus the show, which critically addresses the exotification and folklorization of the East (and, in some respects, of the West as well), challenges the Western exhibition space, using it as a sounding board which takes part in the struggle for visual representation as a political struggle. The modernist ”aesthetic” experience indeed often elicits alienation between the viewer and that which is presented to him. Still, one must also acknowledge the advantages of the ”white space” whose contents tend to strike the viewer with awe upon entering.

While the postmodern era let the voice of the ”other” (the ”black,” ”Mizrahi,” ”gay/lesbian,” etc.) be heard, it also reinforced the dichotomy between the ”enlightened” ”white Westerner” and all those ”others,” revalidating the colonialist modes of observation, naturally occurring in the language of art as well. Much has been written about the ”mysterious” Orient and its treatment by the West, wishing to pattern it and forcing an ”inferior,” ”black” identity upon it; the post-colonialist discourse has become prevalent, almost hackneyed, in the academic and contemporary art world. Edward Said applied the term ”Orientalism”—a critical notion which has become deeply established in the past three decades—to the relationship between the ”Occident” and the ”Orient.” According to Said, standardization and cultural stereotyping of the ”Orient” have intensified the hold of its demonology to Western eyes.8 Indeed, while various cultures in the West identified diverse perceptions under the canopy called ”West,” they continued to regard the ”Orient” as a uniform, static place. The deconstruction of the colonialist gaze must not be deemed an attempt to deny the existence of shared cultural elements founded on a long history common to cultures from the part of the globe thoughtlessly called ”East,” and ones shared by cultures located in the ”West.” Recognizing the danger inherent in reinforcing those divisive modernist practices which perpetuate hierarchical oppositions between ”East” and ”West,” on the one hand, and existing stereotypes, on the other—calls for great caution.

The cultural and artistic appeals arising from the realities mirrored by the works in ”Forbidden Junctions” are dual and swathed in contradiction: the ”Western” and ”Eastern” spaces often become coherent spaces, where the invention of the ”East” and the invention of the ”West” form a part of a comprehensive iconographic array. As part of the exhibition, the Western ”super-culture” likewise becomes an object of investigation, and the local is often deemed as hegemonic as the ”modernist.”

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Scandar Copti’s video installation CFJ1 (College des Frères, Jaffa) presents four Christian Arab men who grew up in Jaffa, the artist included. Their common feature is the fact that as children they attended the French Christian School. The building was erected in 1882 to disseminate French culture in the region, and continued operation in situ, insisting on a European curriculum and schooling system, despite the dramatic changes undergone by the community which it serves: the 1948 war, the deportation of part of the Palestinian inhabitants, the entry of a new Jewish population, introduction of the Israeli educational system, and the dwindling of the Christian population within Palestinian society in Israel. Through the conversation of these four men, Copti unfolds the school’s story as an island of stability, on the one hand, and as a dull mirror reflecting the transformations endured by Jaffa and the Christian-Arab community, on the other.

Similarly, Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour’s video piece The Mondial in Me’eliya addresses the place of the Arab-Christian minority in Israel. It shows how the Christian minority forms its cultural identity by documenting the inhabitants of the village of Me’eliya in northern Israel during the World Cup. The Roman Catholic inhabitants of the village identify mainly with football teams from the ”Western” world, accordingly hanging the flags of their respective nationalities and painting their faces and houses in matching colors. The flags of Middle Eastern, North African, and East Asian countries are conspicuously absent. The uniqueness of the Christian-Arab community in Israel as a Christian minority within an Arab minority, challenges the sustainability of the nation-state as a cultural phenomenon, introducing the volatile affinity between culture and nationality. Through a socio-graphic prism, many minority groups try to find their place within the national ”collective memory.” This is particularly evident in Israel, where classifying thought processes and enforcement of non-hybrid orders are the norm.

The Christians in Israel confront two ”majority” groups with which they ”negotiate” their identity: Israeli Jews and Muslim Arabs. Their historical and geographic national definition as Arabs ascribes the members of this community to the Muslim-Arab world in general, and specifically to the Muslim Palestinians and the Muslim Arabs in Israel. Characterization and definition of the contexts in which cultural and social customs of majority groups are assimilated by minority groups, is a complex task, especially in the case of minorities which negotiate with two majority groups.9 In order to guard their uniqueness and protect their identity, the Christians in Israel display a dual attitude toward both majority groups to which they belong: on the one hand, they attest to their will to integrate, especially in the Israeli Jewish majority; on the other hand, they display a clear tendency to maintain their ingroup identity and set themselves apart, mainly from the Muslim-Arab majority. Only a small percentage of these Christians consider assimilation into one of the groups as a possible alternative, and this option with regard to either larger group is considered equally negative. Both Jewish society and Muslim society fail to understand the versatility of the Christian minority, as well as its religious, social, and cultural needs as a differentiated ethnic group. Nevertheless, the Christians display an equally pluralistic view toward either group, the ”Western” like the ”Eastern,” tending to accept both. From the position of a ”minority within a minority,” perhaps the Christian Arabs in Israel have no other option but to accept the different majority positions with extra tolerance, and to form their identity vis-à-vis these groups.

Turkish artist Köken Ergun’s video installation, Wedding, explores cultural memory. For eight months the artist photographed more than forty wedding ceremonies of Turkish immigrants in Berlin, documentary footage which he edited repeatedly. The work presents the documentary information as a cultural mirror reflecting the displacement of cultural customs. Frame by frame, from the visit to the bridal salon, the artist creates a fictive documentation of a ”typically Turkish” wedding, as it were. In this way, not only does he deconstruct and decode the cultural characteristics of the Turkish community, but he also reconstructs the way in which identity is manifested through changing ritualistic codes. Ergun avoids the ethnographic (colonialist) obstacle which results from romanticizing the ”object of research,” thus creating, with calculated craftiness, an imaginary narrative elusive to foreign eyes, introducing collective cultural memory to be reconsidered.

In her video installation Perfectly Suited for You, Iranian artist Solmaz Shahbazi addresses cultural stereotypes and the construction of a new identity by the emerging upper-middle class in the city of Istanbul. Turkey’s nouveau riche have in recent years moved to houses in prestigious, self-enclosed neighborhoods (”gated communities”) in the city’s affluent suburbs. The idea of a gated community originated in California, and has been gathering momentum in the Middle East. Both the architects and the inhabitants of these new neighborhoods fantasize about a ”new order” and a quiet, comfortable life detached from the city and the local population. As part of the artificial structure of these enclosed communities, inhabitants ”enjoy” a sterile, ostensibly protected life style. The work examines how the new homeowners exert themselves to acquire a new identity, both as a group and as a class, setting themselves apart from the local population to which they belonged prior to their acquisition of wealth. The installation consists of a television screen presenting a videostill taken in a gated compound, reminiscent of a Hollywood set. One of the compound dwellers is heard in the background, explaining her choice of such a neighborhood to maintain a ”safe distance” from the city inhabitants. She reiterates the ease and practicality of such a life, the fact that one doesn’t have to leave the complex, where the global-cosmopolitan modern image is underscored in contradistinction to the local image. Residence in a gated community becomes a status symbol, and the property buyers also acquire a new status for themselves. Screened next to the television is a video piece reviewing different compounds of ”gated communities” throughout Istanbul. The architectural division, whereby the newly affluent gather in ”safe” spaces, is presented as a solution to the city’s ”security problem.”

Future Architecture is a project by the London/Bethlehem Architectural Studio directed by Palestinian Sandi Hilal, Italian Alessandro Petti, and Israeli Eyal Weizman. The current exhibition presents a stereoscopic video documentation made as part of the project, Future Architecture: Psagot/ElBireh, where architects Armin Linke, Francesco Mattuzzi, and Renato Rinaldi propose a new use for evacuated Israeli settlements and military bases in the Palestinian Authority’s territory. The project uses the language of architecture to articulate the spatial dimension of a process of decolonization (colony/settlement ”liberation”). Two disparate video works refer to two different sites: the Jewish settlement Psagot established in July 1981 as part of the ”compensations” for the evacuees of Yamit in the Sinai, and the military base Oush Grab adjacent to Beit Sahour, evacuated by the IDF in May 2006. The settlement Psagot was selected as the first ”laboratory” for architectural conversion. With a populace of 1,700, consisting mainly of American Jews, it was selected due to its strategic spatial location, on a hilltop towering to 900 meters, overlooking the entire area. Prior to its occupation by Israel in 1967, the hill was intended as a tourist resort. The architects acknowledge the fact that the settlements are one of the sorest spots of Israeli domination, yet their proposal is not intended to find solutions for the demands of either side. Therefore they avoid the terminology often used in the political discourse in order to find a ”solution” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The use of the term ”deconolonization” does not imply the forced transfer of inhabitants and communities, but rather offers consensual physical intervention which is intended to open new horizons for change, as part of which Palestinian and Jewish citizens will be able to integrate. The second video piece refers, as aforesaid, to a project already performed in situ. The former military base was erected in the northern entrance to the Palestinian city Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, in the Mandatory period. Between 1948 and 1967 it functioned as a Jordanian army base, and from 1967 to 2006—as an IDF base. Its evacuation by Israeli soldiers was swift, carried out in the middle of the night, and by morning, the Palestinians entered and emptied it of the remaining equipment. As part of the evacuation agreement with the Palestinian Authority it was agreed that the place would not become a police station, but would be transferred to the hands of the Beit Sahour Municipality to serve as a public space. Thus, the new outline plan for the base environment includes a future residential neighborhood, a hospital, and a public park at the foot of the mountain. A playground has already been built on site, as well as a restaurant and an open air reception area, exemplifying the functional conversion of the compound and its adaptation to the needs of the local Palestinian community.

Iraqi artist Waffa Bilal presents The Ashes Series, a cycle of photographs featuring miniatures model of his own construction which trace photographs uploaded online, documenting the ruins in Baghdad in the wake of the war in Iraq. At the heart of Bilal’s photographs, amidst the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s house, stands a chair the likes of which may be found in European palaces. 21 grams of human ashes mixed with organic ashes were scattered on the model. The photographs, documenting the construction of the recreated model, explore the impact of the destruction on domestic spaces expropriated from the private domain following their exposure by the media, pointing at the violent act that took place in them. Bilal examines the alienation generated by the language of art in general, and the language of photography in particular, indicating the indifference of those viewers to the horrifying photographs due to their vast quantity. The act of reconstruction brings the viewer closer to the intimacy of these rooms, while exposing the horror that has taken place in them. The spaces form a symbolic reminder of the repression involved in political conflicts and cultural dichotomies, such as George Bush’s speech which divided the world into those who belonged to the ”axis of evil” and those who did not. According to Bilal, an Iraqi refugee living in the United States, the photographs represent his attempt to find logic in a destruction resulting from cultural clashes, and to preserve the beauty inherent in the moment after the storm, once the violent act has ended and the ashes settle.

Palestinian artist Reem Da’as’s work, A Brief Time in Iraq, consists of the scanning of an album of photographs taken by two adventurous tourists who drove their car from East Jerusalem to Iraq on the eve of the US-British invasion in March 2003. The ”tourists” documented the calm in Iraq, before it became a distant memory, when the colonialist vision of the neo-conservatives in America was replaced by an awakening into a nightmare. Created consciously and ironically, their photographs imitate the touristy custom to have one’s picture taken with familiar sites as the backdrop, a practice which originated in the late 19th century, when European tourists started travelling beyond the boundaries of the continent. The two documented the damage caused by the invasion, when it was still possible to wander freely, to photograph the empty streets, and visit sites later closed to journalists. The two ”tourists” assimilated among the American soldiers who were neither apprehensive of the lens nor attributed an unusual significance to the presence of the two. Without consideration of composition, lighting, or technical aspects, their attention was mainly directed at conveying their impressions, and their point of view was oriented toward documenting the events. The sense of irony elicited by this work and the sense of alienation with regard to the prevalent perception of presenting photographs in a gallery underscore the photographs’ referent and the horror they expose.

The installation Neighborhood by Israeli artist Eli Petel’s Neighborhood discusses the relationship between an image and the reality it represents. The installation comprises a digitally manipulated color photograph from 2005 and a video piece created three years later, for the exhibition. The photograph and the video present a residential quarter built in 1954 in Ramat Gan’s Ramat Hashikma neighborhood to house Yemenite Jews, former inhabitants of the Salame, Kheiriya, and Saquiya transit camps. As part of the urban renewal project, a sign was hung on the building in 1977, presenting the redevelopment architectural plan intended for the neighborhood. It remained in place ever since as a testimony of the project’s resounding failure. The gap between the reality of neglect and the faded promise is further emphasized in view of the sign’s dilapidated state. In the photograph Petel uses the sign as a painters’ palette: he samples colors from it in Photoshop, adding trees and skies to the building. The video screened next to it presents the same frame of the neighborhood at present, reconstructing the still photograph without the artist’s digitally painted additions. In this work Petel alludes to several spaces: the territorial space of a residential area, the architectural counterpart of the housing block in Holon seen through the Gallery’s glass wall; the museum space as representative of the Western artistic narrative; the space in which the exhibition is presented, which strives to dissolve dichotomous cultural representations; and the space between photograph-reality-viewer. While following the timeline of a single site, the installation Neighborhood strives to highlight acts such as reproduction, renewal, reconstruction, empowerment, intervention, and resistance as concepts and forces at once identical and antithetical, arising from a preoccupation with the historical/political, as from the artistic act.

Joseph Dadoune’s sound work, Universes, sets out to form an alternative musical space attesting to his rejection of the crude classification of various musical styles as ”Oriental music.” In the local-Israeli context, the de-Arabization process applies to all the social and artistic apparati, and is also manifested in the exclusion of ”Mizrahi” music from the dominant cultural narrative in Israel as part of the overall exclusion of the Arabic language (”the enemy’s language”) in favor of the ”Westernizing” Hebrew. Dadoune challenges this tendency, incorporating in his work excerpts of classical music and polyphonic Mediterranean singing. He frequently employs vinyl records, moving the record slowly to distort the sound and generate an archaic, blurred, deep sound. The ”world music” genre indicates the globalization of the music industry in recent decades and the way in which the incorporation of ”Eastern” manifestations often serves as a mere cover for a process of appropriation. Dadoune’s work may be construed as representing a political stand, as it reflects a quasi-Western setting, albeit Universes is not necessarily such. Despite its elusive title, the work does not really fall into the category of ”world music.”

The work of Israeli artist Nurit Sharett, Moon on Mount Gerizim, sums up eighteen months of work during which the artist followed the Samaritan community during their religious festivals and holidays in their two major centers in Israel: Holon and Mt. Gerizim near Nablus. Sharett conveys her cumulating impressions of the customs and rituals of the Samaritans who invited her to join them, and some even opened their homes to her. As an onlooker, she outlines the cultural space unique to the Samaritans without being able to decipher it, much like cemeteries located around ancient cities, marking the disappearing city’s borders. Acknowledging her limited abilities, Sharett’s position oscillates between curiosity, expression of an opinion, impressions resulting from appearances, and admitting her partial knowledge. Thus her work illustrates the ways in which art introduces questions about the limitation of vision and the restricted ability to decipher cultural codes. Sharett’s work is encapsulated in the sentence repeatedly confessing her limited knowledge at the outset of the project: ”730 men, six surnames, three languages, two neighborhoods.”

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The works in the exhibition thus raise reflections about the interaction between cultures in contemporary global civilization. Globalization, as an outcome of modernity, makes for an intercultural encounter, yet its political exploitation by dominant interested parties has interfered with local singularities and weaker communities. It is precisely those who challenge the random, sterile assertions, such as minorities within minorities or ethnic groups foreign to the national identity of the state in which they live, who manage to escape this dichotomous cleansing and threaten the cultural and social system of classification. In this context, it is precisely the academic discourse of ”Oriental studies” that might outline arbitrary imaginary cultural borders in order to be differentiated and maintained, thus embedding the danger of double stereotyping—self and ”external”—with regard to the dominant group. Separatism might, sometimes, suffer from blindness due to its tendency to mark those who differ from it as the ones who must be fought.

Moreover, it ought to be acknowledged that not every encounter with Western cultures results in a cultural wound manifested in the form of political strife or a violent conflict. Although the intercultural encounter is sometimes underlain by ruler-ruled relations, such as 19th century European colonialism, and despite the fact that the financial and military power relations still conclusively lean toward the ”West,” the cultural encounter inevitably must also have enriched cultures and generated new hybrid expressions. Furthermore, one must bear in mind that just as the ”Eastern” cultures were defined as uniform, the Western cultures were also perceived similarly. Today one may see that not only is the ”East” explored by its colonizers, but the ”West” too is being examined by other cultures. In the last century, the world media (television, cinema, the press, and internet) have encoded information into patterns at accelerated speed; hence the stereotypical perceptions of both ”East” and ”West” are intensified. The call voiced by scholars, artists, and intellectuals from the ”East” to ”reinstate olden glory” remains an irrational aspiration, whose feasible realization is doubtful. The grief accompanying the forbidden combination attests only to the unwillingness to confront the hybrid cultural reality that has existed around the world from time immemorial. One cannot ignore the fact that the Orient has undergone Orientalization and, as aforesaid, even adopted some of the stereotypes directed against it. Sometimes those demanding their ”lost” identity have no other option but to recreate it through a fictive, elusive prism, often by internalizing the myth of cultural inferiority.

Today more than ever, cultural identity seems to lack a single constant essence, and it seems to be based on the demand of a given subject or group to belong to a temporally defined idea. In this sense, the cultural conditioning forbidding hybrid crossing is paradoxical, since any culture by its very essence is a dynamic junction. The exhibition strives to reflect this situation where arbitrary borders are constantly dissolved.

Dor Guez 


1. The five prohibitions refer to sowing a field with two kinds of crops; grafting two different species of trees; mating two different species of cattle; performing agricultural work with two different species of harnessed animals; and wearing a cloth that combines two types of material (sha’atnez). These prohibitions are repeated on several eoccasions in the Pentateuch (see: Lev. 19:19; Deut. 22:9-11), yet remain unexplained.
2. See: Mishnayoth, trans. Philip Blackman (New York: Judaica Press, 1964), p. 177.
3. See: Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage, 1996), p. 44.
4. Homi K. Bhabha refers to hybridity as a ”third space,” which enables the emergence of other positions, new states, and not as two original conditions which engender a third; see: Rutherford Jonathan, ”The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,” in: Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), p. 211.
5. The West’s identification with the Orient indicates a cultural phenomenon which is described in Western culture as ”going native.” According to Hannah Naveh, this implies ”relinquishment of the Western cultural markers of identity and adoption of the markers of local indigenous (non-)culture. The inferiority of this process to Western eyes is also indicated by the equivalent idiom—’going primitive’ … conveying scorn and disaffirmation from an ostensibly enlightened, culturally-developed position, deeming the process a reprehensible phenomenon.” See: Hannah Naveh, Women and Men Travelers: Travel Narratives in Modern Hebrew Literature (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2002), pp. 188-89 [Hebrew].
6. Many alternative names were proposed for the area spanning the territory where three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—meet, and whose borders ”expand” and ”contract” in keeping with the speaker. In political circles as well as the world media no other terms have prevailed as alternatives.
7. These issues were also addressed in the local art world in several exhibitions, among them ”To the East: Orientalism in the Arts in Israel” (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1998; curator: Yigal Zalmona) and ”Mother Tongue” (Museum of Art, Ein Harod, 2002; curator: Tal Ben Zvi), whose catalogue was combined with an instructive collection of essays edited by Yigal Nizri, entitled Eastern Appearance: A Present that Stirs in the Thickets of its Arab Past (Tel Aviv: Bavel, 2004).
8. See: Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991 (1978)).
9. Gabriel Horenczyk and Salim J. Munayer’s study examines the attitudes of Christian adolescents in Israel toward the Israeli-Jewish and Muslim-Arab majority groups, serving as a basis for the discussion presented here. See: Gabriel Horenczyk and Salim J. Munayer, ”Acculturation Orientations toward Two Majority Groups: The Case of Palestinian Arab Christian Adolescents in Israel”, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 38, no. 1, 76-86 (2007)