Series Editor: Yigal Schwartz
Guest Editors: Batya Shimony and Ilana Rosen
Editorial Board: Eitan Bar-Yosef, Hanna Soker-Schwager, Anat Weisman
Editorial Assistant: Yaara Keren
The present volume of BGU Review offers some innovative analyses of contemporary Israeli works of fiction about war, soldierhood and battlefields. As shown in all of the six articles in this volume, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has exacted a heavy moral and cultural toll on Israeli society. The collection of articles, works analyzed and methods of exploring them in this volume is far from covering the scope of the topic of Israel's wars and their depiction in Hebrew literature; Nevertheless, these six articles shed significant light on the decades-long Zionist effort to dominate the Land.
Four of the six articles (written by Ayala Amir, Yael Shenker and Omri Herzog, Yael Levi-Hazan and Yael Dekel) examine fiction works dealing with the 1948 War and the moral dilemmas it presented to Israeli combatants. Gidi Nevo addresses the portrayal of everyday army life in three Israeli novels, showing the army to be a microcosm of Israeli society and its various subgroups and ideologies, and Yigal Schwartz confronts the trauma of the 1973 Yom Kippur War as remembered in Israeli literature and culture to this very day.
