Olei Hagardom: Between official and popular memory
This article examines the interaction between official memory and popular memory through the case study of Olei Hagardom – Jewish underground fighters executed by the British in Mandatory Palestine. Studies of collective memory usually maintain that the ruling elite, with its control of state resources, dominates collective memory formation. However, the case of Olei Hargardom demonstrates the potentially limited power of institutional commemoration and exclusion in a democratic society. David Ben-Gurion and his government's attempt to exclude these right-wing heroes from the national pantheon had limited impact. Menachem Begin's persistent, partisan political efforts to include them were only partially successful. Ultimately, Olei Hargardom became entrenched in Israeli collective memory as a result of apolitical literary works, popular culture, and the establishment of a site of memory by spontaneous, grassroots efforts.
Half-heartedly: Menachem Begin and the establishment of the Likud Party
ABSTRACT This article seeks to add another dimension to the growing and extensive research on right-wing Zionism, by returning to an era when the Likud was first created. I will examine the major difference between processes that have led to the two key landmarks in the formative years of the Right in Israel: the establishment of Gahal in April 1965 and the founding of the Likud in August–September of 1973. While Gahal's establishment was a product of a prolonged, determined, patient and conscious effort on the part of Menachem Begin, the establishment of the Likud was, to a considerable degree, forced upon him. Those who were interested in expanding Gahal and creating an alignment of centre-right parties were actually the factors outside Herut, while Herut's more veteran leadership disapproved of these attempts. Within the Herut Movement, the voices that called for the creation of a broad political alignment were those that came from Herut's ‘internal opposition’, which revolved around Ezer Weizman. The article analyses the reasons behind Begin's reservations about a continued right-wing merger, examines the negotiation process and sheds light on the oscillation in Menachem Begin's ideology and politics between the fundamental and the pragmatic poles.
The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom
This book is both an analysis of the Bastille as cultural paradigm and a case study on the history of French political culture. It examines in particular the storming and subsequent fall of the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789 and how it came to represent the cornerstone of the French Revolution, becoming a symbol of the repression of the Old Regime. Lusebrink and Reichardt use this semiotic reading of the Bastille to reveal how historical symbols are generated; what these symbols’ functions are in the collective memory of societies; and how they are used by social, political, and ideological groups.

To facilitate the symbolic nature of the investigation, this analysis of the evolving signification of the Bastille moves from the French Revolution to the nineteenth century to contemporary history. The narrative also shifts from France to other cultural arenas, like the modern European colonial sphere, where the overthrow of the Bastille acquired radical new signification in the decolonization period of the 1940s and 1950s. The Bastille demonstrates the potency of the interdisciplinary historical research that has characterized the end of this century, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, and taking its methodological tools from history, sociology, linguistics, and cultural and literary studies.