Reimagining the Promised Land: Israel and America Post-war Hollywood Cinema

While Israel has seemingly been a minor presence in Hollywood cinema, argues that there is a long history of Hollywood deploying images of Israel as a means of articulating an idealized notion of American national identity. This argument is developed through readings of (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956), (William Wyler, 1959), (Otto Preminger, 1960), (Melville Shavelson, 1966), Black Sunday (John Frankenheimer, 1977), (Menahem Golan, 1986), and (Steven Spielberg, 2005). The mobilization of Israel that pervades this eclectic group of films effectively demonstrates one of the more surreptitious ways in which Hollywood has historically constructed and circulated dominant notions of American national identity. Moreover, in examining the most notable Hollywood representations of the Jewish state, the book offers an informed historical overview of the cultural forces that have contributed to popular understandings within the United States of the state of Israel, Israel's Arab neighbours, and also the Arab-Israeli conflict.