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Hazkani

1/16/23

Shay Hazkani's recent book, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (Stanford University Press, 2021) has won the 2022 prize for Best Book in Israel Studies. The prize is given by the Azrieli Institute and Concordia University Library. From their website "The Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies is a multi-disciplinary research center at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Since its foundation in 2011, the Institute has supported the advancement of Israel Studies through educational programs, publications, and financial support for students and faculty." Shay's book was one of four finalists for the award. 

11/16/22
  • By Lilly Roser
    For the Diamondback

    A University of Maryland professor’s 2007 reporting revealed widespread surveillance of Israeli soldiers and occasional retaliation against soldiers by the Israeli military. The reporting was used for a documentary, The Soldier’s Opinion, which was screened at this university on Nov. 9.

Jewish studies professor Shay Hazkani was a journalist in Israel in 2007. When he investigated the Israel Defense Forces, he realized data would often reference a classified report titled, “The Soldier’s Opinion.” This led Hazkani to a decade-long journey of uncovering, researching and revealing the findings in both a book and more recently, a documentary.

While it was public information that the Israeli military would examine soldiers’ letters to minimize potential leaks of military secrets, Hazkani’s research revealed the military also read and copied these letters to analyze the lives, thoughts and minds of soldiers, hence the military report’s name, “The Soldier’s Opinion.”

“There was a long legal struggle to get a lot of these materials declassified,” Hazkani said.

When Hazkani first viewed the report, he came across copies of letters that told personal stories of war experiences. Every letter an Israeli soldier sent from 1948 to 1998 was copied and categorized by the military, then rerouted to the intended recipient.

Hazkani said the letters in the report revealed themes that were never perceived by the public.

“[Soldiers doubted] some of the underlying nationalist story that was very pervasive in Israel then and is very pervasive, perhaps even more, in Israel today,” Hazkani said. “I was obviously attracted to the dissenting voices.”

In infrequent cases, soldiers’ letters would be unknowingly held against them. If a letter expressed homosexuality or dissenting political views, letters could be flagged and reported to the soldier’s unit.

By the end of the research, it was concluded that this collection was ultimately an invasion of privacy as a mechanism for social control.

Assaf Banitt, a filmmaker and eventual director of The Soldier’s Opinion, read Hazkani’s reporting and contacted him about using it for a documentary.

“That was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to put my research out there for ordinary people to engage with,” Hazkani said.

Banitt was a soldier who wrote personal letters during his time in the military. He was inspired to make a documentary about the secret surveillance because of the hurt and betrayal he felt after the extent of the surveillance was exposed.

“I knew [the letters] were being read and censored but I had no idea that it was not for the security of Israel, but intelligence, resources and analysis,” Banitt said. “So, when I read [Hazkani’s] article … I was furious and I was fascinated and that’s a good mixture to start making a film.”

Hazkani wanted to use the documentary to make his research accessible to more people.

“I was very, very fortunate that [Banitt] fell in love with the source the way I did and was very eager, and very capable, and very, very talented to make these letters … into an engaging work of art.”

Hazkani’s goal for his research to reach a wider audience was realized with the screening of the documentary.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to see academic research in a very accessible medium,” said Eric Zakim, event moderator and Jewish studies professor. “The transformation of research into film is a wonderful collaboration that really extends the research to different sorts of audiences.”

11/8/22

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Words of longing to distant lovers. Complaints about rotten food and ill health. Admissions of doubt about the motivations for war.

For soldiers fighting on the front lines across the world, letters have long been a way to share personal reflections with those back home.

But for five decades in Israel, it wasn’t just friends and loved ones who pored over soldiers’ most private writings. From 1948 to 1998, the top-secret Postal Censorship Bureau intercepted and copied soldiers’ outgoing personal letters and compiled the findings in biweekly briefings for the country’s military leadership.

That bureau’s work is the subject of a new documentary co-created by University of Maryland Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies Shay Hazkani. The 55-minute film, “The Soldier’s Opinion,” features both the letter writers and the former censors discussing the impact of the bureau’s intrusion—sometimes even face-to-face with each other. Directed by award-winning Israeli film director Assaf Banitt, the film will be screened at UMD tomorrow.

"The Soldier's Opinion" poster

“This unit was a control mechanism, part of a ‘Big Brother’ apparatus,” Hazkani said. “And as you can see when you watch the film, it can be difficult for people to grapple with the fact that this existed.”

In 2007, Hazkani was a TV journalist conducting research in the archives of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when he noticed a reference to the views of rank-and-file soldiers included in an ongoing report called The Soldier’s Opinion. After learning the archived reports were classified, he embarked on what he describes as a “small crusade” to get access. A year—and extensive litigation—later, he received copies of several hundred letters. It would take six more years to get access to more of the trove, during which time he decided to pursue academia in the United States.

For 15 years, Hazkani has been endlessly fascinated by the tens of thousands of letters in the collection and the stories and voices they capture. The censorship unit, staffed mostly by female soldiers, flagged topics of interest to army commanders, like Israeli politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, homosexuality in the ranks and drug use. In the 1950s, more than 100,000 letters went through the IDF each month, all of which were first sent to censorship bases.

“I remember that first moment, how truly exciting it was to read not what a leader was saying in a very tailored speech, but rather, ordinary people with raw emotion,” Hazkani said. “Reading these letters I felt that dissenting voices were kind of kept from us—in the education system, in the history books—and so my larger goal has been to bring those voices forward.”

In 2013, after Hazkani wrote a story for Haaretz newspaper based on letters sent from soldiers during the Yom Kippur War 40 years earlier, Banitt approached him with interest in turning his academic research into a documentary. Throughout the nearly decade-long collaboration that followed, Hazkani and Banitt worked to transform the written letters into a visual story that could appeal to broad audiences. (Hazkani’s 2021 book “Dear Palestine” also used the letters to capture a range of previously untold Israeli and Arab perspectives of the 1948 War.)

In a review, the Israeli news website Walla lauded the film’s interviews and the way the filmmakers “manage to bring forward a few of the unit's veterans...[who] speak in a truthful and candid manner, aware of what they did and with a sense of self-criticism." The film, it said, “does not have a single boring moment.”

In one scene, Sinai Peter, who served in the army between 1971–74, cries as he reads one of his letters from the time contemplating the dehumanizing ways he saw Israeli soldiers treat Arabs they encountered. He admits in the letter that he’d considered fleeing, or worse—ending his own life.

In the next scene, Peter sits across from the former officer who read those words decades earlier, Adi Tal. She tells him how his letter was shared with leadership as an example of waning soldier morale.

“I was very curious to meet you,” he tells her, “since you rummaged through my innards.”

“I could never do a job like that,” he adds, creating an uncomfortable moment.

Tal admits her youth and naivete at the time, and how she now views the work as “invasive.” Ultimately, the two both express exasperation toward the government’s approach.

Hazkani, who came to UMD in 2016 after receiving his Ph.D. at NYU, said “The Soldier’s Opinion,” aside from being artistically compelling, invites new perspectives and nuance into modern Israeli history, including as it relates to ongoing war and conflict. And it underscores the persistent disconnect between the country’s leaders and its people. Except for a few minor examples, none of the letters ever changed policy.

“We learned this was not the purpose,” Hazkani said. “The idea of the bureau wasn’t to make society better or to solve anything. It was there just to make sure the pot doesn’t overflow. It can simmer, simmer, simmer—but it can’t overflow.” 

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"The Soldier's Opinion” will screen tomorrow at 5 p.m. at UMD in H.J. Patterson Hall followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers. It will also be shown at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the JCC in Washington, D.C.

H.J. Patterson Hall, Atrium 1st Floor
Wednesday, November 09, 2022 - 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM

Film screening of the documentary film, "The Soldier's Opinion", followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers, moderated by Eric Zakim, director of the Cinema and Media Studies Program at UMD.

9/2/22

The Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel have announced that Shay Hazkani's recent book, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (Stanford University Press, 2021), is the recipient of the 2022 Korenblat Book Award in Israel Studies.

From the award letter:

“Dear Palestine marks a paradigm shift in the study of the relations between Jews and Arabs. In an engaging and literary style, Shay Hazkani orchestrates numerous letters and diaries of Jewish and Arab soldiers during the 1948 War, in addition to military journals, pamphlets, and radio broadcasts of the Israel Defense Forces and the Arab League’s volunteer army. This is a microhistory of the ordinary individuals who withstood indoctrination and cooptation, sometime against their best interests. It is a story that quietly defies monolithic and binary perceptions passed down by nationalist histories. In their stead, Hazkani offers a relational account that listens to a more nuanced human network which steers this commendable and unpretentiously radical book.”

The Korenblat Book Award in Israel Studies was established in 2021 by Dr. Phillip Korenblat to promote exceptional scholarly contribution in the field of Israel Studies, and honor each year a book of outstanding merit in either Hebrew or English by scholars at all stages of their career.

8/6/22

The Soldier's Opinion premiered in Jerusalem's Film Festival generated much interest. The Soldier's Opinion Film

Photo credit, Tom Weintraub Louk (Shay Hazkani signing film Hebrew Poster above)

Shay Hazkani with Director, Assaf Banitt and Producer, Shahar Ben-Hur.

The Soldier's Opinion, is based on Dr. Shay Hazkani's research and book, Dear Palestine.  Hazkani is credited as a co-creator and script writer.  The film was was directed by Assaf Banitt and was produced for Israel's main cable network, Hot Telecommunication and will air on Israeli TV in November.  Screening is expected in the U.S. as well. 

The Soldier's Opinion

Israel 2022 | 55 minutes | Hebrew | English subtitles

Over the span of fifty years, the Israeli military censorship secretly copied soldiers' personal letters, extracting their views on the most contentious issues facing Israeli society. The findings were presented to leaders in a top-secret report identified as “The Soldier’s Opinion.”

Hazkani and film crew_ The Soldier's Opinion

Shay Hazkani with film Director, Producer, and Sound Designer, Erez Eyni Shavit. Photo credit Ben Tofach

Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

Launched in Fall 2020, the College of Arts and Humanities Dean’s Colloquium Series on Race, Equity and Justice introduces audiences to faculty expertise on issues of systemic racism, inequality and social justice.

This colloquium features Shay Hazkani, assistant professor in the Department of History and Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies. Talk title coming soon.

10/18/21

By ARHU Staff 

The College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) at the University of Maryland continues its successful Dean's Colloquium Series on Race, Equity and Justice, a colloquium and conversation series hosted by Dean Bonnie Thornton Dill. The series, which began in 2020, seeks to introduce audiences to faculty expertise on issues of systemic racism, inequality and social justice, and continues this year with a focus on the impacts of systemic racism on Asian, Jewish, Black, LGBTQ+, Arab and Muslim populations in the U.S. The events are free and take place virtually. 

The first colloquium of the 2021–22 academic year will be held Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021, from 9–10 a.m. and features Associate Professor of History Christopher Bonner. Bonner’s talk “Willis Hodges's Shield: The Meanings of Black Voters” will focus on voting and racial justice through the lens of the 19th-century activist Willis Augustus Hodges. It will be followed by a conversation with the dean and a Q&A. 

Upcoming talks will focus on topics ranging from countering Islamophobia to fan fiction and social justice. A full list with links to register is available below.  

“I am so pleased that this successful series continues into a new academic year with even more opportunities for the community to learn from our incredible ARHU faculty members,” said Thornton Dill. “They are nationally-known thought leaders on issues of race, inequality and social justice and their expertise will undoubtedly promote dynamic conversations and spark new ideas for social change.” 

The series is part of a collegewide campaign launched in 2020 to address racism, inequality and justice in curriculum, scholarship, programming and community engagement. Among other actions, the Committee on Race, Equity and Justice, made up of faculty, staff and graduate students, serves to advise the dean on goals related to the eradication and dismantling of structural racism and on strategies for ensuring equity and social justice throughout the college, campus and community. 

Each event is free. These conversations are also ARHU TerrapinSTRONG events.

The full list of 2021–22 colloquia events is as follows: 

Oct. 27, Christopher Bonner, associate professor in the Department of History, whose talk is titled "Willis Hodges's Shield: The Meanings of Black Voters." Register here

Nov. 19, Janelle Wong, professor in the Department of American Studies, whose talk is titled “At the Crossroad: Black and Asian American Relations in U.S. Politics Today.” Register here.

Dec. 9, Robert Levine, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English, whose talk is titled “The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson.” Register here.

Feb. 17, Alexis Lothian, associate professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, whose talk is titled “Fan Fiction, Social Justice and the Politics of Fantasy.” Register here.

Mar. 16, Sahar Khamis, associate professor in the Department of Communication, whose talk is titled “Insights on Countering Islamophobia through Research, Activism and Media Outreach.” Register here.

Apr. 15, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, associate professor in the Department of American Studies, whose talk is titled “How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Toward a Mad Methodology.” Register here.

Apr. 27, Shay Hazkani, assistant professor in the Department of History and Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies, title forthcoming. Register here

To watch previous talks, visit: https://arhu.umd.edu/news/arhu-series-talks-centering-race-equity-and-justice

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