Winner of the 2019 Association for Middle East Women’s Studies Book Award
The very language of Zionism prizes the concept of immigration to Israel (
aliyah, literally ascending) while stigmatizing emigration from Israel (
yerida, descending). In
A Queer Way Out, Hila Amit explores the as-yet-untold story of queer Israeli emigrants. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Berlin, London, and New York, she examines motivations for departure and feelings of unbelonging to the Israeli national collective. Amit shows that sexual orientation and left-wing political affiliation play significant roles in decisions to leave. Queer Israeli emigrants question national and heterosexual norms such as army service, monogamy, and reproduction. Amit argues that emigration itself is not only a political act, but one that pioneers a deliberately unheroic form of resistance to Zionist ideology. This fascinating study enriches our understandings of migration, political activism, and queer forms of living in Israel and beyond.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Israel, Zionism, and Emigration Anxiety
2. Points of Departure: The Standard Emigration Story and Queer Israeli Emigrants
3. The Israeli Collective and Emigration: Left-Wing Queers and Unbelonging
4. The New Hebrew Diaspora: Queer Israeli Emigrants in Cyber Space
5. Queer Interruptions: The Temporal Regime of Israel and Queer Israeli Emigrants
6. The Queer Act of Emigration: Avoidance and Unheroic Political Activism
7. A Queer Way Out: Israeli Emigration and Unheroic Resistance to Zionism
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Hila Amit received her Ph D in gender studies from SOAS University of London.
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