Reimagining the Promised Land

While Israel has seemingly been a minor presence in Hollywood cinema <i>Reimagining the Promised Land</i> 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 <i>The Ten Commandments</i> (Cecil B. DeMille 1956) <i>Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ</i> (William Wyler 1959) <i>Exodus</i>(Otto Preminger 1960) <i>Cast a Giant Shadow</i> (Melville Shavelson 1966) Black Sunday (John Frankenheimer 1977) <i>The Delta Force</i> (Menahem Golan 1986) and <i>Munich</i> (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.