Data Resources

On this page, you will find references to databases for research of Israel which were brought to the attention of the AIS. If you are a member and have a datasource that you would like posted on this webpage please email the AIS with the information.

Israiliyat: Journal of Israeli and Judaic Studies is a peer-reviewed journal centered in Turkey
The journal is published in Turkish and English. It has been published since 2017. It publishes
two issues per year. Further, conferences on Israeli and Jewish studies are held annually.
Six conferences have been organized so far. The journal published 9 issues. Since this journal is the only journal that publishes specifically in the field of Israeli and Jewish studies, which is not a common field in Turkey, it is of great importance in terms of contributing to the literature.

https://conference.israiliyat.com

ISRAEL AFFAIRS

Publishes research in Israeli history, politics, literature, art, strategic affairs, economics, the Arab–Israeli conflict and Israel–diaspora relations.

Co-Editors:
Alex Joffe – ASMEA
Asaf Romirowsky – ASMEA

https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/fisa20

BGRI INFRASTRUCTURE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

BGRI-IIS maintains and operates the Ben-Gurion Archives, accommodates a 30,000-item up-to-date academic library, and initiates projects for the acquisition of new collections of primary sources related to Israel Studies.

The Ben-Gurion Archives, housed at BGRI, contain more than four million items held by David Ben-Gurion that reflect the history of Zionism and Israel from 1900 to 1973. Also kept in the Archives is a vast collection of documents gleaned from other locations in Israel and abroad, relating to the pre-independence community, the Zionist movement, and the State of Israel. Included here are personal collections of historical figures such as the Fifth President of the State of Israel, Yitzhak Navon; the American Zionist leader Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver; the Revisionist activist Hillel Kook; and Ben-Gurion’s principal biographer, Shabtai Tevet.

One of the most recent initiatives of the Archives is the Community Archives Project, which aims to accumulate, digitize, and make accessible the vast archive collections of medium-sized urban communities in southern and northern Israel (Negev and Galilee).

The Archives are fully digitized and accessible online.

https://bengurionarchive.bgu.ac.il/en

ISRAELI SPEAKER, ISRAELI EXPERT, ISRAELI SECURITY

Professor Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and long-time senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, teaches political science at Columbia, NYU and Tel Aviv Universities. He writes extensively about Israeli national security affairs, including Israel’s national security strategy and decision-making processes, the Iranian issue, US-Israeli relations, the peace process, Israel and the cyber threat, Hezbollah and Hamas and more.

www.ChuckFreilich.com

SUBSCRIBE TO “PERSPECTIVE” BY ALAN DOWTY 

AIS members are invited to subscribe for free to Perspective, a new twice-weekly Substack newsletter/blog by Alan Dowty.  The objective of Perspective is to provide historical context and broad background for current developments in American and Israeli politics.  Subscriptions, at alandowty.substack.com, include delivery of current postings to the subscriber’s inbox and access to past posts.  

THE LITERARY LAB IN BEN GURION UNIVERSITY

The Literary Lab began its activity in the 2019-2020 academic year as part of the Department of Hebrew Literature at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The lab, the first of its kind in Israel, serves as a nurturing center for systematic computational research in Hebrew literature and associated fields. The lab combines new perspectives with traditional approaches and relies on the collaborative work of researchers and students drawn from the Department of Hebrew Literature, from a variety of different disciplines in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and from across the entire University.

https://www.lit-lab.bgu.ac.il/the-hebrew-novel

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION TOWARDS ISRAEL (APOI) LAB

The APOI lab was established by Dr. Amnon Cavari to study the behavioral aspect of the special relationship between the United States and Israel. In our work, we combine public opinion data with analysis of media coverage of events, elite rhetoric and political actions. Relying on our big data approach, we examine trends in elite and public support and assess causes of change.

https://www.runi.ac.il/en/research-institutes/government/apoi

THE SCHUSTERMAN CENTER FOR ISRAEL STUDIES
RESEARCH GUIDE TO ISRAEL STUDIES

The Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University is proud to announce its new Research Guide to Israel Studies, a one-stop shop for Israel Studies queries, needs, and information.

Interested in photography of pre-state Israel? We have ideas for you. Want to know how Israelis voted in the last elections? We have the answer. Need to find a database of Hebrew literature? We’ve got that covered, too. This free guide contains resources for researchers of every kind. From the high schooler writing a class report, to a journalist looking for reliable information, to a senior academic with thirty years’ experience, everyone will find it invaluable.

ISRAEL VOICE INDEX, ISRAEL DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE

The “Israel Voice Index” is an initiative of the non-partisan Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute.  Over a span of 60 years and through more than 1,200 surveys, the Center has applied rigorous and innovative research to document the Israeli public’s attitudes regarding thousands of issues in all aspects of life including politics, culture, ideology, religion, education, and national security. The Center’s surveys have become a basic reference for policy and decision-makers from across Israel’s political spectrum.

ISRAELI VOICE INDEX

DATA ISRAEL – ISRAEL DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE

The Data Israel portal is an online public opinion research database created and administered by the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, at the Israel Democracy Institute. It is the second-largest database in Israel (second to the Central Bureau of Statistics), and contains data from hundreds of public-opinion polls conducted from 1967 to the present on a wide range of subjects such as society, economics, security, and political leaders and institutions. The portal also contains research reports dating back to 1949.

https://en.idi.org.il/galleries/20650

TEL AVIV REVIEW PODCAST

The Tel Aviv Review is a biweekly podcast dedicated to reviewing the latest developments in nonfiction writing and scholarship about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
In partnership with TLV1 Radio and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Gilad Halpern hosts leading scholars and researchers for long-form, in-depth discussions about their field of expertise.
In June 2016, the podcast covered the AIS Annual Conference in Jerusalem, yielding 20 interviews on a wide range of topics. The interviews, alongside more than 250 archive interviews, can be found here: http://www.telavivreview.org/ais-conference-2016

ISRAELI-EGYPTIAN PEACE NEGOTIATIONS
ISRAEL STATE ARCHIVES

The idea that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat came to Israel for an extremely dramatic visit in November 1977, and from then on it was a forgone conclusion that there would be peace between Israel and Egypt is of course wrong. The fact that the peace agreement between the two warring countries was signed only on 26th of March 1979, 35 years ago this week, hints that the negotiations were long, arduous and at times seemingly hopeless.

The Israel State Archives (ISA) has been publishing the documentation of these negotiations for some time. Among the documents are notes written by Aharon Barak, in illegible Hebrew, when he was alone with President Carter and PM Begin in the room; not only have these notes never previously been published, but until last year no-one was ever able to decipher them. Before this publication Justice Barak deciphered them painstakingly for us, adding comment as he did so.

https://portal.ehri-project.eu/institutions/il-004883

ISRAEL NATIONAL ELECTION STUDIES (INES)

The site incorporates the data of the Israel national election studies and additional relevant information about elections in Israel and in comparative perspective. Election surveys in Israel have been carried out since 1969, and this data has been available to the scientific community in Israel and in the world since.

https://socsci4.tau.ac.il/mu2/ines

JERUSALEM CENTER FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS
DAILY ALERT ARCHIVES

Information on Israel’s national security issues – filtered, sifted, and stored for easy retrieval – from the treasury of electronic content at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) has finished compiling a research database that provides a searchable archive of the center’s Daily Alert publications. The Daily Alert is a publication that the center puts out every weekday to chronicle news articles from that day that pertain to Israel. The publication consists of a summary of each article and a link to the original source. The searchable archive dates back to 2002 and is free to use. 
The database can be accessed at http://www.dailyalert.org/rss/tagpage.php or through the JCPA website: http://jcpa.org/

THE BERMAN JEWISH POLICY ARCHIVE

The Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner (www.bjpa.org) offers open access to a fully-searchable and annotated archive of nearly 5,000 documents as well as research tools for organizing and sharing information. We cover a broad range of topics, and emphasize issues of culture and identity covering both North America, and Israel, for example, Israel Advocacy, Diaspora Relations, and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The collection, which includes primary sources such as original reports and studies as well as analysis and policy recommendations, continues to expand. Many of the materials have never been digitized before or are not available anywhere else online.

VISUAL MEMORY
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL

We invite you to embark on fascinating explorations of Palestine-Israel in the past 150 years. By means of this collection of photographic images, you can pay a visit to Jerusalem in the 19th century, Tel Aviv as it emerged over 100 years ago, the agricultural settlements of Palestine and the newly established State of Israel. You can follow in the footsteps of individuals, both famous and forgotten, witness cultural events and economic enterprises, archeological excavations and educational institutions. You can also become acquainted with the diverse cultures imported by the waves of immigration as well as local Arab culture. Countless experiences and revelations await you here, caught in the eye of the camera’s lens.

http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/digitallibrary/photos/Pages/photo_portal.aspx

ELECTION CHRONICLES
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL

​The cultural impact of an election campaign is not registered in the annals of literature or art, but in ephemeral manifestations that attest to the mainstream nature of the event. These manifestations take the form of print, radio and television propaganda, and in more recent years, Internet propaganda. The materials preserved by the National Library and other partners in this project enable us to give the public a full, rich, and varied portrait of significant events in the Israeli national memory. 
http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/treasures/elections/Pages/default2.aspx

Collection of Zionist and Herzl memorabilia

To celebrate Israel’s 75th birthday, David Matlow of Toronto, Canada selected 75 artefacts from his personal collection of Zionist and Herzl memorabilia (the largest private collection in the world) and shared them in a new book, 75 Treasures: Celebrating Israel at Seventy-Five. 

75 Treasures is available for free download at https://herzlcollection.com/75-treasures.  Please feel free to use and share the book, as well as the other resources which are available at David Matlow’s website: https://herzlcollection.com/