The power of Hegemony: human figures on Israeli banknotes

ABSTRACT

This article examines the processes of selecting human figures on banknotes since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Given Israel’s relative youth, along with the permission to read all proceedings and correspondence of the Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee from its inception in 1955 to 2012, we will decipher the selection of 33 human figures and the ideological motivations behind it. We will contextualize the discussions of the committee in Israeli social and political history; explain the belated, 1969, selection of human figures for illustrations on banknotes; depict the ideological outline of the committee; assess its level of independence; and reveal the working dynamics of a hegemonic body that is compelled to reflect the central personas of a society in the process of founding and institutionalizing a nation state – in this case, the State of Israel.

KEYWORDS:

• Banknotes
• human figures
• Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee
• hegemony
• representation
• Israel

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

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6. Proceedings, 10 December 1989.

7. The selection of the human figures was out of wide variety (see Appendix), according to consensual decisions made by the banknotes committee. Here we analyze the figures that finally appeared on banknotes (see Bank of Israel website at: https://www.boi.org.il/en/Currency/PastNotesAndCoinsSeries/Pages/Default.aspx).

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47. Kimmerling, Immigrants, 283.

48. Proceedings, 18 November 2009, 2.

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56. Kimmerling, Immigrants, 14.

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58. Billig, Banal Nationalism.

59. Unwin and Hewitt, “Banknotes”.

60. Caligaro, Negotiating Europe, 155, 171.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Na’ama Sheffi

Na’ama Sheffi is an associate professor of history in the department of communication at Sapir Academic College

Anat First

Anat First is a professor of communication in the school of communication at Netanya Academic College.