Prof. Shlomo Avineri, one of Israel’s most eminent political scientists, a veteran lecturer at the Hebrew University, and former Director-General of the Foreign Ministry, and author of the book titled Herzl: Theodore Herzl and the foundations of the Jewish State, that was recently published in English.

Avi Pitchon’s “Rotten Johnny and the Queen of Shivers: Counterculture in Escape from Israeliness” chronicles his personal involvement in a very specific turning point in the history of Israeli culture, both homegrown and adopted from overseas – the emergence of punk culture in the 1980s.

On paper, Israelis of mixed ethnicity – those of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi descent – are the realization of the Zionist dream of the gathering of the diasporas; but in reality, their situation is no less troublesome.