Through a review of various non-religious Israeli comics works of the last 30 years, this paper points at the friction between tokenism as diversity, and socio-cultural diversity, that are both present in Israeli culture and through it shed light on how the Zionist paradigm projects not only outwardly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the political sphere, but also inwardly to the notion of being Israeli in Israeli culture.
Israeli comics culture is fringe culture. Because of its niche status in the Israeli arts and culture scene, comics culture offers an exciting social creativity arena. Being relatively free of the attention of major media outlets and public scrutiny and with low entry costs of entry, it offers a varied landscape of creation, with a strong representation of minority voices and non-consensual thought in addition to the many ‘mainstream’ creators of Zionist Jewish secular backgrounds and their works.
In considering the background of creators and their works’ narratives, two concepts of ‘diversity’ arise. Tokenism-as-diversity reinforces the role of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Cultural diversity challenges the former convention and promotes Israel as a state of all its citizens. While so, at the same time, both approaches reject the notion of Israel as the state of all its peoples and cultures. Thus expanding, but never breaking, the Zionist-Israeli cultural melting pot’s circumference or the Zionist paradigm’s limits.