The Israeli teacher-guide: The emergence and perpetuation of a role

The Israeli teacher-guide performs functions associated with tiyulim—special walks in Israel aimed at the promotion of getting to know one's native country, which are organized by public, non-commercial agencies. The Israeli teacher-guide is socially defined as an agent of education and culture rather than of leisure and entertainment. Most of his role performances are carried out during walks with various groups of casual participants. During these walks he is both the navigator and interpreter of the scenes and their meanings. On the background of the history of tourism in the Holy Land, both the emergence of the Israeli teacher-guide role and the persistence of the public demand for tiyulim and for the organizational and interpretational products of the teacher-guide, associated with tiyulim, are described in this paper. These phenomena are explained by the special peculiarities of the “Israeli condition,” which cause many to seek a sense of belonging to the Israeli land and soil and by the idea prevailing among the Israeli educational elite that tiyulim and the contents delivered during them by the teacher-guides, are appropriate means for arousing this feeling. It is hypothesized that the tiyulim may be looked upon as components of the Israeli civil religion and thus the teacher-guide is a kind of civil religion mentor.     

Ninety Years Later... Let’s Dream: Commentary on the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Considering historical and current events in the region, this commentary proposes an approach to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict in which the West Bank integrates with Jordan. Elements of a base plan are presented.     

A note on randomized response models for quantitative data

Standard randomized response (RR) models deal primarily with surveys which usually require a yes or a no response to a sensitive question, or a choice for responses from a set of nominal categories. As opposed to that, Eichhorn and Hayre (1983) have considered survey models involving a quantitative response variable and proposed an RR technique for it. Such models are very useful in studies involving a measured response variable which is highly sensitive in its nature. Eichhorn and Hayre obtained an unbiased estimate for the expectation of the quantitative response variable of interest. In this note we propose a procedure which uses a design parameter (controlled by the experimenter) that generalizes Eichhorn and Hayres results. Such a procedure yields an estimate for the desired expectation which has a uniformly smaller variance.Acknowledgements We are grateful to two referees for their valuable and constructive comments.     

Tourism development — centres versus peripheries: the Israeli experience during the 1990s

Initially tourism was potentially considered as a vehicle for reducing inequalities in regional development through the spread of resources from the more developed regions of a country to its less developed areas. Later, case studies demonstrated that, although certain peripheral areas have emerged as tourist attractions, the large urban centres gained even more in terms of tourism‐generated investment and income. This study examines the Israeli situation comparing tourism development indicators in central versus peripheral areas. Although the two largest cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv appear to attract much of the country's investment in tourism hotels and enjoy a large flow of visitors, data for the 1990s reveal that peripheral areas are having higher share in tourism than their counterparts in the central areas. Furthermore, compared with their proportion in the general population, the peripheral areas location quotient related to tourism development indicators is far higher than that of the central areas. The single largest centre of tourism is now located in the town of Elat, situated in isolation in the southernmost tip of the country. The resort areas of Tiberias on the Lake of Galilee in the northeast and that of the Dead Sea area in the southeast came to be large tourism centres. Also, the most flourishing B&B industry has developed in the northern peripheral area. The study contemplates whether or not the Israeli experience is applicable to other countries and concludes with an attempt to draw broader generalisations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Laggards in disguise: Resistance to adopt and the leapfrogging effect

In this conceptual paper we propose a redefinition of the Laggards concept and discuss a consumer leapfrogging effect, whereby Laggards of previous product generations may often become the Innovators of the most recent generation. We then examine the potential financial benefits to be gained by addressing this resistant population.