The memories of the summer vacations she spent as a child with her family in Tantura were shattered when when she realized how the village had been conqered, destroyed and emptied of its inhabitants in 1948.
An in-depth study by Israeli socialist-feminist Nira Yuval-Davis looking at the constraints put on Israeli women by the zionist state, examining the role of Israeli Jewish women as reproducers of the national collectivity and their role in the "demographic race".
The picture that emerges in the book is very different from the popular myth of the kibbutz , which can be seen as a commune not so much of utopian socialists as of militants of a colonialist-nationalist movement.
Unlike the period prior to 1948, after the establishment of Israel the Palestinian society underwent a process of integration in the Israeli system. Thus the model of internal colonialism does apply as a valid description of the relationship between the Jewish and Arab sectors in Israel after 1948.
The myth of the supposed liberation and equality of Israeli women, while perhaps gratifying a deep-seated need for feminists in search of identity, cajoles most Israeli women into a state of spirited resignation – content with a public image that bears little or no resemblance to their actual situation.
Within the limitations inherent in his ideological and theoretical approach, the author attempts to give a comprehensive picture of ethnic relations in Israel.