Thinking Comparatively about Israel

Students enrolled in Israel Studies courses often come to class with either firm opinions or little knowledge about the country (sometimes both). One way to address this while training students in the particular disciplines in which they are interested is by emphasizing the use of disciplinary concepts and tools to study Israel in a comparative framework, specifically, by pointing out the similarities and differences between Israel and other states. An effective epistemological approach to this end is the use of discussion questions to structure class conversations. This article demonstrates the usefulness of such an approach by looking at three main concepts in Political Science—the state, democracy, and liberal democracy.