Bulletin: Law and Human Rights in Israel

Books

• Yoav Mehozay, Between the Rule of Law and States of Emergency
• Uri Yanai and Tali Gal, eds. From wrongdoing to righting the wrong : restorative justice and restorative discourse in Israel

 

Articles

• Jeff Lahav, Judgments of the Supreme Court of Israel Relating to Human Rights
• Alon Margalit, The Israeli Supreme Court and Bedouin Land Claims in the Negev
• Suzie Navot and Moran Kandelshtein-Haine, Israel Judicial Enforcement of Ethical Norms in Politics
• Sharon Steinberg and Alan Jotkowitz, The Ethics of Public Health Laws

Reviews

• Lynn Rapaport, Review of Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder’s Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust

Theses

• Yoni Levy, Freedom of Expression in Israel and the Place of Different Narratives in the Israeli Discourse (Ma, Columbia)

New Article: Seeman,Coffee and the Moral Order

Seeman, Don. “Coffee and the Moral Order: Ethiopian Jews and Pentecostals against Culture.” American Ethnologist 42.4 (2015): 734-48.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12167

 
Abstract

For Ethiopian Jews and (formerly Jewish) Pentecostals in Israel, coffee (buna) is more than just a stimulant, a cultural symbol, or even a social lubricant. It is a material medium for disputes about the limitations of moral agency, the experience of kin relations that have been broken or restructured, and the eruption of dangerous—but also healing—potencies in the social world. Buna consumption has become a focal point for at least three different forms of moral compulsion (physical addiction; zar, or spirit, affliction; and kinship obligations) that are experienced as isomorphic with “culture” and from which freedom is sought. The decision to drink or to refrain from drinking buna has therefore emerged as a fulcrum of moral experience around which different Ethiopian groups in Israel negotiate the limits of “culture” and the quest for an elusive moral freedom.

 

 

New Article: Levy, Dialectics of Legal Gambling in Israel

Levy, Moshe. “Rationalization and the Re-Enchantment of Play: the Dialectics of Legal Gambling in Israel.” Human Affairs 25.3 (2015): 317-26.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/humaff-2015-0026

 

Abstract

Romantic notions and critical theories of play describe an assault by rationalization processes on the free and spontaneous nature of play. Other theories seek to describe the dialectical nature between rationalization and freedom, between routine, and magic, and between planning and spontaneity. This article seeks to focus on the rationalization processes of play and to examine whether and in what dimensions, these processes shape the characteristics of play and hamper its spontaneity and freedom. Examination of these processes, performed by socio-historical analysis of legal gambling in Israel, shows that rationalization processes were active on both the practical and technological levels, and on the discursive level of the games of chance. Nevertheless, the characteristics of freedom, joy and spontaneity appeared only on the discursive level of the game and were designed to deliberately serve the economic interests of the various agents in the Israeli gambling field.

 

 

New Article: Simchai and Keshet, New Age in Israel

Simchai, Dalit and Yael Keshet. “New Age in Israel: Formative ethos, identity blindness, and implications for healthcare.” Health (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1363459315595848

 

Abstract

This article presents a critical analysis of New Age culture. We draw on two empirical studies conducted in Israel and show that the lofty notions about freedom from the shackles of socially structured identities and the unifying potential this holds, as well as the claim regarding the basic equality of human beings, are utopian. Blindness toward ethno-national identity reinforces identification with a self-evident hegemonic perception, thereby leading to the exclusion of peripheral groups such as indigenous populations. This exclusion is manifested in the discourse symbolically as well as in the praxis of complementary and alternative medicine, which is one of the main fields in which New Age culture is involved. Thus, the unifying ethos in the New Age culture becomes an illusionary paradise. This article contributes to the study of power relationships between New Age culture in diverse Western countries and the native and peripheral populations of these countries, and to the sociological study of complementary and alternative medicine incorporated into health organizations.

 
 
 
 

New Article: Halabi, Druze Women in Israel

Halabi, Rabah. “The Faith, the Honor of Women, the Land: The Druze Women in Israel.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 50.4 (2015): 427-44.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021909614533094

 

Abstract

This study investigates the status of the Druze women in Israel, focusing on the effects of the frequent interactions between the Druze and the more permissive Jewish-Western society. The main question posed is why Druze women accept the double standards of freedom, especially on sexual morality, that expect them to be chaste but allow sexual freedom to men. I argue that this is a patriarchal deal, in which women trade their sexual freedom in exchange for access to higher education, and to the prestigious status of moral guardians from western temptations. The paper is based on narrative analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with 50 Druze students, half of them male and half female, enrolled in Israeli universities.

Summer Seminar: Tikvah Israel Student Seminars (BA and MA students; apply by Apr 14, 2015)

The Tikvah Israel Summer Student Seminars

Dates: August 2-13 or 16-27, 2015
Location: Jerusalem
Instructors: Ran Baratz, Ruth Wisse, Meir Soloveichik, Asael Abelman, Michael Doran, Vance Serchuk, and Samuel Gregg

The Tikvah Fund is offering three different two-week seminars for Israeli advanced BA and MA students.

The seminar on Zionism will take place from August 2 until August 13. Asael Abelman will lead it, alongside Ran Baratz, Ruth Wisse, and Meir Soloveichik. Throughout, we will examine Zionist thought and history, especially as it relates to Judaism. Is Zionism the fulfillment of or an alternative to traditional Jewish life?

The seminar on Economics and Freedom will take place from August 16 until August 27. Ran Baratz and Samuel Gregg will discuss modern liberal economic principles as shaped by major thinkers like Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, the world economy and the Israeli economy, and the reforms that would benefit Israel.

The seminar on War and Strategy will also take place from August 16 until August 27 and it will be led by Michael Doran and Vance Serchuk. The first week will be devoted to the causes of war and peace, and some of the strategies that states have pursued to contend with the former and promote the latter. The second week will interpret American policy in the Middle East.

Applications are open until April 14, 2015.

New Book: Meydani, The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel

Meydani, Assaf. The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel. Constitutional Rhetoric and State Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

 

 

Why is there such a large gap between the declarations that countries make about human rights and their imperfect implementation of them? Why do states that have enacted laws and signed treaties about human rights choose to not enforce these laws in daily life? Why have activists failed to achieve the goals of ensuring human rights domestically and internationally? This book examines the issue of human rights in the Israeli domestic arena by analyzing the politics and strategies of defending human rights. To do so, it integrates the tools of social choice theory with a unique institutionalist perspective that looks at both formal and informal, and local and international factors. The book offers an analysis explaining the processes through which Israel is struggling to promote human rights within a specific institutional environment, thus determining the future of Israeli democracy and its attitude toward human rights.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Institutional theory and social choice studies: understanding the anatomy of human rights
3. Human rights between constitutional rhetoric and state practice
4. Structural and cultural variables favoring a short-term orientation
5. The right to be free from the threat of torture in light of structural and cultural complexity
6. The right to equality: gender segregation on ultra-orthodox buses following the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling on the ‘segregation lines’ in 2011
7. The right to enjoy a decent lifestyle: the case of the Laron law – national insurance law (amendment no. 109, 2008) encouraging the disabled to work
8. The human rights commission in Israel that never was
9. Property rights – the issue of designing policy about the separation fence – the High Court of Justice case: Beit Sureiq Village v. the State of Israel, 2004
10. The right to human dignity and liberty: the organ transplant law, 5768 (2008)
11. Policy evaluation: analyzing the reality for human rights.

URL: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/human-rights/anatomy-human-rights-israel-constitutional-rhetoric-and-state-practice