New Book: Natanel, Sustaining Conflict

Natanel, Katherine. Sustaining Conflict. Apathy and Domination in Israel-Palestine. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.

 

 

Sustaining Conflict develops a groundbreaking theory of political apathy, using a combination of ethnographic material, narrative, and political, cultural, and feminist theory. It examines how the status quo is maintained in Israel-Palestine, even by the activities of Jewish Israelis who are working against the occupation of Palestinian territories. The book shows how hierarchies and fault lines in Israeli politics lead to fragmentation, and how even oppositional power becomes routine over time. Most importantly, the book exposes how the occupation is sustained through a carefully crafted system that allows sympathetic Israelis to “knowingly not know,” further disconnecting them from the plight of Palestinians. While focusing on Israel, this is a book that has lessons for how any authoritarian regime is sustained through apathy.

 

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Everyday of Occupation
• 2 Bordered Communities
• 3 Normalcy, Ruptured and Repaired
• 4 Embedded (In)action
• 5 Protesting Politics
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

 

KATHERINE NATANEL is a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.

New Book: Ben Shitrit, Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right

Ben Shitrit, Lihi. Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

 

How do women in conservative religious movements expand spaces for political activism in ways that go beyond their movements’ strict ideas about male and female roles? How and why does this activism happen in some movements but not in others? Righteous Transgressions examines these questions by comparatively studying four groups: the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the ultra-Orthodox Shas, the Islamic Movement in Israel, and the Palestinian Hamas. Lihi Ben Shitrit demonstrates that women’s prioritization of a nationalist agenda over a proselytizing one shapes their activist involvement.

Ben Shitrit shows how women construct “frames of exception” that temporarily suspend, rather than challenge, some of the limiting aspects of their movements’ gender ideology. Viewing women as agents in such movements, she analyzes the ways in which activists use nationalism to astutely reframe gender role transgressions from inappropriate to righteous. The author engages the literature on women’s agency in Muslim and Jewish religious contexts, and sheds light on the centrality of women’s activism to the promotion of the spiritual, social, cultural, and political agendas of both the Israeli and Palestinian religious right.

Looking at the four most influential political movements of the Israeli and Palestinian religious right, Righteous Transgressions reveals how the bounds of gender expectations can be crossed for the political good.

 

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments vii
• Note on Language xi
• 1 Introduction: “Be an Other’s, Be an Other”: A Personal Perspective 1
• 2 Contextualizing the Movements 32
• 3 Complementarian Activism: Domestic and Social Work, Da‘wa, and Teshuva 80
• 4 Women’s Protest: Exceptional Times and Exceptional Measures 128
• 5 Women’s Formal Representation: Overlapping Frames 181
• 6 Conclusion 225
• Notes 241
• References 259
• Index 275

 

LIHI BEN SHITRIT is an assistant professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia.

 

 

 

New Article: Strier, Fathers in Israel

Strier, Roni. “Fathers in Israel: Contextualizing Images of Fatherhood.” In Fathers Across Cultures: The Importance, Roles, and Diverse Practices of Dads (ed. Jaipaul L. Roopnarine; Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2015): 350-67.

 

Extract

Walking the Israeli fatherhood labyrinth means rediscovering fatherhood as a highly changing and multifaceted construction. The Israeli case confirms the dynamic nature of fatherhood. Fatherhood trajectories (Zionist, ultra-Orthodox, and Immigrant Jewish, as well as Palestinian) already reviewed help us disclose the fluctuating character of fatherhood as a historical, cultural, and class-based construction. The Israeli case also questions the validity of a possible essential Israeli fatherhood and suggests the need to discuss changing fatherhoods in Israel – fatherhood as facing shared processes (westernization, familism, growing inequalities, and national conflict) and huge divides.
Of equal importance is the recognition of the complexity of the fatherhood experience as a multilayered phenomenon in which gendered images of masculinity interact with changing views of fatherhood. The Israeli case study presents fatherhood as a puzzle of internal tensions and external constraints. This frame helps us to acknowledge the contributions and shortfalls of the nation-state to grasp the changing and dynamic nature of fatherhood as a historical construction. finally, the Israeli case calls on fatherhood scholars to keep examining the impact of war and political violence on the well-being of fathers and families. In a more broad, global scope, the experience of fatherhood in Israel should call for a new discourse of fatherhood that includes the respect for human rights, the repudiation of any form of violence and injustice, and the pursue of political goals through nonviolent means.

 

 

New Article: Meier, Palestinian Divorced and Widowed Mothers in Israel

Meier, Tal. ““I Do What I Please, but Even So, I See a Psychologist”: Palestinian Divorced and Widowed Mothers in Israel.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 11.3 (2015): 306-324.

 
URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_middle_east_womens_studies/v011/11.3.meler.html
 
Abstract

Divorce, separation, and widowhood produce great psychological stress for Palestinian women in Israel. Very often family support is a set of demands seeking to regulate and reshape their conduct. This article is based on a study conducted between 2007 and 2011 with twenty-four divorced, separated, and widowed Palestinian single mothers in Israel. In contrast to claims in most existing scholarship, all of the women turned to nonfamilial sources of support to deal with family and community regulation, restrictions, and stigmatization and to acquire resources. Level of surveillance and regulation was most highly associated with socioeconomic class. The poorer the women, the fewer their choices and the less freedom they had to determine their lives and their children’s lives. The women interviewed disproportionately reported turning to outsiders, such as psychologists, spiritualists, and feminist activists, for “expressive” support.

 

 

New Article: Meier, Intersections in Palestinian Single Mothers’ Lives in Israel

Meier, Tal. “Intersections in Palestinian Single Mothers’ Lives in Israel.” Social Identities (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2015.1100990
 
Abstract

The present article addresses the support and supervisional relations of Palestinian Israeli single mothers vis-à-vis their families and communities. It links the theoretical discussion on intersectional analysis with power relations and gender. In this article I focus on the importance of employing analytical models that take into consideration the internal variance within this social category of ‘Palestinian Israeli single mothers’ which emerge due to the contradictory social trends typifying Palestinian society in Israel today – models that examine the implications of the complexity of women’s lives in discrete locations, the changes society is undergoing, together with processes of discrimination and the strengthening of conservative trends. The article is based on data gathered during in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted and analyzed with a commitment to the principles of feminist research.

 

 

New Article: Ben-Moshe, Disability and Anti-Occupation Activism in Israel

Ben-Moshe, Liat. “Movements at War? Disability and Anti-Occupation Activism in Israel.” In Occupying Disability. Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability (ed. Pamela Block et al.; Dordrecht and New York: Springer, 2016): 47-61.

 

 

Abstract

At the time of the first major disability protest in Israel in 1999 and then in 2000-2001, there were already many anti-occupation and peace organizations at play in Israel/Palestine. While participating in this budding disability movement, I began reflecting on my experiences of simultaneously being an Israeli anti-occupation activist and disabled activist publically fighting for the first time for disability rights. In the summer of 2006 I conducted research in Israel, trying to assess any changes that occurred since 2000 in the connections between the movements and within the disability movement itself. And then the war on Lebanon began. My intention in writing this chapter is to highlight the connections between disability activism and anti-war and anti-occupation activism, which seems to be at war with one another but in fact intersect in important ways. I hope this narrative and analysis will be useful for material resistance as well as a reflection on our current states of exclusion in activism and scholarship.

 

 

New Article: Keshet et al, Underrepresentation of Arab Physicians in Israel

Keshet, Yael, Ariela Popper-Giveon, and Ido Liberman. “Intersectionality and Underrepresentation among Health Care Workforce: The Case of Arab Physicians in Israel.” Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 4.18 (2015): 13pp.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-015-0004-0

 

Abstract

Background

An intersectionality approach that addresses the non-additive influences of social categories and power structures, such as gender and ethnicity, is used as a research paradigm to further understanding the complexity of health inequities. While most researchers adopt an intersectionality approach to study patients’ health status, in this article we exemplify its usefulness and importance for studying underrepresentation in the health care workforce. Our research objectives were to examine gender patterns of underrepresentation in the medical profession among the Arab minority in Israel.

Methods

We used both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The quantitative data were obtained from the 2011 Labor Force Survey conducted by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, which encompassed some 24,000 households. The qualitative data were obtained through ten semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted during 2013 with Arab physicians and with six nurses working in Israeli hospitals.

Results

The findings indicate that with respect to physicians, the Arab minority in Israel is underrepresented in the medical field, and that this is due to Arab women’s underrepresentation. Arab women’s employment and educational patterns impact their underrepresentation in medicine. Women are expected to enter traditional gender roles and conform to patriarchal and collectivist values, which makes it difficult for them to study medicine.

Conclusions

Using an intersectionality approach to study underrepresentation in medicine provides a foundation for action aimed at improving public health and reducing health disparities.

 
 
 
 

New Article: Naber and Zaatari, Feminist and LGBTQ Activism in the Context of the 2006 Israeli Invasion of Lebanon

Naber, Nadina and Zeina Zaatari. “Reframing the War on Terror: Feminist and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Activism in the Context of the 2006 Israeli Invasion of Lebanon.” Cultural Dynamics 26.1 (2014): 91-111.

 

URL: http://cdy.sagepub.com/content/26/1/91

 

Abstract

This article seeks to expand the kinds of questions we ask about the diverse militarized campaigns referred to collectively as the “war on terror,” the grassroots resistance to these wars, and efforts committed to creating a world without destruction and killing. Shifting the focus of this feminist critique of war away from the center of power (the empire) to the everyday lives of feminist and queer activists living the war on terror from the ground up, this article examines a distinct feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social movement that worked to respond to and resist the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. We argue along with our interlocutors in Lebanon that asymmetrical systems of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and family are entangled in the historical conditions of transnational capital, empire, and war, and necessitate an intersectional approach that refuses to impose false binaries or hierarchies on a complex social reality. We conclude by arguing the importance of reframing the war on terror and reimagining feminist and LGBTQ policies as a critique of the post-racial discourse, beyond dominant imperialist and nationalist discourses, which are exclusionary, sexist, and homophobic in different ways.

ToC: Israel Studies Review 28,2 (2013)

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Rethinking the Family in Israel

pp. vii-xii(6)
Authors: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie; Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Articles: The Transformation of Intimacies

Religious Zionist Singles and Late-Modern Youth Culture

pp. 1-17(17)
Author: Engelberg, Ari

Israeli-Palestinian Women and Their Reasons for Divorce: A Comparative Perspective

pp. 18-40(23)
Author: Meler, Tal

Midlife Women in Second Partnerships Choosing Living Apart Together: An Israeli Case Study

pp. 41-60(20)
Author: Or, Ofra

Articles: Families in Transition

‘The Art of the Deal’: Preferences in Spouse Selection among Parents in a Hasidic Community

pp. 61-82(22)
Author: Block, Sima Zalcberg

Crises in Orthodox Israeli Family Life Onstage

pp. 83-101(19)
Author: Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Aging, Family, and Preferences for Care among Older Jews and Arabs

pp. 102-121(20)
Author: Halperin, Dafna

Articles: The Boundaries of Family Life

Hybridization and Purification: The Experiences of Mizrachi Middle-Class Adolescents in Israel

pp. 122-139(18)
Author: Selinger, Guy Abutbul

Conceiving Judaism: The Challenges of Same-Sex Parenthood

pp. 140-156(17)
Author: Lustenberger, Sibylle

Israeli ‘Mixed Families’ with Members of Ethiopian Origin: Encounters in the Public Space

pp. 157-173(17)
Author: Benezer, Gadi

“I Earn, Therefore I Exist”: Impoverished Bedouin Mothers Who Become Entrepreneurs

pp. 174-191(18)
Author: Alhuzail, Nuzha Allassad

Migrant Care Workers in Israel: Between Family, Market, and State

pp. 192-209(18)
Author: Shamir, Hila

Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

The Spousal Covenant (Brit Hazugiut), or the Covenant with the Status Quo

pp. 210-227(18)
Author: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie

Articles: Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

The Legitimacy of Single Mothers in Israel Examined through Five Circles of Discourse

pp. 228-246(19)
Author: Herbst, Anat

The Anomaly of Custody in Israeli Family Law

pp. 247-263(17)
Author: Mazeh, Yoav

The Child’s Worst Interests: Socio-legal Taboos on Same-Sex Parenting and Their Impact on Children’s Well-Being

pp. 264-281(18)
Author: Triger, Zvi

Children’s Rights in Israeli Case Law: A Spiral Progression

pp. 282-299(18)
Author: Morag, Tamar

Succession Law in Israel: Individualism and the Family

pp. 300-313(14)
Author: Kreiczer-Levy, Shelly

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

pp. 314-324(11)

Cite: Lavie, Writing against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain

Lavie, Smadar. “Writing against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain.” American Ethnologist 39.4 (2012): 779-803.

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01395.x/abstract

Abstract

Equating bureaucratic entanglements with pain—or what, arguably, can be seen as torture—might seem strange. But for single Mizrahi welfare mothers in Israel, somatization of bureaucratic logic as physical pain precludes the agency of identity politics. This essay elaborates on Don Handelman’s scholarship on bureaucratic logic as divine cosmology and posits that Israel’s bureaucracy is based on a theological essence that amalgamates gender and race. The essay employs a world anthropologies’ theoretical toolkit to represent bureaucratic torture in multiple narrative modes, including anger, irony, and humor, as a counterexample to dominant U.S.–U.K. formulae for writing and theorizing culture.