New Article: Violi, A Peace-Building Experience in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Violi, Patrizia. “Just Words under the Wall: A Peace-Building Experience in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” In Gender and Conflict: Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices (ed. Georg Frerks, Annelou Ypeij, and Reinhilde Sotiria König; London and New York: Routledge, 2016): 217ff.

 

 

Extract

This experience, in which I was personally involved, was a three-year EU-financed project initiated in late 2005 entitled ‘Building Constituencies for Women’s Alternative Ways for Peace’. Its primary objective was to promote encounters between Palestinian and Israeli women and support peacemaking efforts by The Jerusalem Link, an organisation involving two Women’s Centres: Bat Shalom and Jerusalem Center for Women.’ The Jerusalem Link involving these two women’s organisations was established in 1994 to bring about a just, comprehensive and lasting peace between the two peoples of Palestine and Israel, and its feminist grounding is explicitly emphasised in the declaration of intent.

 

 

New Article: Goren, Tel Aviv and the Question of Separation from Jaffa 1921–1936

Goren, Tamir. “Tel Aviv and the Question of Separation from Jaffa, 1921–1936.” Middle Eastern Studies (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1125340
 
Abstract

The ordinance granting Tel Aviv the status of local council was given in 1921. Immediately thereafter, the municipal council acted to amend the terms of the ordinance so as to free Tel Aviv entirely from the supervision of Jaffa municipality. Tel Aviv aimed for the status of an independent municipality, but still wished to safeguard its interests in Jaffa. Detachment from Jaffa was for long a central issue for Tel Aviv municipality. The article analyses the Jewish side’s stance on Jaffa from 1921 until the outbreak of the disturbances in 1936, when Tel Aviv detached itself almost entirely from Jaffa. In the 1920s, the importance of Jaffa for the Jews was mainly economic, but in the 1930s, the addition of the demographic dimension reflected the growing status of the Jaffa Jewish community and was decisive in increasing the Jewish influence in Jaffa.

 

 

 

New Article: Shtern, Urban Neoliberalism vs. Ethno-National Division in Jerusalem’s Shopping Malls

Shtern, Marik. “Urban Neoliberalism vs. Ethno-National Division: The Case of West Jerusalem’s Shopping Malls.” Cities 52 (2016): 132-9.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.11.019

 

Abstract

Most research on ethnically and nationally contested cities posits that urban spatial segregation trends will remain decisive so long as the macro level national conflict persists, and assumes that the neoliberalization of urban space would only strengthen such trends. Over the last decade however, and despite the ever deepening national conflict, Jerusalem has seen the emergence of neoliberal spaces of consumption that serve as resilient spaces of intergroup encounter between Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab populations. In this article I will examine and compare two such neoliberal spaces in Jerusalem, and show how under certain conditions, privatized urban spaces can undermine processes of ethno-national segregation. I argue that interactions between members of the two rival groups are challenged and reshaped by neoliberal spaces and that the relocation of the ethno-national intergroup encounters to privatized spaces of consumption could represent a temporal shift to a class based encounters.

 

 

 

New Book: Bekerman, The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Bekerman, Zvi. The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education. Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

The Promise of Integrated and Multicultural Bilingual Education presents the results of a long-term ethnographic study of the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel that offer a new educational option to two groups of Israelis–Palestinians and Jews–who have been in conflict for the last one hundred years. Their goal is to create egalitarian bilingual multicultural environments to facilitate the growth of youth who can acknowledge and respect “others” while maintaining loyalty to their respective cultural traditions. In this book, Bekerman reveals the complex school practices implemented while negotiating identity and culture in contexts of enduring conflict. Data gathered from interviews with teachers, students, parents, and state officials are presented and analyzed to explore the potential and limitations of peace education given the cultural resources, ethnic-religious affiliations, political beliefs, and historical narratives of the various interactants. The book concludes with critique of Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives that currently guide peace education, maintaining that one of the primary weaknesses of current bilingual and multicultural approaches to peace education is their failure to account for the primacy of the political framework of the nation state and the psychologized educational perspectives that guide their educational work. Change, it is argued, will only occur after these perspectives are abandoned, which entails critically reviewing present understandings of the individual, of identity and culture, and of the learning process.

 
Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1
• 1. Positioning the Author
• 2. Theoretical Perspectives
• 3. Methodology: From Theory to Implementation
• 4. Schools in Their Contexts
• Part 2
• 5. The Parents
• 6. Teachers at Their Work
• 7. The Children
• Part 3
• 8. School Routines: Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Classroom
• 9. Ceremonial Events
• 10. Conflicting National Narratives
• Part 4
• 11. The Graduates
• 12. Conclusions
• Author Index
• Subject Index

 

ZVI BEKERMAN teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as culture and identity intersect with issues of social justice, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education.

 

 

 

New Article: Bashir, On Citizenship and Citizenship Education

Bashir, Bashir. “On Citizenship and Citizenship Education: A Levantine Approach and Reimagining Israel/Palestine.” Citizenship Studies 19.6-7 (2015): 802-19.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2015.1007033

 

Abstract

This article argues in favor of a Levantine approach to citizenship and citizenship education. A Levantine approach calls for some sort of Mediterranean regionalism, which accommodates and promotes overlapping and shared sovereignties and jurisdiction, multiple loyalties, and regional integration. It transcends the paradigmatic statist model of citizenship by recasting the relationship between territoriality, national identity, sovereignty, and citizenship in complex, multilayered and disaggregated constellations. As the case of Israel/Palestine demonstrates, this new approach goes beyond multicultural accommodation and territorial partition. It proposes, among other things, extending the political and territorial boundaries of citizenship to take all the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River as one unit of analysis belonging to a larger region.

 

 

 

New Article: Kidron, Jews and Palestinian-Arabs in Mandatory Haifa

Kidron, Anat. “Separatism, Coexistence and the Landscape: Jews and Palestinian-Arabs in Mandatory Haifa.” Middle Eastern Studies 52.1 (2016): 79-101.
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1081177
 
Abstract

Haifa was named a ‘mixed city’ by the British, who ruled Palestine from 1917 to 1948, in reference to the two national communities that inhabited the town. This definition was not neutral, and reflected the Brits aspirations to create national coexistence in Palestine among the diverse urban societies.

Reality was more complicated. The basic assumption of this paper follows the idea that the bi-national urban society of Mandatory Haifa developed into dual society, albeit with much overlapping in economic and civil matters, but takes it one step further: through highlighting changes in the urban landscape, I wish to argue dominance of the national European modern Hebrew society over the Palestinian-Arabs and the traditional and oriental Jewish societies and ideas alike. The changes in the urban landscape tell us the story of Zionism’s growing influence and dominance, and the way the urban landscape was used to embody Zionism’s modern European ethos. The neighbourhood’s segregation, therefore, represents not only the effort to separate but to create a modern national ‘sense of place’ that influenced the city development.

 

 

 

Lecutre: Tzfadia, Israel’s Jewish-Arab City (Rutgers, Dec 3, 2015)

 

Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, Rutgers University

Presents

Erez Tzfadia

Living Together Separately: Israel’s Jewish-Arab City

Thursday, December 3, 2015; 7:30pm

Douglas Campus Center, 100 George Street, New Brunswick

New Article: Alon-Mozes, National Parks for a Multicultural Society

Alon-Mozes, Tal. “National Parks for a Multicultural Society: Planning Israel’s Past and Present National Parks.” In Landscape Culture – Culturing Landscapes: The Differentiated Construction of Landscapes (ed. Diedrich Burns et al; Wiesbaden: Springer, 2015): 173-83.

 

 

Extract

Both case studies demonstrate the power of the landscape as an agent fostering first national and later communal identity. Early planning of Gan HaShlosha and Zippori national parks emphasized the role of the biblical/Hellenistic pastoral landscape in reinforcing a common national identity among the Jewish settlers of Israel. Consequently, the Palestinians’ past was erased from Zippori grounds, as in other places in Israel, and their narrative was silenced.

Due to the failure of the melting pot policy and the emergence of Israel as a multicultural society, contemporary Israeli national parks are designed and managed in order to address the needs of various communities of visitors, and not solely the hegemonic ones. The new clientele includes veteran Jews and new immigrants, various Jewish ethnic groups, ultra-orthodox Jews, Christian pilgrims, and the Palestinians Currently, panning strives to increase the profitability of the parks by recruiting new communities, by enabling mass gatherings and communal cultural events, and by mitigating conflicts among participants. Various stakeholders promote parallel narratives within and surrounding the parks, advancing the parcelization of the area based on time or space zones. Within this relatively enabling system, even the Palestinian narrative of Zippori is marked on the land, in spite of objections based on nationalistic considerations.

 

 

New Book: Goldscheider, Israeli Society in the Twenty-First Century

Goldscheider, Calvin. Israeli Society in the Twenty-First Century. Immigration, Inequality, and Religious Conflict, Schusterman Series in Israel Studies. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press (imprint of University Press of New England), 2015.

This volume illuminates changes in Israeli society over the past generation. Goldscheider identifies three key social changes that have led to the transformation of Israeli society in the twenty-first century: the massive immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union, the economic shift to a high-tech economy, and the growth of socioeconomic inequalities inside Israel. To deepen his analysis of these developments, Goldscheider focuses on ethnicity, religion, and gender, including the growth of ethnic pluralism in Israel, the strengthening of the Ultra-Orthodox community, the changing nature of religious Zionism and secularism, shifts in family patterns, and new issues and challenges between Palestinians and Arab Israelis given the stalemate in the peace process and the expansions of Jewish settlements.

Combining demography and social structural analysis, the author draws on the most recent data available from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and other sources to offer scholars and students an innovative guide to thinking about the Israel of the future.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary Israel, the Middle East, sociology, demography and economic development, as well as policy specialists in these fields. It will serve as a textbook for courses in Israeli history and in the modern Middle East.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables and Figure
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Nation-Building, Population, and Development
• Ethnic Diversity Jewish and Arab Populations of Israel
• Immigration, Nation-Building, and Ethnic-Group Formation
• Arab Israelis Demography, Dependency, and Distinctiveness
• Urbanization, Residential Integration, and Communities
• Religiosity, Religious Institutions, and Israeli Culture
• Inequality and Changing Gender Roles
• Education, Stratification, and Inequality
• Inequality and Mortality Decline
• Family Formation and Generational Continuities
• Emergent Israeli Society Nation-Building, Inequalities, and Continuities
• Appendix: Data Sources and Reliability
• Bibliography
• Index

Thesis: Wilson, African Asylum Seekers in Israeli Political Discourse

Wilson, Ben R. African Asylum Seekers in Israeli Political Discourse and the Contestation over Zionist Ideology, MA Thesis, Temple University, 2015.

URL: http://gradworks.umi.com/15/97/1597134.html

 

Abstract

Since the time of their arrival beginning around 2005, there remain approximately 46,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. The following paper reviews the foundations and implications of Israel’s political discourse in reference to the presence of this community. I situate the treatment of the asylum seekers in their relationship to the Jewish State, Zionist ideology, international refugee law, and Israel’s human rights community. I argue: 1) that the discourse surrounding the asylum seekers reflects larger changes within the ethos of the Jewish State and models of Israeli personhood; 2) that notions of “security” and “threat” in relation to the asylum seekers take on new meanings shaped by Israel’s ongoing demographic concerns; and 3) that the political response to the African asylum seekers sheds light on irreconcilable goals of the Zionist nation-building project seeking to both maintain a Jewish majority and liberate world Jewry from life segregated and isolated in the Diaspora.

 

 

New Article: Stern, Sanctity and Separateness among Jewish Religious Zionists

Stern, Nehemia Akiva. “‘I Desire Sanctity’: Sanctity and Separateness among Jewish Religious Zionists in Israel/Palestine.” Anthropology of Consciousness 26.2 (2015): 156-69.

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/anoc.12039

 

Abstract
This article expands on anthropological understandings of affect and emotion to include certain theological and religious concepts that structure and give meaning to the daily lives of religious nationalists in areas of ethnic and political conflict. In doing so, it will ethnographically explore the relationship between theological notions of sanctity and the way those notions manifest themselves in the context of contemporary Jewish religious Zionism in both Israel and the Occupied West Bank. I will argue that analyzing mystical conceptions of sanctity as a distinct affect opens new areas of human experience, which anthropologists may use to better grapple with the dilemmas posed by nationalism and religious extremism in an increasingly politically fraught world.

 

 

New Book: Peters and Newman, eds. The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Peters, Joel and David Newman, eds. The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

 

URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415778626/

Abstract

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most prominent issues in world politics today. Few other issues have dominated the world’s headlines and have attracted such attention from policy makers, the academic community, political analysts, and the world’s media.

The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict offers a comprehensive and accessible overview of the most contentious and protracted political issue in the Middle East. Bringing together a range of top experts from Israel, Palestine, Europe and North America the Handbook tackles a range of topics including:

• The historical background to the conflict
• peace efforts
• domestic politics
• critical issues such as displacement, Jerusalem and settler movements
• the role of outside players such as the Arab states, the US and the EU

This Handbook provides the reader with an understanding of the complexity of the issues that need to be addressed in order to resolve the conflict, and a detailed examination of the varied interests of the actors involved. In-depth analysis of the conflict is supplemented by a chronology of the conflict, key documents and a range of maps.

The contributors are all leading authorities in their field and have published extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/peace process. Many have played a leading role in various Track II initiatives accompanying the peace process.

 

Table of Contents

Part 1: Competing Nationalisms

1. The Origins of Zionism Colin Schindler

2. The Palestinian National Movement: from self-rule to statehood Ahmad Samih Khalidi

Part 2:Narratives and Key Moments

3. Competing Israeli and Palestinan Narratives Paul Scham

4. The 1948 War: The Battle over History Kirsten E. Schulze

5. The First and Second Palestinian Intifadas Rami Nasrallah

6. The Camp David Summit: a Tale of Two Narratives Joel Peters

 

Part 3: Seeking Peace

7.The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: 1967-1993 Laura Zittrain Eisenberg

8. Peace Plans: 1993-2012 Galia Golan

Part 4: Issues

9.Palestinian Refugees Rex Brynen

10. Jerusalem Michael Dumper

11. Territory and Borders David Newman

12. Water Julie Trottier

13. Terrorism Magnus Norell

14. Religion Yehezkel Landau

15. Economics Arie Arnon

16. Unilaterlaism and Separation Gerald M. Steinberg

17. Gaza Joel Peters

Part 5: Domestic Actors

18.The Palestine Liberation Organization Nigel Parsons

19. The Palestinian Authority Nigel Parsons

20. Hamas Khaled Hroub

21. Palestinian Civil Society Michael Schulz

22. Gush Emunim and the Israeli Settler Movement David Newman

23. The Israeli Peace Movements Naomi Chazan

Part 6: International Engagement

24. Palestinian Citizens of Israel Amal Jamal

25. The United States: 1948- 1993 Steven L. Spiegel

26. The United States: 1993-2010 Steven L. Spiegel

27. Russia Robert O. Freedman

28. Europe Rosemary Hollis

29. The Arab World P. R. Kumaraswamy

30. The Jewish Diaspora and the Pro-Israel Lobby Dov Waxman

Chronology Steve Lutes

New Article: Rebhun, Israeli Émigrés in the United States and Europe Compared

Rebhun, Uzi. “Immigrant Acculturation and Transnationalism: Israelis in the United States and Europe Compared.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 53.3 (2014): 613-35.

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12135/abstract

Abstract

This article examines relations between social integration into host societies, religio-ethnic acculturation into group belonging, and ties to home country among Israeli émigrés in the United States and Europe. I use data from a 2009–2010 Internet survey into which I incorporated country-contextual characteristics. The results of multivariate analyses show that a social integration combining duration of residence abroad and local citizenship enhances religio-ethnic identification. Another measure of integration, social networks, deters group behaviors. All measures of general integration inhibit attachment to the home country, whereas religio-ethnic acculturation is largely insignificant for transnationalism. The religiosity of the new country does not influence immigrants’ religio-ethnic patterns or homeland attachment. Insofar as group size is a significant determinant of particularistic behaviors, it weakens them. The more policy-based opportunities newcomers receive, the more they dissociate from group behaviors and homeland ties. Irrespective of individual and contextual factors, living in the United States encourages group affiliation more than living in Europe does. The results are discussed in reference to four working hypotheses—marginalization, integration, assimilation, and separation—and from a U.S.-European comparative perspective.

 

New Article: Abulof, The Zionist ‘Iron Wall’ and the ‘Arab Question’

Abulof, Uriel. “National Ethics in Ethnic Conflicts: The Zionist ‘Iron Wall’ and the ‘Arab Question’.” Ethnic and Racial Studies (online first).

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2013.854921

 

Abstract

Ethnic conflicts often involve a delegitimation of the rival ethnic community and its national aspirations. This, I suggest, can impel the community in question to legitimate its politics through ethical principles, which in turn may affect its policies. An abiding non-recognition of the ethnonational movement from within and without may engender ethical transformation and policy reorientation. Empirically, I trace the emergence, evolvement and possible effects of the Zionist ‘Iron Wall’ ethics. The original concept comprised the horizon of Arab recognition and peace, the strategy of containment, and the moral pillars of reciprocal self-determination and the lesser injustice. Iron Wall ethics, while constantly challenged, predominated much of Zionism’s history, culminating in the 1990s peace process. However, in the wake of the Second Palestinian Intifada, a prevailing assertion that the Arabs would never accept Israel’s right to exist has undermined the Iron Wall’s original ideals, rewriting its strategic prescription.

 

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: Allon, Gender Segregation, Effacement, and Suppression: Trends in the Status of Women in Israel

Allon, Michal L. “Gender Segregation, Effacement, and Suppression: Trends in the Status of Women in Israel.” Digest of Middle East Studies 22.2 (2013): 276-291.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dome.12030/abstract

 

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in Israel. The article describes some of the causes of this phenomenon, its impact on Israeli society, and the difficulty in confronting it. Israeli women have made impressive gains on many fronts, but the exclusion of women from the public sphere as a result of the influence of the growing Ultra-Orthodox minority, which imposes its norms on the general public, raises serious concerns. The exclusion of women manifests itself in several forms: gender segregation in public spaces, the effacement of women’s images from the public sphere, and the suppression of women’s voice. The infiltration of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalism into Israeli society may cause the regression of advancements previously made in women’s rights in Israel. The article points to the limitations of the treatment of this phenomenon within a theory of multiculturalism, and suggests an alternative framework of discourse, which relies on concepts that are drawn from the literature on environmental ethics, public rights, and public ownership of space and resources.

Cite: Busbrisdge, Colonial Sovereignty and the Israeli ‘Separation’ Wall

Busbridge, Rachel. “Performing Colonial Sovereignty and the Israeli ‘Separation’ Wall.” Social Identities, online preview, 2013.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2013.835514

 

Abstract

As a structure that does not mark an actual border and is constructed primarily on occupied territory, the Israeli ‘separation’ wall is a unique space that functions as both border and borderlands. Here, I explore the wall as a performance of sovereignty which simultaneously constructs and de-constructs imaginings of the Israeli nation-state. On the one hand, I contend that the wall is a colonial production that draws a psychic line between a ‘civilised in here’ and ‘uncivilised out there’, fulfilling the double function of forging a perceived bounded, protective national enclosure at the same time as buttressing the necessity of controlling territory beyond the bounds of that enclosure. On the other hand, I argue that the complex relationship between settler and state materialised in the wall points to a blending of theology and politics in Israel, which threatens to empower a God-sanctioned politics that undermines state. In addition to promoting anxiety of the Palestinian ‘out there’, then, the wall is understood as also fostering an anxiety increasingly turned inward to the structures of the Israeli state itself.

Cite: Shoham, Separatist Consumption in Interwar Palestine

Shoham, Hizky. “‘Buy Local’ or ‘Buy Jewish’? Separatist Consumption in Interwar Palestine.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45.3 (2013): 469-89.

URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8960411

Abstract

The article explores the Zionist cultural economy in interwar Palestine,
by studying the emergence of the field of consumption as an arena for
political struggles among Jews and between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish
nationalist movement employed dominant contemporary assumptions about
economic nationalism in attempts to politicize the economy of British
Palestine, including through campaigns advocating ethnonational
separatism in consumption. Unlike other “buy local” movements around the
world, these were not directed solely against imports; rather, they
were often “buy Jewish” campaigns waged against the consumption of
commodities produced by the rival ethnonational sector in Palestine.
Using a variety of archival and media sources, the article tracks the
development of Jewish separatist consumption campaigns in interwar
Palestine, uncovering a gradual amplification of their ethnonational
emphasis that paralleled the escalation of the Arab–Jewish conflict. The
cultural mechanisms used to attribute ethnic qualities to objects and
define them as either “Jewish” or “foreign” are analyzed with particular
attention to the conceptual contradictions in the definitions of a
Jewish product, which were shaped by economic conflicts and the diverse
political conceptions of Jewish identity. The study of separatist
consumption sheds new light on the “dual society” thesis, revealing the
deep grip of separatist approaches across multiple layers of the Jewish
middle class in the Yishuv.

Cite: Pullan, Conflict’s Tools. Borders, Boundaries and Mobility in Jerusalem’s Spatial Structures

Pullan, Wendy. “Conflict’s Tools. Borders, Boundaries and Mobility in Jerusalem’s Spatial Structures.” Mobilities 2013.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17450101.2012.750040

 

Abstract

Transformed communications and mobility have led to the reinterpretation of urban space, so that instead of regarding it as primarily bounded and geometrically definable, it may be understood as based on a series of relations and, thus, continuously open to its own temporality. So where does this leave contested cities where differences in civic populations are so often represented through the rigid division and bounding of territory? This article examines borders, boundaries and mobility regimes in Jerusalem in terms of the spatial qualities of the city that have formed from the deceptively simple formula of more borders/less mobility. Clearly, an unbalanced and inequitable city has developed, and the research reveals that the politically motivated planning system has stamped out the fluid ‘relational’ space needed to enhance diverse interactions. Not only Palestinians but also Israelis are subject to this extreme binary vision of the city.

Cite: Balázs, The Conflict of Conscience and Law in a Jewish State

Balázs, Gábor. “The Conflict of Conscience and Law in a Jewish State.” Shofar 31.2 (2013):118-136.

–

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/v031/31.2.feldheim.html

–

Abstract

Founded in 1998, the Mehadrin bus lines adhere to strict separation of men and women: women must board the bus at the back and sit only at the back, and men at the front. In addition, women must adhere to strict modesty rules in their attire, that is, for example, wear long skirts, no pants, and sleeves. The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) became involved after being approached by five women reporting physical or verbal abuse when not conforming to the segregation or modesty rules on the buses. The fear of those active in defense of the rights of women was that segregation will extend further into public spaces. Indeed, the issue of gender segregation became a major issue about preserving the presence of women in public spaces in Israel. On the other hand, the segregation issue raises the question of whether secular Israelis have the right to force Western standards on the ultra-Orthodox. This article examines the background, and the legal, religious, and political arguments raised in reconciling the rights of women and rights of religious observance yet supporting the Israeli nation’s goal of advancing democracy.