New Article: Shoham, Victim Rhetoric among Sex Offenders: A Case Study of the Former Israeli President

Shoham, Efrat. “Victim Rhetoric among Sex Offenders: A Case Study of the Former Israeli President.” Journal of Politics and Law 8.1 (2015): 26-34.

 

URL: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jpl/article/view/45340/

 

Abstract

In 2009, the Israeli eight former president Katzav was accused of two counts of rape against an employee working under his authority during his time as Minister of Tourism. The story of the conviction of the eighth Israeli president of sex offences turned into a high-priority media story, which stayed at the top of the Israeli media agenda for a relatively long period. This qualitative paper, is aiming to identify and analyze the various rhetorical techniques utilized by Katsav, to replace the new criminal identity attributed to him with a victimized self-identity. The victimized rhetoric which is based on justifications and accounts such as: “Reverse character assassination”, “Attack the attackers” or “Contradiction technique”, had served the former president as a means to reduce his responsibility, to deny it and to build an alternative narrative that presents the alleged perpetrator as a persecuted victim. Never the less, the conviction and jailing of a president for sex crimes has greatly increased the awareness of sex offences in the workplace committed by people of power and authority.

New Article: Harlap, Reading the Israeli Television Miniseries Nevelot

Harlap, Itay. “Bad Television/ Good (post)Television. Reading the Israeli Television Miniseries Nevelot (Eagles).” Critical Studies in Television (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1940161215626565
 
Abstract

Nevelot (Eagles) is an Israeli miniseries about two elderly men who, in their youth, fought for a Jewish Zionist underground movement in Palestine, and who in the present-day, embark upon an all-out, killing spree across the city of Tel Aviv, targeting exclusively the young. Whilst it does not directly address television (TV) per se, key scenes and paratexts convey that Nevelot is by no means ‘regular TV’, and that watching it constitutes a viewing experience which differs altogether from ‘regular TV viewing’; a practice often associated with passivity, femininity and victimhood. Employing terms from Zionist, gender and cultural discursive fields, Nevelot offers a fascinating commentary on contemporary Israeli society and the TV content it produces.

 

 

 

New Book: Jonathan-Zamir et al, Policing in Israel

Jonathan-Zamir, Tal, David Weisburd, and Badi Hasisi, eds. Policing in Israel: Studying Crime Control, Community, and Counterterrorism. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016.

 

 

Policing in Israel presents important advances in Israeli police science during the past decade. It demonstrates how empirical research in countries outside the traditional research domains of the United States, Europe, and Australia can provide comparative legitimacy to key concepts and findings in policing. It also addresses innovative questions in the study of police, showing that there is much to learn about the police enterprise by looking to Israel.

The studies included in this book contribute to the policing literature in three significant ways. They replicate findings from English-speaking countries on key issues such as hot-spots policing, thereby supporting the validity of the findings and enabling a wider scope of generalization. Also, they utilize unique Israeli conditions to address questions that are difficult to test in other countries, such as in counterterrorism. Finally, they ask innovative questions in the study of policing that are yet to be addressed elsewhere.

Aside from providing better knowledge about policing in Israel, the broader advances in police science that the book illustrates play an important role. It contributes to major areas of contemporary interest in policing literature, including crime control, police–community relationships, and policing terrorism. Policing in Israel gives you not only a broad picture of Israeli policing and police research in the past decade, but also carries critical implications for policing scholars and practitioners around the world.
.

 

Table of Contents

 
Policing in Israel: Studying Crime Control, Community, and Counterterrorism: Editors’ Introduction
Tal Jonathan-Zamir, David Weisburd, and Badi Hasisi

CRIME CONTROL

Law of Concentrations of Crime at Place: Case of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
David Weisburd and Shai Amram

Vehicle Impoundment Regulations as a Means of Reducing Traffic Violations and Road Accidents in Israel
Tova Rosenbloom and Ehud Eldror

Lean Management for Traffic Police Enforcement Planning
Nicole Adler, Jonathan Kornbluth, Mali Sher, and Shalom Hakkert

Organizational Structure, Police Activity, and Crime
Itai Ater, Yehonatan Givati, and Oren Rigbi

THE POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY

Police, Politics, and Culture in a Deeply Divided Society
Badi Hasisi

Crime Victims and Attitudes toward Police: Israeli Case
Gali Aviv

Procedural Justice, Minorities, and Religiosity
Roni Factor, Juan Castilo, and Arye Rattner

Police Understanding of Foundations of Their Legitimacy in the Eyes of the Public: Case of Commanding Officers in Israel National Police
Tal Jonathan-Zamir and Amikam Harpaz

POLICING TERRORISM

Terrorist Threats and Police Performance: A Study of Israeli Communities
David Weisburd, Badi Hasisi, Tal Jonathan-Zamir, and Gali Aviv

Police Legitimacy under the Spotlight: Media Coverage of Police Performance in the Face of High Terrorism Threat
Revital Sela-Shayovitz

Policing Terrorism and Police–Community Relations: Views of Arab Minority in Israel
Badi Hasisi and David Weisburd

How Has Israel National Police Perceived Its Role in Counterterrorism and Potential Outcomes? A Qualitative Analysis of Annual Police Reports
Tal Jonathan-Zamir and Gali Aviv

Lessons from Empirical Research on Policing in Israel: Policing Terrorism and Police–Community Relationships
Simon Perry and Tal Jonathan-Zamir

 

 

 

New Article: Yi and Phillips, The BDS Campaign against Israel: Lessons from South Africa

Yi, Joseph E. and Joe Phillips. “The BDS Campaign against Israel: Lessons from South Africa.” PS: Political Science & Politics 48.2 (2015): 306-310.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1049096514002091

 

Abstract

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is animated by a pragmatic strain that views external sanctions as effective pressure against a small democratic state and by a moralistic Manichean strain that portrays Israelis as oppressors. Both strains hearken back to the earlier campaign against apartheid in South Africa. We argue that doing so misreads the lessons of South Africa. Sanctions may have contributed to ending apartheid, but they operated in conjunction with improved security and interpersonal trust among negotiators. Key contenders moved from a discourse of oppression to one that humanized one another as partners with legitimate concerns. These conditions are missing from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Both sides consider their security to be precarious and they are locked in competing narratives of victimization, which further erode mutual trust and security. Measures to improve the parties’ security and trust would contribute to mutual concessions and greater justification for sanctions if the Israeli government is intransigent.

New Book: Yosef and Hagin, eds. Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema

Yosef, Raz and Boaz Hagin. Deeper than Oblivion. Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

 

URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/deeper-than-oblivion-9781441199263/

 

In this collection, leading scholars in both film studies and Israeli studies show that beyond representing familiar historical accounts or striving to offer a more complete and accurate depiction of the past, Israeli cinema has innovatively used trauma and memory to offer insights about Israeli society and to engage with cinematic experimentation and invention. Tracing a long line of films from the 1940s up to the 2000s, the contributors use close readings of these films not only to reconstruct the past, but also to actively engage with it. Addressing both high-profile and lesser known fiction and non-fiction Israeli films, Deeper than Oblivion underlines the unique aesthetic choices many of these films make in their attempt to confront the difficulties, perhaps even impossibility, of representing trauma. By looking at recent and classic examples of Israeli films that turn to memory and trauma, this book addresses the pressing issues and disputes in the field today.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Sweet on the Inside: Trauma, Memory, and Israeli Cinema Boaz Hagin and Raz Yosef

Chapter 2: Postscript to Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation Ella Shohat

Chapter 3: Gender, the Military, Memory, and the Photograph: Tamar Yarom’s To See If I’m Smiling and American Films about Abu Ghraib Diane Waldman

Chapter 4: The Event and the Picture: David Perlov’s My Stills and Memories of the Eichmann Trial Anat Zanger

Chapter 5: The Agonies of an Eternal Victim: Zionist Guilt in Avi Mograbi’s Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi Shmulik Duvdevani

Chapter 6: Traces of War: Memory, Trauma, and the Archive in Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort Raz Yosef

Chapter 7: Memory of a Death Foretold: Fathers and Sons in Assi Dayan’s “Trilogy” Yael Munk

Chapter 8: Queering Terror: Trauma, Race, and Nationalism in Palestinian and Israeli Gay Cinema during the Second Intifada Raya Morag

Chapter 9: “Our Traumas”: Terrorism, Tradition, and Mind Games in Frozen Days Boaz Hagin

Chapter 10: History of Violence: From the Trauma of Expulsion to the Holocaust in Israeli Cinema Nurith Gertz and Gal Hermoni

Chapter 11: Last Train to the Holocaust Judd Ne’eman and Nerit Grossman

Chapter 12: Passages, Wars, and Encounters with Death: The Desert as a Site of Memory in Israeli Film Yael Zerubavel

Chapter 13: “Walking through walls”: Documentary Film and Other Technologies of Navigation, Aspiration, and Memory Janet Walker

Notes on Contributors

Index

 

New Publication: Matar and Harb, Narrating Conflict in the Middle East

Dina Matar (author), Zahera Harb (author), eds. Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine. London: Tauris, 2013.

The term conflict has often been used broadly and uncritically to talk
about diverse situations ranging from street protests to war, though the
many factors that give rise to any conflict and its continuation over a
period of time vary greatly. The starting point of this innovative book
is that it is unsatisfactory either to consider conflict within a
singular concept or alternatively to consider each conflict as entirely
distinct and unique; Narrating Conflict in the Middle East explores
another path to addressing long-term conflict. The contributors set out
to examine the ways in which such conflicts in Palestine and Lebanon
have been and are narrated, imagined and remembered in diverse spaces,
including that of the media. They examine discourses and representations
of the conflicts as well as practices of memory and performance in
narratives of suffering and conflict, all of which suggest an embodied
investment in narrating or communicating conflict. In so doing, they
engage with local, global, and regional realities in Lebanon and in
Palestine and they respond dynamically to these realities.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Approaches to Narrating Conflict in Palestine and Lebanon: Practices, Discourses and Memories Dina Matar and Zahera Harb

      Practices

Just a Few Small Changes: The Limits of Televisual Palestinian Representation of Conflicts within the Transnational ‘Censorscape’ Matt Sienkiewicz

Mediating Internal Conflict in Lebanon and its Ethical Boundaries Zahera Harb

Negotiating Representation, Re-making War: Transnationalism, Counter-hegemony and Contemporary Art from Post-Taif Beirut Hanan Toukan

Narratives in Conflict: Emile Habibi’s al-Waqa’i al-Ghariba and Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention Refqa Abu-Remaileh

      Discourses

Islam in the Narrative of Fatah and Hamas Atef Alshaer

Al Manar: Cultural Discourse and Representation of Resistance Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso

The Battle over Victimhood: Roles and Implications of Narratives of Suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Kirkland Newman Smulders

The ‘I Love…’ Phenomenon in Lebanon: The Transmutations of Discourse, its Impact on Civil Society, the Media and Democratization Carole Helou

      Memories and Narration

Making Sense of War News among Adolescents in Lebanon: The Politics of Solidarity and Partisanship Helena Nassif

Narrating the Nakba: Palestinian Filmmakers Revisit 1948 Nadia Yaqub

Bearing Witness to Al Nakba in a Time of Denial Teodora Todorova

 

USE discount code for special offer on paperback: BOUNDARIES

Cite: Morag, Perpetrator Trauma and Current Israeli Documentary Cinema

Morag, Raya. "Perpetrator Trauma and Current Israeli Documentary Cinema." Camera Obscura 27.2 (2012): 93-133.

–

URL: http://cameraobscura.dukejournals.org/content/27/2_80/93.abstract

–

–

Abstract

This essay proposes a new paradigm for cinema trauma studies: the trauma of the perpetrator. Recognizing a current shift in interest from trauma suffered by victims to that suffered by perpetrators, it seeks to break the repression of the abhorrent figure of the perpetrator in cinema and psychoanalysis literature. This new paradigm is driven by the emergence of a new wave of Israeli documentaries such as Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, Tamar Yarom’s To See If I’m Smiling, and Avi Mograbi’s Z32, one that for the first time includes female IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) veterans. Israeli cinema, attached on one side to the legacy of the Holocaust and on the other to the Israeli occupation, proves a highly relevant case for probing the limits of both types of traumas. Taking as a point of departure the distinction between testimony given by the victim and confession made by the perpetrator, the paper addresses the questions of whether the trauma of the perpetrator indeed exists; how we might understand the somatic and epistemological conditions of guilt; how we should define the perpetrator’s trauma in contrast to the victim’s; and whether this cinematic trend indeed paves the way for Israelis to assume responsibility for their deeds. Analyzing the characteristics of perpetrator trauma defined as crises (of evidence, disclosure, gender, audience, narrativization) finally leads to a preliminary reflection on the possible relevance of this model for analyzing related new-war films in twenty-first-century world cinema.

Cite: Caplan, Victimhood in Israeli and Palestinian National Narratives

Caplan, Neil. “Victimhood in Israeli and Palestinian National Narratives.” Bustan: The Middle East Book Review 3.1 (2012): 1-19.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/mebr/2012/00000003/00000001/art00001

 

Abstract

This essay discusses the theme of victimhood in the Israeli and Palestinian national narratives. These sentiments have contributed to the entrenchment of mutually exclusive claims which have made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so intractable. Israeli history and identity have been overwhelmed by a morose sense of victimization, while Palestinian national identity presents a parallel victimhood component stemming from the Nakba, the catastrophe of Israel’s establishment and the Palestinian defeat in 1948. This article highlights recent publications that directly address these questions, focusing on the highly partisan, polemical nature of the debate. Overcoming these narratives of victimhood and decreasing the level of self-righteousness which both sides embrace is a prerequisite for making some of the tough compromises involved in reaching a workable solution to this protracted conflict.

Cite: Ofer, Quietism and Activism in Israeli Consciousness

Dalia Ofer. "Victims, Fighters, Survivors: Quietism and Activism in Israeli Historical Consciousness." Common Knowledge 16.3 (2010): 493-517.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/common_knowledge/summary/v016/16.3.ofer.html

Cite: Nachson and Slavutskay-Tsukerman, The Dolphinarium Explosion

Nachson, Israel and Irena Slavutskay-Tsukerman. "Effect of Personal Involvement in Traumatic Events on Memory: The Case of the Dolphinarium Explosion." Memory 18,3 (2010): 241 – 251.

–

URL: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a918815868

–

Keywords: Terrorism, Tel Aviv, Memory, Trauma, Victim, Violence, דולפינריום

New Publication: Oron, Israeli Identities

Oron, Yair. Israeli Identities. Jews and Arabs Facing the Mirror and Each Other. Fetish. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2010 [in Hebrew].

 

 

זהויות ישראליות
יהודים וערבים מול המראה והאחר

מאת: יאיר אורון

 

הספר זהויות ישראליות הוא מחקר אמפירי ראשון מסוגו והיקפו אשר עוסק בשאלת הזהויות הישראליות – אחת הבעיות המרכזיות והאקטואליות של החברה הישראלית בימינו. המחקר מקיף ארבעה דגמים של תת-זהויות יהודיות-ישראליות: הלא-דתית (החילונית); המסורתית; הדתית-לאומית והדתית-חרדית. לצדן ולעומתן מוצגת במחקר הזהות הערבית (הפלסטינית) הישראלית, אשר גם היא אינה מקשה אחת. 
הספר מנתח שני מחקרי זהות שנערכו בשנים 1990 ו-2008, בקרב סטודנטים יהודים-ישראלים וערבים (פלסטינים)-ישראלים. נידונים בו המרכיבים הבאים: "העם ואני", "השואה ואני", "הנכבה ואני", "האני והאחר" (עמדות הדדיות של יהודים כלפי ערבים ולהפך), "המדינה ואני", "הדת ואני". בעוד שהשואה מהווה נדבך מרכזי בזהות היהודית-ישראלית, הנכבה מהווה גורם מרכזי בזהות הערבית (הפלסטינית) הישראלית. לכל הישראלים, הן היהודים והן הערבים, משותפת הזהות הקורבנית, אך, כמובן, זהויות הקורבן הן שונות, לעתים גם קוטביות. 
באמצעות מחקר זה מתריע המחבר על כך שכישלון בחינוך לדמוקרטיה, לפלורליזם ולדו-קיום עלול להחריף ולהסלים את מערכת היחסים השברירית בלאו הכי בין הקבוצות השונות בחברה הישראלית. עלינו לעסוק באינטנסיביות בחינוך משמעותי נגד גזענות, להודות שהיא מצויה בקרבנו ולהכיר בכך שאנו-עצמנו איננו רק מושא לגזענות, אלא גם נשאיה של גזענות. 

פרופ’ יאיר אורון הוא חוקר ומרצה באוניברסיטה הפתוחה ובמכללת סמינר הקיבוצים. עוסק בחקר הג’נוסייד ובהוראתו, ביחסה של מדינת ישראל לג’נוסייד של עמים אחרים, וביהדות בת-זמננו. פרסם מאמרים וספרים רבים בנושאים אלה בארץ ובעולם. עומד בראש פרויקט להוראת תופעת הג’נוסייד, במסגרתו ראתה אור סדרת ספרי הקורס "ג’נוסייד" באוניברסיטה הפתוחה.