Bulletin: Military and Soldiers

Articles

• Ben-Shalom, Uzi, and Yizhaq Benbenisty. “Coping Styles and Combat Motivation During Operations. An IDF Case Study.” Armed Forces and Society 42.4 (2016): 655-74.
• Lebel, Udi. “The ‘Immunized Integration’ of Religious-Zionists within Israeli Society: The Pre-Military Academy as an Institutional Model.” Social Identities 22.6 (2016): 642-60.
• Lomsky-Feder, Edna, and Orna Sasson-Levy. “The Effects of Military Service on Women’s Lives from the Narrative Perspective.” In Researching the Military (Cass Military Studies; ed. Helena Carrieras, Celso Castro, and Sabina Frederic; Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016): 94ff.
• Rosman, Elisheva. “Toward a Classification of Managing Religious Diversity in the Ranks. The Case of the Turkish and Israeli Armed Forces.” Armed Forces and Society 42.4 (2016): 675-95.
• Shelef, Leah, Evyatar Ayzen, Nirit Yavnai, Eyal Fruchter, and Orly Sarid. “The Contribution of the Socio-Demographic Characteristics on Suicidal Ideation among Israeli Soldiers.” Disaster and Military Medicine 2.5 (2016).
• Simonetti, Ilaria. “Women’s Violence and Gender Relations in the Israeli Defence Forces.” In Gender and Conflict: Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices (ed. Georg Frerks, Annelou Ypeij, and Reinhilde Sotiria König; London and New York: Routledge, 2016): 67-90.

Panel: Confession and Testimony As Repertoires of Contention in Conflict Zones (Vienna, July 12, 2016)

Confession and Testimony As Repertoires of Contention in Conflict Zones

Tuesday, 12 July 2016: 10:45-12:15

Room: Hörsaal 21

RC48 Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change (host committee)

Language: English

Confession and testimony are central repertoires of contention in the disclosure of “ugly pasts.” Solidarity movements mobilize testimony to diffuse human rights violations condoned and supported by their own societies. Less attention has been paid to the deployment of testimony and confession by anti-denial movements, movements that demand that the members of their own societies acknowledge the “problematic present” in situations of ongoing ethno-national conflict, and take responsibility for it and action against it.
This session invites research that engage in the analysis of confession and testimony in contemporary conflicts by members of the perpetrator nation amongst them:

• Are these repertoires gendered and how?
• What are the groups that engage in testimony and confession?
• How states and civil societies in perpetrator nations react to anti-denial movements?
• Anti-denial movements and national identity.

Session Organizer:

Sara HELMAN, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Oral Presentations:

Challenging the Israeli Occupation through Testimony and Confession: The Case of Anti-Denial Movements Machsom Watch and Breaking the Silence
Sara HELMAN, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Dis/Acknowledging Military Violence: Women Soldiers Testify Against the Occupation
Edna LOMSKY-FEDER, Department of Sociology and Anthropology and School of Education, Israel; Orna SASSON-LEVY, Department of Sociology and Anthroplogy Bar Ilan University, Israel

Thesis: Ichikawa, Minorities in Contemporary Hebrew and Japanese Literature

Ichikawa, Kimiko. Minorities, Minority Identity and Violence: The Comparison in Contemporary Hebrew and Japanese Minor Literature, Masters Thesis. Brandeis University, 2016.

 

URL: http://bir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/32275

 

Abstract

This thesis examines how minority identities are depicted in contemporary autobiographical literature from the 1990’s to present. In this thesis, I focus my analysis on minority literatures from Israel and Japan. In spite of the extreme rarity of the literary comparison, I examine minorities of Israeli Arab and the second generation Japanese Koreans. I explore how these minorities with different histories are represented, with shared experience of oppression and violence, and analyze the phenomena or ramifications in minority identity. By analyzing famous novelists of minority literature— Israeli Arab author, Sayed Kashua and two Japanese Korean authors, Yi Yang-ji and Kazuki Kaneshiro—I concentrate on pointing out the influences and outcomes of psychological and political violence (Chapter I and II) to their minority identities. This comparison will enable a wider perspectives regarding minorities in various societies, and an analysis of issues of relating to minority as well as race identity in modern life. This unique literary comparison attempts to examine cultural and political similarities as well as differences in order to explore the phenomena of two countries with different cultures but that share certain similarities, particularly in the articulation of their minority literature. Although Israel and Japan differ very much in term of culture and history, I still find significant similarities in the minority literature. The minorities I examined in Hebrew and Japanese minor literature interact with violence in various ways each society. I focused my examination especially on psychological and political violence in addition to physical violence. My questions in researching this minority literature revolve around how these minorities relate to these kinds of violence. This thesis concentrates on presenting the ways that these the minority authors address their own political identities, and the ways that social violence and oppression influence their minority identities.

 

 

 

New Article: Wiseman, Dahlia Ravikovitch’s ‘Egla ‘Arufa

Wiseman, Laura. “Voice of Responsibility: Dahlia Ravikovitch’s ‘Egla ‘Arufa (Felled Heifer).” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15.2 (2016): 301-17.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2015.1133178

 

Abstract

In a cycle of poems, Sugeyot beyahadut bat zemanenu, “Issues in Contemporary Judaism,” Dahlia Ravikovitch protests against human suffering and fatalities that occur during war and conflicts of attrition involving Israel’s indigenous peoples and contiguous populations. Among the poetry, ‘Egla ‘arufa, with its cryptic title and densely encoded contents, requires textual “demystification” for its central message to be heard. First, this article identifies the most crucial pair of Hebrew sources underlying this poem and discusses their intertextual influence and the transition between them for an enriched reading. Second, through textual analysis this study applies a postmodern literary poetic – a “hermeneutic lag” – to a unique dynamic in the dimensions of the writing. In general, I relate to selected poems by Dahlia Ravikovitch as self-portraits, and regard “Felled Heifer” as an abstract figuration of the voice of the speaker: the voice of responsibility.

 

 

 

ToC: Jewish Film & New Media 4.1 (2016; special issue on genres)

Jewish Film & New Media

Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2016

Table of Contents

SPECIAL ISSUE: GENRES IN JEWISH AND ISRAELI CINEMA

Guest Editors: Yaron Peleg and Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan

 

Introduction to the Special Issue

Genres in Jewish and Israeli Cinema

pp. 1-2

Yaron Peleg, Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan

Articles

A Body in Every Cellar: The “New Violence” Movement in Israeli Cinema

pp. 4-24

Neta Alexander

Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat: Holocaust Memory, Film Noir, and the Pain of Others

pp. 25-42

Yael Munk

The “New Psyche”: A Model of Different Femininity in Film: Viviane Amsalem, Heroine of the Trilogy by Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz

pp. 43-67

Macabit Abramson

Frum with Benefits: Israeli Television, Globalization, and Srugim’s American Appeal

pp. 68-89

Shayna Weiss

Adapting Masculinities: Israeli and American Genres Redefining Mizrahi Masculinity in the TV Series Haborer

pp. 90-108

Ronen Gil

DIY: How to (Not So) Safely Dismantle the Bomb of On-Screen Jewish-Israeli Identity: The Synergies with Art and Television in the Representation of Jewish-Israeli Identity and What Can Be Learned from Them

pp. 109-138

Lee Weinberg

New Article: Enosh et al, Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence Among FSU Immigrants

Enosh, Guy, Elazar Leshem, and Eli Buchbinder. “Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence and Corporal Punishment Among Former Soviet Union Immigrants in Israel.” Violence Against Women (early view; online first).

 

URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077801215623382

 

Abstract

The study regards attitudes of Russian immigrants in Israel toward wife abuse and corporal punishment. The sample consisted of 1,028 participants, based on a multistage cluster sampling. The study used a questionnaire related to immigration, acculturation, and attitudinal issues. The findings indicate a dual-causal model, in which corporal punishment attitudes contribute to wife abuse attitudes and vice versa. However, the effect of attitudes supporting corporal punishment was stronger than the effect of wife abuse attitudes, indicating that the attitudinal system as a precursor of violent behavior is already merging the two types of violence.

 

 

 

New Article: Wright, The Ethico-Politics of Love and Mourning in Jewish Israeli Solidarity Activism

Wright, Fiona. “Palestine, My Love: The Ethico-Politics of Love and Mourning in Jewish Israeli Solidarity Activism.” American Ethnologist 43.1 (2016): 130-43.
 
URL: dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12268
 
Abstract

Jewish Israeli left-wing activists engage in a subversive affective politics when they express love for, and mourn the loss of, Palestinian life. But the affects of love and mourning also bind these solidarity activists to Israeli state violence and sovereignty in various ways, entangling them in the very forms of power they aim to challenge. Loving and mourning the Palestinian Other involves an ambivalent ethics in which the activist subject objectifies the Other, and this objectification is a kind of violence that emerges in the affective becomings of solidarity activism. Activist loving and mourning thus call into question the nature of solidarity and alert us to the difficulty of ethics as troubled relations enmeshed in the violence of politics.

 

 

 

New Article: Natanel, Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine

Natanel, Katherine. “Border Collapse and Boundary Maintenance: Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine.” Gender, Place & Culture (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2015.1136807
 
Abstract

Drawing upon subaltern geopolitics and feminist geography, this article explores how militarisation shapes micro-geographies of violence and occupation in Israel–Palestine. While accounts of spectacular and large-scale political violence dominate popular imaginaries and academic analyses in/of the region, a shift to the micro-scale foregrounds the relationship between power, politics and space at the level of everyday life. In the context of Israel–Palestine, micro-geographies have revealed dynamic strategies for ‘getting by’ or ‘dealing with’ the occupation, as practiced by Palestinian populations in the face of spatialised violence. However, this article considers how Jewish Israelis actively shape the spatial micro-politics of power within and along the borders of the Israeli state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem during 2010–2011, an analysis of everyday narratives illustrates how relations of violence, occupation and domination rely upon gendered dynamics of border collapse and boundary maintenance. Here, the borders between home front and battlefield break down at the same time as communal boundaries are reproduced, generating conditions of ‘total militarism’ wherein military interests and agendas are both actively and passively diffused. Through gendering the militarised micro-geographies of violence among Jewish Israelis, this article reveals how individuals construct, navigate and regulate the everyday spaces of occupation, detailing more precisely how macro political power endures.

 

 

 

New Book: Hever, Suddenly the Sight of War

Hever, Hannan. Suddenly, the Sight of War. Violence and Nationalism in Hebrew Poetry in the 1940s. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.

 

Suddenly, the Sight of War is a genealogy of Hebrew poetry written in pre-state Israel between the beginning of World War II and the War of Independence in 1948. In it, renowned literary scholar Hannan Hever sheds light on how the views and poetic practices of poets changed as they became aware of the extreme violence in Europe toward the Jews.

In dealing with the difficult topics of the Shoah, Natan Alterman’s 1944 publication of The Poems of the Ten Plagues proved pivotal. His work inspired the next generation of poets like Haim Guri, as well as detractors like Amir Gilboa. Suddenly, the Sight of War also explores the relations between the poetry of the struggle for national independence and the genre of war-reportage, uniquely prevalent at the time. Hever concludes his genealogy with a focus on the feminine reaction to the War of Independence showing how women writers such as Lea Goldberg and Yocheved Bat-Miryam subverted war poetry at the end of the 1940s. Through the work of these remarkable poets, we learn how a culture transcended seemingly unspeakable violence.

 

Table of Contents

Part I: Hebrew Symbolist Poetry During World War II
1. “The Real Has Become a Symbol”
2. The Dispute over War Poetry
3. Criticism of Nationalism Violence
4. Reading Nationalist Poetry Critically
5. Nationalism Anthologized
6. The Living-Dead in Joy of the Poor
7. Revence on a Nationalist Scale
8. Leah Goldberg Writes War Poetry
9. The Duality of the Symbolist Woman Poet
10. The Living-Dead and the Female Body
11. Amir Gilboa: Boy Poet

Part II: Historical Analogy and National Allegory During the Holocaust
12. A Surprising Moral Judgment
13. The Uncommon Stance of a Major Poet
14. Critical Reception
15. A Postnationalist Reading
16. A Symbol, Not an Allegory
17. Allegory in The Poems of the Plagues of Egypt versus Symbolism in Joy of the Poor
18. Allegory as a Nonhegemonic Stance
19. Alterman and the Memory of the Holocaust
20. The Father-Son Strategy
21. Blind Vengeance
22. Breaking the Cycle of Crime and Punishment
23. History of the Defeated

Part III: Symbols of Death in the National War for Independence
26. Return of the Hegemonic Symbol
27. The Living-Dead in the Independence War
28. Amir Gilboa and the Subversion of the Symbol
29. Gilboa versus the Metaphor of the Living-Dead
30. Poets as Reporters
31. Sorrow Petrified into Symbols
32. Hegemonic Strategies
33. From Reportage to Lyric
34. Women Write of Fallen Soldiers as Flesh and Blood
35. In the Service of National Subjectivity
36. Women and the Metaphor of the Living-Dead
37. Criticism of the Living-Dead Metaphor
38. The Authority and Power of Women
39. Popular versus Canonical Mourning
40. The Secrets and Power of Women

Conclusion
Index

 

HANNAN HEVER is the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at Yale University. He is the author of several books, including Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon.

 

 

 

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 Article: Meiri, Sexual Violence as Represented in Israeli Holocaust-Related Cinema

Meiri, Sandra. “Visual Responses: Women’s Experience of Sexual Violence as Represented in Israeli Holocaust-Related Cinema.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22.4 (2015): 443-56.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350506815606439

 

Abstract

This article explores the function of Israeli narrative films’ persistent, albeit marginal, portrayal of women as victims of sexual violence during the Holocaust. While the marginalization of such characters may be attributed to the difficulty of representing sexually-related trauma/post-trauma, their portrayal attests both to the ubiquity of sexually-related crimes in the Holocaust and to its aftermath: namely, the persistence of women’s trauma. The first of the two waves of ‘retro films’ examined here evinces the importance of the visual, cinematic representation of women’s trauma. Its main function is to legitimize its disclosure through cinematic aesthetic/artistic mediation, for sexual violence was a crime committed against helpless victims. The second wave includes films made from the point of view of ‘the second generation’, and explores the topic further by dealing with the transmission of post-traumatic symptoms of women’s trauma to the second generation.

 

 

Postdoc: Research Associate in Religion and Violence in the MidEast (Princeton, 2016-7)

The Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia invites applications for a postdoctoral or more senior researcher related to the theme of Religion and Violence in the Middle East. Applicants can be from the disciplines of history, law, politics, literature, as well as Islamic studies. The appointment will be for the year, September 1, 2016 through August 31, 2017, with the possibility of renewal, subject to satisfactory performance and continued funding. Assuming approval by the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Dean of the Faculty, the researcher will be expected to teach a one-semester undergraduate course, which may be open to graduate students. Candidates must hold the Ph.D. degree and are expected to pursue independent research at Princeton and to participate in Institute-related activities on campus. Travel assistance of up to $1000 for round-trip, economy-class airfare will be available to the appointee and her or his immediate family. The salary, to be approved by the Department and the Dean of the Faculty, will be based on the successful candidate’s qualifications. This position is subject to the University’s background check policy.Interested applicants must apply online at https://jobs.princeton.edu and submit a current curriculum vitae, a research statement (maximum length 2 pages), a cover letter, and contact information for three references. The deadline for application is March 31, 2016, 11:59 p.m. EST.

Essential Qualifications: Candidates must hold the Ph.D. degree and are expected to pursue independent research at Princeton and to participate in Institute-related activities on campus.

Click here to apply.

Report: Cohen & Mimran, A Reexamination of Israel’s Home Demolition Policy (Hebrew)

Cohen, Amichai, and Tal Mimran. Cost without Benefit: A Reexamination of Israel’s Home Demolition Policy, Policy Studies 112. Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2015 (in Hebrew).

URL: http://www.idi.org.il/cost_with_no_benefit/

 

Abstract

Under a policy that was in force from 1967 until 2005, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) demolished the homes of the perpetrators of terrorist acts and various security offenses, as well as their accomplices. In 2005, a commission of experts, headed by Maj. Gen. Ehud Shani, expressed its doubts as to the policy’s legality and efficacy and recommended that it be abandoned. Notwithstanding, the home demolition policy was revived three years later, in 2008.

The demolition of homes is an extreme measure. The arguments against it include that it is a disproportional infringement of private property rights, constitutes collective punishment, and that there are no evident gains that can justify its use. Nevertheless, over the years, decision-makers in the IDF insisted that the deterrent effect outweighs other considerations and justifies the infringement of rights. The Supreme Court of Israel, almost without exception, has given its full backing to that position. The underlying assumption about the deterrent effect of home demolition is based on the intensity of the sanction against the terrorist and his family as well as the rapidity with which it is implemented.

This study is a three-part examination of how the IDF reached the conclusion that home demolition is an effective policy and employed it for so many years without ever conducting an empirical study. We also consider what caused the decision-makers to revive the policy only three years after it was decided to abandon it.

 

 

 

New Article: Daskal, Cultural Challengers in the Regulatory Arena

Daskal, Efrat. “‘My Voice Needs to be Heard’: Cultural Challengers in the Regulatory Arena.” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 786-804.

 

URL: http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4529

 

Abstract

This article proposes the concept of cultural challengers, viewers whose dissatisfaction with popular culture prompts them to initiate a dialogue with media organizations. The article explores the textual dimensions that may cause such discontent and identifies three tracks for conducting the dialogue: civic, economic, and regulatory. The regulatory track is explored through three methodologies: a quantitative content analysis of 817 complaints filed to the Israeli regulatory authority (SATR) between 2005 and 2010, and of the SATR’s responses to them; participatory observation within the SATR; and an online survey of 58 viewers who had filed a complaint with the SATR. The article highlights the differing stances of the regulator and the cultural challengers and analyzes the social and cultural implications of the dialogue.

 

 

 

New Book: Sharvit & Halperin, A Social Psychology Perspective on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Sharvit, Keren, and Eran Halperin, eds. A Social Psychology Perspective on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Celebrating the Legacy of Daniel Bar-Tal, volume 2. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2016.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been waging for decades, resulting in mass losses, destruction, and suffering with profound effects on the members of the involved societies. Furthermore, its effects reach beyond the involved societies and influence regional and global stability. Many attempts have been made to bring this conflict to peaceful resolution, but so far without success. Due to its intensity and extensive effects, this conflict has drawn the attention of scholars from numerous disciplines, who attempted to explain the causes of the conflict and the reasons for the difficulties in resolving it. Among these one can find historians, geographers, political scientists, sociologists, and others. Social and political psychologists have also addressed this conflict, and one of the most influential among them has been Daniel Bar-Tal.

This is the second of two volumes intended to pay tribute to Daniel Bar-Tal’s scholarly contribution upon his retirement from his position at Tel Aviv University. While the first volume was devoted to Bar-Tal’s general theory of the sociopsychological foundations of intractable conflict and the theory’s relation to other prominent theoretical frameworks, this volume is devoted to applying Bar-Tal’s theory to the specific case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his most recent book, published in 2013, Bar-Tal acknowledges the immense effects that living in Israel, being exposed to this conflict, and taking part in it have had on his thinking, theorizing, and empirical research regarding intractable conflicts. We too, as his former students, have been inspired by living in Israel and by Bar-Tal’s work to continue to investigate the sociopsychological dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and through them to advance the understandings of intractable conflicts in general.

 

Table of Contents

• Sociopsychological Foundations of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Applying Daniel Bar-Tal’s Theorizing
  Keren Sharvit
• Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: A Developmental Perspective
  Yona Teichman
• Young Children’s Experiences and Learning in Intractable Conflicts
  Meytal Nasie
• The Israeli Collective Memory of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict: Its Characteristics and Relation to the Conflict
  Rafi Nets-Zehngut
• The “Silenced” Narrative of 1948 War Events Among Young Palestinians in Israel
  Eman Nahhas
• Perceptions of Collective Narratives Among Arab and Jewish Adolescents in Israel: A Decade of Intractable Conflict
  Anan Srour
• “Seeing Through a Glass Darkly”: Israeli and Egyptian Images of the Other During the Nasserite Period (1952–1970)
  Elie Podeh
• The Jewish–Israeli Ethos of Conflict
  Neta Oren
• Ethos of Conflict of the Palestinian Society
  Ronni Shaked
• Harmed by Our Protection: Exposure to Political Violence and Political Preferences in the Range of Fire
  Daphna Canetti
• Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Intractable Conflict and Their Relation to the Ethos of Conflict in Israeli Society
  Ruthie Pliskin
• When Jewish and Zionist Identities Encounter Otherness: Educational Case Study
  David Ohad
• Peace Education Between Theory and Practice: The Israeli Case
  Soli Vered
• Containing the Duality: Leadership in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process
  Nimrod Rosler
• The Role of Peace Organizations During Peacemaking Processes: The Case of the Jewish-Israeli Society
  Tamir Magal
• The Road to Peace: The Potential of Structured Encounters Between Israeli Jews and Palestinians in Promoting Peace
  Ifat Maoz
• Addressing Israelis’ and Palestinians’ Basic Needs for Agency and Positive Moral Identity Facilitates Mutual Prosociality
  Ilanit SimanTov-Nachlieli
• Transitional Justice in Societies Emerging from Intractable Conflicts: Between the Right to Truth and Collective Memory
  Ofer Shinar Levanon
• Index
• About the Authors

 

New Article: Gavriel-Fried et al, Multiple Facets of Self-Control in Arab Adolescents

Gavriel-Fried, Belle, Tammie Ronen, Qutaiba Agbaria, Hod Orkibi, and Liat Hamama. “Multiple Facets of Self-Control in Arab Adolescents. Parallel Pathways to Greater Happiness and Less Physical Aggression”. Youth & Society (early view; online first).

 

URL: dx.doi.org/10.1177/0044118X15606157/

 
Abstract

Adolescence is a period of dramatic change that necessitates using skills and strengths to reduce physical aggression and increase happiness. This study examined the multiple facets of self-control skills in achieving both goals simultaneously, in a sample of 248 Arab adolescents in Israel. We conceptualized and tested a new multi-mediator model that posited two parallel paths. Structural equation modeling with bootstrap analysis supported the hypothesized model where self-control linked with subjective happiness directly, and indirectly through positive emotions and social support. In addition, self-control linked directly to physical aggression, and indirectly through hostility and anger. The findings provide new theoretical conceptualizations for further research and suggest possible mechanisms for prevention and intervention programs.

 

 

 

Dissertation: Harel, “The eternal nation does not fear a long road”: An Ethnography of Jewish Settlers in Israel/Palestine

Harel, Assaf. “The eternal nation does not fear a long road”: An Ethnography of Jewish Settlers in Israel/Palestine, PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 2015.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3VD71FW

 

Abstract

This is an ethnography of Jewish settlers in Israel/Palestine. Studies of religiously motivated settlers in the occupied territories indicate the intricate ties between settlement practices and a Jewish theology about the advent of redemption. This messianic theology binds future redemption with the maintenance of a physical union between Jews and the “Land of Israel.” However, among settlers themselves, the dominance of this messianic theology has been undermined by postmodernity and most notably by a series of Israeli territorial withdrawals that have contradicted the promise of redemption. These days, the religiously motivated settler population is divided among theological and ideological lines that pertain, among others issues, to the meaning of redemption and its relation to the state of Israel. This dissertation begins with an investigation of the impact of the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip upon settlers and proceeds to compare three groups of religiously motivated settlers in the West Bank: an elite Religious Zionist settlement, settlers who engage in peacemaking activities with Palestinians, and settlers who act violently against Palestinians. Through a comparison of these different groups, this dissertation demonstrates that while messianism remains a central force in the realities of Jewish settlements and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it exists these days in more diversified forms than before. In addition, this ethnography illustrates how religion both underlies and undermines differences between Israelis and Palestinians and argues that local communities and religious leaders should be included in peace processes. Finally, by examining how messianic conceptions of time among different groups of Jewish settlers connect to their settlement practices, this study reveals the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be as much about time as it is about space. Accordingly, this dissertation has broader implications for understanding the contemporary role of religion and time within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the political struggles of the Middle East.

 

 

New Article: Fast, School Violence Policies in Israel

Fast, Idit. “Understanding Educational Policy Formation. The Case of School Violence Policies in Israel.” Sociology of Education (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038040715615923
 
Abstract

This study explores mechanisms underlying processes of educational policy formation. Previous studies have given much attention to processes of diffusion when accounting for educational policy formation. Less account has been given to the day-to-day institutional dynamics through which educational policies develop and change. Building on extensive governmental archival data, complemented with interviews and media analysis, I study the development and transformation of school violence policies in Israel. I argue that diffusion of global policy ideas and practices provides the menu of possible policies, while within-country struggles over legitimacy in the policy domain serve as a mechanism shaping which items on the menu becomes actual policy. Specifically, in the Israeli case, the interest in and action toward school violence were influenced by a global trend, but the actions of Psychological-Counseling Services (PCS) who struggled to assert their legitimacy as the authority on school violence in the Israeli Ministry of Education (MOE) shaped the adoption, rejection, and institutionalization of the specific school violence policy ideas and practices.

 

 

 

Conference Paper: Iganski and Sweiry, Antisemitism and Social Media

Iganski, Paul, and Abe Sweiry. “Antisemitism and Social Media”.

 

URL: http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/75744/

 
Abstract

It is now well-known that each time there is an upsurge in the Israel-Palestine conflict there is a rise in violent and other abusive incidents against Jews around the world. So it was in 2014 with Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ military action in July and August. Numerous backlash incidents against Jews in the UK and elsewhere in the world were reported by news media. The news reporting mainly focused on physical acts: violence and the daubing of insults and slogans on synagogues and other communal buildings. This time around, however, there were also numerous instances of anti-Jewish abuse on social media, to the extent that by the end of July 2014, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz reported “an explosion of anti-Semitic abuse on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter”. There has, however, been little sustained or in-depth analysis of the problem of antisemitism on social media. Using the methodology of corpus linguistics, we carried out a rapid response analysis of the phenomenon on Twitter to inform the recent report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry against Antisemitism. In our paper, we discuss our methods of analysis, the key findings, and the potential we see for the future in using corpus approaches for the analysis of antisemitism and other manifestations of discriminatory discourse.

 

 

 

New Book: Kotef, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom

Kotef, Hagar. Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

 

We live within political systems that increasingly seek to control movement, organized around both the desire and ability to determine who is permitted to enter what sorts of spaces, from gated communities to nation-states. In Movement and the Ordering of Freedom, Hagar Kotef examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces. Ranging from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, this book shows how concepts of freedom, security, and violence take form and find justification via “regimes of movement.” Kotef traces contemporary structures of global (im)mobility and resistance to the schism in liberal political theory, which embodied the idea of “liberty” in movement while simultaneously regulating mobility according to a racial, classed, and gendered matrix of exclusions.

 

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

• Introduction
• 1. Between Imaginary Lines: Violence and Its Justifications at the Military Checkpoints in Occupied Palestine / Hagar Kotef and Merav Amir
• 2. An Interlude: A Tale of Two Roads—On Freedom and Movement
• 3. The Fence That “Ill Deserves the Name of Confinement”: Locomotion and the Liberal Body
• 4. The Problem of “Excessive” Movement
• 5. The “Substance and Meaning of All Things Political”: On Other Bodies
• Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

 

HAGAR KOTEF is based at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University.