Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood
Abstract
The ghost of the Holocaust is ever present in Israel, in the lives and nightmares of the survivors and in the absence of the victims. In this compelling and disturbing analysis, Idith Zertal, a leading member of the new generation of revisionist historians in Israel, considers the ways Israel has used the memory of the Holocaust to define and legitimize its existence and politics. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the author exposes the pivotal role of the Holocaust in Israel's public sphere, in its project of nation building, its politics of power and its perception of the conflict with the Palestinians. She argues that the centrality of the Holocaust has led to a culture of death and victimhood that permeates Israel's society and self-image. For the updated paperback edition of the book, Tony Judt, the world-renowned historian and political commentator, has contributed a foreword in which he writes of Zertal's courage, the originality of her work, and the 'unforgiving honesty with which she looks at the moral condition of her own country'.
... 3 The Holocaust is a central issue in the Jewish-Israeli identity and narrative of group victimization. Previous research conducted during HMD in Israel found an increase in group glorification (Ariely, 2019;Zertal, 2005). Therefore, we statistically controlled for related variables (i.e., perpetual ingroup victimhood orientation, group attachment, and glorification) in all analyses. ...
... As described in the "current research" section, studies have found that group glorification increases during HMD (Ariely, 2019;Zertal, 2005). Accordingly, we statistically controlled for connection to one's group (attachment) and the perception that one's group is uniquely superior to other similar groups (glorification). ...
... The sanctification of the deceased in the Zionist culture contributed to the creation of a powerful communal solidarity and heritage that defined and legitimized the existence of the state of Israel (Zertal 2005). Being involved in an ongoing bloody conflict with parts of the Arab world and coping with the loss of thousands of soldiers and civilians, the geography of the institutionalized memorial sites and monuments in Israel is usually designed and manifested as a monolithic militarized narrative (Bilu and Wiztum 2000). ...
Culture is constructed, negotiated, managed, and shared by various ideological, political, and moral reasonings which manifest themselves tangibly and intangibly in public monuments, architecture, memorial sites, theaters, museums, orchestras, and heritage associations. The contributions to this volume explore the intersection of cultural heritage and nationality in societies that are characterized by national, multi-national, and post-national concepts. They question the roles that cultural heritage plays in its various contexts, and the ways in which ideology functions to produce it.
... The Holocaust is the central event of Jewish history that defines Israeli identity, replacing even the establishment of the State of Israel (Klar et al., 2013;Zertal, 1998Zertal, , 2005. The volume of literature based on psychological and historical studies is immense; it constantly grows and develops (Gil, 2012;Kenan, 2003;Ofer, 2009Ofer, , 2013. ...
This research discusses whether various educational approaches can bridge the wide gaps between national narratives of the Holocaust, augmented by the Act on the IPN: 44, and the reactions that followed it in Israel, Poland, and the West. We start with a brief account of the Polish narrative of the World War II experience, and the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust. We then give an account from the field: during January and February 2020, we visited the Majdanek Concentration Camp Museum, where we met and interviewed some of the local guides; we also went to the Grodzka Gate Centre in Lublin and discussed things with their guides. For the Israeli narrative, we referred to surveys and interviews of IDF reserves officers who participated in the “Witnesses in Uniform” project of commemoration delegations to Poland. Our analyses show that in each of the two societies one can find national narratives that can create paths of compromise and conciliation. The findings indicate the existence of a spirit that can enable each group to stick to its own heritage yet at the same time to respect the narratives of others.
... Israeli prime ministers created tightly looped past-presentfuture connections that conveyed an ongoing terrorist threat with no temporal signature. This not only generated a path-dependent relationship between 9/11 and the present and future; it also resonated with the Israeli cultural sense that history is very much still alive (Liebman & Don-Yeh _ iya, 1983) and that they have been persecuted throughout time (Zertal, 2005). ...
Political leaders construct meanings for current events in support of their existing policy goals, but the constructed meanings do not change when policy goals change. Consequently, the established narrative of the past becomes part of the policymaking terrain, justifying existing policies and creating criteria for policy success. It must be navigated by leaders seeking to reach their policy objectives. References made by U.S. and Israeli political leaders to the event known as “9/11” from 2002 through 2019 reveal how they renegotiated its meaning as their policy goals evolved. Policy goals at the time of the event shaped the meanings made of the event. As policy goals changed, existing meanings could not be discarded or reshaped at will, nor could 9/11 simply be forgotten. Instead, leaders navigated and amended the inescapable public memory of 9/11 to support varying policy goals over a 20-year time span. For Israel, 9/11 made a chronic problem an international cause célèbre, offering potential to generate international response to a commonly marginalized threat, a narrative prime ministers sought to adapt as their policy goals changed. In the U.S. the George W. Bush Administration’s narrative of 9/11 promoted and sustained the administration’s policies and goals, making it difficult for Barack Obama’s administration to change course unless it could tell a different story. Both cases demonstrate that arguments made for or against policies are contingent upon how the past is narrated. Collective remembrance can affect the contours of public policy, for the remembered past constitutes the terrain of policymaking.
... Hashiloni-Dolev and Raz (2010) found that German genetic counsellors regarded Nazi eugenics as setting moral limits for contemporary practices, and highlighted the value of diversity in society. Interestingly, while the Holocaust is considered a primary defining element in Israeli culture (Zertal 2005), many Israeli genetic counsellors have dismissed the idea that the lessons learnt from Nazi eugenics should guide their current work and have detached their practice from historic atrocities (Hashiloni-Dolev/Raz 2010). ...
Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributors of this book present conversations between leading scholars from Israel and Germany based on an empirical bioethical perspective, analyses about the reshaping of 'life' by biomedicine, and philosophical reflections on socio-cultural claims and epistemic horizons of responsibilities. Practices and discussions of reproductive medicine transform the concepts of responsibility and irresponsibility.
... Hashiloni-Dolev and found that German genetic counsellors regarded Nazi eugenics as setting moral limits for contemporary practices, and highlighted the value of diversity in society. Interestingly, while the Holocaust is considered a primary defining element in Israeli culture (Zertal 2005), many Israeli genetic counsellors have dismissed the idea that the lessons learnt from Nazi eugenics should guide their current work and have detached their practice from historic atrocities (Hashiloni-Dolev/Raz 2010). ...
In this chapter, we explore the controversy around NIPT against the background of previous controversies on abortion and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). We argue that we see a recurring pattern, which we have termed the “No, but...” pattern. It is characterised on the one hand by a widespread moral unease about reproductive practices that, in effect, involve selective decisions about which children should be born and which should not, and on the other by a political disinclination to take binding decisions to effectively curb them. Since the 1970s, the traditional way of accommodating these countervailing tendencies has been to confirm the morally problematic character of such selective choices in principle while nevertheless allowing them under certain circumstances, which – theoretically – are defined as being exceptional and rare (Braun 2016). However, there is no general rule to determine whether such exceptional circumstances are present or not; thus, it becomes a matter of case-by-case decision-making or, as Dominique Memmi (2003) puts is, of delegated biopolitics. In practice, the decision is left to the individual. Thus, the responsibility for the diffusion of reproductive selection practices lies with the individual. Policy actors usually see the need to take fundamental social and ethical implications of such practices into account, but resort to the above-mentioned “No, but...” model to deal with the issue (Braun and Könninger 2018). To understand the structure of this policy pattern better, we will first take a look back at the so-called abortion compromise and the legal regulation of PGD. Subsequently, we will briefly recapitulate the controversy about PND in Germany and then show how the “No, but...” pattern plays out in the case of NIPT.
... Hashiloni-Dolev and found that German genetic counsellors regarded Nazi eugenics as setting moral limits for contemporary practices, and highlighted the value of diversity in society. Interestingly, while the Holocaust is considered a primary defining element in Israeli culture (Zertal 2005), many Israeli genetic counsellors have dismissed the idea that the lessons learnt from Nazi eugenics should guide their current work and have detached their practice from historic atrocities (Hashiloni-Dolev/Raz 2010). ...
Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributors of this book present conversations between leading scholars from Israel and Germany based on an empirical bioethical perspective, analyses about the reshaping of 'life' by biomedicine, and philosophical reflections on socio-cultural claims and epistemic horizons of responsibilities. Practices and discussions of reproductive medicine transform the concepts of responsibility and irresponsibility.
... The history of the Holocaust forms a cornerstone of Israeli national culture. Memory of the Holocaust and of antisemitism, in general, has been used by the state to provide justification for its founding, ongoing existence, and policies (Zertal 2005). The Holocaust plays a central role in constructing the Israeli collective memory and its nationalist manifestations, turning it into a "civil religion" (Ophir 1987;Gershenson 2018) that is perpetuated by national holidays, school curricula, memorials, museums, and the like. ...
The story of Israel and its raison d’être are suffused by memories of the Holocaust, which construct the self-definition and identity of the state. This article examines works by three contemporary Israeli women artists—Dvora Morag, Miri Nishri, and Bracha Ettinger—who subvert the traditional telling of history and enable rethinking of the past as the basis for the individual’s existence in the nation state. Through the works of these artists, official memory disintegrates into fragments of personal memories of the artists’ mothers, enabling a new moral, historical perspective. The reconstruction of history through stories that pass from mother to daughter contrasts sharply with Jewish tradition in which the historical story passes from father to son. The yearly Passover retelling of the Exodus admonishes “Thou shalt tell thy son on that day to say, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt’”. The two narratives, the Exodus from Egypt and the Holocaust, are told as stories of redemption of the Jewish people—from ruin to resurrection. The art examined here reassesses the past, while unraveling parallels between the stories from a female perspective that reflects a personal moral stance.
... While research has examined how collective memory is established and sustained in Israel, it has typically focused on national collective memory (e.g. the mythologization of Masada), most prominently the memory of the Holocaust (Gutwein, 2009;Zertal, 2005). Gavriely-Nuri (2014) presented a critical reading of the political use of collective memory as a metaphoric device used by Israeli prime ministers in their attempt to address present challenges. ...
Politically grappling with history is a constructive act, one that relies on context, structure, and agency, and is also directed at the forging of cultural coherence. In light of the growing transnationalization of commemoration practices, political actors not only rely on national past but also appeal to historical foreign events in political domestic speech. This research focuses on Israel as a case study for theoretical expansion of the political encounter with history and the experience of alterity. Qualitative analysis of Israeli political rhetoric since the 2000s demonstrates how Israeli prime ministers primarily rely on domestic collective memories; when used, events of others are intended to create a sense of shared experience through comparison. ‘Importation for comparison’ is thus the apparatus reflecting how Israeli prime ministers comply with current needs put forth by internal and external challenges in a globalized world. Contributing to the ongoing discussion regarding the nature of identity, this research underlines how referencing to events from abroad is one of the prominent ways in which national self is evaluated, discussed, and negotiated, thus providing a better understanding of how Israeli society imagines itself in relation to others.
... The reaction to the Holocaust has no doubt played a major role in the creation of the Israeli culture of silence and self-censorship with regard to the conflict with the Palestinians. During the first period in Israel's developing collective memory of the Holocaust, lasting from the state foundation in 1948 until the 1961 Eichmann Trial, Holocaust memory was used and constructed as a means of cementing the Zionist ethos in the context of the historic struggle for statehood: the victims' suffering was used to foster recognition of the Jewish people's right to a state, while the (few) ghetto fighters were elevated to heroic status in Israel (Gutwein, 2009; see also Zertal, 2005). Consequently, Holocaust survivors were met with a 'conspiracy of silence,' an unwillingness to hear their stories ( Bar-On et al., 1998;Danieli, 1998;Segev, 1993). ...
Self-censorship in contexts of conflict: Theory and research
... The Israeli culture of collective memory has been the focus of much previous research. This includes official commemoration practices (Lebel 2013;Shamir 1996), mythmaking (Ben-Yehuda 1996Schwartz et al. 1986), and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the memory of the Holocaust and its effects (Adams 2020;Klar et al. 2013;Zertal 2005). As memory and commemoration are primary organizing principles, modern Israeli commemoration is entrenched in Jewish historiography (Yerushalmi 1982), yet at the same time, is also infused with new and renewing traditions of the Israeli nation-state (Azaryahu 1995;Sivan 1991;Zerubavel 1995). ...
Challenging traditional understandings of the past, the toppling of statues of prominent historical figures highlights the ongoing negotiation of collectives with their pasts and the importance of commemoration practices in meaning-making processes. In Israel, this phenomenon is complex and nuanced, despite its appearance as a lack of concern with revisiting the past. Accordingly, this research examines current practices of de-commemoration in Israel as a unique tool of social and political protest. Drawing upon qualitative and multi-method studies that combine text analysis, in-depth interviews, participant observations, and archival work, we suggest a hierarchical typology of de-commemoration-desecration, reframing, and planned obsolescence-establishing how each practice renegotiates with the present through alteration of the form of commemorated material. Questioning previous understanding regarding the prominence of the past, and building on the unique Israeli case, analysis demonstrates how practices of de-commemoration are influenced by the transna-tional climate of change, consciously adhering to the need to realign commemorated pasts in line with the conflicts of the present. Commemoration and de-commemoration thus complement and build on one another, constituting the civil religion of any given collective. Contributing to current discussions regarding the norma-tive attributions of collective memory, we show how nothing is set in stone.
While growing attention has been given to the impact of historical traumas on international politics, we know little about how trauma influences the foreign policy of states that have experienced trauma(s). Challenging the dichotomous conceptualization of traumatized states’ behaviours as either aggressive or pacifist, we show that traumatized states tend to articulate their foreign policy roles in a more complex way. We identify five foreign policy roles reflecting the remembering mode associated with ‘acting out’ (i.e. the role of victim and safe-haven/defender of the traumatized minority), with ‘working through’ (i.e. the role of forgiver, the role of canary in a coal mine and the guardian of the memory) or a blend of the two, demonstrating that both types of remembering modes can be activated simultaneously. The oscillation between these modes of remembering is characteristic of the non-linear process of coping with trauma, explaining the traumatized states’ seemingly inconsistent self-representations. We illustrate our claim with the case of Israel, based on the qualitative content analysis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speeches to foreign audiences between 2009 and 2021.
Studies in the tourism and human-resource management fields tend to ignore the use made of heritage tourism as a tool to reward employees. ‘Witnesses in Uniform, the Journey to Poland,’ whose participants are members of the Israeli Defence Force’s standing army, is an example of a reward system whose goal is to influence the human resource. This research examines the effect of participation in a trip to Poland on the sense of organisational commitment. The study employs a qualitative research methodology, and is based on 32 structured interviews with personnel of the standing army who took part in a journey to Poland, as well as five open interviews with those involved in the management and organisation of the journey. It was found that the journey to Poland had a positive impact on the sense of organisational commitment. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge regarding heritage tourism and human-resource management. On a practical level, the insights that emerge from this research are relevant for the understanding of the use of heritage activities as a tool for human-resource management in public organisations, as well as to the management of Witnesses in Uniform journey.
That Putin’s regime has been able to put the memory of the Great Patriotic War (GPW) to political use is hardly news to any observer of Russia. What is often overlooked, however, is that the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has contributed to the instrumentalization of this memory by the Kremlin. In this article, I aim to bridge this gap. Drawing on an analysis of the ROC’s commemorative activities, I reconstruct the specific, martyrological, interpretation of the GPW that it is forging. With sin, atonement, and glory as its central concepts, this interpretation invests the suffering and losses of the GPW with patriotic sense. Thus, it turns the politically problematic traumatic memory of the GPW into a politically useful one. Simultaneously, it is consistent with the triumphant cult of the GPW advanced by the Kremlin. It also perfectly suits the statist historical narrative focused on the continuity of Russia’s past, which is crucial for the ideology of Putin’s regime. Furthermore, this interpretation does not contradict the Soviet memory of the GPW that the regime relies on. Finally, in combining Orthodox Christianity with militarism, the martyrological interpretation of the GPW is highly suitable for the regime’s political business of the day, which is waging its war against Ukraine.
This essay is a record of the experience of the ongoing war in Ukraine, presented from the perspective of the contemporary dance artist Anton Ovchinnikov. Captured almost in statu nascendi, his moral dilemmas and difficult choices—personal and artistic—constitute a kind of a war diary, a record of a moment in history. The author also asks important questions about artistic responsibility, whose relevance resounds ever more strongly in the face of the continuing conflict. Joanna Szymajda’s introduction offers a historical panorama of artistic phenomena and attitudes in response to the state of war. The author focuses on 20th- and 21st-century artists, showing the variety of formats and aesthetics in the works of such major figures as Martha Graham, José Limón, John Cranko, and Rami Be’er, among others.
In 1984, Edward Said argued that Palestinians had not yet gained “permission to narrate,” that is, a Palestinian national narrative of exile and colonization remained unintelligible in the Euro-American world. Forty years hence, much has changed. And yet, this essay asks, with what political consequences? What if the epistemological-qua-political ground has changed such that this “permission to narrate” turns out to be far less consequential than Said once believed? Tracing a shift in Israeli historical scholarship, and among the Israeli public, vis-à-vis the expulsion of Palestinians during the war of 1948, this essay queries a long-standing anti- and post-colonial commitment to the political salience of counter-histories, of revisiting the archive. Other forms of (epistemological) power have emerged and they do not require the kinds of ideological closures (denial, official or unofficial censorship) that were central to Said’s analysis. Israeli settler-nationhood no longer depends on the suppression of the historical trace, the state secret—on denial. It can just as easily operate through the embrace of a far more brazen and explicit seizure of power: I know very well, but nevertheless.
How does historical victimization and its memorialization impact present-day outgroup attitudes in conflict-riven societies? This study explores this question using a survey experiment with a representative sample of 2000 Jewish Israelis—half of whom are direct descendants of Holocaust survivors—and a content analysis of 98 state-approved school textbooks, examining how histories of victimization become socialized and shape political attitudes. We find that, in Israel, family victimization during the Holocaust plays surprisingly little role in shaping present-day attitudes toward outgroups. Rather, perceived historical victimization of the Jewish and Israeli people is broadly socialized among the Israeli public and is a stronger predictor of outgroup (in)tolerance. These findings shed light on the power of societal victimhood narratives—even in the absence of personal family histories of victimization—to shape political attitudes in conflict contexts, with long-term implications for intergroup cooperation and conflict.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is generally referred as a territorial conflict, but it is also a conflict over the preservation of identity. This study analyzes the relations of Jews and Palestinians in Israel from an identity security perspective. It sheds light on how the communities perceive actions, discourses, and symbols as a mutual threat to their own identity. Adapting the concept of societal security dilemma (SSD), this study seeks to reveal the patterns of feeling insecure between the groups and to put forth the measures and countermeasures taken to secure identity. This approach contends that the measures and countermeasures taken to reduce the perception of threat do not lead to a feeling of security; on the contrary, it creates a cycle of constant threat perception, making the groups feel more insecure in terms of identity. I argue that this is the case for the Jews and Palestinians in Israel. The analytical dimensions of SSD are applied to the case via process tracing and historical analysis. However, I identify a gap unaddressed by these dimensions of the concept. The present study proposes an additional dimension— confrontation —to fill this gap.
This chapter extends the theoretical foundation laid in Chap. 2, to demonstrate how this study brings Edward Said’s and Hannah Arendt’s political thinking into praxis. This requires teasing out additional points of intersection between and imaginative possibilities enabled by both scholars’ work. In particular, and with the assistance of Ariella Azoulay, I demonstrate that both Said and Arendt understood storytelling and photography as key media through which to make their political visions a reality. More specifically, I explore how storytelling and photography create the occasions and conditions of possibility necessary for willing the impossible through civil imagination.
In this discussion, I would like to complement Perlitz’s argument by reminding that mutual imbeddedness requires conditions of existential security. Most traumas the author mentions occurred in the past. Thus, to process trauma and experience mutual imbeddedness a “background of safety” is needed. Only this enables the work of mourning, peace-making, and connection to other people. Many communities throughout the world, however, exist under extremely threatening conditions. Hence, I propose that mutual imbeddedness requires a complementary human capacity, which is equally vital, and expresses itself in conditions of existential threat or in a reality of protracted violence. This force is characterized by persecutory anxiety and the massive use of the mechanism of splitting, which issues in defense of the self using removing the adversary, using fight or flight. During times of protracted threat, people organize to defend themselves, their families, and their communities, and they will use any means to safeguard their existence. For this purpose, they activate a specific psychic dynamic: Trust is replaced by fear, enriching otherness now becomes dangerous otherness, open borders turn into high, impermeable walls, and where there was generosity, now there is cruelty. I want to offer two illustrations of the collapse of mutual imbeddedness in conditions of physical danger and existential threat: One is Israel’s political situation, and the other is the impact of the Covid pandemic on the fabric of human relations.
The purpose of this research paper was to investigate the justification of Jewish terrorism against the Palestinians, through the lens of chosen trauma. Through qualitative research, it was deduced that chosen trauma is the result of victimization and large-group identity. Hence, the psychological domain of collective victimhood and Sigmund Freud’s Group Psychology were employed to elaborate on this concept. It was deduced that the process and acceptance of victimization are dynamic and are a result of stages since it calls for the collective recognition of trauma by large groups. Large group identity becomes stronger upon attacks or threats from external groups, and attacks generate collective victimhood. The resulting concept is that; the perceived harm is stored in the collective memory of large groups, and they aspire to seek revenge. It was also presented that, shared tragedy is transmitted through generations by virtue of “depositing”. The psychological domain of transgenerational transmission of trauma argues that through depositing, the parties become free of the traumatic images and deal with their mental conflicts. The result is chosen trauma, whereby a collective sense of entitlement for the purpose of recovering from ancestral collective trauma is reflected. Along these lines, the Jewish Holocaust survivors passed down the trauma of concertation camps, torture, and sexual violence across generations. Present-day Jews aspire to avenge the Holocaust by maintaining domination over Jerusalem and current Israeli land. As a result, the Palestinian community which challenges the aspiration of Jews is a victim of state-sponsored terrorism. In retaliation, Palestinians are victims of expulsions, killings, military occupation, forced detention, war crimes, and human rights violations. Despite being called out by various international organizations, Israel is able to justify its actions under the realm of chosen trauma. Hence, the notion of chosen trauma is employed to justify Jewish atrocities against the Palestinians.
This volume provides the first major study of worldviews in international relations. Worldviews are the unexamined, pre-theoretical foundations of the approaches with which we understand and navigate the world. Advances in twentieth century physics and cosmology and other intellectual developments questioning anthropocentrism have fostered the articulation of alternative worldviews that rival conventional Newtonian humanism and its assumption that the world is constituted by controllable risks. This matters for coming to terms with the uncertainties that are an indelible part of many spheres of life including public health, the environment, finance, security and politics – uncertainties that are concealed by the conventional presumption that the world is governed only by risk. The confluence of risk and uncertainty requires an awareness of alternative worldviews, alerts us to possible intersections between humanist Newtonianism and hyper-humanist Post-Newtonianism, and reminds us of the relevance of science, religion and moral values in world politics.
Efforts to incorporate the collective memories of minority communities into national memory narratives are viewed as an integral part of efforts to revive democracy, while contributing to social integration and equality. In this context, the inclusion of minority histories is increasingly being mandated by law and policy in many countries. Recently, Israel passed memory laws that set out to include the previously excluded history of its North African minority communities into the larger Israeli national memory narrative of the Holocaust. In this essay, we ask whether, and in what ways, this change in the national memory narrative has quelled feelings of alienation experienced by members of these minorities and increased feelings of national belonging. Based on group interviews conducted with members of Jewish North African communities in Israel, we demonstrate that feelings of exclusion from the national remembrance narrative linger, despite the efforts of the State.
The Bible plays a central role in Israel. This text studies the evolution of the biblical references and its instrumental use in the Israeli nation building process, both in the pre-estate period and in the first decades of the State. The tensions, both ideological and practical, derived from the secular use of a religious/sacred text, transcend the case of Israel and the Bible. They are related to the broad political and religious debates which are in the origin of the modern nation-states and the concept of national sovereignty and parliamentary democracy.
Middle Eastern police forces have a reputation for carrying out repression and surveillance on behalf of authoritarian regimes, despite frequently under enforcing the law. But what is their role in co-creating and sustaining social order? In this book, Jessica Watkins focuses on the development of the Jordanian police institution to demonstrate that rather than being primarily concerned with law enforcement, the police are first and foremost concerned with order. In Jordan, social order combines the influence of longstanding tribal practices with regime efforts to promote neoliberal economic policies alongside a sense of civic duty amongst citizens. Rather than focusing on the 'high policing' of offences deemed to threaten state security, Watkins explores the 'low policing' of interpersonal disputes including assault, theft, murder, traffic accidents, and domestic abuse to shed light on the varied strategies of power deployed by the police alongside other societal actors to procure hegemonic 'consent'.
In this innovative study of everyday charity practices in Jeddah, Nora Derbal employs a 'bottom-up' approach to challenge dominant narratives about state-society relations in Saudi Arabia. Exploring charity organizations in Jeddah, this book both offers a rich ethnography of associational life and counters Riyadh-centric studies which focus on oil, the royal family, and the religious establishment. It closely follows those who work on the ground to provide charity to the local poor and needy, documenting their achievements, struggles and daily negotiations. The lens of charity offers rare insights into the religiosity of ordinary Saudis, showing that Islam offers Saudi activists a language, a moral frame, and a worldly guide to confronting inequality. With a view to the many forms of local community activism in Saudi Arabia, this book examines perspectives that are too often ignored or neglected, opening new theoretical debates about civil society and civic activism in the Gulf.
This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing both individual memory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organised around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasising the role of memory processes in the construction of self-identity, of shared cultural norms and concepts, and of historical awareness. Although the results are fairly new and the techniques suitably modern, the vision itself is of course related to the work of such precursors as Frederic Bartlett and Aleksandr Luria, who in very different ways represent the starting point of a serious psychology of human culture.
This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing both individual memory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organised around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasising the role of memory processes in the construction of self-identity, of shared cultural norms and concepts, and of historical awareness. Although the results are fairly new and the techniques suitably modern, the vision itself is of course related to the work of such precursors as Frederic Bartlett and Aleksandr Luria, who in very different ways represent the starting point of a serious psychology of human culture.
This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing both individual memory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organised around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasising the role of memory processes in the construction of self-identity, of shared cultural norms and concepts, and of historical awareness. Although the results are fairly new and the techniques suitably modern, the vision itself is of course related to the work of such precursors as Frederic Bartlett and Aleksandr Luria, who in very different ways represent the starting point of a serious psychology of human culture.
This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing both individual memory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organised around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasising the role of memory processes in the construction of self-identity, of shared cultural norms and concepts, and of historical awareness. Although the results are fairly new and the techniques suitably modern, the vision itself is of course related to the work of such precursors as Frederic Bartlett and Aleksandr Luria, who in very different ways represent the starting point of a serious psychology of human culture.
This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing both individual memory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organised around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasising the role of memory processes in the construction of self-identity, of shared cultural norms and concepts, and of historical awareness. Although the results are fairly new and the techniques suitably modern, the vision itself is of course related to the work of such precursors as Frederic Bartlett and Aleksandr Luria, who in very different ways represent the starting point of a serious psychology of human culture.
This article traces the emergence of what the author calls predation TERFism to the development of US Jewish-identified feminism and, in particular, Zionist lesbian separatism. This historical connection is reflected in the rhetorical and ideological similarities between predation TERFism and Zionism, both of which are defined by an “extinction phobia” that confuses oppressor and oppressed, presenting the subordinate party as capable of eliminating the dominant one. This extinction phobia transforms into “right-wing annihilationism” via a dehumanization of the subordinate party as innately harmful and therefore requiring elimination; hence the hallmark predation TERF abjection of trans women as rapists of cis women and the Zionist abjection of Palestinians as “savage” and/or “terrorist.” These connections can be obscured by the siloization of social justice movement work in the United States, wherein anti-colonial and anti-imperial organizing is often separated from organizing for gender and reproductive justice and sexual freedom. Recognizing the continuities, however—whether historical, material, or ideological—between predation TERFism and Zionism offers useful lessons for understanding not only the power of the contemporary global anti-trans resurgence, but also how we might build solidaristic, anti-colonial movements to defeat it.
Israel has participated in the Eurovision, the largest European music festival, since 1973. The Jewish state regularly invests substantial resources in the contest and goes to great lengths to shine; with four victories, as well as two second places, it has been highly successful. Given its symbolic significance, as well as its actual impact on Israeli cultural diplomacy and nation-branding efforts, the annual media event and the process of selecting an artistic representative frequently elicit values-laden debates. Against this backdrop, the article investigates the evolution of the ways in which Israelis have presented themselves on the Eurovision stage, as well as the country’s internal discourse surrounding this annual cultural ritual. Israel’s participation in the yearly spectacle, I argue, has become an important element of ongoing Zionist-Israeli nation-building.
The prenatal genetic testing arena has witnessed great changes over the past decades and has been the focus of extensive discussion of its ethical, legal, and social implications. Germany and Israel were previously known for strongly contrasting regulations and attitudes of both professionals and laypeople towards genetic testing. Based on qualitative analysis of 37 semi-structured interviews, this study compares German and Israeli family members of individuals with Down syndrome and disability activists, thereby examining the interplay between lived experience and cultural scripts and their impact on the formation of personal views toward disability and prenatal testing. We have found that the differences between Germany and Israel remain, despite the emergence of new technologies, and that family members and disability activists reflect the norms of their socio-cultural environments, thereby emphasising the role society plays in shaping the views of those with direct experience of disability.
The legal challenges arising from the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem are widely discussed in legal theory. Less attention is given to the trial in the framework of political and moral philosophy, where the key focus remains on the nature and the origins of evil (without a doubt, fuelled by Hannah Arendt’s definition of banality of evil). However, the trail itself present equally challenging question of human response to evil: how are we, the members of the modern political locus to respond to the evil of inhuman proportions? This article aims to answer the question through the reconstruction of debate that took place during the period of the trail (from the date of capture of Eichmann in 1960, till his execution in 1962) and the arguments “for” and “against” the trial by Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Isaiah Berlin, Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber. Beyond these arguments, there is an engaging philosophical debate about the nature and origins of justice, the limits of guilt and retribution, crime and punishment. It is argued that Arendt’s pro-trail stance provide for a way of engagement with the questions of evil by modern political men.
Based on extensive interviews and oral histories as well as archival sources, Women and the Islamic Republic challenges the dominant masculine theorizations of state-making in post-revolutionary Iran. Shirin Saeidi demonstrates that despite the Islamic Republic's non-democratic structures, multiple forms of citizenship have developed in post-revolutionary Iran. This finding destabilizes the binary formulation of democratization and authoritarianism which has not only dominated investigations of Iran, but also regime categorizations in political science more broadly. As non-elite Iranian women negotiate or engage with the state's gendered citizenry regime, the Islamic Republic is forced to remake, oftentimes haphazardly, its citizenry agenda. The book demonstrates how women remake their rights, responsibilities, and statuses during everyday life to condition the state-making process in Iran, showing women's everyday resistance to the state-making process.
Based on first-hand ethnographic insights into Shi'i religious groups in the Middle East and Europe , this book examines women's resistance to state as well as communal and gender power structures. It offers a new transnational approach to understanding gender agency within contemporary Islamic movements expressed through language, ritual practices, dramatic performances , posters and banners. By looking at the aesthetic performance of the political on the female body through Shi'i ritual practices – an aspect that has previously been ignored in studies on women's acts of resistance -, Yafa Shanneik shows how women play a central role in redefining sectarian and gender power relations both in the Middle East and in the European diaspora.
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