Battling Against Interfaith Relations in Israel: Religion,Therapy, and Social Services

One of the less studied aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is its demography. On the Jewish side, active steps are taken by the state to encourage Jewish immigration and Jewish births and discourage Jewish assimilation. As part of these efforts, the “problematic relationships” between Arab men and Jewish women from low socioeconomic background have become a high agenda item in public discussions in Israel during the last decade. I will examine here how the diagnostic category “girls at risk” and a therapeutic intervention employed by social services dealing with these couples helps maintaining the delicate balance between Jewish and democratic values. I will analyze these practices as a solution to a structural problem of the Jewish enclave in Israel. Video Abstract     

巴勒斯坦经济发展中的以色列因素分析

第三次中东战争后，以色列对约旦河西岸和加沙地带的占领为巴勒斯坦农业和工业带来了诸多负面影响，并使巴勒斯坦经济具有较强的依附性，突出表现为劳务输出和进出口贸易对以色列的依赖。以色列的占领严重地影响了巴经济的发展，并造成了巴勒斯坦在巴以和谈中的劣势。     

Securitization vs the yearning for peace in the Israeli casino discourse

This study analyses the controversy in Israel in the years 1958–2003 surrounding the legitimacy of casino gambling, with particular focus on how it was affected by the operations of Casino Oasis in the Palestinian Authority territory between 1998 and 2000. An interpretative narrative analysis of debates in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and in the local press reveals that, prior to the casino's opening, most of the arguments raised were similar to those seen elsewhere in the world, with opponents objecting on moral, religious and social grounds, and those in favour emphasizing its economic and tourism benefits. However, once Casino Oasis opened its doors, the controversy took on a character not seen anywhere else in this context – opponents raised concerns about terrorism, while proponents championed the casino as a promoter of peace and coexistence – reflecting a broader, more fundamental national debate within Israeli society over the country's physical boundaries.     

Oriental Othering and National Identity: A review of Early Israeli Anthropological Studies of Palestinians

Israeli culturalism, like Israeli identity at large, is premised on a two-pronged negation-that of the Jewish diaspora and that of the Arab East. Its emergence was assisted, directly or indirectly, by academic anthropology. The formative cohort of Israeli anthropology, mainly male researchers who came of academic age in the 1960s and 1970s, displayed stronger preoccupation with the Palestinian citizens of Israel than is normally recognized. This preoccupation, and the marginal status of Palestinians as a minority trapped within the ethno-territorial Jewish project, render the relationship between anthropological knowledge, Israeli statehood and constructions of Israeli identity particularly suggestive. The combination of these elements, so deeply integrated into Israeli public discourse, resurfaces in a grotesque, exaggerated form, as Israelis grapple to make sense of the Palestinian Intifada of 2000-2001 and of Wahabist inspired terrorism and America's 'War Against Terror' further a field.     

浅析沙龙政府的单边撤离计划

单边撤离计划是沙龙政府提出的单方面从部分巴勒斯坦被占领土上撤离的计划，是从以色列的角度提出的实现巴以和平的方案。此项计划是沙龙政府在综合多方面因素、反复进行利弊权衡的基础上提出的。这项计划自提出之时就备受争议，沙龙政府既要面对来自国内的巨大压力，还要与巴勒斯坦方面以及国际社会进行协调与对话。这项计划的执行不可避免地会对以色列国内的政治、安全状况及巴以局势产生重要影响。     

Career choice in the context of political conflict: the case of Palestinians social workers in Israel

The helping professions in general and social work in particular pose particular challenges and opportunities for national minority group members. This article adds to the present knowledge in the literature concerning the interaction between career choice in the welfare professions and minority status, by looking at the voices of Palestinian Israeli social workers. The article is based on data gathered through in-depth interviews with 32 Palestinian Israeli social workers, describes the motivations, the process of choosing social work as a profession and the barriers that Palestinian Israeli professionals face in the context of the political, social and economic factors shaping their lives as belonging to a national minority in Israel.     

Deconstructing National Myths,Reconstituting Morality: Modernity,Hegemony and the Israeli National Past1

Abstract Since the late 1980s there has been a growing scholarly concern with speaking silences of the past and recognizing the voices and perspectives of those “others” who have been written out of hegemonic historical narratives, especially in areas of intense conflict like Israel/Palestine. This study is concerned with the ways in which hegemonic national history can be re‐inscribed even as attempts are made to tell an alternative narrative. This article is based on three years of ethnographic research in an Israeli Jewish high school at the height of debates among historians about the Israeli national past. It examines the motivation to teach an alternative narrative that would recognize Palestinian perspectives and reveals the micro‐processes involved that ultimately undermine such recognition.     

Beyond Guilt and Stigma: Changing Attitudes among Israeli Migrants in Canada

Over 60 years ago, the Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism culminated in the creation of the State of Israel. Millions of Jews immigrated to Israel over the twentieth century, a process known as aliya (literally, “going up”). Yet over the years, thousands of Israelis have also chosen to leave Israel in a movement termed yerida (“going down”). As the term suggests, this reverse migration has been highly stigmatized. During the 1960s and 1970s, emigrants were publicly disparaged in the Israeli media for having abandoned a struggling state. Consequently, Israeli migrants suffered strong feelings of guilt that often, hampered their integration process abroad, a phenomenon observed as late as the 1990s. This paper, however, reveals that feelings of stigmatization have greatly decreased among Israeli migrants in recent years. The study is based on research that I conducted in 2008–2009, involving nine months of participant observation in Vancouver’s Israeli community and 34 in‐depth interviews. Unlike in previous studies, most of my informants expressed no feelings of guilt over having left Israel. Of those who did, most framed their guilt as a longing for family and friends rather than the patriotic longing for the land as expressed by previous generations. Previous studies have also found that Israelis harbour a “myth of return”– a continuously expressed desire to return to Israel and a reluctance to accept their stay abroad as permanent. However, I have not found that the myth of return is still strong today, despite the continued prevalence of a strong sense of Israeli identity among Israelis abroad. I suggest that these changing attitudes are the product of shifting ideals in Israeli society that have developed as the state of Israel has matured. This paper thus serves to update the outdated image of Israeli migrants as it exists in the prevailing literature.     

从以色列撤离加沙看巴勒斯坦问题的解决前景

巴勒斯坦问题的最终解决将以建立独立的拥有永久边界的巴勒斯坦国而告终.至于在未来一段时间内是建立拥有临时边界和主权象征的巴勒斯坦国,还是建立独立的拥有永久边界的巴勒斯坦国则取决于巴以和谈的结果.以色列可能有条件地从它1967年第三次中东战争中所占领的约旦河西岸的大部分土地上撤走,在巴以谈判中以1949年停战线即“绿线”为基础,进行小幅度调整.     

“Now I am also Israeli”: From Illegality to Legality ‐ Life experiences and identities of migrant workers’ children after receiving civil status in Israel

In 2006 and 2010, following demands from local and international civil society organizations, Israel granted civil status to approximately 1500 undocumented migrant workers’ children. This was considered a “one time humanitarian gesture,” not to be repeated. Thousands of other children, who did not fulfill the required criteria, were left without civil status. Within the context of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, this mixed‐methods study explored how the children's life experiences have been constructed and reconstructed since the inception of their new civil status. According to the findings, 80 per cent of migrant workers’ children reveal a high degree of belonging to Israeli society, defining themselves as Israelis. For them, receiving civil status has four practical implications: being able to serve in the Israeli army; the ability to travel abroad; better access to the job market; and freedom from fear of deportation. Our study also revealed difficulties due to their religious and ethnic identities, reflected in the children's understandings of what it means to be Israeli. The complex manifestations of their newly acquired civil status is embedded in the concept of “freedom,” i.e. to do and to be what they really want to be.     

Pinkwashed

Claims regarding “gay rights” have acquired a prominent role in debates over Israel's occupation of Palestine. This often takes the form of “pinkwashing,” a term denoting the use of gay rights discourse to justify the imposition of colonial rule. This article analyzes the pornographic film Men of Israel to explore how pinkwashing reflects colonialism's depoliticizing and exclusionary logics. Men of Israel shows how pinkwashing is far more than a justificatory practice. It also legitimates, reproduces and appropriates colonial narratives to justify an alliance between supporters of gay rights and the “pro-gay” Israeli state. It simultaneously excludes a racial category of people called “Palestinians,” which includes gay Palestinians, from the rights accorded to gay men in Israel. In an era of “gay rights as human rights,” such deployments of “gay rights” highlight the necessity of directing critical scrutiny to the alliances and exclusions implicated by a particular articulation of rights.     

Palestinian National Authority's public relations policies relating to Israel: Current attitudes among Palestinian officials and media experts

This study investigates attitudes about Palestinian public relations policies during the Palestinian struggle in the Israeli media war and future challenges that will face the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in public relations planning. This study shows that Palestinian groups have mixed attitudes toward PNA's public relations plans and policies. The media experts tend to see the PNA's efforts as reactive, not pro-active. The experts think that PNA's main concern has been to follow up on daily political events, and thus its approach to public relations has been more of a reaction to Israeli practices rather than a strategic pro-active plan.     

Voices in the Adjudication of Compulsory Adoption in Israel: The Hegemonic Voice of the Professional Expert and the Unheard Voice of the Biological Parents

Ambiguity in the definitions of “parental incapability” and “child's best interests” in the Israeli law of adoption allows for different “voices” to determine their meaning. With regard to compulsory adoption, findings from texts of the judicial discourse in Israel portray the voice of the professional expert as hegemonic and that of the biological parents as unheard, revealing the nature of the practices that lead to the deligitimization of the parents’ voice. To bring about a balanced representation of the different voices, the article proposes a moralization of the legal procedure of adoption that stresses its rehabilitative rather than condemnatory character.     

Silenced Reality: Power Relations between Marital Blueprints in Israeli Marriages

In this study we examined the effect of job insecurity on couples' relationships in the context of recent macro‐level economic changes in Israel. Based on Hajer's discourse interaction approach, we conceptualized marital relationships and particularly the marital conversation as contested terrain reflecting power relations between social forces and their related discourses. We interviewed seventeen couples in which at least one of the partners suffered from job insecurity in order to trace forms of emotion work and silence in their marital interaction. We found that couples experienced a decreased ability to speak with each other. In their accounts of this experience, gendered “story lines” that we interpreted as “new” to the relationship emerged. Women's emotion work was indicative and halted change‐directed marital negotiation. The possibility that authoritative gendered relationships are reinforced in Israeli marriages during times of job insecurity is thus supported.     

NEGOTIATING NATIONAL BOUNDARIES: PALESTINIAN AND JEWISH WOMEN’S STUDIES STUDENTS IN ISRAEL

This article examines the intersection of gender and national identity in an Israeli university, focusing on the Women's Studies classroom. Taking into consideration the overshadowing effect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, we wondered how exposure to Women's Studies’ egalitarian ethos and studying in a mixed Palestinian–Jewish classroom affects the feminist solidarity and national identity of young women students. In-depth interviews with eleven Palestinian and twelve Jewish Women's Studies’ graduates indicate that solidarity between women of the two groups is built around women's issues, such as equal employment opportunities and reforms in the educational system. Considering the solidarity built around women's, as opposed to feminist, issues, it seems that national differences override the potential for a feminist solidarity.     

阿克萨清真寺宗教和政治功能解读

作为伊斯兰世界的第三大圣寺，阿克萨清真寺有着重要的宗教和政治功能，是伊斯兰宗教建筑和伊斯兰教的象征。对巴勒斯坦来说，它是国家的象征、主权的象征，也是其民族团结的象征；对以色列来说，阿克萨清真寺旁的“西墙”遗址是犹太民族信仰和民族精神的集中体现。正是由于阿克萨具有如此重要的社会功能，导致阿以之间围绕耶路撒冷老城的争夺异常激烈，并使之成为阿以和平进程中的一个“死结”。     

A forgotten history,a marginalized community: Biographical narratives of Ethiopian Jews,former activists in underground organizations during the civil war in Ethiopia, 1974–1991

Despite a proliferation of studies concerning Ethiopian Jews (formerly known as “Beta Israel”) and their lives while still in Ethiopia, a topic that has not been studied enough is their lives during the turbulent period of the 1974 revolution and the civil war that followed (ending 1991). According to most existing (Israeli) literature, this group was completely cut off from these events, or at most passively affected by them. The present study, based on 17 in-depth interviews with Ethiopian-born Israelis, shows that some members of the community were indeed deeply involved in these historical events, as political activists and/or military rebels in one of two major political parties: the TPLF and the EPRP. After a short historical introduction, the study discusses the central themes that emerged from the interviews: (1) the interviewees' deep identification with universal and contemporary ideology, (2) their deep solidarity with Ethiopia and with the organizations they belonged to, (3) abandonment of revolutionary ideology and politics after arrival in Israel. The central argument in the concluding part is that this chapter in the community's history was forgotten because it did not accord with the Ethiopian Jews' intended role as reinforcement of the official Zionist narrative of the negation of exile. This oblivion meant that the community was constructed in the Israeli public imagination as pre-modern, detached from modern ideologies and characterized by a very limited worldview.     

PLAYING WITH FIRE: On the domestication of the mobile phone among Palestinian teenage girls in Israel

This paper offers an analysis of mobile phone practices among Palestinian Israeli teenage girls, framed within a discussion about the domestication of communication technologies, women and the telephone, and Palestinian teenage girls in Israel. The paper constructs a detailed account of mobile phone use among Palestinian Israeli girls who, at the time of the fieldwork (2003-2006), used mobile phones given to them by their illicit boyfriends, unbeknownst to their parents. The analysis explores the ways in which the phone use dialectically reaffirmed and challenged intergenerational and cross-gender relationships; and reflects on the notion of 'domestication' as a framework for analysing mobile communication media.