Black‐market Medicine and Public Opinion Towards the Welfare State: Evidence from Israel

Based on a survey and interviews, this article presents and analyses Israeli public opinion toward black‐market medicine (BMM) and the welfare state. In addition to providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of the existence of under‐the‐table payments in Israel, we suggest various insights into this phenomenon. While most citizens admit that they would consider making under‐the‐table payments in order to receive preferential medical treatment, when the questions mention words such as ‘illegal’ or ‘bribe’, respondents tend to be less tolerant of such activities. We find that, first, there is a basic willingness among Israeli citizens to use BMM. Second, despite this predilection, Israeli citizens are reluctant to articulate their willingness to engage in such illegal activities. This reluctance implies the existence of a moral barrier among the population as far as identifying themselves with illegal behaviour is concerned. We may infer the existence of a gap between declared attitudes and behaviour. Third, the fact that people's willingness to engage in BMM is greater than their willingness to adopt black‐market strategies in other areas signifies the special nature of health care. Finally, by connecting the phenomenon of BMM to public opinion regarding the welfare state, we point to a possible gap between normative attitudes and preferences produced by structural conditions.     

‘From badness to sickness’:1 the role of ethnopsychology in shaping ethnic hierarchies in Israel

This article explores the role of the psychological sciences in depoliticising processes of ethnic demarcation and marginalisation within the Jewish population in Israel. It shows how the psychological sciences have provided the scientific foundation by which cultural domination and subordination have been essentialised. The study traces the ways in which ethnopsychological discourse has changed its contours over time. Early ethnopsychological discourse provided an overt link between the ‘cultural backwardness’ and ‘psychological impairment’ of the Mizrahi Jew. In light of broad social and political transformations, in the more recent model the overt ethnic signifier was silenced, and the Mizrahi ‘impaired mind’ appeared to be detached from its ethnic roots while being attributed to the same ethnic population. Both ethnopsychological forms have focused on the individual's ‘special needs’ and ‘inherent psychological impairment’, obscuring the role of social and political forces in shaping social gaps in Israeli society and reinforcing the hegemonic discourse of nurture. The latter has provided a negative mirror image of the modern Ashkenazi secular Israeli Jew following Western cultural models of self‐control as the universal index of health and progress. This study is based on both primary and secondary sources as well as on my in situ observations.     

Frontline social service as a battlefield: Insights from street-level bureaucrats' interactions with violent clients

How do different types of social service providers experience and respond to violent clients? The street-level social service environment is a fertile ground for manifestations of violence by dissatisfied clients. This study examines the violence, verbal, and physical, to which street-level bureaucrats are exposed, and the different coping strategies they adopt. We explore these issues using interviews with 71 Israeli social service providers. Our results indicate that while some street-level bureaucrats are tolerant of client violence, others refuse to accept it. The former weigh their words, express empathy and seek to satisfy demands. The latter recruit the support of additional players and server relationships.     

Religion and community philanthropic organizations: The case of the United Jewish Appeal‐Federation of New York

This article explores the processes that occur when community philanthropic organizations develop religious expressions and practices by examining the shifts that took place within the United Jewish Appeal‐Federation of New York between 1990 and 2014. As the findings indicate, the gradual integration of ethnoreligious practices, norms, and expressions into the Federation's missions, routine, activities, and distribution of resources, as well as among staff and volunteers, reshaped the Federation's identity and faith‐based orientation. This process led the Federation to move beyond being a faith‐background organization toward becoming a faith‐affiliated organization, expressing Jewish beliefs through its charitable work and philanthropic activities. The article highlights the resulting dilemmas and obstacles faced by the Federation and concludes with a discussion of the implications for understanding the process of increased religion among community philanthropic organizations.     

Financial Hardship and Emergency Relief in Victoria

Abstract

The existence and provision of emergency relief remains one of the more contentious aspects of poverty relief in Australia. This is largely due to a fundamental difference of opinion within government and the welfare sector about how to best tackle the financial hardship being experienced by people in need. Some contend that emergency relief should be expanded and better funded by the Commonwealth, whereas others believe it should be discontinued altogether and replaced by more generous social welfare payments. This debate continues unresolved for a number of reasons, including a lack of reliable and comprehensive data on who uses emergency relief in Australia and why. This paper reports on a State-wide investigation undertaken of emergency relief use in Victoria between 2007 and 2008. It has found that existing social welfare recipients—especially those on the disability support pension, parenting payment, and Newstart allowance—are the main users of emergency relief, who are living in households headed by a single adult, and forced to rent housing in the private sector. A disaggregation of the findings over both time and spatial regions of Victoria suggests that the level of need is not uniform. Several recommendations are offered to address the financial hardship that some people living in differing parts of Victoria face on an ongoing basis.     

Exodus from the Babylonian Captivity: The Jews of Modern Iraq

The solving of the Eastern Question during the twentieth century ended the existence of the oldest Jewish Diaspora community; modern political, social, and economic phenomenon marginalized a significant ethnic minority that resided in Iraq for over two millennia. Much of this breakdown of relations with the Muslim majority, and the further marginalization of the Iraqi Jewish community can be traced to several events after the turn of the century that occurred during the inter-war period and extending to the creation of Israel in 1948. A rise in Arab nationalism, Germanophilia, British colonialism, and more importantly the answering of the Palestine Question effectively marginalized, and subsequently lead to the expulsion of the Iraqi Jewish community. The Iraqi Jews were marginalized in part by religio-cultural differences in language, which were exacerbated by Jewish economic preeminence in international commerce, which had expanded since the European Capitulations in the 1800s. Furthermore, Jews were denied full cultural inclusion by their exclusion from the military, which served as a cultural and political force in the period of Iraqi state-formation. Coupled with Zionism's rise in Palestine, and Europe, and its regional impact, the Iraqi Jews became viewed as a fifth column and a Trojan horse of European and Zionist imperialism by the Iraqi Muslim majority. Tensions came to a head in the Farhud of June 1941, an anti-Jewish uprising, which followed a pro-Nazi coup lead by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. The Farhud came to symbolize the breaking point for the Iraqi Jewish community; because of a disproportionately privileged socio-economic status that was based on a different cultural existence, and regional political factors, the Jews of Iraq had been rejected by their host society of two millennia.