A DEMOCRATIC JEWISH STATE:

2021 ◽  
pp. 136-156
Keyword(s):  
2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-169
Author(s):  
Ronen Yitzhak

This article deals with Lord Moyne's policy towards the Zionists. It refutes the claim that Lord Moyne was anti-Zionist in his political orientation and in his activities and shows that his positions did not differ from those of other British senior officials at the time. His attitude toward Jewish immigration to Palestine and toward the establishment of a Jewish Brigade during the Second World War was indeed negative. This was not due to anti-Zionist policy, however, but to British strategy that supported the White Paper of 1939 and moved closer to the Arabs during the War. While serving in the British Cabinet, Lord Moyne displayed apolitically pragmatic approach and remained loyal to Prime Minister Churchill. He therefore supported the establishment of a Jewish Brigade and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in the secret committee that Churchill set up in 1944. Unaware of his new positions, the Zionists assassinated him in November 1944. The murder of Lord Moyne affected Churchill, leading him to reject the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.


2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nohad ‘Ali

This paper argues that, although the shared and universal ideology of the Islamic revival movements was adopted by the Islamic movement in Israel, the movement has been trying to embody it in diverse and distinctive ways. In principle there is a conflict between commitment to the principle of Islamic revivalism on the one hand, and being so committed in the specific context of the ethnic Jewish state, on the other. The Jewish context of the State of Israel continues to bedevil the development of the Islamic movement in Israel. Since the 1930s, Islamic revivalism in Palestine has undergone five phases of development: the Egyptian, Israeli, Palestinian, and the two phases of ‘adaptation’ and ‘post-adaptation’. These phases reflect ideological developments, rather than simply a historical evolution. They are also the outcome of three sets of constraints: structural, ideological and domestic.


2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-151

The quadrilateral meeting at Aqaba, intended to ““kick off implementation”” of the road map, was attended by King Abdallah, Prime Minister Abbas, Prime Minister Sharon, and President Bush. All four leaders made statements at the end of the meeting, but only those by Abbas and Sharon are reproduced below. President Bush's statement was noteworthy for its mention of Israel as a ““vibrant Jewish state”” (““America is strongly committed and I am strongly committed to Israel's security as a vibrant Jewish state””) and of Palestinian ““hopes”” for a ““viable”” state, and for reiterating that the Arab states ““have promised to cut off assistance and the flow of money and weapons to terrorists groups and to help Prime Minister Abbas rid Palestinian areas of terrorism.”” The statements by Abbas and Sharon were drafted with U.S. officials prior to the meeting. Though Abbas did not comply with the Israeli demand of Palestinian acknowledgment of Israel as a ““Jewish state,”” his speech provoked indignation in the occupied territories for its reference to ““the suffering of the Jews”” without mention of Palestinian suffering, its reiterated call for ending the ““armed intifada,”” and its ““renunciation”” of terrorism. Sharon resisted U.S. suggestions to refer to ““settlements,”” but did mention ““unauthorized outposts.”” In reference to Sharon's mention of ““territorial contiguity”” for a ““viable”” Palestinian state, a spokesman indicated that the contiguity would be ensured by ““bridges and tunnels.”” The text of the statements, transcribed by eMediaMill- Works and carried by the Associated Press, was posted on the Washington Post's Website.


Author(s):  
Robert Eisen

When the state of Israel was established in 1948, it was immediately thrust into war, and rabbis in the religious Zionist community were challenged with constructing a body of Jewish law to deal with this turn of events. Laws had to be “constructed” here because Jewish law had developed mostly during prior centuries when Jews had no state or army, and therefore it contained little material on war. The rabbis in the religious Zionist camp responded to this challenge by creating a substantial corpus of laws on war, and they did so with remarkable ingenuity and creativity. The work of these rabbis represents a fascinating chapter in the history of Jewish law and ethics, but it has attracted relatively little attention from academic scholars. The purpose of the present book is therefore to bring some of their work to light. It examines how five of the leading rabbis in the religious Zionist community dealt with key moral issues in the waging of war. Chapters are devoted to R. Abraham Isaac Kook, R. Isaac Halevi Herzog, R. Eliezer Waldenberg, R. Sha’ul Yisraeli, and R. Shlomo Goren. The moral issues examined include the question of who is a legitimate authority for initiating a war, why Jews in a modern Jewish state can be drafted to fight on its behalf, and whether the killing of enemy civilians is justified. Other issues examined include how the laws of war as formulated by religious Zionist rabbis compares to those of international law.


Author(s):  
Björn Siegel

This chapter examines the ideological and economic dimensions of the Zionist concept “conquest of the sea” that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s by focusing on the role played by Arnold Bernstein in the emergence of an example of a Jewish shipping industry during the interwar period. In 1895, Theodor Herzl characterized the future Jewish state as the end product of an organized mass migration and endorsed the notion of “conquest of the sea” as a necessary component of this process. The chapter first provides a background on the Palestine Shipping Company founded by Bernstein before discussing the spatial factors that influenced the emergence of a Jewish shipping industry. It suggests that the construction of a Jewish maritime “space” was guided by ideological clashes, economic and political interests, and personal networks.


This chapter reviews the book Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse (2015), by Yakir Englander and Avi Sagi, translated by Batya Stein. Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse examines the positions and debates about “sexuality” in one area of the Jewish public sphere in Israel—religious Jewry—and specifically that of the Israeli religious Zionists who, following the notion of “Torah ’im Derech Eretz” first formulated by Samson Raphael Hirsch as an answer to the Enlightenment, are now struggling in a Jewish state to combine halakhic commitment with the values of modernity. Englander and Sagi focus on questions of sexuality as defined by rabbinic notions of gender attraction and bodily integrity/autonomy: those dealing with homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation, and the relationships between the sexes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Rephael G. Stern

This article examines Zionist/Israeli comparisons and connections to India and Pakistan between 1945 and 1955. While Zionists found striking similarities between the unfolding realities in Palestine/Israel and South Asia, the exact nature of the comparison was quite equivocal. On the diplomatic axis, Israelis sought to establish full diplomatic relations with India by underscoring the similarity of their two nations. Here, comparisons were a way of positioning Israel as an analogue of India. On the technocratic axis, Israelis looked to Pakistan as a model for constructing legal institutions to expropriate Palestinian property. The appeal of Pakistan as a model was due to a perceived glaring difference: Pakistan was a Muslim state, Israel the Jewish State. Meanwhile, as Zionists/Israelis looked to India and Pakistan, Indians returned the gaze. Indian technocrats found the methods Israel used to resettle Jewish refugees and immigrants worthy of emulation. When they came to Israel to study these resettlement efforts, they were-unknowingly-often looking at projects that had been built upon former Palestinian land which the Israeli government had seized using the transplanted Pakistani law-the very same laws that had dispossessed India's new citizens, whom the technocrats were seeking to resettle. This article ultimately uncovers a broader post-imperial technocratic sphere in which nascent states continued to transplant legal institutions developed in other parts of the former colonial world to construct their own.


Pólemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Paolo Coen

Abstract This article revolves in essence around the contributions made by the architect Moshe Safdie to the Yad Vashem memorial and museum in Jerusalem. Both probably need at least a brief introduction, if for no other reason than the nature of the present publication, which has a somewhat different scope than the type of art-historical or architectural-historical journals to which reflections of this kind are usually consigned. The first part draws a profile of Safdie, who enjoys a well-established international reputation, even if he has not yet been fully acknowledged in Italy. In order to better understand who he is, we shall focus on the initial phase of his career, up to 1967, and his multiple ties to Israel. The range of projects discussed includes the Habitat 67 complex in Montreal and a significant number of works devised for various contexts within the Jewish state. The second part focuses on the memorial and museum complex in Jerusalem that is usually referred to as Yad Vashem. We will trace Yad Vashem from its conception, to its developments between the 1950s and 1970s, up until the interventions of Safdie himself. Safdie has in fact been deeply and extensively involved with Yad Vashem. It is exactly to this architect that a good share of the current appearance of this important institute is due. Through the analysis of three specific contributions – the Children’s Memorial, the Cattle Car Memorial and the Holocaust History Museum – and a consideration of the broader context, this article shows that Yad Vashem is today, also and especially thanks to Safdie, a key element in the formation of the identity of the state of Israel from 1967 up until our present time.


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