Citizens Of Israel Research Articles

Update on Conflict and Diplomacy

This update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and Israel, compiled from a survey of more than 100 print, wire, television, and online sources providing U.S., Israeli, Arab, and international independent and government coverage of unfolding events. Regional events figure heavily in developments from 16 August 2017 to 15 November 2017 as the Saudi Arabian crown prince steps out of the shadows of secret meetings with Israeli and U.S. officials; Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri announces his resignation under mysterious circumstances in Riyadh; and Prince Mohammad bin Salman summons PA president Mahmoud Abbas to the Saudi capital just two days later. These actions come soon after representatives from Hamas and Fatah sign a new reconciliation agreement in Cairo, prompting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to threaten to upend Trump's peace initiative. Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition continue to quarrel internally over settlement growth and annexation. They also continue their crackdown on the Israeli opposition, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Earlier in the quarter, U.S. president Donald Trump asks the Palestinians to delay unilateral moves at international forums while he puts together a plan for restarting Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Exposure to screens of digital media devices, sleep, and concentration abilities in a sample of Israel adults

A major consequence of the invasion of digital media devices with screens equipped with light-emitting diode (LED) into bedrooms exposes the users to ongoing short wavelength (SWL) lighting during the evening and at night when under natural conditions, long wavelength are dominant. Results of several studies reveal a negative physiological, behavioral, and functional outcome of the exposure to SWL artificial light at night (ALAN) from digital media screens. The aims of our study are to assess the relationships between digital media usage, sleep patterns, subjective sleepiness, and attention abilities in adult Israeli citizens compared with Israeli adolescents. We recruited 280 adult participants using convenience sample method, 49% males and 51% females with an age range of 18–82. The participants filled out self-reporting novel and original questionnaires as follows: demographic, general health evaluation, sleep habits, and difficulties by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS), prevalence, and usage patterns of digital media devices. Smartphones are the most used digital media device in the evening and after bedtime (the time one gets to sleep in bed). Israeli adults used smartphones for 30 min and TV for about 15 min after bedtime. We noted that excessive exposure to these devices at nighttime was associated with longer sleep latency (r = 0.192, p < 0.01) and decreased sleep hours (r = − 0.143, p < 0.05). Moreover, we found a negative correlation between attention abilities in the morning and the usage time of digital media at nighttime (r = − 0.155, p < 0.01). Exposure to digital screens at evening and nighttime was positively correlated with subjective sleepiness on the KSS (r = 0.135, p < 0.05, and r = 0.261, p < 0.01). To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the association between digital media screens usage, sleep, and concentration abilities in the Israeli adult.

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

Recognition, or the lack of it, is a central concern in International Relations. However, how states cope with international misrecognition has so far not been thoroughly explored in International Relations scholarship. To address this, the article presents a theoretical framework for understanding international misrecognition by drawing on discursive and psychoanalytical theories of collective identity formation and humour studies. The article conceptualises international misrecognition as a gap between the dominant narrative of a national Self and the way in which this national Self is reflected in the ‘mirror’ of the international Other. We argue that humour offers an important way of coping with misrecognition by ridiculing and thereby downplaying international criticism. The significance for international relations is illustrated through an analysis of the public diplomacy campaign ‘Presenting Israel’, which, through parodying video clips, mobilised ordinary Israeli citizens to engage in peer-to-peer public diplomacy when travelling abroad. Public diplomacy campaigns are commonly seen by scholars and practitioners as attempts to improve the nation’s image and smoothen or normalise international Self–Other relations. However, after analysing the discursive and visual components of the campaign — which parodied how European media portrayed Israel as primitive, violent and exotic — this article observes that in the context of international misrecognition, such coping attempts can actually contribute to further international estrangement.

Contextualizing risk and protection: Perceptions of Bedouin mothers from unrecognized villages in the Naqab.

This qualitative study utilizes ecological theory, a context-informed perspective, and an interactive model to study minority children, while considering structural factors, oppression, segregation, power dynamics, and awareness of the political context. It examines perceptions of risk and protection using "snowball" sampling of 33 Bedouin mothers, citizens of Israel, from the unrecognized villages (UVs) in the Naqab in Southern Israel. Data were collected via in-depth, semistructured interviews during 2011 to 2013. The interviews were thematically analyzed and then arranged according to the 5 contextual levels of the ecological systems theory. The findings demonstrate a wide range of risks to child development including immediate physical environment, lack of supervision, child characteristics, relationships in the child's life, difficult life conditions, sociopolitical risks, and risks related to the entry of technology. Despite these numerous risk factors, Bedouin families cope by trying to prevent risks, utilizing the mothers' constant investment in their children, family and tribal support, spirituality and religious beliefs, the positive use of technology, formal education, and cultural identity. Our findings suggest that marginalization and political discrimination affect child development on different contextual levels. Moreover, the findings highlight the need to include parental voices in discourse on risk and protection and the contribution of a context-informed perspective that includes awareness of historical and political effects. (PsycINFO Database Record

Renouncing Citizenship as Protest: Reflections by a Jewish Israeli Ethnographer

The events of summer 2014 and the painful realizations that they invoked have led me to consider renouncing my Israeli citizenship. Contemplating what may seem like a straightforward stance of resistance, I have come to realize how complex it actually is. This short essay considers renunciation as an act of protest from the standpoint of a Jewish Israeli legal ethnographer and geographer... [The essay] foregrounds the following questions: aren’t all modern states founded upon bloodshed? And, if so, shouldn’t all citizens be renouncing their citizenship? Or from the opposite angle: why bother replacing one flawed citizenship with another? In my own case, how is my current US citizenship better than the Israeli one that I am considering renouncing? What, if any, is a citizen’s responsibility vis-a-vis her nation-state(s), and how far back does this responsibility go? As a citizen of the United States, am I now responsible for slavery? For the war in Iraq? For the continued oppression of people of color and the ongoing colonization of Puerto Rico? And does this responsibility change if I hold double or even multiple citizenships?... In any case, the renunciation of citizenship as protest cannot be a renunciation of responsibility to redress injustice, a shedding of liabilities; it is, rather, a taking on of enhanced responsibility, an act of care.

Populist Rightwing Ideological Exposition: Netanyahu’s Regime as a Case in Point

Populism is often described as a thin-centered ideology, an underdeveloped worldview which can be found both on the extreme right and radical left, in authoritarian and democratic regimes alike. This paper goes against the grain arguing that rightwing populism of the dominant conservative party in established democracies developed a fully-fledged ideology which is irreducible to the quest for power or the desire to rule. Crucially, it encompasses a distinct notion of democracy which is hostile to rights-based theory yet forwards a discourse which is discernible and unique, reinterpreting the will of the people and majority rule. It further mixes neoliberal economics-cum-politics with neo-conservative nationalism and upholds a particular idea of the people and the state. Crucially, it forwards a concept of governability which centers on the government as the bearer of sovereignty encroaching upon the role of the parliament, courts and the gate-keepers, including the public media. This paper analyzes the 2015 Israeli election as a case in point. Ideological analysis, we argue, can explain for example why the most inciting government against the Arab Israeli citizens has also put forward the most radical 5 years plan for economic rehabilitation of non-Jewish minorities. The tension between neo-conservatism and neoliberalism shapes this domain. While national nuances are crucial, they still function as an ideological family so that a great deal can be learnt from one exemplar to the other.

Mobilising bodies, narrating security: tourist choreographies at Jerusalem’s Holocaust History Museum

Memorials and museums commemorating war and atrocity mobilise visitors into narratives about security and sovereignty. The skilful architecture of Jerusalem’s Holocaust History Museum steers international tourists and Israeli citizens into a choreography that evokes the Holocaust as experience of radical insecurity and constrained mobility for Jewish victims. The visit reassuringly concludes with the establishment of the state of Israel, followed by familiar tourism rituals: beautiful panoramas, peaceful gardens, and souvenir shops. This ending constructs post-1948 experiences of mobility in Israel as characterised by security and freedom and obscures contemporary violence and unequal mobility/security landscapes in Israel and Palestine.

The Israeli Selective Myopia and the Missing Culturally Sensitive Support for Bedouin IDF War Widows

Israel is a democratic state that champions the aspiration for equality, justice, and acceptance of multiculturalism. We critically examine the officially declared policy vis-a-vis the actual fulfillment of minorities’ equal rights. In keeping with the rights-based approach to social work, minority groups are entitled to any rights granted to the dominant group in their countries, as they have equal rights to realize their humanity. The present research project showcases a severe violation of human rights in a hitherto unstudied minority sector in Israel, namely Bedouin Israeli Defense Forces war widows. These widows are positioned in an extremely paradoxical intersection as their fallen husband died during service in the Israeli Defense Forces, an army which is perceived by most Bedouins as the force which conquered and expropriated their land. Analysis of in-depth interviews with seven Bedouin war widows has led us to expose an abuse of their human rights, due to a failure to take into consideration their unique religious and cultural imperatives and restrictions. We explore their paradoxical lived experience of being formally entitled to equal human rights while reporting suffering discrimination, exclusion, and marginalization. In the name of these silenced Israeli citizens, we call for public awareness of this severe violation of human rights and propose some practical suggestions as to how to adapt the provision of social work support to the cultural features of these recipients, in order to truly adhere to the democratic vision.

Lack of legal status and health rights of Palestinian women spouses of Palestinian Israeli citizens

Lack of legal status and health rights of Palestinian women spouses of Palestinian Israeli citizens

Israeli Groups’ Entitlement to Social Rights: Views of Israeli Jewish and Arab Teachers

This study is based on distributive justice theory and research that it has produced as well as on accumulated knowledge about sociocultural reality in Israel. It demonstrates a situation in which different groups are excluded to varying degrees from the Israeli moral community as a consequence of the prevailing Jewish pioneering ethos of distributive justice. A sample of Jewish and Arab Israeli teachers was used. Out of the seven groups defined a priori, the Jewish subsample recognized five and ordered them along the anticipated social-exclusion dimension, from least to most excluded, as follows: (1) Ashkenazi/Mizrahi; (2) Haredi/Ole; (3) Druze; (4) Arabs; and (5) Foreign workers. In contrast, the distinction made by Arab respondents was dichotomous, between the Jews and the Arabs/Foreign workers, and not clear-cut at that. Furthermore, the Arab subsample ranked their “ingroup” as the most strongly entitled to social rights. The results obtained are attributed to the bifurcation of the Israeli citizenship discourse, which comprises, as an alternative to the Western egalitarian civil normative framework, an ethnorepublican discourse that implicitly promotes inequality (Shafir and Peled 2002).

Sensitivity to Casualties in the Battlefield

This study examines how long the Israeli people support the government for an ongoing war. The rally-round-the-flag phenomenon, proclaiming that wartime governments can enjoy majority public support at the beginning of wars, is a challenging topic in the field of International Relations. Although this effect was noticed at the time of the Second Lebanon War, it remains unclear which particular condition determined the duration of public support in Israel. While the rally effect is a universal phenomenon, it is important to keep in mind the particularity of Israel. We hold on to an alternative theory, bandwagon effect, emphasizing the role of affectivity of individuals on the flow of information in crisis, in place of the standard rational expectation theory. An original experimental survey was conducted to examine the bandwagon effect in the rally phenomenon among Israeli citizens.

In the shadow of the 1967 war: Israel and the Palestinians

The 1967 war in the Middle East has had major ramifications on the entire region including Israel. This article focuses on three of the major longstanding ramifications namely the change in the demographic balance between Jews and Palestinians west of the Jordan River, the challenge that the military regime imposed on the Palestinians in the newly occupied Palestinian territories poses regarding the nature of the Israeli regime as a whole and the reconnecting of Palestinians, citizens of Israel, with their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This article demonstrates how Israeli policies towards Palestinians impacted on the disposition of the Palestinian community inside Israel and how the coming together of Israeli policies, changes in Palestinian struggle for independence and social transformations inside the Palestinian community in Israel have led to different adaptation strategies among the Palestinians to face their in-between reality.

Social and political determinants of health equity of Palestinians in Jerusalem: a qualitative assessment

BackgroundEast Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, and the Palestinian people living there made permanent residents and became separated from those living in the West Bank. In a qualitative assessment we sought to understand the social and political determinants of health equity for this population in East Jerusalem. MethodsWe reviewed the scientific literature into health disparities and social determinants in Jerusalem and comparative studies between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, whether Israeli citizens, residents, or people living in the remaining part of the occupied Palestinian territory. Our review was limited to English-language articles published after 2000. 682 results were scanned and 117 articles reviewed. We did semistructured interviews with 15 key health policymakers or experts from Palestinian, Israeli, and other international stakeholder groups. Data were recorded, transcribed, coded, organised into themes, and analysed with Rifkin's CHOICE framework that links human rights, empowerment, and health equity. FindingsFew health studies examined Palestinians living in Jerusalem as a distinct population group; official data was representative of Jerusalem's annexed status. In the reviewed literature, research methods showed little participation by Palestinians, the lack of an appropriate reference group, selection bias in data sets, and survey methods that were not adapted to the studied population. Health differences between populations in Israel were attributed to differences in culture, ethnic origin, sex, or lifestyle, with little discussion of underlying social determinants. Well documented social and political restrictions on Palestinians in Jerusalem and life-course analyses were absent from health research. Key informant narratives transcended sociopolitical identities and showed differences in ideological or value systems. Informants recognised that Palestinians have poor social determinants, but had different perspectives about the causes of the causes of health inequalities. 14 of 15 key informants offered insight into Palestinian experience in Jerusalem, including perceptions of discriminatory demographic and planning laws, exclusionary policies, imposed language and health system, and social and labour integration inequities. InterpretationOur results were consistent with evidence in scientific literature that structural barriers, cultural subordination, and hostile state values adversely affect health of minority populations. Palestinians in East Jerusalem might perceive exclusionary national policies, which inequitably distribute social determinants, create structural barriers to equity, and hinder Palestinian development and free choice, to adversely affect their health and wellbeing. FundingNone.

“Mixed Jew - it's like being half pregnant”: Russian-Jewish mixedness in the bureaucratic encounter with the Jewish State1

ABSTRACTThis article presents an ethnographic picture of Russian immigrants of mixed Jewish origin in their encounter with the state national bureaucracy in Israel. It discusses the meanings and outcomes of the religious categories of classifications embraced by the Jewish state for the newcomers' lived identities. The article suggests that the meanings of ethnic mixture are not given, but that they are constituted in the course of the bureaucratic encounter of migration. Unfolding one ethnographic narrative, I reveal the discrepancy between Israeli citizenship and nationality, expose the contradictions between the Soviet and Israeli perceptions of Jewishness, and interpret the role of religion in the acculturation of Russian-speaking immigrants of mixed Jewish origin.

Love, Theft, and Other Entanglements

Love, Theft, and Other Entanglements

Facebook users’ engagement with Israel’s public diplomacy messages during the 2012 and 2014 military operations in Gaza

In an attempt to broaden our understanding on current uses of public diplomacy tools and their effectiveness, the study focuses on an Israeli citizens’ initiative (Israel Under Fire) that promoted messages via social media in the two recent rounds of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (2012, 2014). The study examines the message strategies used by the initiative in their English Facebook page (N = 926 posts), and the users’ engagement they generated. Four message strategies were identified: (1) Israel has the Right to Defend Itself; (2) “What Would YOU Do (if you were in the same situation)?”; (3) Exposing Hamas’ Propaganda; and (4) Free Gaza from Hamas. The analysis revealed that the “What would YOU do?” strategy generated significantly greater audience engagement compared to the other message strategies. The study indicates that countries such as Israel, which suffer from a Goliath image problem, may benefit more from messages that encourage online audiences to engage in perspective taking and to think about the conflict vicariously than from messages that refer directly to the positions of the conflicting sides.

Stereotype Threat and Stereotype Reactance: The Effect of Direct and Indirect Stereotype Manipulations on Performance of Palestinian Citizens of Israel on Achievement Tests

The role of stereotype threat in performance of Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) on the psychometric exam (parallel to the SAT in the United States) was investigated. Two experiments, conducted in field settings, examined the role of stereotype threat in performance of PCI students in psychometric-like tests. Experiment 1, conducted on 135 Arab high school students, indicated that activation of the stereotype pertaining to the lower academic ability of PCI lowered participants’ performance relative to a control group. Experiment 2, which included 115 Arab students who participated in preparatory courses for the psychometric tests, showed that a direct manipulation of the stereotype led to stereotype reactance and increased performance, whereas an indirect manipulation activated the stereotype and resulted in lowered performance. These findings suggest that activating a stereotype threat or a stereotype reactance is contingent on the manipulation employed. Practical implications of these results are discussed.

The construction of Israeli Citizenship Law: Intertwining political philosophies

Because of the significance attached to it, the Knesset passed the 1950 Law of Return in an unprecedentedly short time, but it took two more years to pass the Citizenship Law. The official protocols regarding the legislation of Israel’s Citizenship Law illuminate the main concerns of the drafters. The goal of the emerging national citizenship regime was not just to promote Jewish immigration but to establish a modern state that prohibited dual citizenship, accepted naturalizations, prevented statelessness, and granted equal citizenship to women. These policies are accumulations of countless opinions, values, interests, and ideas, each with different conceptions of citizenship and nationhood.

Back to the Land

Back to the Land

Routinergency: Domestic securitization in contemporary Israel

The Israeli law obliges the construction of bomb shelters as integrated rooms within every residential unit throughout the country. Based on 12 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews with both Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Palestinian citizens of Israel, we argue that the mundane presence and use of these everyday-cum-security spaces has produced a new civilian sensibility towards securitization, which we call ‘ routinergency’: the naturalization of security emergency as intrinsic to the flow of routine life. We demonstrate that while the privatization of domestic securitization affords reliable protection to every citizen, routinergency also excludes Arab–Palestinians from the ethnonational boundaries that still inform the constitution of collective identities in Israel. Yet, as embodied practice, routinergency also enables access to a universal form of citizenship in Israel, which is premised on socioeconomic criticism of Zionist discourse. We use the topological metaphor of a Mobius strip to discuss how mamad rooms accentuate the contemporary tension in Israel between these ethnonational and neoliberal vectors of citizenship.