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220 books match the query 'Israel' and 14 start with c

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Canine Pioneer

The Extraordinary Life of Rudolphina Menzel

Edited by Susan Martha Kahn

Brandeis University Press, 2022

An insightful look at the life and legacy of a pioneer cynologist between Europe and Israel.

Rudolphina Menzel (née Waltuch, 1891–1973), was a Viennese-born, Jewish scientist whose pioneering research on canine psychology, development, and behavior fundamentally shaped the ways dogs came to be trained, cared for, and understood. Between the two world wars, Menzel was known throughout Europe as one of the foremost breeders and trainers of police dogs and served as a sought-after consultant at Kummersdorf, the German military dog training institute in Berlin. She was also a fervent Zionist who was responsible for inventing the canine infrastructure in what came to be the State of Israel and for training hundreds of dogs to protect Jewish lives and property in pre-state Palestine. Teaching Jews to like dogs and training dogs to serve Jews became Menzel’s unique kind of Zionist mission. Detailed and insightful, Canine Pioneer: The Extraordinary Life of Rudolphina Menzel brings to light an important piece of history.

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Captive Revolution

Palestinian Women's Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System

Nahla Abdo

Pluto Press, 2014

Women throughout the world have always played their part in struggles against colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression. However, there are few books on Arab political prisoners, fewer still on the Palestinians who have been detained in their thousands for their political activism and resistance.

Nahla Abdo's Captive Revolution seeks to break the silence on Palestinian women political detainees, providing a vital contribution to research on women, revolutions, national liberation and anti-colonial resistance. Based on stories of the women themselves, as well as her own experiences as a former political prisoner, Abdo draws on a wealth of oral history and primary research in order to analyse their anti-colonial struggle, their agency and their appalling treatment as political detainees.

Making crucial comparisons with the experiences of female political detainees in other conflicts, and emphasising the vital role Palestinian political culture and memorialisation of the 'Nakba' have had on their resilience and resistance, Captive Revolution is a rich and revealing addition to our knowledge of this little-studied phenomenon.

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Chaim Weizmann

A Biography

Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani

Brandeis University Press, 2024

A magisterial biography of Israel’s first president.

In Chaim Weizmann: A Biography, Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani show how Weizmann, a leader of the World Zionist Organization who became the first president of Israel, advocated for a Jewish state by gaining the support of influential politicians and statesmen as well as Jews around the world. Beginning with his childhood in Belorussia and concluding with his tenure as president, Reinharz and Golani describe how a Russian Jew, who immigrated to the United Kingdom in the early twentieth century, was able to advance the goals of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist Organization. Weizmann is also shown as a man of human foibles—his infatuations, political machinations, and elitism—as well as a man of admirable qualities—intelligence, wit, charisma, and dedication.

Weizmann, who came to the UK to work as a biochemist, was in regular communication with British political figures, including prime ministers Arthur James Balfour, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and Ramsay MacDonald. He also met presidents of the United States from Woodrow Wilson to Harry Truman. His success in earning the support of British political figures helped lead to the Balfour Declaration, which advocated for a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine.

As the authors show in this authoritative account of Weizmann’s life, Weizmann was guided by the belief that “Zion shall be redeemed in justice,” a phrase that recurs often in his writings.

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Citizenship, Faith, and Feminism

Jewish and Muslim Women Reclaim Their Rights

Jan Feldman

Brandeis University Press, 2011

Religious women in liberal democracies are “dual citizens” because of their contrasting status as members of both a civic community (in which their gender has no impact on their constitutional guarantee of equal rights) and a traditional religious community (which distributes roles and power based on gender). This book shows how these “dual citizens”—Orthodox Jewish women in Israel, Muslim women in Kuwait, and women of both those faiths in the U.S.—have increasingly deployed their civic citizenship rights in attempts to reform and not destroy their religions. For them, neither “exit” nor acquiescence to traditional religious gender norms is an option. Instead, they use the narrative of civic citizenship combined with a more authentic, if alternative reading of their faith tradition to improve their status.

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Communities and Law

Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities

Gad Barzilai

University of Michigan Press, 2005

"Relying on theories of politics, law, and society, Barzilai offers a 'critical communitarian' solution that views non-ruling communities as cultural foci of mobilization. His thoughtful analysis contributes to key theoretical discussions of the relationship between communitarianism and national minorities: feminism and religious fundamentalism. This insightful book explores the continuum of litigation to violence in the broader context of politics of identity. . . . Highly recommended."
--Choice

"A remarkable achievement."
--Malcolm Feeley, University of California, Berkeley

"A rich, subtle, and wide-ranging analysis of the complex interaction between law and culture in Israeli society."
--Pnina Lahav, Boston University School of Law

"Barzilai makes a major contribution to thinking about state-society relations, pointing researchers to the plurality of communities harboring different sorts of legal identities, consciousness, and practices."
--Joel Migdal, University of Washington

Communities and Law examines the intersection of communities, cultures, and laws in public life, asking important questions about how nonruling communities confront the law in their efforts to achieve political goals.

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Comparing Jewish Societies

Todd M. Endelman, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 1997

Having unfolded in the diverse communities of the diaspora, Jewish experience lends itself almost effortlessly to comparative treatment. The contributors to this volume take up the challenge, examining Jewish societies from medieval to modern times, in Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America, North Africa, India, China, and the Middle East. The essays use the methodological strategies and theoretical insights of history, sociology, anthropology, and political science to explore such topics as Jewish and African nationalism; Arab and Jewish railway workers in British-ruled Palestine; East European Jewish immigrants in New York, London, and Paris; ritual murder trials in fin-de-siècle Central Europe; and Catholic and Jewish enlightenment movements. Further, because of their comparative structure and method, these essays stimulate fresh questions about the larger societies in which Jews lived--their values, practices, and structures. Comparing Jewish Societies will appeal to students and scholars at all levels who wish to break out of old frameworks to observe the Jews and their religion with a new, methodologically sophisticated eye. Todd M. Endelman is William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan.

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Connecting with the Enemy

A Century of Palestinian-Israeli Joint Nonviolence

By Sheila H. Katz

University of Texas Press, 2016

Thousands of ordinary people in Israel and Palestine have engaged in a dazzling array of daring and visionary joint nonviolent initiatives for more than a century. They have endured despite condemnation by their own societies, repetitive failures of diplomacy, harsh inequalities, and endemic cycles of violence.

Connecting with the Enemy presents the first comprehensive history of unprecedented grassroots efforts to forge nonviolent alternatives to the lethal collision of the two national movements. Bringing to light the work of over five hundred groups, Sheila H. Katz describes how Arabs and Jews, children and elders, artists and activists, educators and students, garage mechanics and physicists, and lawyers and prisoners have spoken truth to power, protected the environment, demonstrated peacefully, mourned together, stood in resistance and solidarity, and advocated for justice and security. She also critiques and assesses the significance of their work and explores why these good-will efforts have not yet managed to end the conflict or occupation. This previously untold story of Palestinian-Israeli joint nonviolence will challenge the mainstream narratives of terror and despair, monsters and heroes, that help to perpetuate the conflict. It will also inspire and encourage anyone grappling with social change, peace and war, oppression and inequality, and grassroots activism anywhere in the world.

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Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, State, and Land of Israel

Gavin D'Costa

Catholic University of America Press, 2021

After Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church began a process of stripping away anti-Jewish sentiments within its theological culture. One question that has arisen and received very scant attention regards the theological significance of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 – and the attendant nakba, the plight of the Palestinian people. Some American evangelical Christians have developed a theology around the state of Israel, associating themselves with Zionism. Some Christian groups have developed a theology around the suffering of the Palestinian people and demand resistance to Zionism. This unique collection of essays from leading Catholic theologians from the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, England, and the Middle East reflect on the theological status of the land of Israel. These essays represent an exhaustive range of views. None avoid the new Catholic theology regarding the Jewish people. Some contributors see this as leading towards a positive theological affirmation of the state of Israel, while distancing themselves from Christian Zionists. All contributors are committed to rights of the Palestinian people. Some affirm the need for strong diplomatic and political support for Israel along with equal support for Palestinians, arguing that this is as far as the Church can go. Others argue that the Church’s emerging theology represents the guilt conscience of Europe at the cost of the Palestinian people. None deny the right of Jews to live in the land. Two Jewish scholars respond to the essays creating an atmosphere of genuine interfaith dialogue which serves Catholics to think further through these issues.

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Contours of Israeli Politics

Jewish Ethnicity, Religious Nationalism, and Democracy

Hannah M. Ridge

Temple University Press, 2025

There is no single Jewish ethnicity, and no single Jewish ethnic group constitutes a clear majority of Jewish Israelis. These intra-Jewish differences permit a social hierarchy within the “in-group” – Jewish Israelis – that privileges the Ashkenazi Jews of European descent over Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews of Middle Eastern backgrounds.

The timely Contours of Israeli Politics focuses on the socio-political ramifications of this hierarchy within the upper stratum of Israeli society. Using public opinion studies and qualitative data, Hannah Ridge examines the effects of this social hierarchy to address attitudes on Israeli ethnicity and religious majoritarianism, support for Israeli democracy, and preference for an expanded territorial state and peace with its neighbors.

As various Jewish ethnic groups face greater pressure to assert their in-group membership (their Jewishness), they are more likely to protect the status privileges of that group. This can strengthen their ideas about identity, nationalism, democratic values, and conflict attitudes. Ridge’s findings reveal the ways in which Jewish ethnicity continues to influence the politics of Israel, a Jewish ethno-religious state.

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Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation

Evidence from the London Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine

Edited by Asa Winstanley and Frank Barat

Pluto Press, 2011

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is a people’s tribunal in the spirit of the Tribunal on Vietnam that was set up by Bertrand Russell in the 1960s. This book contains a selection of the most vital evidence and testimonies presented at the London session. It includes the papers submitted to the tribunal, written by expert witnesses, based on their detailed research into the companies that prop-up Israeli occupation.

Examining the involvement of corporations in the illegal occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, the tribunal of 2010 generated widespread media coverage. The book identifies companies and corporations participating in such illegality and possibilities for legal action against them are discussed.

Released to coincide with the South Africa session at the end of 2011, Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation is a vital resource to lawyers, journalists and activists hoping to take informed action against Israeli war crimes and occupation.

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Cracks in the Wall

Beyond Apartheid in Palestine/Israel

Ben White

Pluto Press, 2018

After decades of occupation and creeping annexation, the situation on the ground in Palestine/Israel can only be described as a system of apartheid. Peace efforts have failed because of one, inconvenient truth: the Israeli maximum on offer does not meet the Palestinian minimum, or the standards of international law.

But while the situation on the ground is bleak, Ben White argues that there are widening cracks in Israel's traditional pillars of support. Opposition to Israeli policies and even critiques of Zionism are growing in Jewish communities, as well as amongst Western progressives. The election of Donald Trump has served as a catalyst for these processes, including the transformation of Israel from a partisan issue into one that divides the US establishment. Meanwhile, the Palestinian-led boycott campaign is gathering momentum, prompting a desperate backlash by Israel and its allies.

With sharp analysis, Ben White says now is the time to plot a course that avoids the mistakes of the past - a way forward beyond apartheid in Palestine. The solution is not partition and ethnic separation, but equality and self-determination - for all.

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Crossing Jerusalem

Journeys at the Centre of the World’s Trouble

Nicholas Woodsworth

Haus Publishing, 2010

Jerusalem is not an ordinary city and Crossing Jerusalem is not a standard telling of its story. At once a traditional travelogue, a questioning of spiritual values, and an examination of the beliefs that have sustains Jerusalem’s populations through centuries of conflict and division, this book offers an unusual yet penetrating perspective of the city and its inhabitancies.

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Cultural Genocide

Davidson, Lawrence

Rutgers University Press, 2012

Most scholars of genocide focus on mass murder. Lawrence Davidson, by contrast, explores the murder of culture. He suggests that when people have limited knowledge of the culture outside of their own group, they are unable to accurately assess the alleged threat of others around them. Throughout history, dominant populations have often dealt with these fears through mass murder. However, the shock of the Holocaust now deters today’s great powers from the practice of physical genocide. Majority populations, cognizant of outside pressure and knowing that they should not resort to mass murder, have turned instead to cultural genocide as a “second best” politically determined substitute for physical genocide.

In Cultural Genocide, this theory is applied to events in four settings, two events that preceded the Holocaust and two events that followed it: the destruction of American Indians by uninformed settlers who viewed these natives as inferior and were more intent on removing them from the frontier than annihilating them; the attack on the culture of Eastern European Jews living within Russian-controlled areas before the Holocaust; the Israeli attack on Palestinian culture; and the absorption of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China.

In conclusion, Davidson examines the mechanisms that may be used to combat today’s cultural genocide as well as the contemporary social and political forces at work that must be overcome in the process.

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