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Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Human Rights Studies Master of Arts Program Silencing “Breaking the Silence”: The Israeli government’s agenda respecting human rights NGOs activism since 2009 Ido Dembin Thesis Adviser: Prof. Yinon Cohen Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 12 September, 2018 Abstract This research examines a key aspect in the deterioration of Israeli democracy between 2009-2018. Mainly, it looks at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Right-wing governments utilization of legislative procedure to limit the right to free speech. The aspects of the right to free speech discussed here pertain to dissenting and critical activism against these government’s policies. The suppression of said right is manifested in the marginalization, delegitimization and ultimately silencing of its expression in Human Rights NGOs activism. To demonstrate this, the research presents a case study of one such NGO – “Breaking the Silence” – and the legal and political actions designed to cause its eventual ousting from mainstream Israeli discourse. The research focuses on the importance and uniqueness of this NGO, as well as the ways in which the government perceives and acts against it. First, it analyzes the NGO’s history, modus operandi and goals, emphasizing the uniqueness that makes it a particularly fascinating case. Then, it researches the government’s specific interest in crippling and limiting its influence. Finally, it highlights the government’s toolbox and utilization thereof against it. By shining a light on this case, the research seeks to show the process of watering down of a fundamental right within Israeli democracy – which is instrumental to understanding the state’s risk of decline towards illiberal democracy. -
The Role of Ultra-Orthodox Political Parties in Israeli Democracy
Luke Howson University of Liverpool The Role of Ultra-Orthodox Political Parties in Israeli Democracy Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy By Luke Howson July 2014 Committee: Clive Jones, BA (Hons) MA, PhD Prof Jon Tonge, PhD 1 Luke Howson University of Liverpool © 2014 Luke Howson All Rights Reserved 2 Luke Howson University of Liverpool Abstract This thesis focuses on the role of ultra-orthodox party Shas within the Israeli state as a means to explore wider themes and divisions in Israeli society. Without underestimating the significance of security and conflict within the structure of the Israeli state, in this thesis the Arab–Jewish relationship is viewed as just one important cleavage within the Israeli state. Instead of focusing on this single cleavage, this thesis explores the complex structure of cleavages at the heart of the Israeli political system. It introduces the concept of a ‘cleavage pyramid’, whereby divisions are of different saliency to different groups. At the top of the pyramid is division between Arabs and Jews, but one rung down from this are the intra-Jewish divisions, be they religious, ethnic or political in nature. In the case of Shas, the religious and ethnic elements are the most salient. The secular–religious divide is a key fault line in Israel and one in which ultra-orthodox parties like Shas are at the forefront. They and their politically secular counterparts form a key division in Israel, and an exploration of Shas is an insightful means of exploring this division further, its history and causes, and how these groups interact politically. -
Schools and Votes: Primary Education Provision and Electoral Support for the Shas Party in Israel
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 470 344 SO 034 268 AUTHOR Schiffman, Eitan TITLE Schools and Votes: Primary Education Provision and Electoral Support for the Shas Party in Israel. PUB DATE 2001-08-00 NOTE 27p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (San Francisco, CA, August 30- September 2, 2001). PUB TYPE Reports Research (143) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Educational Research; Elementary Education; Foreign Countries; *Political Issues; *Political Parties; Religious Education IDENTIFIERS Empirical Research; Exploratory Studies; *Israel; Religious Fundamentalism; Research in Progress ABSTRACT This paper presents the foundation of an exploratory study about the effects of primary school education provision by the ultra-orthodox Shas party on electoral support for the party in Israel. Specifically, the research explores the question of whether and to what extent religious organizations that provide services for their clients are able to redirect the loyalties of their targeted communities away from the state and its ideology and toward the ideological goals of their organization. In addition to the discussion of prevailing theories for Shas's party success, the paper theorizes how the success of Shas can be regarded and tested as a case of political clientelism, manifested through the provision of services by the party's publicly funded education network, the Wellspring of Torah Education. Currently, the Shas school system operates schools (n=101) and kindergarten classrooms (n=484). The empirical research for this project is a work in progress. Therefore, no definitive conclusions are presented at this time, pending completion of field research in Israel. -
The Haredim As a Challenge for the Jewish State. the Culture War Over Israel's Identity
SWP Research Paper Peter Lintl The Haredim as a Challenge for the Jewish State The Culture War over Israel’s Identity Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs SWP Research Paper 14 December 2020, Berlin Abstract ∎ A culture war is being waged in Israel: over the identity of the state, its guiding principles, the relationship between religion and the state, and generally over the question of what it means to be Jewish in the “Jewish State”. ∎ The Ultra-Orthodox community or Haredim are pitted against the rest of the Israeli population. The former has tripled in size from four to 12 per- cent of the total since 1980, and is projected to grow to over 20 percent by 2040. That projection has considerable consequences for the debate. ∎ The worldview of the Haredim is often diametrically opposed to that of the majority of the population. They accept only the Torah and religious laws (halakha) as the basis of Jewish life and Jewish identity, are critical of democratic principles, rely on hierarchical social structures with rabbis at the apex, and are largely a-Zionist. ∎ The Haredim nevertheless depend on the state and its institutions for safeguarding their lifeworld. Their (growing) “community of learners” of Torah students, who are exempt from military service and refrain from paid work, has to be funded; and their education system (a central pillar of ultra-Orthodoxy) has to be protected from external interventions. These can only be achieved by participation in the democratic process. ∎ Haredi parties are therefore caught between withdrawal and influence. -
Political Parties and Interest Groups In
1 Political Parties and Interest Groups in Contemporary Israel Gregory Mahler1 December, 2007 The building blocks of Israeli democracy have been its political parties. Israel was described nearly fifty years ago as a parteienstaat, (“party-state”), and the role of political parties in the day-to-day operation of the polity has not diminished. In this session I want to discuss the structure and behavior of political parties and related interest groups, how political parties are organized in Israel, what their key issues are, and how they differ from each other. Then, my focus will shift to interest groups, another very important structure in the contemporary Israeli democratic arena. The Setting Israeli Parliamentary government. Model of Parliamentarism in Israel. The underlying factor in contemporary Israel that explains a good deal of the turbulence in the political system is that of the political party. The Israeli political system has been referred 1 This is substantially taken from Chapter 6, “Political Parties and Interest Groups,” in my recent book Politics and Government in Israel: The Maturation of a Modern State. Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. 2 to as a parteienstaat par excellence,1 and the description is appropriate. Political parties played an important role in Israel’s achieving statehood. One could even say that the State of Israel “was actually brought into existence by political parties, which were organized and developed entities . years before the coming of statehood.”2 Indeed, contemporary Israeli political parties are a direct link to the past in that virtually all have roots in some prestate political form.3 The Israeli political party system could almost be classified as overdeveloped. -
CEPS Middle East & Euro-Med Project
CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN POLICY WORKING PAPER NO. 8 STUDIES JULY 2003 Searching for Solutions THE ARAB MINORITY IN ISRAEL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT SHIRA KAMM WITH COLLEAGUES OF THE MOSSAWA CENTER This Working Paper is published by the CEPS Middle East and Euro-Med Project. The project addresses issues of policy and strategy of the European Union in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the wider issues of EU relations with the countries of the Barcelona Process and the Arab world. Participants in the project include independent experts from the region and the European Union, as well as a core team at CEPS in Brussels led by Michael Emerson and Nathalie Tocci. Support for the project is gratefully acknowledged from: • Compagnia di San Paolo, Torino • Department for International Development (DFID), London. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the author in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which he is associated. CEPS Middle East & Euro-Med Project ISBN 92-9079-441-0 Available for free downloading from the CEPS website (http://www.ceps.be) © Copyright 2003, CEPS Centre for European Policy Studies Place du Congrès 1 • B-1000 Brussels • Tel: (32.2) 229.39.11 • Fax: (32.2) 219.41.41 e-mail: [email protected] • website: http://www.ceps.be CONTENTS 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 2. Background ....................................................................................................................... -
CANDIDATES, PARTIES and BLOCS Israel in the 1990S
02 Arian (JB/D) 5/10/01 11:36 am Page 689 PARTY POLITICS VOL 7. No.6 pp. 689–710 Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi CANDIDATES, PARTIES AND BLOCS Israel in the 1990s Asher Arian and Michal Shamir ABSTRACT The Israeli party system, its parties and its voters, have undergone tremendous change. From a stable dominant party system through a competitive two-bloc system, it finds itself in the 1990s in a state of dealignment, with weakening parties, loosening party ties, fragmen- tation, growing volatility and frequent turnover in government. The combination of electoral reform, which instituted direct elections of the Prime Minister, new voting groups, and international shifts exacerbated in Israel the processes which characterize all Western democracies. While the party system and the parties are in disarray, candidates, issues and the political blocs of left and right grow in importance. KEY WORDS Ⅲ dealignment Ⅲ Israel Ⅲ issue voting Ⅲ left–right blocs Political systems change, and they change in complex ways. Just as a range of factors affects the decision of the individual voter, myriad forces drive the transformation of a society and its political system. The rules of the game may be altered; new groups of voters may emerge; international or econ- omic shifts may present new challenges. Were one to seek an apt site and an appropriate setting to study these matters, the choice of the 1999 elections in Israel would be most felicitous. Some observers, especially in the foreign media, interpreted the election of Ehud Barak as prime minister as a fundamental sea change in Israeli priorities and belief patterns. -
Israel Horizons November 2020
Israel Horizons November 2020 Contents PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE 1 Farcical Treaties By Paul Scham INSIGHTS 3 The Peace Camp’s Self-Interest Dilemma By Ron Skolnik SYMPOSIUM PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE 6 Some Reflections on Israel Farcical Treaties Symposium 2020: “Beautiful By Paul Scham Dream, Painful Reality” By Claude Goldenberg popular Israeli song from the 1970s, Machar or “Tomorrow,” envisioned a future in which wars will cease and Israelis can sail KOLOT from “Eilat to the Ivory Coast.” While the song’s premise that 8 The Negev Coexistence Forum Awars will end has not exactly been fulfilled, many Israelis apparently felt that for Civil Equality: they were almost there with the celebration of the “normalization” of Israel’s Working for Justice for relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain in a ceremony in Arab-Bedouin Citizens in September in Washington, D.C. Sudan duly followed suit a few weeks later Southern Israel once the U.S. removed it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, despite By Elianne Kremer and considerable internal opposition. The big prize, of course, is Saudi Arabia; Sabreen Abu Kaf perhaps when the current king dies and current Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon (MBS) takes the throne? Or perhaps these bouts of “friendship” might WORLD ZIONIST CONGRESS be interrupted if Donald Trump isn’t reelected? 10 The 38th World Zionist Congress I was in Israel in March 1979 when the treaty with Egypt was signed, and saw BOOK REVIEW first-hand Israelis’ joy and their expectations that the wall of hostility around them was crumbling, before the First Lebanese War inaugurated the “cold peace” 12 Olive Branch Dreams: that largely still prevails today. -
Political Parties
Political Parties: Political Parties and Interest Groups in Israel Gregory Mahler Earlham College Richmond, Indiana December 9-11, 2007 Parliamentary Government • “Westminister” vs. Presidential Government – 1. Split executive – 2. President symbolic; Prime Minister and Cabinet powerful – 3. Prime Minister and Cabinet from the Knesset – 4. Government responsible to the Knesset • The Knesset and the Prime Minister • The President Political Ideology • l. Private enterprise (a) vs. socialism (b); • 2. "Activist" Arab policy (c) vs. restraint (d); • 3. Torah oriented life (e) vs. secularism (f); • 4. Pro-Soviet Union (g) vs. pro-West (h); • 5. Zionist (i) vs. non-Zionist (j).* A---------------------------------------------------------------------B C---------------------------------------------------------------------D E---------------------------------------------------------------------F G---------------------------------------------------------------------H I----------------------------------------------------------------------J * Thomas Goodland, "A Mathematical Presentation of Israel's Political Parties," British Journal of Sociology 8 (1957): 263-66. Political Parties Functions of Political Parties – Personnel Agencies – Organize Groups and Articulate Demands – Frame of Reference – Linkage Mechanisms The Electoral System • Proportional Representation (Israel) vs. Single-Member-District Representation (U.S.) • Electoral Lists of Political Parties • Accuracy of Representation • The 1992 “Deviation” The Complexity of the Coalition-Formation Process • Situation I: Simplest Majority Possibilities – Parties: A (44), B (42), C (14) AB, AC, BC, ABC • Situation II: More Complex Majority Possibilities – Parties: A (38), B (20), C (17), D (15), E (10) AB, AC, AD, ABC, ABD, ABE, ADE, BCD, etc. • Situation III: Most Complex Majority Possibilities – Parties: A (30), B (19), C (12), D (9), E (8), F (8), G (7), H (7) ABC, ABD, ABE, ABF, ABG, BCDE, CDEFGH, etc. Approx. Life of Date of Govt. Knesset Prime Minister (Party) Coalition Partners Govt. -
Israel's Religious Right and the Question of Settlements
ISRAEL’S RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND THE QUESTION OF SETTLEMENTS Middle East Report N°89 – 20 July 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................... i I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 II. NATIONAL-RELIGIOUS FRAGMENTATION AND RADICALISATION............ 3 III. THE TIME OF THE ULTRA-ORTHODOX............................................................... 12 IV. JEWISH ACTIVIST TOOLS ........................................................................................ 17 A. RHETORIC OR REALITY? ............................................................................................................17 B. INSTITUTIONAL LEVERAGE ........................................................................................................17 1. Political representation...............................................................................................................17 2. The military................................................................................................................................20 3. Education ...................................................................................................................................24 C. A PARALLEL SYSTEM ................................................................................................................25 V. FROM CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TO VIOLENCE .................................................... -
The Way Forward
The Way Forward Israel and India as the two leading parliamentary democracies have traveled a long and difficult electoral terrain in the past 70 years toward political independence. Sharing commonalities on various socio- economic, religious and political issues, Israel and India also exhibit distinct differences on these issues. The successful holding of parliamen- tary elections from independence to date—twentieth in Israel and six- teenth in India—strengthens the spirit of their democratic survival. The political governance in the two nations in the twenty-first century assumes significance in view of transformation from politico–emotive issues to economico–pragmatic issues, especially in the aftermath of globalization of the 1980s. Their polities witness a unique feature of a shift from ‘one- party dominance’ to ‘multiparty coalition’, which came to be character- ized by the term, ‘Coalitional Multipolarity’. The focus of the book has been more on the changing dynamics of the parties and party systems of Israel and India. As both the countries share common historical and colonial experiences, the party formations in the two nations before and after independence get unprecedented signifi- cance. Researchers on parties and party systems might not have witnessed extensive commonalities in the systems of two parliamentary democratic © The Author(s) 2018 343 S.K. Choudhary, The Changing Face of Parties and Party Systems, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5175-3 344 The Way Forward nations in terms of their electoral behavior, democratic pattern of gover- nance, party dominance and uniform shifts in party systems. From this perspective, comparing democracies, parties and governance of Israel and India leave good scope for the new researchers to delve into the actual dynamics of the two systems. -
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DEMOCRACY-2019/10/07 1 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION FALK AUDITORIUM DEMOCRACY, NATIONALISM AND POPULISM: THE U.S., ISRAEL, AND BEYOND Washington, D.C. Monday, October 7, 2019 PARTICIPANTS: Moderator: NATAN SACHS Fellow and Director Center for Middle East Policy The Brookings Institution Panelists: WILLIAM A. GALSTON Ezra K. Zilkha Chair and Senior Fellow Governance Studies The Brookings Institution SHANY MOR Associate Fellow, Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College; Former Director for Foreign Policy, Israeli National Security Council YAEL (YULI) TAMIR President, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design; Adjunct Professor, University of Oxford * * * * * ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 500 Montgomery Street, Suite 400 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 DEMOCRACY-2019/10/07 2 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. SACHS: Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much and I apologize for the delay. Long story short, it’s my fault. Thank you very much for coming. We have -- we are delighted to see packed house for what is obviously the top issue in the news today which is the philosophical aspects of nationalism. But besides everything that’s happening in Turkey and in Washington and in Jerusalem and in Iraq and in Egypt and let’s not forget London where both Shany and Yuli spent a lot of time, besides that, this is the hottest topic. So the title of our panel today is Democracy. Nationalism and Populism and we are looking at it from a perspective, especially of U.S. and Israel but not focused solely on that. So this is not really about the state of Israel today.