Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social movements – Israel'

This study engaged in pushing the current political limitations created by the political impasse of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, by imagining new possibilities for radical political change, agency, and subjectivity for both the international activists volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement as well as Palestinians enduring the brutality of life under occupation. The role of the witness and testimony is brought to bear on activism and rhetoric the social movement ISM in Palestine. Approaches the past studies of the rhetoric of social movements arguing that rhetorical studies often disassociated 'social' from social movements, rendering invisible questions of the social and subjectivity from their frames for evaluation. Using the testimonies of these witnesses, Palestinians and activists, as the rhetorical production of the social movement, this study provides an effort to put the social body back into rhetorical studies of social movements. The relationships of subjectivity and desubjectification, as well as, possession of subjects by agency and the role of the witness with each of these is discussed in terms of Palestinian and activist potential for subjectification and desubjectifiation.

The centrality of the police in everyday life means police officers are in position of power to actively support or threaten democratic activities (Sklansky, 2008) for example during protests. In democracies, policing duties should be performed in ways that sustain democratic values, rather than undermine them (Loader, 2006), yet that is not always the reality. Police training is one of the tools for aligning officers' behaviour with societal norms; it is considered a protection against the possibility that police officers abuse the wide-ranging powers they hold (Manning, 2010). Training programs are therefore a basic feature of all police forces' organizational approach. Despite its centrality, training has not received extensive academic attention; there is a pressing need to understand the impact of training on police behaviour and the mechanisms thorough which it operates (Skogan & Frydl, 2004). This thesis attempts to advance the evidence-base of democratic police training following the Medical Research Council's framework for the development and evaluation of complex social interventions (Craig et al., 2008). The Israeli Border Police was chosen as the context to examine the potential of training to advance democratic norms. The three stages of the research project included: theoretical modelling of the existing complex training intervention to assess its alignment with existing evidence; participatory development and piloting of a training curriculum on policing of protests in a democracy that used an Adult Education approach and introduced Procedural Justice-related components; and a pilot quasi-randomised study to evaluate this training. Analysis and reporting are carried out in a way that allows assessment of prospective scale-up and generalisability. Flowing from the empirical work, four strands of theoretical contributions are put forward. First, a theoretical model of police training is proposed, drawing on social psychology constructs. Second, contact theory, which originates in peace education, is proposed as a possible platform for designing both police training and their evaluation studies. Third, four factors limiting the efficacy of Procedural Justice & Legitimacy based training interventions in deeply divided societies are outlined. Fourth, the Border Police case study is used to substantiate the value of participatory research methods for advancing knowledge translation and evidence-based policing.

This thesis examines the role emotions play in the practice and sociality of Palestinian solidarity activism in Israel and Palestine. It finds that emotion is a subtle and sophisticated, and often ambiguous, form of knowledge and perception which is implicit in forming, appraising and adjusting the relationships participants have with intimates, fellow dissenters and public discourses on identity and the regional conflict. Fieldwork was based in and around Jerusalem and carried out over twelve months in 2011-12. This is a highly diverse transnational field where Palestinians, Israelis and Internationalists come together at specific times and places to practice various forms of dissent, largely but not exclusively against the socio-political conditions of the Palestinians vis-à-vis Israeli State policy. I present three separate propositions on Weirdness, Wrongness and Love, which relate to three different affective dimensions; perception, morality and loyalty. Each proposition also develops upon what Hannah Arendt defined the innate political faculties or activities of the human condition; thinking, action and judging. The perceptive quality of finding something Weird is found to produce doubt in the subjective mind, the purpose for which Arendt believed thinking to be a political act. The moral appraisal that something is Wrong, underwrites concerted political action in the public realm. Finally judging, as the attempt to understand the world from the perspective of another, is facilitated by the discourse of Love in the long-term loving relations activists have with friend and family, who are antagonistic to the aims of solidarity activism. Taken together these feelings are found to flow through and inform one another, constituting a nuanced affective understanding and appraisal of our world, one that is producing and maintaining a politically engaged transnational community of dissent. This community has been fostered to a large degree by the insistence and perseverance of a small number of Palestinians in villages across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who call upon peoples of all creeds, colours and places to witness and experience the repression of non-violent resistance. If as researchers we are to understand the complexities of human life and practices, I believe we must carefully attend to this sophisticated form of emotional reasoning and begin to think not just about feelings, but also with feelings.

The State of Israel’s control of the West Bank and their creation of settlements has led to feelings of frustration amongst the Palestinian population. The significance of the next generation in a conflict that has been ongoing for generations becomes crucial when aiming for peace, as the youth of today will be the adults of tomorrow. Therefore, this study researches how Palestinian university students perceives the Israeli settlements as well as examining whether if the Relative Deprivation Theory can explain these potential perceptions and the possible willingness amongst Palestinian students to participate in social movements. The methodology is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with ten Palestinian students from Bethlehem University, which then has been analysed. The results of this study indicate that the respondents feel deprived of seven different themes, namely (1) Demolition, (2) Economy, (3) Freedom of Movement, (4) Freedom of Speech, (5) Permits, (6) Resources and (7) Services. Furthermore, the result shows that nine out of ten respondents are, or have been, participating in activities to achieve social change. In addition to feeling deprived of the seven different themes, all the respondents also felt frustration and/or negative feelings towards the existence of Israeli settlements. The analysis focuses on how the respondents partake in social movements as well as what their opinions about the resistance activities are. It became clear that all the respondents feel, or have felt, a willingness to participate in activities to achieve social change. However, the respondents use different forms of activities, such as protesting in the streets, demonstrating, and/or raising awareness, but there is an overarching social movement which focuses on “the Palestinian cause”. Finally, this study supports the idea of Relative Deprivation Theory, as the willingness to partake in social movements seems to be high amongst the respondents due to them being deprived of essential services and resources.

Existing scholarship suggests terrorism is an ineffective method of political contestation; groups rarely achieve their political objectives and are often disrupted by the security services. These findings invite us to look again at the dominant rational choice paradigm, which suggests that terrorism is selected as the best strategy to achieve predetermined goals. Unpicking the assumptions underpinning this model using historical case studies, comparative analysis and typology development, this thesis broadens our interpretation of what those who use terrorism seek to achieve. It does so via a tripartite framework. First, employing a new reading of American pragmatist thought, interpreting militant group goals as culturally and socially mediated problems opens up a new vista of outcomes, in particular examining the way terrorism seeks to change relations between people. Second, using Social Movement Theory as its organising framework, an empirically derived typology of militant groups sets out the background political conditions and organisational characteristics of 28 dormant groups. Using existing models of interpreting outcomes to assess these historical cases demonstrates the unmet challenges of providing robust explanations for why terrorism ends and what it achieves. Third, the thesis explores the promise of a mechanism and process-led approach to explaining outcomes. It does so through in-depth examination of two historical case studies: Kach and the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army. Despite being classified as failures, using largely neglected primary sources, the case studies reveal a range of fascinating and important outcomes that still resonate in Israel and Yemen today. Most of these methodological and conceptual tools are being applied to the question of terrorism's outcomes for only the first or second time. In doing so, this thesis offers greater depth than existing scholarship on how terrorism ends, by looking beyond measures such as success and failure in interpreting outcomes, whilst affording greater breadth through its ability to make comparative assessments at the level of mechanisms and processes. The result is a more detailed and robust set of explanations as to how terrorism ends and what it achieves, illustrated through detailed historical case studies of two interesting, yet often neglected, groups.

This thesis examines the missiological writings of Orlando E. Costas (1943-1987), particularly The Church and Its Mission: A Shattering Critique from the Third World (1974); Theology of the Crossroads in Contemporary Latin America (1976); Christ Outside the Gate (1982); and Liberating News: A Theology of Contextual Evangelization (1989). From the early 1970s until his death in 1987 he wrote over 130 articles and 12 books in both Spanish and English that addressed key missiological concerns. A careful reading of a selection of Costas's texts oriented around a hymn, a gospel song, a psalm, and a poem provides the shape of this thesis. This thesis argues that Costas formulated a Third World evangelical missiology. Chapter one investigates what Costas's autobiographical material expressed about his positions on conversion, Protestant evangelicalism, missiology, and those living on the ‘periphery' of life. Chapter two recognises his commitment to the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean in particular and the Third World in general. Chapter three explores Costas's analysis of the Latin American Protestant Church in a revolutionary situation in the continent and chapter four examines his survey and critical appraisal of Latin American liberation theology. Chapter five recognizes the pastoral shape of Costas's missiology. Chapter six explores his critical interaction with two more conservative evangelical missiological positions, the Church Growth Movement and Peter Beyerhaus and the Frankfurt Declaration, and chapter seven surveys the discussion within the international evangelical community regarding the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility. Chapter eight examines Costas's Liberating News as an expression of Third World evangelical missiology. Chapter nine considers the theological issue of penal substitutionary atonement and his missiology. The thesis concludes with an appraisal of the issues and contributions of Costas's Third World evangelical missiology to current missiological discussion.

Defence date: 17 May 2018
Examining Board: Prof. Donatella della Porta, EUI (Supervisor- Scuola Normale Superiore); Prof. Olivier Roy, EUI; Prof. Klaus Eder, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Prof. Joel S. Migdal, University of Washington
This qualitative research studies different characteristics of peace movement groups and organizations in militaristic societies by using the most similar system design to compare Israel and Turkey. It attempts to explore the dynamic interaction of political opportunity structures (POS), mobilizing structures and framing through different time periods. The two countries are similar in many types of POS like having a militaristic society, ethnic division and being involved in armed conflicts. If Israel and Turkey have similar POS, does it mean that they also have similar characteristics of peace movements? With my research, I found out that in the two countries mobilizing structures and frames vary consistently. This can be explained through the fact that the development of mobilizing structures and frames is affected by other types of POS, in which Israel and Turkey differ: citizenship rights and foundational principles. These types of POS that vary between the two countries also explain the variance of peace movement groups’ and organizations’ characteristics. This study covers the period from 2000 (the Second Intifada) in Israel and from 2002 in Turkey (when AKP came to power) until Summer 2014. The research is conducted using interviews during fieldworks in Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem between June 2012 and September 2014. This research is based on sixty-seven intensive interviews with thirty-seven peace movement groups and organizations; such as human rights organizations, anti-NATO groups, political organizations and groups supporting conscientious objectors. It includes mobilization during turning points like Operation Protective Edge (2014) and Gezi Protests (2013). It builds on the theories of political, as well as discursive opportunity structures, and citizenship studies, which are important to analyze how framing works through mobilizing structures in militaristic societies. To my knowledge, there is no previous research which deals extensively, and exclusively, with this topic, therefore my research is the first attempt to categorize and label these groups. The originality of this research depends on its empirical data as well as on its conceptual framework. Considering the recent mobilization in Israel, Turkey and the surrounding regions, this research is a very timely project. Besides that, it also contributes to the theoretical as well as methodological understanding of social movements, and peace movements in particular.

Toward the start of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, activists formed a media watchdog group called Palestine Media Watch (PMW) to challenge U.S. news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tired of coverage that blamed the conflict on Palestinian terrorism, PMW monitored news coverage, met with newsworkers, and bombarded news organizations with complaints in an attempt to root the conflict’s cause in Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. I study PMW’s efforts to produce change in coverage, and examine its campaigns’ effects. Most critical research examines the news system’s production of “propaganda” and news models suggest that media monitoring is one mechanism through which an entire “ideological air” is supported. “Guardian watchdogs,” like the Israel lobby, guard the ideological boundaries around news content that are erected by others. This study considers PMW’s efforts in terms articulated by the dialogic and dialectical models, which gives agency to dissident movements and requires study of the strategic interactions between media and movements to understand framing struggles. These models suggest that “dissident watchdogs,” like PMW, can affect news coverage. What is not clear is the extent to which dissident watchdogs can affect news content when they can make appeals that resonate with professional journalism but that do not resonate with the country’s ideological air. I examine PMW’s strategies to produce content changes between 2000 and 2004, detail the group’s interactions with newsworkers, and document the outcomes of those interactions to understand the struggle to affect media framing. The watchdog, when it systematically monitored coverage and individually critiqued news staff, produced substantive changes in content and practice but these were limited in number. When the watchdog bombarded news organizations with complaints it was able to produce several superficial changes, but these changes resulted in no meaningful impact on the news frame. These findings indicate that the dominant narrative is incorporative enough to accommodate “journalistically useful” points without resulting in a fundamental or substantive change in the frames that inform newswork. Thus, the emergence of dissident media monitors to “neutralize” guardian monitors is only one step toward affecting the entire “ideological air” that informs newswork of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues.
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The US Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was an organization of the Black Power Movement, a cultural and a political nationalist movement central to the history of the African-American Freedom Struggle. The Black Panthers' anti-imperialist politics, militant visual style, grassroots strategies, and community programs appealed within and beyond the United States. Between 1967 and 1972, people of color struggling under class and ethnic oppression in six countries outside the United States formed Black Panther Parties inspired by the US Panthers. In the United Kingdom, West Indians, West Africans, and South Asians formed a Black Panther Movement in 1968 and in Israel, a group of Mizrahi (Arab) Jews founded a Black Panther Party in in Jerusalem in 1971. This dissertation examines these two movements with reference to the US Black Panthers in order to place local, national, and global histories in dialogue.

This study adopts a transnational framework that conceives of Black Power as a movement of global migrants. From 1948 to 1967, over two million people from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean migrated to the UK and Israel. These migrants' overlapping experiences of displacement and class- and ethnic-based oppression led them to establish Black Panther groups in their new home countries in order to raise their political concerns under a collective banner. These people chose to become Black Panthers specifically because the US Black Panther Party offered a name and style that connected their global brothers and sisters to a range of grassroots strategies promoting interethnic solidarity and the collective advancement of black communities against the social structures that fostered racism. Through the examination of oral histories, photographs, letters, fliers, passport stamps, films, court cases, and surveillance files, this study focuses on how these global Panther activists represented themselves and their politics in the public sphere.

Both the British and Israeli Panther movements first organized in response to the city police's harassment of youth in their neighborhoods. Their respective critiques expanded from an opposition to police brutality to systemic goals of improving housing, education, welfare, and employment for blacks. Both of the nation-states in which these groups emerged relied upon the US for military stability and economic support during this period, such that the British and Israeli Panthers saw confrontations with their respective governments as acts of resistance to American Empire.

This dissertation, then, is at once a community study of two branches of a transnational social movement as well as a larger story. The broader narrative reveals how everyday people responded to the American Empire in the 1960s and 1970s, how the US Black Panthers translated black internationalist politics into urban neighborhoods, and how people outside the US constructed narratives about African-Americans as a way of making sense of racial formations at home. This work also demonstrates how foreign governments and media producers appropriated African-American history for a variety of in political purposes during this period. This examination enables a deeper understanding of the transnational black freedom struggle, as it centers the role that people of color outside the United States played in creating and sustaining Black Panther Movements that confronted American and British Empires from the grassroots.

Dissertation

This project seeks to determine, to what extent the culture of early Israel (1250-1000 BC) is similar to African cultures, more specifically, to that of the Lemba. However, a comparison between the cultures of early Israel and those of certain African tribes is not the primary objective in this case. This project is neither an anthropological study nor does it intend to mainly focus on the Lemba as such -though this may appear to be the case. This endeavour primarily fits into the ambit of Old Testament Studies. The investigation into the Lemba is meant to be subsidiary to the point of contingence between their culture and Old Testament customs and traditions, and how this information affects the interpretation of the Old Testament and its teaching in Africa. A number of comparisons between the early Israelite religion as reflected in the Old Testament and the Lemba are drawn. Though the qualitative research (inductive approach) is employed in the field work, the greatest part of the data on religious perspectives and practices is mediated by the theory of a phenomenological approach as advocated by Ninian Smart on matters of experience, mythology, ritual, and ethical/judicial dimensions. Therefore, the approach is also deductive. The Lemba is a very specific group with claims about Israelite/Judaic origins. Their early departure from Israel (according to them ca 586 BC) can mean that there are remnants of a very ancient type oflsraelite religion, now valuable when juxtaposed to that of early Israel. This study takes Lemba traditions seriously, but finally does not verify or falsify Lemba claims - but the outcomes in this thesis may take this debate a step further. Their claims make them special and extremely interesting to study from the point of view of oral cultures. Their oral culture is constitutive of their world-view and self-understanding or identity. It incorporates the role of oral traditions, history and historiography and parallels are drawn between orality in early Israelite and Lemba religions. The reciprocity between orality and inscripturation of traditions, yielding valuable information on what may have happened in the developent of traditions in Israel, are also attended to in this project. Nevertheless, this project is primarily a search for the understanding and relevance of the Old Testament in Afiica and is, therefore, a selective and not an exhaustive comparison between the Lemba and early Israel. And so, taking cognisance of the hermeneutic of contextualisation in Africa in particular, a teaching module syllabus for Old Testament Studies is developed, of which the very strands of religion among the Lemba and early Israel are constitutive for teaching Old Testament Studies in present-day African cultures (and perhaps elsewhere).
Biblical and Ancient Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (Biblical Studies)

This project seeks to determine, to what extent the culture of early Israel (1250-1000 BC) is similar to African cultures, more specifically, to that of the Lemba. However, a comparison between the cultures of early Israel and those of certain African tribes is not the primary objective in this case. This project is neither an anthropological study nor does it intend to mainly focus on the Lemba as such -though this may appear to be the case. This endeavour primarily fits into the ambit of Old Testament Studies. The investigation into the Lemba is meant to be subsidiary to the point of contingence between their culture and Old Testament customs and traditions, and how this information affects the interpretation of the Old Testament and its teaching in Africa. A number of comparisons between the early Israelite religion as reflected in the Old Testament and the Lemba are drawn. Though the qualitative research (inductive approach) is employed in the field work, the greatest part of the data on religious perspectives and practices is mediated by the theory of a phenomenological approach as advocated by Ninian Smart on matters of experience, mythology, ritual, and ethical/judicial dimensions. Therefore, the approach is also deductive. The Lemba is a very specific group with claims about Israelite/Judaic origins. Their early departure from Israel (according to them ca 586 BC) can mean that there are remnants of a very ancient type oflsraelite religion, now valuable when juxtaposed to that of early Israel. This study takes Lemba traditions seriously, but finally does not verify or falsify Lemba claims - but the outcomes in this thesis may take this debate a step further. Their claims make them special and extremely interesting to study from the point of view of oral cultures. Their oral culture is constitutive of their world-view and self-understanding or identity. It incorporates the role of oral traditions, history and historiography and parallels are drawn between orality in early Israelite and Lemba religions. The reciprocity between orality and inscripturation of traditions, yielding valuable information on what may have happened in the developent of traditions in Israel, are also attended to in this project. Nevertheless, this project is primarily a search for the understanding and relevance of the Old Testament in Afiica and is, therefore, a selective and not an exhaustive comparison between the Lemba and early Israel. And so, taking cognisance of the hermeneutic of contextualisation in Africa in particular, a teaching module syllabus for Old Testament Studies is developed, of which the very strands of religion among the Lemba and early Israel are constitutive for teaching Old Testament Studies in present-day African cultures (and perhaps elsewhere).
Biblical and Ancient Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (Biblical Studies)

of Ph.D. thesis: Middle Eastern Conflict in the French Public Space (2000-2010) Václav Nekvapil, 2013 The main objective of the thesis is to analyse and typologise French social discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a reflection of certain opinions, interests, stances and values associated with today's Jewishness and Jewish diasporic identity. The research also contains an analysis of the official political-diplomatic discourse of both Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. Based on the methodology of typologisation and critical discourse analysis, we distinguish three basic positions related to the debate on the abovementioned topics in the years 2000- 2010: republican, anti-imperialist and neoconservative. The thesis elaborates on attitudes of presidents of the French Fifth Republic towards Israel and how their policies have been perceived by the Jewish community. The community as such is also a matter of the research: its changing religiosity, demography, immigration of Nord African Jewry and the attitude towards Zionism and the State of Israel. The thesis follows four main thematic axes when analysing arguments of the most important speakers. First, when analysing the duty of memory (devoir de mémoire), the author carefully examines moral argumentation concerning the...