Perceived threat and exclusionary attitudes towards foreign workers in Israel

The present article focuses on determinants of attitudes towards granting social rights to overseas labour migrants in Israeli society. The analysis is based on a national representative sample of the adult population in Israel. The findings reveal that a substantial number of respondents (both Jews and Arabs) oppose granting equal social rights (i.e. education, welfare, health, housing) to foreign workers. These attitudes can partially be explained as resulting from perceived threat to social and economic well-being of individuals as well as threat to national identity and Jewish character of the state. Part of the exclusionary attitudes that cannot be attributed to threats, are explained by individuals’ socio-economic characteristics, ethnicity and political orientation. The findings are discussed within the context of Israel as an ethno-national state.     

Two states for three peoples: the ‘Palestinian-Israeli’ in the Future Vision Documents of the Palestinians in Israel

This article focuses on the Vision Documents of the Arab civil society organizations in Israel as an act of citizenship and an expression of the politics of contention used by the Palestinians in Israel. We argue that these documents challenge both the political inclusiveness of the identity of Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state, and the political continuity of collective identity of the Palestinian people. With these documents, the Arab civil society organizations reclaim responsibility over their political future by clinging to the Israeli citizenship framework, but at the same time attempt to change its nature from within, by re-associating the Palestinians in Israel with the core issues of the stumbling peace process, especially in regard to the ‘Right of Return’. The paper contends that for the Palestinians in Israel, the national and the civic frameworks do not circulate in separate orbits, but constitute and reframe each other.     

OBAMA AND THE BIRACIAL FACTOR: THE BATTLE FOR A NEW AMERICAN MAJORITY

Written from a “critical perspective”, four new sociologies of Israel have recently been published. This article critically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of these new books, as well as the “new orthodoxy” that they propose with regard to Israel's past and present.     

‘I don't want to see it’: decoupling ethnicity and class from social structure in Jewish Israeli high schools

Social inequality in Israel's education system has often been analysed with top-down structural models. This study inquires, instead, how students understand their position in the stratified structure of opportunities at school. Our quantitative and qualitative data, gathered in Jewish high schools in Israel, indicate that, despite clear ethno-class distribution in academic tracking, students reject the logic of identity politics and consider ‘free will’ to be the main factor determining tracking. In light of the Jewish-Israeli national identity, which rejects class and ethnic divides, the reference point for the system of classification at school shifts to the autonomous individual. Our findings show that students use consumerist and psychological discourses to dismantle ethno-class identities and depoliticize the classification system at school.     

State and minority in Israel: the case of ethnic state and the predicament of its minority

The connection between ethnicity and democracy has been the subject of much debate among scholars in various disciplines. This article deals with the ethnic divisions and the debate over democracy in Israel. How Israel should be defined, with regard to the democracy-ethnic affiliation nexus, has long been debated by scholars in the field. Some present Israel as a consociational democracy. Some Israeli scholars consider Israel to be a liberal democracy. Others define it as an 'ethnic democracy' that balances the ethnic and democratic components in its dealings with its Arab-Palestinian citizen. In this article I claim that Israel, like many other countries (Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Canada until the sixties, Malaysia) is not a democracy, if our criterion is the ethnic preference it shows for Jews. It is, instead, a textbook example of an ethnic state, applying sophisticated policies of exclusion and discrimination towards the Arab minority. In principle, it invites its Arab citizens to participate in its life; but under no circumstances does it offer them equality. It maintains Jewish superiority in all fields and grants them preference symbolically, structurally and practically.     

Mortality of an apex predator,the eagle owl bubo bubo,in Israel 2007–2021

Anthropogenic structures and installations in wild areas are known to directly and indirectly affect wildlife populations, especially apex predators such as Eagle Owls (Bubo bubo). To understand the situation at the national level we analyzed data collected by the Scientific Data Department of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the wildlife hospital at the Safari in Ramat Gan. We analyzed a total of 189 dead Eagle Owls during fifteen years, 2007–2021; 39.7% were electrocuted, 29.2% roadkill, 12.7% flew into fences/barbed wire, 3.8% drowned, and 14.9% died from other causes. The largest mortality of the Eagle Owls was detected in agricultural (34.92 %) and urban areas (31.74%). Also, the pylons identified as lethal should be prioritized and modified with appropriate insulators. Only a sincere effort on the part of the authorities will the continued electrocution of eagle owls and other avian wildlife be truncated.     

Genetic counseling for sex chromosome anomalies (SCAs) in Israel and Germany: assessing medical risks according to the importance of fertility in two cultures

In this article, I report findings from a comparative study of Israeli and German genetic counselors. Specifically, it concerns counselors' attitudes and risk assessments relating to prenatal diagnosis of sex chromosome anomalies (SCAs) such as Klinefelter and Turner syndromes. Data collected through in-depth interviews with counselors in both countries (N = 32) are presented, and the types of claims experts deploy in their personal and professional estimation of the risks involved in SCAs are analyzed. The article concludes by suggesting that the counselors rhetoric concerning SCAs, whose major manifestation is the future infertility of the unborn child as well as their estimations of the related risks, should be situated in a broader cultural context, that of local Israeli and German understandings of the importance of fertility, and not in their professional nondirective ethos. Hence, to understand the practice of genetic counselors in two late-modern societies, one must understand the unique relationship between the individual bodies of pregnant women and the body politics of their nations, a relationship mediated by the counselors, who are the bearers of knowledge and expertise in this field.     

Characterization of the stimulation of neuronal Na+, K+-ATPase activity by low concentrations of ouabain

Low concentrations (< 10^?7 M) of ouabain stimulate the activity of Na⁺, K⁺-ATPase in whole homogenates of rat brain. The magnitude of this stimulation varies from 5 to 70%. The concentrations of ouabain which induces maximal stimulation is also highly variable and ranges between 10^?9 to 10^?7 M. The ouabain stimulation disappears following 1:50 dilution and 2 h preincubation or freezing and thawing of the membranes or their treatment with deoxycholate. “Aging” of a preparation of ATPase also results in loss of its ability to be stimulated by ouabain but ouabain inhibition is preserved. No stimulation of enzyme activity by ouabain is observed in rat brain microsomal fraction. The β-adrenergic blocker propranolol does not inhibit the ouabain induced stimulation of ATPase activity. It is suggested that the stimulation of Na⁺, K⁺-ATPase activity by low concentrations of cardiac glycosides if a result of either the displacement of an endogenous ouabain-like compound from the enzyme or an indirect effect by changing membrane surrounding environment of the Na⁺, K⁺-ATPase.