Punishing International Crimes Committed by the Persecuted: The Kapo Trials in Israel (1950s-1960s)

This article deals with the legal and moral imperatives arisingout of the Kapo trials, which took place in Israel between 1951and 1964. Section 2 considers substantive aspects of the IsraeliNazi and Nazi Collaborators Law (adopted in 1950), as well asthe moral quagmire embedded within this Law. Section 3 exploresthe dialogue that these trials advanced (and the dialogue thatthey failed to advance) in Israeli society. Section 4 offerssome reflection on the reasons why these trials have been expungedfrom Israel's collective memory. The authors also attempt toshed some light on the impact that this deliberate collectiveforgetting has had on the construction of Israel's nationalidentity and examine the central role that judicial institutionshave played in reconstructing the past and providing meaningfor the Kapo trials as a nation-building mechanism.     

Experiments in the Courtroom: Social Dynamics and Spectacles of Proof in Early Modern English Witch Trials

This article presents the composite social context surrounding the “experiments” that were used to prove witchcraft accusations in early modern England. It demonstrates that legal proof was not imposed by elite legislators and judges, or fashioned in accordance with the voice of scientific experts, but was shaped through complex social dynamics in which the middling sort and petty gentry fulfilled a crucial role. Through this process, popular beliefs percolated into judicial proceedings. Members of influential provincial families were the social agents who reconstructed old supernatural methods of proof into innovative rational experiments, often replicating public displays of proof that helped bolster the criminal charges and provided a competing arena of evidence. The article claims that the judges' cooperation with these “experiments” might have been an endeavor by the official legal system to circumvent the threat posed by a popular grassroots alternative to the exclusive jurisdiction of the court system.     

Unlikely relations: Israel,Romania and the Egyptian–Israeli peace accord

The history of Israel's turbulent relations with the Eastern bloc nations during the Cold War has one exception, Romania. Unlike other Warsaw Pact members, Romania did not sever relations with Israel following the 1967 war. Central to these relations was Romanian Communist leader Nicolai Ceausescu, who managed to establish himself as an important figure among both Arabs and Israelis. This article will examine Romanian–Israeli relations during the 1970s and especially Ceausescu's role in the Egyptian–Israeli peace negotiations. Recent Israeli and some Romanian documents released from the Israeli State Archive and the Begin Centre reveal much about Israel's attitude towards Romania and Ceausescu's involvement in the Middle East, and serve to shed light on a heretofore neglected aspect of Israeli foreign policy. Some of the main issues to be addressed are Ceausescu's influence on Egyptian and Israeli decision makers, Israel's prime motives in maintaining a close relationship with Romania, the importance of Romanian Jewry's position to Israel's policy vis-à-vis Romania and the extent to which these relations represented a back channel that facilitated some contact with the Kremlin. All these will be examined against the larger backdrop of the Cold War and the Arab–Israeli conflict.     

Hide and seek? Israeli–Turkish relations and the Baghdad pact

The aim of this article is to address the impact of the Baghdad Pact and the Anglo-American defense system and its collapse on the Turkish–Israeli relationship from 1954 to 1958, a discussion that is absent from scholarly studies. The article will highlight the different approaches and views of the two parties and their impact on the cold war alliances and the Arab–Israeli conflict. Examining this from the perspectives of both Ankara and Jerusalem will contribute to a comprehensive study of the bilateral relations during the 1950s. Some of the main questions to be addressed are: to what extent, if at all, did the Baghdad Pact change bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel? What were Israel's main concerns? Were its suspicions of Turkey's changing policy founded? How much was Turkey influenced by Iraq's membership of the Pact and its hostile attitude toward Israel? Was Turkey's attempt to maintain reasonable relations with both Israel and Iraq a realistic aim? All these will be assessed against regional upheavals and the cold war politics with current implications.     

What the ICJ did not say about the Duty to Punish Genocide: The Missing Pieces in a Puzzle

The article focuses on the legal implications of the constructionof the International Court of Justice (ICJ or the Court) ofthe duty to punish genocide under Article VI of the Conventionon the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide inthe Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro judgment.It posits that the Court's discussion of the duty to punishis satisfying in terms of what it says and less satisfying interms of what it is silent about. It is satisfying in the sensethat the Court's construction of the duty to cooperate withinternational tribunals prosecuting genocide as including aduty of extradition, seems to extend beyond the plain languageof the Convention and indeed beyond the parties’ originalintent. It is not fully satisfying because the duty to prosecuteremains quite limited. It is further argued that the obligationto punish genocide as established in Article I and the obligationto prosecute genocide as established in Article VI should beunderstood as two distinct obligations. Article VI merely setsthe institutional arrangements for prosecution. Other normativesources support the conclusion that a general duty to prosecuteperpetrators of genocide or extradite them for prosecution elsewhereapplies even in those cases where the offence was not committedin the territory of a contracting state or when the offenderis prosecuted by an international court that has jurisdictionover the state where the alleged perpetrator is found.     

Quality of health care and the role of relationships: bridging the medico-legal divide

This Article focuses on an often overlooked barrier to efforts to enhance the quality of health care: the relationship crisis that currently exists between physicians and patients. This state of affairs has resulted from the divide between the medical and legal worlds. The medical arena has understandably tended to view the doctor-patient relationship as a purely medical issue, ignoring the law's impact in generating and sustaining problematic relationship patterns. The legal world has yet to fully recognize this state of affairs, and the law's role in its evolution and persistence. We offer a relational approach to health-care law as a means of bridging the divide between the two disciplines. In the malpractice context, this would entail adopting a no-fault compensation scheme, which is committed to strengthening collaborative doctor-patient relations, enhancing patient safety and systemic learning, while providing adequate compensation.     

Investigation of Different Ways in Which the CODIS 7.0 May be Used in Mass Disaster Identification

DNA analysis is a key method for the identification of human remains in mass disasters. Reference samples from relatives may be used to identify missing persons by kinship analysis. Different methods of applying the CODIS in disaster victim identification (DVI) were investigated. Two searches were evaluated: (i) relating family relatives to a pedigree tree (FPT) and (ii) relating unidentified human remains to a pedigree tree (UPT). A joint pedigree likelihood ratio (JPLR) and rank were calculated for each search. Both searches were similar in average JPLR and rank. In exceptional cases, namely the existence of a mutation different from the CODIS model, a nonbiological father, a mistake in STR, or incorrect profile association, the UPT search returned one true rank, whereas the FPT search returned no results. This paper suggests a novel strategy to overcome these limitations and increase efficiency in conducting identification of mass disaster victims.     

Whose 'Conduct Unbecoming'?: The Shooting of a Handcuffed, Blindfolded Palestinian Demonstrator

The article focuses on the decision of the Israeli MilitaryAdvocate General (MAG) to charge an officer who ordered theshooting of a handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinian demonstrator,and the soldier who executed the order, for ‘conduct unbecoming’.It advances the following propositions: (i) from the perspectiveof the applicable international law, the facts of the case qualifythe shooting as a war crime; (ii) said decision of the IsraeliMAG is indicative of a policy of tolerance towards violenceagainst non-violent civilian protest against the constructionof the Separation Wall; (iii) the implication of such policyis twofold: first, it might transform ‘conduct unbecoming’— which as a matter of law is a war crime — intoa crime against humanity; second, it may well be construed asan invitation to the international community to intervene throughthe exercise of universal jurisdiction.     

Adolescents’ Mental Health Outcomes According to Different Types of Exposure to Ongoing Terror Attacks

This study investigates the impact of several types of exposure to terror attacks on adolescents’ psychological outcomes in the context of ongoing terror. A total of 913 adolescents (51% girls) aged 12 to 18 years (12–13.6 = 33%; 13.7–15.6 = 38%; 15.7–18 = 28%) took part in the study. Detailed data were collected concerning objective, subjective and “mixed” types of exposure to terror, as well as demographics, post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), emotional and behavioral problems and overall psychological and psychiatric difficulties. Subjective exposure was found to be the most important contributor to adolescents’ post-traumatic stress and other mental health problems in this context. Gender also had important effects. The effects of objective and mixed types of exposure, as well as age, were less prominent. We did find, however, that the more adolescents consulted media, the less they experienced behavioral and emotional problems. Given that subjective experiences appear to be the best factor in explaining mental health outcomes when adolescents are confronted with persistent terror, the cognitive and emotional dynamics along with the coping behavior linked to such experiences merit further investigation.

Legitimacy and online proceedings: Procedural justice,access to justice,and the role of income

Courts have long struggled to bridge the access-to-justice gap associated with in-person hearings, which makes the recent adoption of online legal proceedings potentially beneficial. Online proceedings hold promise for better access: they occur remotely, can proceed asynchronously, and often rely solely on written communication. Yet these very qualities may also undermine some of the well-established elements of procedural-justice perceptions, a primary predictor of how people view the legal system's legitimacy. This paper examines the implications of shifting legal proceedings online for both procedural-justice and access-to-justice perceptions. It also investigates the relationship of both types of perceptions with system legitimacy, as well as the relative weight these predictors carry across litigant income levels. Drawing on online traffic court cases, we find that perceptions of procedural justice and access to justice are each separately associated with a litigant's appraisal of system legitimacy, but among lower-income parties, access to justice is a stronger predictor, while procedural justice dominates among higher-income parties. These findings highlight the need to incorporate access-to-justice perceptions into existing models of legal legitimacy.