The effectiveness of service work: An analysis of recidivism

The Israeli “service work” law of 1987 enables a court to commute prison sentences of up to 6 months to service work in the community. This paper examines the correctional effectiveness of this new sanction by comparing the rate of recidivism (over a period of 14 months) among 407 offenders sentenced to service work to that of 950 comparable offenders sentenced to imprisonment. As the research design is quasi-experimental, an adjustment for confounders is carried out using the propensity score (PS) methodology. The estimation of the odds ratio of recidivism with respect to sanction comprises two steps: (a) the PS, which is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular sanction given a set of confounders, is estimated by a logistic model; and (b) the conditional probability of recidivism, given the PS and other covariates, is estimated by a second model. The findings indicate that before an adjustment for the systematic differences between the two sanctions was carried out, the odds for recidivism among prisoners were 2.4 times higher than the odds for service workers. After the adjustment, the odds ratio was reduced to 1.7. This estimate indicates that the service work sanction has a considerable correctional effect. The need to address additional criteria for the effectiveness of service work (e.g., net-widening) is emphasized.     

Methods Meet Policy: Transnational Monitoring of the Israel–Palestine Conflict

For the past 2 years, the Kansas Event Data System project has been using event data and other web-based sources to produce quarterly reports on the Israel–Palestine conflict for the swisspeace (Swiss Peace Foundation) FAST Project, which is sponsored by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and a number of non-governmental organizations. This paper describes the indicators that we are monitoring, the process we have developed to generate the reports, and the supplemental sources we are using. We address the issue of the differences between newspaper and news wire reports with respect to "media fatigue" effects and also analyze some of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to conflict monitoring.     

Herzl's legal and economic views in The Jewish State: A scorecard

This paper compares Theodor Herzl's conception of the legal and economic institutions he envisioned in The Jewish State with those functioning Israel in 1995. His main goal, the establishment of a Jewish state, was achieved, but what has developed is not quite what Herzl expected, due mainly to the enormous burdens of defense. Nevertheless, many of the legal and institutional features of the economy he envisioned are in place, although in altered form.     

WORLD

正ICELAND Lava flows out of the Bardarbunga volcano on September 14.Bardarbunga,at 2,000 meters above sea level,is the country’s second highest peak and is located under Europe’s largest glacier,Vatnajkull THE UNITED STATES Anti-war activists protest as U.S.Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel(left)and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General     

Setting the Public Sphere in Motion: The Rhetoric of Political Bumper Stickers in Israel

Most members of the public have little opportunity to express political opinions via a mass medium. Political automobile bumper stickers provide such a possibility and can constitute a revival of Habermas's notion of the public sphere. This article examines how such bumper stickers function in the case of Israel, where political bumper stickers have become a ubiquitous medium of communication, expressing complex national-ideological messages that reflect individual opinions on a mass scale. Four elements have combined to bring about the development of this openly accessible political medium for the expression of public opinion: Israel's volatile political situation, a cultural predisposition to verbal expression on political topics, dramatic changes in the communication climate, and the particular status of cars and attitudes toward driving in the country. This mobile rhetoric has been used to set the public sphere in motion, reflecting five factors that account for the dynamism of the medium: the physical circulation of the messages on cars; the dialogic interaction and renegotiation of previously established ideological premises; the reflection, introduction, and maintenance of topics on the public agenda; the taking of power by the people; and the performative act of public expression.     

The Limits of Tolerance: Nation–State Building and What It Means for Minority Groups

Abstract

When we think of the most egregious forms of intolerance directed against minority communities we tend to associate them with particularly despicable regimes, such as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where racism, ideology or some special route to development is often held to blame, or where ultra-nationalism swamps positive tendencies towards democracy and a civil society. In this essay Levene proposes a partial corrective to this view with reference to the supposedly ‘good’ nation–state derived from the western liberal model. He considers the behaviour of two such states at their inception, Poland and Israel, with regard to two minorities, Jews and Arabs, with the Jews providing linkage between the two state trajectories. Levene charts their respective rejections of bi-national or multinational development, and suggests that the fact that both states today maintain a modicum of tolerance towards their residual Jewish and Arab minorities is more the result of (paradoxical) good luck than of conscious, benevolent design. In conclusion Levene proposes that the very nature of the modern nation–state militates against genuine pluralistic tolerance, a goal that requires a massive structural re-ordering of contemporary society away from global economies to a sustainability of human scale.     

The Sephardi and Oriental Jews of Haifa and Arab-Jewish relations in Mandate Palestine

Abstract

This article examines the development of the relations between Jews and Arabs in Haifa during the British Mandate period from the perspective of the Sephardi and Oriental Jews (Mizrahim). It focuses on the two Sephardi neighborhoods in Haifa: Ard al-Yahud and Harat al-Yahud. The article examines the character of the shared Jewish-Arab space that existed in both these mixed neighborhoods, which were inhabited by both Jews and Arabs. The character of this spatial system was exposed during the course of a local political struggle to secure representation for the Sephardi and Oriental Jews and to improve their social condition, as well as during periods of security tension. The article also examines the attitude of the Sephardi leadership toward the ‘Arab question’, and discusses the manner in which everyday life in Ard al-Yahud and Harat al-Yahud manifested the existence of an Arab-Jewish identity during the Mandate period.     

Changing Israeli perceptions of the relations with the International Committee of the Red Cross in the wake of the June 1967 war: from coexistence to open hostility

Abstract

Since 1948/1949 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been synonymous in the Arab–Israeli context with processes of exchanging prisoners and caring for human lives. After the 1967 war the ICRC changed in status from that of a mediator to that of the executive arm of larger forces. The processes leading to the partial demise of the ICRC are clearly identified in retrospect. It has to do with the asymmetry of perceptions between Israel and the organisation. Israel did not agree to the application of the Fourth Convention in the territories. The ICRC believed that this population fell under the Convention and therefore under the ICRC. Furthermore, the ICRC failed in getting the Israeli POWs back home, especially after the conclusion of the War of Attrition in 1970. The resulting feelings eliminated in the Israeli decision makers' minds the role that the ICRC saw for itself in future POW exchange deals. After the 1973 war the ICRC would lose its position as a negotiator, leaving that arena to other international actors.     

Filial Piety in Israel: Between the Law in the Books and the Law in Action

This paper explores the main legal aspects of filial piety in Israel. Based on a socio-legal study, it traces a significant gap between the law in the books, which mandates that children support their parents financially if the latter cannot support themselves, and the law in action, which narrows this obligation to cases in which the parents must be cared for in a State nursing home. The study also highlights the relevance of religious and cultural norms in shaping filial piety in multicultural countries and thus points to the urgent need to tailor filial piety legal policies according to socially constructed, actual, and diverse filial piety perceptions and practices.     

以色列边境防暴警察(四)——以色列的恐怖主义与反恐怖策略

恐怖主义活动称得上是当今世界最严重的社会问题之一.综观以色列的历史,它自称是恐怖主义的受害者,实际上它也是一个恐怖主义的大国.但与其他的恐怖主义不同,它更多的是国家军事战略基础之上的"恐怖主义".以色列边防卫队就是在这样的战略方针下执行边境防暴平乱任务的,其危险性之大也就可想而知.