Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780812245929)

In Conscientious Objectors in Israel, Erica Weiss examines the lives of Israelis who have refused to perform military service for reasons of conscience. Based on long-term fieldwork, this ethnography chronicles the personal experiences of two generations of Jewish conscientious objectors as they grapple with the pressure of justifying their actions to the Israeli state and society--often suffering severe social and legal consequences, including imprisonment.

While most scholarly work has considered the causes of animosity and violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Conscientious Objectors in Israel examines how and under what circumstances one is able to refuse to commit acts of violence in the midst of that conflict. By exploring the social life of conscientious dissent, Weiss exposes the tension within liberal citizenship between the protection of individual rights and obligations of self-sacrifice. While conscience is a strong cultural claim, military refusal directly challenges Israeli state sovereignty. Weiss explores conscience as a political entity that sits precariously outside the jurisdictional bounds of state power. Through the lens of Israeli conscientious objection, Weiss looks at the nature of contemporary citizenship, examining how the expectations of sacrifice shape the politics of both consent and dissent. In doing so, she exposes the sacrificial logic of the modern nation-state and demonstrates how personal crises of conscience can play out on the geopolitical stage.

Author: Erica Weiss
ISBN-10: 081224592X
ISBN-13: 9780812245929
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Language: English
Published: 04/11/2014
Pages: 216
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 9.45h x 6.38w x 0.87d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 05/16/2014 pg. 18