Middle East

Citation:

Kuntsman, Adi. 2009. “The Currency of Victimhood in Uncanny Homes: Queer Immigrants’ Claims for Home and Belonging Through Anti-Homophobic Organising.” Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 35 (1): 133–49.

Author: Adi Kuntsman

Abstract:

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of Russian-speaking queer immigrants in Israel and, in particular, on their organising against homophobia. The paper follows the queer immigrants' claims that the homophobic attacks they experience are similar to anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. Engaging with Freud's notion of the double as uncanny, I trace the relations of doubleness and substitution between two figures: the humiliated homosexual and the persecuted Jew. What does it mean, I ask, that injuries of homophobia are compared to injuries of anti-Semitism? What does it mean that Jewish immigrants in Israel claim that they are persecuted 'just like the Jews'? Throughout the paper I explore questions of migration and sexuality, as well as issues of Israeli nationalism and the currency of victimhood in claims for national belonging.

Topics: LGBTQ, Nationalism, Religion, Sexuality Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2009

Citation:

Kogacioglu, Dicle. 2004. “The Tradition Effect: Framing Honor Crimes in Turkey.” Differences 15 (2): 118-51.

Author: Dicle Kogacioglu

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Turkey

Year: 2004

Citation:

Qouta, Samir, Raija-Leena Punamäki, Thomas Miller, and Eyad El-Sarraj. 2008. “Does War Beget Child Aggression? Military Violence, Gender, Age and Aggressive Behavior in Two Palestinian Samples.” Aggressive Behavior 34 (3): 231–44.

Authors: Samir Qouta, Raija-Leena Punamäki, Thomas Miller, Eyad El-Sarraj

Abstract:

[Qouta et al] examined, first, the relations between children's exposure to military violence and their aggressive behavior and the role of age and gender in that relation in two Palestinian samples. Second, [Qouta et al] tested parenting practices as a moderator of the relation between exposure to military violence and aggressive behavior, and third, whether exposure to military violence of different nature (direct victimization versus witnessing) has specific associations with different forms of aggression (reactive, proactive and aggression-enjoyment). Study I was conducted in a relatively calm military-political atmosphere in Palestine-Gaza, and included 640 children, aged 6–16 years whose parents (N=622) and teachers (N=457) provided reports. Older children (≥12 years) provided self-reports (N=211). Study II included 225 Palestinian children aged 10–14-year, who participated during a high-violence period of the Al Aqsa Intifada characterized by air raids, killing and destruction. Results showed that witnessing severe military violence was associated with children's aggressive and antisocial behavior (parent-reported) in study I, and with proactive, reactive and aggression-enjoyment (child-reported) in the study II. As hypothesized, good and supporting parenting practices could moderate the link between exposure to military violence and aggressive behavior.

Keywords: trauma, military violence, aggression, Palestinians, children

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Gender, Girls, Boys, Health, Mental Health, Trauma Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2008

Citation:

Khatib, Lina. 2008. “Gender, Citizenship, and Political Agency in Lebanon.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35 (3): 437–51.

Author: Lina Khatib

Abstract:

This paper examines the condition of women as political agents in Lebanon in the context of legislation and political participation. It focuses on the effect of the Civil War on women's conditions of living in Lebanon, and their lives in the post-war period. War had negative effects on women, reinforcing their patriarchal subjugation, furthering their economic deprivation, and diverting attention from issues like women's rights, which have only added to women's political and social marginalization. The war also had a positive effect on women as it opened up new avenues for them to participate in public life. This paper analyzes gender relations in Lebanon through the frameworks of social change and the rise of civil society, but also emphasizes the challenges facing women in post-war Lebanon, where they are still governed by patriarchal values that hinder their political participation and their identification as full citizens.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Citizenship, Civil Society, Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Women, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Lebanon

Year: 2008

Citation:

Rosenberg-Friedman, Lilach. 2003. "Religious Women Fighters in Israel's War of Independence: A New Gender Perception, or a Passing Episode?" Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues, no.6, 119-47.

Author: Lilach Rosenberg-Friedman

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Religion Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2003

Citation:

Mayer, Tamar, ed. 2000. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. New York: Routlege.

Author: Tamar Mayer

Abstract:

This book provides a unique social science reading on the construction of nation, gender and sexuality and on the interactions among them. It includes international case studies from Indonesia, Ireland, former Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Australia, the USA, Turkey, China, India and the Caribbean. The contributors offer both the masculine and feminine perspective, exposing how nations are comprised of sexed bodies, and exploring the gender ironies of nationalism and how sexuality plays a key role in nation building and in sustaining national identity.

The contributors conclude that control over access to the benefits of belonging to the nation is invariably gendered; nationalism becomes the language through which sexual control and repression is justified masculine prowess is expressed and exercised. Whilst it is men who claim the prerogatives of nation and nation building it is, for the most part, women who actually accept the obligation of nation and nation building. (Amazon)

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Nationalism, Sexuality Regions: Africa, MENA, West Africa, Caribbean countries, North America, Asia, East Asia, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Balkans, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Oceania Countries: Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, United States of America, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2000

Citation:

Hasso, Frances S. 1998. “The ‘Women’s Front’: Nationalism, Feminism, and Modernity in Palestine.” Gender & Society 12 (4): 441-65.

Author: Frances S. Hasso

Abstract:

Nationalisms are polymorphous and often internally contradictory, unleashing emancipatory as well as repressive ideas and forces. This article explores the ideologies and mobilization strategies of two organizations over a 10-year period in the occupied Palestinian territories: a leftist-nationalist party in which women became unusually powerful and its affiliated and remarkably successful nationalist-feminist women's organization. Two factors allowed women to become powerful and facilitated a fruitful coexistence between nationalism and feminism: (1) a commitment to a variant of modernist ideology that was marked by grassroots as opposed to military mobilization and (2) a concern with proving the cultural worth of Palestinian society to the West, a project that was symbolized by women's status in important ways. By comparing international and indigenous feminist discourses, the study also demonstrates how narratives about gender status in the Third World are implicated in, and inextricable from, international economic and political inequalities.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Nationalism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 1998

Citation:

Ricks, Thomas M. 2006. “In Their Own Voices: Palestinian High School Girls and Their Memories of the Intifadas and Nonviolent Resistance to Israeli Occupation, 1987-2004.” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 18 (3): 88–103.

Author: Thomas M. Ricks

Abstract:

This article focuses on the observations and coping devices of 17 and 18-year-old Palestinian high school girls in regards to the violence in their streets, homes, and schools that occurred during the two Palestinian uprisings known as Intifadas against Israeli occupation in the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Bethlehem from 1987 to 2004. Based primarily on the oral histories and school diaries of the girls, this article underscores the ways that the Israeli occupation shaped the lives of many young women in Occupied West Bank, Palestine, and the variety of creative responses of these young women to conditions of urban warfare.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Girls Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2006

Citation:

Naaman, Dorit. 2007. "Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers." Signs 32 (4).

Author: Dorit Naaman

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Terrorism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2007

Citation:

Dahan-Kalev, Henriette. 2001. "Tensions in Israeli Feminism: The Mizrahi Ashkenazi Rift" Women's Studies International Forum 24: 1-16.

Author: Henriette Dahan-Kalev

Abstract:

The idea of women's liberation was imported in the 1970s from the West by liberal feminist activists who immigrated to Israel. The first Israeli feminists adopted all the liberal feminist slogans and ideology together with their advantages and the disadvantages. The implantation of these ideas in the Israel—a country torn ethnically—has produced a conflict from which Mizrahi feminism has evolved. By the 1990s, Mizrahi women who participated in feminist activity, and who found themselves excluded and marginalized by the Ashkenazi women who dominated the Israeli feminist movement began to give expression to their feelings of oppression. This reached a peak in 1995 in Natanya with the First Mizrahi Feminist Annual Conference. This article outlines the historical, social, political and ideological processes in which Mizrahi feminism developed. It shows how slogans such as sisterhood and solidarity, have been used to endorse activities which do not benefit women of all the different ethnic groups in Israel. The article includes a discussion of dilemmas that arise from “tokenism” and the purportedly universalist feminist agenda. The Mizrahi feminist agenda and its ideological framework, as well as its strategic aspects, are also critically reviewed.

Topics: Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Women Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2001