07.04.22
Editorial Note
Dr. Revital Madar completed her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University by the end of last year. Her thesis is titled “Repudiated Violence and Sovereignty – The case of Israel.”
In February, Madar provided a glimpse to her research when, as a Max Weber Fellow, she lectured on the “power structures that transgress the framework of conflict or war-related sexual violence. It is often taken as a fact that despite Israel’s diverse arsenal of violence, sexual violence is missing from its military toolbox.” Madar referred to “Tal Nitsan’s claim that apart from the 1948 war and its aftermath, the rape of Palestinian women by Israeli male soldiers is a rare phenomenon significantly contributed to the perception of Israel as a state whose military avoids the use of sexual violence.”
Madar treats Nitsan’s claim as “symptomatic of war and conflict-related sexual violence discourse. It introduces an intersectional analysis of sexual violence’s conditions of possibility in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt).”
Madar bases her claim on testimonies of Palestinians and analyzes Israel’s control in the oPt. She examines the “pertinency and implications of each component in Nitsan’s claim: Israeli male soldiers, rape, Palestinian women, and war. My findings show that these categories work to silence Israel’s employment of sexual violence against Palestinians – men, women, and children – by a wide range of security agents who are not necessarily soldiers or exclusively male.”
For Madar, the “rape in war paradigm distracts our attention from the colonial nature of Israeli control in the oPt and from the structural proximity between the vulnerability of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and women who live in poverty.”
Her findings imply three things, “the need to be more cautious considering the social categories researchers of sexual violence employ”; “attuned to the risks embodied in approaching rape as a universal and homogenized phenomenon, stripped of its specific context and the structure of power in which it materializes”; and “encourage us to incorporate within our analysis power structures that transgress the framework of conflict or war-related sexual violence.”
In other words, Madar suggests that the Israeli soldiers sexually abuse Palestinians.
Madar has a long history of anti-Israel activism. She is a member of the group School For Unlearning Zionism, producing narratives based on a “non-dominant narrative.” For those unfamiliar with the neo-Marxist, critical scholarship rhetoric, this means providing information unmoored from empirical constraints or, in plain language, “fake news.”
In another article besmirching Israel, she took up the cases of Palestinian infiltrators entering Israel illegally, stating that “Most of the infiltrators who died while trying to enter Israel were unarmed. Most of them were poor refugees who wanted to return to Israel, whether in the hope of a better life.” In her view, the treatment of Palestinian refugees, they are disposable human beings whose death is covered up by the “Israeli regime.”
In another piece of writing, “Deathmurder: From the Language of Humanity to the Question of Who Can Be Murdered,” Madar’s conclusion, borrowing from Amira Hass’s article, claims that “Palestinians Are Fighting for Their Lives; Israel Is Fighting for the Occupation,” on Haaretz, in 2015. Madar discusses a decision over “who can be murdered” which demarcates “the border between them and us, between those who are seeking life, and those who are hunting death. Between humans and not-humans.”
Like many of her activist peers, Madar’s research topics are focused on the delegitimization of Israel. It is hardly surprising that her doctoral supervisor is a leading political activist, Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian,who falsified her facts, as the previous IAM post indicated. The members of her Ph.D. committee are in the same activist club: Louise Bethlehem is a radical activist reported by IAM before. Gadi Algazi is an expert on Medieval history at Tel Aviv University who remade himself as an expert on the contemporary Middle East, and Yael Berda is a lawyer working for the Palestinians, as IAM reported before.
It is quite clear that as in the case of Madar, activists masquerading as scholars have rigged the academic system to produce a new generation trained to delegitimize Israel. Hebrew University authorities should take note of this trend.
References:
https://www.eui.eu/events?id=547024
Lecture
Beyond the Rape in War and Conflict Paradigm
An Intersectional Analysis of Israeli State Sexual Violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
WHEN 25 February 2022 15:00 – 17:00 CET
WHERE Sala del Consiglio Villa Salviati- Castle
Organised by Department of History and Civilisation
This lecture by Max Weber Fellow, Revital Madar centres around an analysis on power structures that transgress the framework of conflict or war-related sexual violence.
It is often taken as a fact that despite Israel’s diverse arsenal of violence, sexual violence is missing from its military toolbox. Within this tendency, Tal Nitsán’s claim that apart from the 1948 war and its aftermath, the rape of Palestinian women by Israeli male soldiers is a rare phenomenon significantly contributed to the perception of Israel as a state whose military avoids the use of sexual violence. This presentation treats Nitsán’s claim as symptomatic of war and conflict-related sexual violence discourse. It introduces an intersectional analysis of sexual violence’s conditions of possibility in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt). Based on testimonies of Palestinians and analysis of Israel’s control in the oPt, the presentation examines the pertinency and implications of each component in Nitsán’s claim: Israeli male soldiers, rape, Palestinian women, and war. My findings show that these categories work to silence Israel’s employment of sexual violence against Palestinians – men, women, and children – by a wide range of security agents who are not necessarily soldiers or exclusively male.
What is more, the rape in war paradigm distracts our attention from the colonial nature of Israeli control in the oPt and from the structural proximity between the vulnerability of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and women who live in poverty. I argue these findings imply (1) the need to be more cautious considering the social categories researchers of sexual violence employ; (2) be attuned to the risks embodied in approaching rape as a universal and homogenised phenomenon, stripped of its specific context and the structure of power in which it materialises; and (3) encourage us to incorporate within our analysis power structures that transgress the framework of conflict or war-related sexual violence.
Please register in order to get a seat or the ZOOM link.
Contact(s): Uladzimir Valodin (EUI)
Organiser(s): Uladzimir Valodin (EUI)
Speaker(s): Revital Madar (EUI)
===========================================================
EUI-Queer and Feminist Studies Working Group·
21 February
This Friday, 25 February, at 3 pm Revital Madar, Max Weber Fellow from LAW, will present and discuss her paper on “Beyond the Rape in War and Conflict Paradigm: An Intersectional Analysis of Israeli State Sexual Violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”. For further information and to register for the event, please follow this link: https://www.eui.eu/events?id=547024
====================================================
Revital Madar: Sovereignty and Citizenship in the Kafr Qasim Trial
May 24, 2021
Transcript by YouTube
0:00
um i hesitated quite a lot about the structure of the lecture today
0:05
um especially because of the fact that we are on zoom
0:11
so instead of presenting this very structured paper that you will have to follow from
0:17
beginning to end i will cover mostly some arguments i
0:22
make in the in the paper and that i think that are most that are relevant to this task of
0:31
unlearning zionism in general um so i hope it will really help us have a
0:38
more vibrant discussion in general and to feel less zoom fatigue
0:45
and because i present the paper like that if you read hebrew and you want the full
0:52
version of the article i’ll be happy to share it with you. um i do want before to open just with a
1:01
few words about the overall project from which my thoughts on the massacre
1:06
originated my current project is an analysis of court documents
1:12
mostly transcripts and court rulings of cases in which the state of israel
1:17
persecuted members of its security forces for the killing of palestinians
1:22
i term these cases acts of repudiated violence because of the denial of the dialectic
1:28
position occupied by the state when it decides to prosecute its own soldiers
1:34
thus condemning the violent act while also taking its hands off it
1:40
after all the all idea behind these trials is eventually to legalize the
1:45
daily violence that is not disowned as illegal in that case i
1:51
consider these trials to be performative moments in which the state negotiates
1:56
and sets out the limits of its legitimate and illegitimate violence
2:01
this trial is allowed to listen in a way to the state’s corridor talks because as much as the
2:08
state can and is carefully tailoring the narratives these trials deliver it has limited
2:14
control over the discursive explosion in focus terms that is taking place in
2:21
in the court and outside of it, the project originated from two
2:27
complementary assumptions the first assumes the first assumes that despite the state
2:34
secrecy and its mechanisms of censorship the state speaks and if we are willing to do away with
2:40
positivistic standpoint and set out our values regardless of the law’s definition of
2:47
legality and illegality as moral indicators we can penetrate the
2:53
state’s internal logic and unveil its conditions of possibility.
2:58
in other words if we are willing to unlearn what entails a legitimate entry into the
3:04
state and gain a privileged perspective over how the state perceives
3:09
itself we can see that the state is far from being as opec as surveillance scholars would like us
3:16
to believe there are obviously specific methodologies one has to adopt to take
3:22
this path i won’t be able to elaborate on that but if it interests you we can discuss it
3:27
later, the second assumption concerns denial stanley coin’s work is of great
3:33
importance here it allows us to see how informative denials of individuals or organizations can be
3:42
beyond that and that’s something i picked up through my activism on sexual violence the informativity of
3:49
denial lies not only in what is told and how it is told but in the sheer repetition over the
3:56
same reasons again and again in other words there are specific
4:01
denials for specific events within the field of sexual violence a very familiar denial
4:08
is the claim that everything was done in consent when israeli soldiers need to justify
4:14
why they saw right to shoot for example a wounded palestinian lyng wounded on the ground
4:21
a central claim would be the sense of threat the soldier felt we should thus be able to
4:27
understand what are the conditions that construe these denials and render them so common
4:34
why these answers are considered as acceptable as they are within a specific
4:40
framework in that sense part of my project entails the examination of the extent at which we
4:47
can render repetition in itself suspicious so
4:53
in what follows i will offer a short presentation of the massacre and the trial and then discuss a number
4:59
of aspects i think are of essence for the process of unlearning in general and of unlearning zionism in particular
5:08
these aspects include the memory of the clara custom trial the challenge it poses and the
5:14
specific form of citizenship it unveils
5:19
on the eve of the sinai campaign on october 29 1956 it will be 64 years in two days
5:27
from now israeli military officials decided that there is a need to unsure
5:33
quiet on the jordanian front the potential agitators were palestinian
5:39
villagers occupying the area near the jordanian border in the interest of avoiding the
5:45
information being leaked to the local population the curfew was announced only some
5:50
three hours before it was set to begin at five in the afternoon around that time around the time in
5:58
which the villagers were returning home from work the local mukhtar to whom the israeli
6:04
communicated their decision had no means by which to inform the hundreds of villagers working outside
6:11
and due to return later that evening one hour after the curfew began 49
6:18
men women and children were shot to death by israeli soldiers in the outskirts of the village
6:25
in compliance with the curfew and colonel chadmi’s order to shoot to kill
6:30
despite their carrying out their superior’s order 18 of the 11 soldiers who massacred the
6:37
villagers were subsequently arrested charged with murder tried and sentenced
6:42
to 7 to 17 years of imprisonment the three of the
6:47
defendants were acquitted of all charges in a way this description can be enough
6:54
it reiterates the important elements of the massacre so to speak
7:00
and the trial if that is the case then the matter is close the accused were found guilty and the
7:06
victims were prosecuted from a legal point of view we learned our lesson
7:12
and when you reviewed the scholarly work on the foreign massacre i’m talking about um scholarly work
7:20
in french english and hebrew because these are the languages i can read you can really get the sense
7:26
that it’s a done deal there is a general agreement over the fact the
7:32
that originates from the trial transcripts and the verdict on the on a factual level there are two
7:38
open questions colonel schadman’s trial that is still mostly closed to the public
7:44
and resulted with a fine of 10 cents and the question of operation hatha ferret according to
7:51
gaddiel ghazi and adam raz the massacre was part of this operation whose objective was to make palestinians
7:58
living in the triangle area to flee to the jordanian border and into jordan and as israel did with
8:06
palestinians who flew for their lives in the past then deny their return and reduce the
8:12
number of palestinians living in israel a secret mini the declarations of the
8:19
soldiers during the trial enforce this assumption another disagreement regards the number
8:25
of victims israel counts 47 the palestinians 49.
8:31
the overall factual agreement standing mostly from the very detailed verdict of
8:37
judge benjamin levy renders the massacre and the trial into a very dense frame almost as if it’s uh
8:45
as if there was we have a frame of a camera that simply captured everything
8:50
and it tells us all we need to know it leaves little to debate on and i
8:56
cannot but wonder to what extent the supposedly closeness of the massacre produced by the trial
9:03
is what allows israel to deny requests to apologize for it and acknowledge it
9:09
as well as dedicate a special national day for the massacre i argue that this
9:16
that it is this overall agreed factuality enabled by the state’s decision to make
9:22
public the majority of the documents related to the massacre that makes the clarkson massacre
9:29
challenge where there is little factual debate the narrative of the events was already
9:35
determined and so was its meanings again existing scholarly work is very
9:42
telling in that sense it focuses on the question of the manifestly unlawful order the
9:47
citizenship of palestinians and the memory of the trial among jews and palestinians
9:53
and excluding excluding shira robinson’s work all these works rely on the core
9:58
documents and the narratives it puts forward therefore when i began to work on the
10:05
forecaster massacre it was clear that i need to unlearn these narratives and the meanings they
10:10
produce turning my gaze away from aspects that are important from a legal perspective
10:16
and focusing on marginal moments on issues that are non-issues for the state and the legal
10:22
system to unlearn the narratives and meanings of the forecaster massacre
10:29
and the trial from from far from being a mere a mere
10:34
attempt at adding a narrative on existing ones reviewing the trials transcripts and
10:40
verdicts and focusing on marginal moments the relation between existing narratives and
10:46
meanings over the overall question of legitimate use of stake violence becomes clear
10:52
as mandani tells us a legitimate use of violence entails that the violence
10:57
should be rational explained one that we can appropriately situate within a narrative
11:04
of progress that is relatively easy when the violence is construed as a heroic
11:10
act or one that stems from security necessities but what can one do with an act of
11:17
violence that is clearly unlawful and which forces the state once it was
11:22
discovered to defor to divorce itself from it letters sent by israeli ngos and private
11:30
citizens to the vietnam once the massacre became known demanding that those responsible for it
11:36
will stand trial clearly show that this violence at least at the time had no explanation
11:43
and lacked an acceptable pardon the trial in that sense wasn’t only an attempt to clean israel
11:50
from this shameful event but also an attempt to situate the violence of the falcasa massacre
11:57
on the right register to detach it from all the supposedly justified and lawful
12:04
acts of violence israel commits daily as arendt explains in response to
12:11
critiques over her work on totalitarianism she insisted on not supplying and is not
12:17
not supplying a historical narrative that would emphasize what led to the holocaust because strict
12:24
historical writings is always already a supreme justification of what took
12:29
place when an event is locked within a positive sequence it can regardless of how violent it is
12:36
to start going through a process of rationalization the falcaosan trial did just that
12:44
by focusing on the individuals who committed the massacre and considering their decision to shoot innocent people
12:50
the massacre could have been explained as bad judgment on their part not as an event that lies on much deeper
12:57
roots pertaining to israel’s own conditions of possibility as a sovereign state
13:03
within this framework jojo levy’s insistence on the equal belonging of the
13:08
villagers under the title of israeli citizenship the fact that is verdict was meant to be
13:16
quick lesson on what citizenship entails a verdict that a verdict through which
13:23
israeli jews were meant to learn that palestinian citizens of israel are
13:28
equal citizens in fact this decision distanced the violence of the massacre from
13:34
israel’s bleeding history that is constituted on a perception and employment of citizenship on the
13:41
basis of passing passing like a jew not passing like an
13:46
arab the order given to the border police soldiers was to shoot to kill
13:53
no questions asked this order which judge levy concluded to be
13:58
a manifestly unlawful order has a long history that doesn’t relate to israeli
14:03
citizenship but rather to palestinian refugees attempting to return to their homes
14:10
after the in fact the same order was employed against every palestinian attempting to
14:17
cross into israel regardless of his or her motivations and whether they were armed or not
14:25
as corinth tells us the majority of palestinian refugees who were shot by israel during the 1950s were poor
14:32
palestinians hoping for better life yet as indicated
14:37
by charles hopkins the infiltration law from 1954 rendered every refugee
14:44
into a security threat and from israel’s perspective that was the case because the question is never the
14:51
motivations or aspirations of the palestinians it’s their own existence in other words
14:58
under settler colonial settings even the liberal idea of citizenship can be used
15:03
to cover up the real origins of the massacre unfortunately this is still one of the
15:10
biggest legacies of the trial that never dared intentionally or not to
15:15
look at the history of the order of should to kill so constitutive to the israeli state
15:22
i want to dedicate the last point to the specific form of citizenship
15:28
which the farcasm trial unveils in order to rule out
15:34
whether soldiers could refrain from shooting innocent people on the day of the massacre it was
15:40
necessary to determine if it was truly possible to identify who
15:45
among the people returning home that evening is a palestinian citizen and who among
15:51
them is a fadin a member of groups who were trained by by the egyptian army and attacked
15:58
military and civilian targets within the border area of israel during the 50s
16:04
the transcript does reveal long discussions in which the defense attorneys try to show
16:10
that in fact there was no way to identify a palestinian citizen of israel
16:15
from afar they investigate army officers and ask them what differentiates for example a
16:22
palestinian citizen of israel from fading one answer is that we heard that
16:27
in egypt the fathering were sneakers others claim that a fadin
16:33
is armed although at the time of the massacre it was impossible to get a clear view
16:39
from afar of the person coming towards you some were at least honest enough to say
16:45
that you cannot distinguish a palestinian citizen of israel from a faday and that at any rate the area of the
16:52
triangle and more specifically the villages in which the curfew was held
16:58
was simply an arab area there were no jews there the lawyers keep on insisting and ask if
17:05
they would see right to shoot an income tax official for instance had he been passing in the area during
17:12
the current few hours the answer is clear no also when another
17:17
army officer is asked if he knows what an arab bystander he replies
17:22
negatively these discussions that from a legal perspective are almost meaningless
17:29
reveal in fact a form of citizenship that contrary to judge ben benjamin levy’s
17:35
wishes and illusions of liberal zionists is based on nothing more than the possibility of passing as a g
17:42
and at least of not passing as an arab considering that the political is
17:48
constituted according to schmidt on the possibility of identifying an enemy from a friend something is clearly
17:54
not working here in a place in which it’s impossible to distinguish citizens from non-citizens
18:01
where there are citizens and there are also enemy citizens i will leave it to you to think if we
18:07
could qualify the citizenship that is based on practices of passing as a sovereign
18:13
failure or rather as a constitutive element within israel’s sovereignty
18:19
then and also today the failure to distinguish citizens from
18:24
non-citizens enemies from friends is not limited to palestinians because it lies on the possibility of
18:31
passing as a jeer and passing as a jew is considered as the opposing side of arab nest
18:37
mizaki are also targeted from time to time because they are mistaken for being palestinians
18:44
in his work on the mizahfi civil struggle roby mentions a number of occasions in which during the 50s
18:52
mizaki men were shot by the border police because they were mistaken for being arabs a few years ago another
18:59
mizrah man was stabbed by a jew who went out looking for arabs to stab
19:05
and following the last arrest and imprisonment of ayata mimi members of the israeli parliament were
19:12
discussing the possibility that in fact the tamimi family members aren’t palestinians
19:18
and proposed that they are they are actors recruited by the palestinian authority
19:24
the argument in favor of that assumption were tamimi’s light skin and eyes as well as
19:31
her blonde hair and american style wardrobe whatever that means
19:37
having said that it’s important to distinguish the studies of mizaki people in the early years of the
19:43
of the israeli state from the present as iris mentioned in our lecture in the
19:49
early years mizaki didn’t simply exactly people didn’t simply look like arabs resembled arabs they were
19:56
also considered as people whose loyality to the israeli state due to their arab origins is uncertain
20:04
questioned today i would say unfortunately our loyalty to the israeli
20:10
state is no longer questioned no more and no less than that of ashkenazi
20:16
the incidents i described in which mizrafi people are mistaken for being arabs originate simply from this
20:23
perception of citizenship that is based on practices of passing on resembling a citizen
20:30
in a place in which citizenship is still thought of through european appearance times have changed and the
20:37
whole of the israeli state made sure that it would be much more beneficial also for mizafi to be on its own side
20:45
thank you very much
20:53
thank you very much i don’t believe we’re already finished i think we could have all listened to you for another half hour at least and
21:00
not even noticed wow thank you so much for uh
21:05
giving this very enriching and and wide setting in which we can have conversation
21:12
and i invite everyone to write their questions in the chat and i’m happy to read them out loud without
21:18
the names and and i will start with a question of my own lucky me
21:24
because i think people are still thinking and writing so um
21:30
[Music] i guess the first question i would ask you is uh
21:39
can you maybe say something general on systems of peace slash
21:46
order are these integral two structures of violence and its justification as such would you
21:54
agree with that comment and that’s a very big question um
22:00
but do whatever you want my shorts my my few years in france uh and my love of
22:07
fanon uh it was quite amazing i mean a lot of
22:12
a lot of i would say white people because that would be the easiest or liberal people have a big problem with
22:19
fanon and on the one hand we have this interpretation of south in which
22:27
everything is about violence and the native cannot but be reborn through violence with which
22:34
is a misreading of on the other hand a lot of times i mean i think every
22:42
every country has its own zionists uh and it doesn’t pertain necessarily to
22:48
their relationship to israel it really relates to some kind of taboo
22:54
that you cannot uh bypass uh something that goes against that
23:00
the status quo and in that sense there is this very intense attempt to
23:07
pacify fanon and and to do away
23:12
with all the violent elements of his writing um so and
23:18
yeah i think globally we see time and again and perhaps especially these last few what it is in two months
23:25
in a month we had three peace agreements in israel uh so yeah they are interwined
23:34
unfortunately thank you um question could you elaborate on the eventual
23:42
analogies between your take on peacekeeping and the actual situation in
23:47
france concerning concerning muslims and islamophobia
23:53
i don’t know if i’m exactly a specialist i simply live here for the last five years
23:59
i can say only that that i’ve been looking almost everywhere on the media
24:05
even on on media on like platforms that are usually more critical
24:13
i still didn’t find anyone criticizing the french obsession to
24:21
to do caricatures of muhammad as if this is the essence of
24:27
the french idea of liberation and free speech uh so i
24:33
really hope i’m mistaken and perhaps there are platforms i’m not aware of uh but it is quite amazing to see
24:41
how everyone are just saying the same thing uh
24:47
lazydays still consider this neutralized concept um
24:53
[Music] so where do i find the relation between that and my
24:58
work um that’s hard to say i really think that what i’m trying to do overall through
25:04
the project is really to think about a state or more even a sovereign powers conditions
25:12
of possibility so in that sense every research we would do
25:17
about the stay would require to historicize it and to put it
25:22
in the specific context uh it means that i cannot just take what i know about israel and
25:30
and consider it valid for another society
25:40
thank you can you tell us more about the sources slash methods you used for your paper
25:47
today and in particular if you are looking at other moments where the category of
25:53
infra infiltrator and citizen emerge together
26:00
i can i’m really my my overall project is an analysis of three cases of this
26:07
nature so there is the casa massacre there is uh the event from 49 michelatmirim
26:14
which uh in which a bedroom young girl we don’t know her age was gang-raped and murdered by
26:23
an israeli battalion really just close to the border at the time
26:29
with egypt the third one is the 2016 shooting
26:34
incident in hebron and it might be a bit of a frustrating
26:40
answer uh but i’m trying to really approach each case
26:45
as from its own limits uh so there are some resemblances
26:52
but for instance this bad green girl of course that
26:59
there was an order that was given to all the units that were and that were positioned next to the
27:06
border on 49 to shoot to kill and through the trial
27:11
you can see that they consider the order to shoot to kill
27:17
they don’t consider the the order to shoot to kill every arab women children whatever every
27:23
arab that passes by as illegal at the time what they consider as illegal is
27:30
the the command given by the officer to one of his soldiers to shoot
27:36
her after they kidnapped her and raped her uh for almost 24 hours
27:43
um but there is i mean they give um they give this order
27:50
to to kill and then the day afterwards when they are given the written order then they change it and they say that
27:57
you shouldn’t shoot children and women so there is this uh difference between
28:03
the written command and the command that is given orally
28:08
to people and but there there is really no question of citizenship and of course
28:14
also in the 2016 um shooting incident in hebron
28:19
there is no question about um about the citizenship the status
28:28
of al-sharif i mean uh is simply a terrorist he’s considered a terrorist
28:33
through the trial although he never stood trial in himself he was he wasn’t prosecuted obviously he was murdered
28:40
um so i think um it is interesting to see though that in
28:46
the early early years of of the israeli state
28:51
it seems like israel is more preoccupied with the international community um
28:59
but also even in the falcaosan trial on the one hand we have all these letters that are sent to ben
29:05
gurion from citizens from ngo telling him that’s a terrible event you have to
29:11
to they have to be tried and the trial has to be public but then when the trial is over and
29:19
they they got their punishments and they were imprisoned then you have
29:24
these letters that are sent then like listen yeah they did something very bad but you
29:29
shouldn’t we shouldn’t react so aggressively to them so in that sense it was really
29:34
interesting to read it um in relation to what happened around
29:40
the 2016 shooting incident in which we know that there was a very big support for laura zarya
29:47
among citizens among politicians
29:55
and yeah maybe i can add to that another short question when is a hero just violent and when is
30:01
it legit um and is the only difference than the law or is the difference being
30:09
caught i would have to ask from whose perspective um i mean
30:17
i obviously as i hope it was clear from the the short lecture and i
30:24
don’t think we can consider the legal spectrum to be our indicator
30:31
and especially when you see how the open fire regulations for example
30:37
is really what structures this the question of how the event is going to be denied
30:43
uh okay what’s going to be the response for the so it becomes really i’m just working
30:49
now on the 2016 shooting incident an article on this event and it becomes
30:54
clear that from a legal perspective the death of al sharif is the most irrelevant issue in the tribe and the
31:02
trial is construed entirely from the perpetrator’s perspective um [Music]
31:09
that’s it um [Music] and but at the same time it seems
31:16
that most of the time these events will go there will be a process of
31:21
prosecuting the of prosecuting those involved etc etc because it was
31:29
because it was found out i mean there was no intention on ben gurion’s
31:35
part to have a trial in the beginning he thought he can cover it up um i think the most interesting
31:44
events are really these perverse moments in which people from the army cannot bear the violence
31:52
and they decide to speak out they are very rare but it’s interesting to see that it
31:59
exists but that’s really i mean it’s not what happens most of the
32:05
time most of the time it simply gets out to the international media um and then they are forced to do
32:12
something about it
32:18
thank you um could you say something about how you came to this project
32:24
what was your initial motivation what sparked it and and so
32:32
i’m obsessed with sovereignty uh it’s something that because i was doing
32:37
my master i was a student of adio fear um and i worked with him
32:43
on that topic and then i left it for a while um and and it started from the
32:50
realization that in philosophy we take this relation between sovereignty and violence
32:56
as an obvious one and i’m not very much contesting this relation
33:01
but i do think that something else happens in the moment in which the
33:07
state acknowledges the violent act because most of the time we are discussing and analyzing the
33:14
state’s uh use of violence it’s at moments that the state doesn’t
33:20
necessarily acknowledge it as such i mean either there is a denial of the event
33:26
it didn’t take place at all or it was legal and it was justified etc
33:32
etc and i thought that these events perhaps would allow me to go into how
33:39
the state negotiates these limits um and how in fact they transform
33:47
its they transform in a way the sovereign power in question
33:57
next question thank you did you find other mechanism than racial profiling
34:02
and passing to assert of reality
34:08
um that’s a very interesting question um
34:14
because i’ve never thought about it as a mechanism to assert state sovereignty so i’m thankful
34:21
i don’t know and who asked the question but i’m thankful for this idea um but i
34:29
am thinking of looking really more deeply and hope hopefully with other
34:36
scholars on really this idea of citizenship that is based on passive and how
34:43
um because i think we are all using it very very often i mean our idea
34:50
of citizenship is really doomed uh in that sense uh yeah we live in france
34:58
so we are very used to we usually when we lived in paris it was mostly
35:04
in in neighborhoods with a lot of immigrants so friends would come and they’re like there are no french people
35:10
in your neighborhood um because they are all black asians you know um
35:18
and and i’m i’m saying it and at the same time i mean i think it’s really embedded
35:25
within us the idea that nationality comes with a specific appearance uh whether it really helps to
35:33
strengthen withhold safe sovereignty that’s a good question i would say
35:38
just like that yeah because if i would think about all the
35:44
abstractions that are required to think about the nation so of course a specific appearance would be
35:50
a very important feature within this process
36:02
thank you i’m always impressed by our speakers that that have answers to all the questions and they’re very different
36:08
and some of our personal but so so uh um thanks for that and i’m gonna ask another one of my own
36:15
uh as long as there’s none in the chat and also you can see in the chat who’s asking the questions i i purposely don’t
36:20
read the names just in case people don’t want that um
36:30
yeah so maybe uh we can stick with uh uh i mean it’s
36:36
somehow related was was the the you call it the potential agitator
36:42
was the image of the potential agitator has it changed over time if yes how and was it also
36:50
sometimes adopted actually i need a bit of clarification on this
36:56
question so i’m thinking now of like uh
37:01
and having like on one side this image of this is the person you should be afraid
37:07
of like the image of the agitator right or the potential agitator is um
37:13
is the infiltrator and in the same time there’s also an adaption
37:19
of of their culture or of their appearance to become or to
37:24
justify some sort of self local belonging it’s not exactly
37:30
what what you’re talking about but i wonder like uh the image of the agitator is it like has it changed over time do you see
37:36
there is some developments and also uh if yeah if you would wish to
37:41
comment on that if not i am i i don’t work on this specific issue so i cannot really give a reliable
37:50
answer beyond my intentions and i don’t without beyond my assumptions so i don’t think it would be
37:55
would be fair okay you see i couldn’t answer a question
38:00
sorry i also didn’t form it very well um [Music]
38:07
so next question uh in the jewish israeli society many of
38:14
us are civilians and soldiers either before civilians and then soldiers civilians and soldiers at the same time
38:21
um how would that maybe influence uh the discussion um
38:28
or also yeah the objectivity maybe of um of the courtroom where everyone
38:35
also used to be a soldier i think it is um
38:41
it’s in the film the rule of law um that one of the judges says
38:49
is honest is like it’s very problematic to have like a palestinian coming into court
38:55
um under the accusation of committing a terrorist act
39:01
which is like uh something that targets me as a jewish person uh in israel
39:08
and to really just be fair and be able to um
39:16
i think that you see the relationship the fact that
39:24
most of the people in israel go to the army um i think you see that in these trials
39:33
mostly when it gets to the punishments i mean the specific verdict
39:41
they would intel um so then immediately they’re taking into
39:46
consideration um the fact that as soldiers you you already you are already in a
39:53
situation of contributing yeah to the state you’re already doing sort
39:59
of a voluntary work so that’s um and of course in the 2016
40:04
uh shooting in hebron it was very clear with
40:10
the the identification of elorzaya as our child
40:17
it happened by the way also with the group of young men accused of
40:24
rape in cyprus they all became in one moment our kids
40:30
which is also and they were before their service they were about to start their service
40:37
um so yeah it’s something that is really strong in israel
40:42
i think in general thanks next question from the audience
40:49
is in your opinion does the israeli legal system take its self-seri take itself serious when
40:56
it comes to bringing justice for the palestinian or is the court uh just meant
41:02
to be uh for pr purposes i think it’s neither actually i think
41:09
it’s really uh i’m working on a paper now with uh yeah alberta uh and
41:16
it’s it’s one there is uh this tendency in the last few years um there is a lot of propaganda coming
41:24
out of the army so one of it there is um [Music] the military prosecution decided
41:32
for israel’s 17th independence day to ask the soldiers to write about these
41:39
important events for the military prosecution and and that’s a very interesting project to
41:47
look at it’s online you can all visit it and we were we are we were really trying for
41:54
a very long time to understand why are they doing it i mean why are they writing about these cases
42:00
i mean the majority of them don’t involve palestinians but there are quite a lot that involve palestinians and it seems
42:08
to us that and you can be in disagreement with me on that of course but it seems to us that
42:17
uh what is important for the military prosecution is that it would simply be by law
42:24
what is the content of the law is less important and less relevant uh and
42:30
that’s how we ha we came to it because the art is very strange situation where
42:37
like the soldier writing this text about it would say yeah it was a very
42:43
important case and you see how the judges really gave a very important decision
42:50
here considering a palestinian issue but eventually
42:55
but then like the verdict is really you know is humiliating uh and and it there is no
43:01
contradiction for them uh so it seems like the the mere fact that it went to trial it was tried
43:09
uh it was by law even if the law itself is problematic is really what helps them
43:17
sleep at night i don’t know feel comfortable with what they are doing
43:28
and so what does the justification of some violence
43:33
under the law and the diligent legitimization of other violence
43:39
that becomes unlawful um have to do with um the democratic
43:46
part of the title of the state of israel can you repeat it so israel defines
43:54
itself as jewish democratic state yes um what does uh
44:00
legitimate versus non-legitimate violence have to do with holding on to this jewish
44:06
democratic the democratic part of the title of the state i think it’s essential uh i think it’s
44:13
really essential i don’t think i would say anything very new here i’m very claiming it but um
44:23
because the world is looking i mean i think israel’s status in the international
44:29
community is a very very pro it’s a very complicated one because on the one hand we are talking about
44:36
a state that is a strong state a wealthy state um and although we don’t have
44:43
any border i mean we never really decided on our borders so we can say
44:48
like the borders are contested and they are contested but the question is by whom
44:55
um and the international community is you know they can give declarations
45:02
etc etc in general they’re not doing anything um so israel is really in this strange
45:09
situation in which it relies also a lot economically i’m sure she’ll have
45:16
knows much more about it than me about export and its relations with other
45:22
countries um perhaps now with all these peace agreements uh we will we can just decide to let go
45:30
even of the liberal image because what does it matter anymore but um but eventually i think it’s
45:38
really essential to do these trials because you can see with the 2016
45:44
um shooting that the reactions internationally were very hard um
45:52
but then you know it went to trial there was a bit of criticism about the fact that the aurora was
46:00
imprisoned simply like the the verdict was simply 18 months um that were reduced of course
46:08
afterwards that’s what happens all the time um but it didn’t shake
46:14
anything i mean and what would have happened had israel wouldn’t try
46:21
anything that’s a good question but as we know from the very important work yes dean is
46:27
doing and the i mean it’s really it’s a small small fraction
46:32
so um most of the time we don’t prosecute
46:43
i invite the audience uh to keep bringing in your questions we’re gonna
46:48
uh and shortly finish up so if anyone wants to to ask one or two more questions and please
46:56
welcome um i’m coming back to this
47:02
idea of making trial because one has been caught
47:08
and i wonder um what does that have to do with uh
47:14
freedom of academy as a watchdog for state institutions if you want to give a comment on that of
47:22
like who catches who and where are responsibilities within
47:28
those uh spaces i actually there was
47:33
i i don’t think i’m not sure i will answer your question but i will share a short story um because
47:40
yesterday evening i went into my facebook that it’s closed now because i have to submit
47:46
my phd in a few months so i’m not allowed to go there but i went in just to let people know of this
47:52
lecture and then i found a message from a military historian
47:59
that i quote in my paper and he told me and the day he and another
48:07
um military historian found the the final
48:14
proof that operation huffa ferret uh was in place but that in fact
48:22
there are other reasons for it eventually i convinced him to send me
48:27
his paper um and and it really triggered me because i can’t say more about that a lot about
48:34
that because i was swerved to secrecy because it’s under review but it was really interesting that their
48:42
claim is that actually operation cafe was intended to
48:49
trick the egyptian and that because uh that the idea was to make it
48:55
look like there is action on the jordanian border but in fact um
49:01
the idea was to attack egypt um and that no one intended
49:10
the the order of should to kill given to these units in the villages in the triangle area
49:18
no one intended them to really shoot the villagers so it was this perverse outcome that no
49:25
one intended to and in fact it was a deception plan uh and i was really dazzled by it
49:33
because of course on the one hand of course israel gets out perfectly because suddenly
49:39
shooting palestinians is a perverse action in israel we know it’s not unfortunately um
49:46
on the other hand i was really i was asking myself why is he even
49:52
writing about it i mean he’s doing a military historian
49:58
clearly very zionist um the man who wrote with him is teaching
50:04
in a military academy in israel i mean these are people from within the system
50:10
um so i think that’s really intriguing i mean i feel like there is something about
50:15
the zionist soul i don’t know as i missed consciousness i don’t know
50:21
how to call it exactly that is really interesting to me because i don’t understand it that’s
50:28
that’s the fact of the matter i simply don’t understand it i don’t know i mean again
50:35
we are none of us is a rational being in the sense that we would like ourselves to we would like to think
50:42
uh so perhaps we can just say okay zionists are like everyone like all the other um but still it’s
50:50
really interesting i and i thought maybe part of it is really because it has to do with the past
50:56
so not only eventually israel comes out okay because they didn’t intend them to
51:02
shoot the palestinians and then they were like oh wow why did you shoot them we just told you to shoot them but you
51:07
weren’t supposed to shoot them something like that um and
51:13
and also because in general there is this it’s it’s something that i picked on uh
51:20
when working on falcasa it’s like there is this national mission of saving
51:25
ben gurion’s name and they will do whatever gymnastics they have to do
51:31
in order to make sure that ben gurion is okay uh he didn’t cover up he
51:38
he did that so yeah not an answer like i said
51:46
but a great story thank you um okay i see there’s one last question
51:51
that i missed and adding on the mechanism question and what expression to your opinion does
51:58
this mechanism and women take in relation to the jewish citizens
52:04
of israel if any and i think that’s sadly our last question and then we’ll start wrapping up
52:09
okay um very good question um i think we should ask
52:16
about which jewish citizen because we are not as homogenic as
52:23
israel would like us to believe um but i i think
52:28
i feel it’s a bit hard for me to answer because my instinct would be to say yeah
52:35
of course we as misaki we you know we pay a price for it whereas
52:43
i don’t know light skin jewish people simply enjoy this privilege etc but that
52:50
seems like too much of an easy answer um and on top of it as time goes by
52:58
i feel like we need to revisit the narrative we have about mizah youth in israel in general
53:05
i feel it’s too it’s it’s like it’s frozen in time um in a way so
53:13
very often we will see the same theories applied same theories that were written in the
53:20
80s in the 90s applied today and i think the status of mizaki people
53:25
changed greatly so i really appreciate in that line works that are being done on mizaki
53:32
people from middle class or upper class and stuff like that not to say that there are no
53:39
differences economic differences cultural differences and opportunities among the groups but
53:47
that politically something changed [Music]
53:52
and i think as a jew we simply meet it daily every time we are not asked a question
53:59
when we go into a public institution we feel that
54:05
our citizenship lies on passing and when we are asked we know that
54:12
it’s not clear i mean i’m asked when i’m entering the airport with a taxi
54:19
and and then they add to the appearance of course my accent and then they are very happy and
54:27
i can go in easily but yeah um it’s something we feel daily i
54:35
think even if we are not asked it’s also
54:45
vital thank you so much it was a true pleasure and honor to have you part of
54:50
our program and to listen to you speak if you have any uh last message you wish
54:56
to uh to share with us this evening or something you want to to ask us and you’re welcome and i think
55:03
we are officially wrapping it up and and yeah here come all the thank yous so
55:09
if you want if you want to have the last word you’re welcome and uh thanks again
55:15
uh i would just like to say thank you for the invitation thank you for all the
55:22
questions um and keep on with this beautiful project of
55:27
unlearning zionism i wish us all to unlearn everything we learned there so
55:35
that’s it
===================================================
https://www.eui.eu/people?id=revital-madar
Revital Madar
Max Weber Fellow
Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies
Biography
Revital Madar’s research focuses on the intersection of law, sovereignty, and violence in the context of Palestine-Israel. In her current project, Revital delineates a legal taxonomy of state violence that would allow to better identify the conditions of possibility of this violence locally and globally. This is an interdisciplinary project that rethinks what legal taxonomy can be and who and what it can serve.
In 2021 Revital will be awarded a Ph.D. by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The main contribution of her thesis, ‘Repudiated Violence, and Sovereignty – the Case of Israel’, is the introduction of an analytical framework that offers a new entry into the question of sovereign violence. In the context of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, her thesis traces how violence against Palestinians was legalized.
During her stay at the EUI Revital will dedicate her time to examining the implications of repudiated violence on international law and revise her thesis into a monograph.
Revital was granted the Trajectories of Change – Bucerius Ph.D. Fellowship and was a visiting fellow at Sciences-Po, Université de Liège, and the IHEID.
Expertise for Teaching and Mentoring of Ph.D. Researchers
Revital has been teaching Sciences-Po B.A. level courses since 2017. Her teaching experience includes two elective courses, Sovereign Power & Violence – from Territory to Population and Sexuality, and Gender and Imperialism, discussion sessions on imperialism in the 20th century, and academic writing consultation. In 2014 she initiated and moderated an academic professional workshop for first-generation students that is now in its sixth year.
===========================================================
https://huji.academia.edu/MadarRevital
Madar Revital
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Cultural Studies, Graduate Student
Revital Madar is a Ph.D. student in the cultural studies program in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a fellow member of the Minerva Humanities Center. In 2015 she initiated, together with Dr. Roi Wagner, a widely acclaimed academic professionalization workshop for first generation students, which is now entering its third year. Her M.A. thesis in philosophy explored Nietzsche’s concept of revenge, and offered an innovative reading of his perception of revenge as a constructive concept. Her academic work is embedded within the Israeli public sphere through social and feminist activism and through publications of op-ed columns in leading Israeli newspapers. Supervisors: Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
===================================
https://www.palestine.cz/en/newsd-the-only-democratic-party-in-israel
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-only-democratic-party-in-israel-1.5401830
The Embassy of the State of Palestine in Czech Republic
The Only Democratic Party in Israel
The wall-to-wall condemnation of three Arab MKs for meeting terrorists’ families shows that the Joint List is only one party here that truly understands what democracy is.
“The definition of democracy is ‘Shut up, shut up! The majority rules,’” Education Minister Naftali Bennett (played as a teacher by actor Eran Zarhovitz) tells a class of schoolkids on Channel 2 TV’s current affairs satire “Eretz Nehederet” (“A Wonderful Country”). When a student in the class says the definition is wrong, since democracy is supposed to protect the rights of minorities, the class tells him, “Shut up, shut up!” Bennett takes pride in how quickly the children have learned the lesson.
How far is the concept of democracy in Israel – as well as in the Knesset – from the idea of Bennett and the right-wing as evinced in “A Wonderful Country”? The recent verbal assaults by political parties across the spectrum on three Balad MKs who met with the families of Palestinian terrorists shows that the distance is not far enough.
If we expand the answer of the rebellious student in the skit, who challenged the definition of Bennett, then beyond the question of the majority and the minority, a democratic regime must see to it that rights themselves are protected and that all groups in the population share them – in life as in death.
In Israel, of course, there is a problem with the definition of the population, since not everyone who lives in the area under Israel’s control is defined as a citizen. This differentiation makes it possible for Israel to impose one regime – on the formal level as well – on those who have Israeli citizenship, and another on those who do not (leaving aside for the moment the discrimination between citizens of Israel).
Under these circumstances, Israeli society and the Knesset – which represents it and dictates the boundaries of its political thought – does not have the tools to understand the ideas of the members of the Balad faction with regard to the meaning of democracy and civil rights, as well as human rights.
How can Balad MKs care more for a person who committed a crime, the Israeli thinking goes, and for the rights of his family? How can they insist that the family be allowed to bury its dead in the manner they see fit, and be given custody of the body beforehand?
The Zionist enterprise long ago stopped making do with control over the lives of Palestinians. Why do so when their deaths can be organized according to the will of the Israeli state, too? When the controlling power assumes the rights to a person’s remains, when it takes away the rights of the family and their deceased from them, these families should rightly receive the support of those who support democracy. There should be those for whom the arsenal of Israel’s security-related excuses – which time and again restrict rights and expand obligations – are not paramount, because in a democracy, caring for civil and human rights must be the top priority.
Following the wall-to-wall condemnation of the Balad MKs, clearly there is only one party that truly understands what democracy is (and which is light years away from the definition given by Bennett in the “Wonderful Country” skit). That party is the Joint Arab List – that Knesset alliance of Arab parties that few believed could last, considering the different positions of the factions that came together to form it.
In light of the Joint Arab List’s condemnation of the criticism of MKs Haneen Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka and Basel Ghattas, and the unbridled incitement against them, and the lack of such condemnation by the rest of the Knesset, it is quite clear that the threat to democracy in Israel comes not only from the more extreme or less extreme right. The threat to democracy in Israel, from 1948 to the present, is rooted in Zionism. And until this fact is recognized, there is probably no point in the various parties trying to persuade us they are in deep disagreement on diplomatic issues.
Until then, the Knesset can pride itself on having only one democratic party in its midst. It is a party so radical that it really has internalized the demand of a democratic regime not to differentiate between human beings, not to condition rights on obligations, not to impose collective punishment. It is this belief that leads only one party to care for the mother whose nights have no peace until her son is buried according to her faith.
Revital Madar
Haaretz Contributor
====================================
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1927-7451
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1927-7451
Revital Madar EUI
Keywords
state violence, state criminality, sovereignty, human rights, international humanitarian law, political theory, political anthropology
Countries
Israel, Palestinian Territories, Italy, France, Switzerland
account_circle
Revital Madar
Biography
Revital Madar is a Max Weber postdoctoral fellow at the Law Department at EUI. She is interested in state violence and criminality, sovereignty, human rights, IHL. Her PhD thesis, Repudiated Violence and Sovereignty – The Case of Israel, introduces a new analytical tool and paradigm for researching state violence. Focusing on trials of Israeli soldiers, it explores the state’s relationship with its security agents against the backdrop of the legal system.
Activities
Employment (1)
European University Institute: Fiesole, Toscana, IT
2021-09-01 to 2022-08-31 | Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow (Law)
Employment
Education and qualifications (2)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, IL
2021-11-27 | PhD (Cultural Studies )
Education
Organization identifiers
RINGGOLD: 26742
Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, IL
Other organization identifiers provided by RINGGOLD
ISNI: 0000000419370538
OFR: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003483
2021-12-11
Source: Revital Madar
Tel Aviv University: Tel Aviv, IL
2015-03-01 | M.A. (Philosophy )
Education
Invited positions and distinctions (3)
Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développement: Geneve, GE, CH
2019-11-01 to 2020-05-31 | Junior Visiting Fellow (International Law)
Université de Liège: Liege, BE
2017-09-01 to 2018-01-31 | Doctoral visiting fellow (Philosophy )
Sciences Po: Paris, FR
2016-09-01 to 2017-08-31 | Doctoral Visiting Fellow (Political Theory)
Membership and service (1)
ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius: Hamburg, Hamburg, DE
2021-10 to present | Co-director of woking group “Law and Care: A Transnational and Transregional Perspective”
Service
Funding (4)
Repudiated Violence and Sovereignty – The Case of Israel
2017-12 to 2020-11 | Grant
Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius (Hambourg, DE)
Repudiated Violence and Sovereignty – The Case of Israel
2017-09 to 2018-01 | Grant
Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Brussels , BE)
Repudiated Violence and Sovereignty – The Case of Israel
2016-09 to 2017-08 | Salary award
Erasmus+ (Paris , FR)
“Do You Know What’s an Arab Bystander?”: The Kafr Qasim Trial as a Case Study for a Sovereign Failure
Grant
Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv , IL)
Works (8)
Repudiated Violence and Sovereignty
2021-11-27 | Dissertation/Thesis
Language
English
Country of publication
Israel
Israël, un État Juif et Séculier ?
Relations
2021 | Magazine article
Deathmurder: From the Language of Humanity to the Question of Who Can Be Murdered
Sartre, Jews and the Other – Rethinking Anti-Semitism, Race & Gender
2020 | Book chapter
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110600124-014
“Do You Know What’s an Arab Bystander?”: The Kafr Qasim Trial as a Case Study for a Sovereign Failure
The Conflict – Sociological, Historical and Geographical Aspects.
2019 | Book chapter
Israel’s Mizrahi Moment
Jewish Quarterly
2017 | Magazine article
The Art of the Struggle
Tohu Magazine
2017 | Magazine article
“Stretching What Already Exists”: The Work of the Designer Sasson Kedem as a Different Encounter between Creation and Critique
Bezalel – Journal of Visual and Material Culture
2015 | Journal article
Covered yet Overexposed: From a Female Religious Jewish Performance to Israel’s Status as a Western or non-Western Country
International Journal of Fashion Studies
2015 | Journal article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/infs.2.1.115_1
===========================================
https://huji.academia.edu/MadarRevital/CurriculumVitae
Revital Madar Curriculum Vitae January 2020
1
Revital Madar
Curriculum Vitae
The Program in Cultural Studies
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
madarevital@gmail.com
+33783923641
Education
2015-present The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Ph.D. Candidate, The Program in Cultural Studies
“Repudiated Violence and Sovereignty – The case of Israel”
Supervisor: Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Committee: Prof. Louise Bethlehem, Prof. Gadi Algazi, Dr. Yael Berda
2015 Tel Aviv University, Israel
M.A. in Philosophy, Magna Cum Laude with Distinction, GPA: 94.5
Thesis: “The Conceptual Realm of Nietzsche’s Concept of Revenge in
Ecce Homo and Human all too Human”, Supervisor: Prof. Adi Ophir,
Grade: 95, Summa Cum Laude
2006 Tel Aviv University, Israel
B.A. in Philosophy and the Interdisciplinary Program of the Arts
Publications
Refereed Journal Articles
Madar, Revital. 2015. “Covered yet Overexposed: From a Female Religious Jewish
Performance to Israel’s Status as a Western or non-Western Country,” International
Journal of Fashion Studies, 2(1) pp. 115-120.
Madar, Revital. 2015. “Stretching What Already Exists”: The Work of the Designer Sasson
Kedem as a Different Encounter between Creation and Critique,” Bezalel – Journal of
Visual and Material Culture (2) June [Hebrew].
Book Sections
Madar, Revital. Forthcoming. “Deathmurder: From the Language of Humanity to the
Question of Who Can Be Murdered,” in Manuela Consonni & Vivian Liska (Eds.),
Sartre, Jews and the Other – Rethinking Anti-Semitism, Race & Gender. Berlin,
Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Madar, Revital. 2019. “’Do You Know What’s an Arab Bystander?’: The Kafr Qasim Trial as
a Case Study for a Sovereign Failure,” in Amal Jamal (Ed.), The Conflict –
Sociological, Historical and Geographical Aspects. Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-
Arab Coexistence through Education, Tel Aviv University, pp. 25-48 [Hebrew].
Revital Madar Curriculum Vitae January 2020
2
Work in Progress
Sovereignty from Below: The Performance of Israel’s Rule of Law and the Legal Place of the
Palestinian
Exceptional Violence and Ordinary Racialization: The Construction of Sovereign Difference
in Israel’s Military Courts
Selected Non-Academic Publications
English
2017 Madar, Revital. “The Art of the Struggle,” Tohu Magazine, June 25.
2017 Madar, Revital. Israel’s Mizrahi Moment, Jewish Quarterly, 64(1), p. 10.
2016 Madar, Revital. Why Ask MKs about God, of all Things?, Haaretz, October
20.
2016 Madar, Revital. The Only Democratic Party in Israel, Haaretz, February 9.
2015 Madar, Revital. When Dikla Sang Eurythmics in an Arab Accent,” Haaretz,
November 14.
Hebrew
2019 Madar, Revital. Critique – Revital Madar on ‘Little Life’ by Hanya
Yanagihara, Hamussach – Literary Supplement, January 24.
2018 Madar, Revital. The Politics of the Mizrahi Closet, Haokets, February 24.
2015 Madar, Revital. A Mizrahi, Ashkenazi and a Palestinian Wear a Galabyia:
Who has the Cultural Right to Wear it?, Haaretz, June 5.
2015 Madar, Revital. The Poet Yonit Naaman Demands an Equal Representation for
each of her Representations, Haaretz, January 15.
Grants and Fellowships
2019-2020 Junior Visiting Ph.D. Fellow
International Law Department, Graduate Institute of
International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva.
Supervisor: Prof. Andrea Bianchi
2018-2020 Trajectories of Change – Bucerius Ph.D. Fellow
ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius (39,600€, 33 months)
Revital Madar Curriculum Vitae January 2020
3
2018 The Authority for Research Students, Support for International
Conferences Grant, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2200$)
2017 The Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence through
Education, the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tel Aviv,
Ph.D. Grant (2500€)
2017 European Fund for the Balkans (EFB)
Center for Comparative Conflict Studies, Faculty of Media and
Communication, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Summer School
Grant (400€)
2017 Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI), Ph.D. Research Scholarship
Philosophy Department, Université de Liège
Supervisor: Prof. Édouard Delruelle (8500€, 9 months)
2017 The Faculty for Social Sciences Grant for Conference Participation,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (400€)
2015-2016 EMAIL III – Erasmus Mundus Doctoral Research Scholarship
Political Theory Department, Sciences-Po Paris (7,200€, 6 months)
2016 Prof. Louise Bethlehem, The Program in Cultural Studies, The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Doctoral Research Grant (1000€)
2016 The Program in Cultural Studies, Research and Conference
Participation Grant, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1900€)
2015, 2013 Minerva Humanities Center, Conference Participation Grant, Tel Aviv
University (2000$)
2014 EDEN – Erasmus Mundus Master’s Research Scholarship
Political Theory Department, Sciences-Po, Paris (5000€, 6 months)
2012 Prof. Adi Ophir, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of
Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University
Master’s Research Grant (2000€)
2010 Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI), M.A. Research Scholarship
Rhetoric Department, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Supervisor: Prof. Emmanuelle Danblon (4800€)
2010 Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), German Language
Studies, Did – Deutsch-Institut, Berlin (2000€)
Invited Talks
2019 The White West 2, “Israël et la Suprématie Blanche – une Nouvelle
Aube pour une Relation Séculaire? ” La Colonie, Paris, June 16.
Revital Madar Curriculum Vitae January 2020
4
2018 Creator and Moderator, “The Challenge of Grounded Theory,” 2-day
Ph.D. Workshop at “Think = Do = Discover – The Multiverse of
Research,” Ph.D. Program “Transformations in European Societies,”
Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, LMU Munich,
October 24-25.
2017 Semaine Anticolonial, « Peut-on rendre compte de la lutte Mizrahi en
Israël sans Sacrifier Celle des Palestiniens – Aujourd’hui Comme
Hier ? », Salon Anticolonial, Paris, March 4.
2016 Philosophy is not written with a ‘Z’ – on the Bodies of Thought, “The
Anorexic Sovereign,” Tel-Aviv Night of Philosophy, May 26.
2016 “Black and Mizrahi Feminism” in the Seminar: Women in the
Community and Social Change: Critical Practice, School of Social
Work, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, April 6.
2014 “When the Political Enters the Studio: on the Political-Creative
Consultant,” Research Methods for Creative Direction for Fashion
Seminar, London College of Fashion, May 14.
Conference Participation
Conferences and Workshops Organized
2018 Living with Contested Borders – The Case of Palestine-Israel, Beyond
Borders – ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Alumni
Conference, Berlin, May 25.
2013 The Underrepresentation of Women from Minority Groups in the
Israeli Academy, Minerva Humanities Center – University of Tel Aviv,
December 22.
Panel Organized
2020 Law & Society Annual Meeting, “In Search of the ‘Political’: Law’s
(Il)legibility Between Violence and Care,” Denver, May 29.
Papers Presented
2020 Law & Society Annual Meeting, “Constructing and Preserving Settler-
Colonial Temporality Through Law and Violence,” Denver, May 29.
2019 Sixth Annual ACGS Conference – Racial Borders, Racist Borders,
“Exceptional Violence and Ordinary Racialization in Hebron’s 2016
Shooting Incident,” University of Amsterdam, October 17.
2019 Beyond Borders, ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Alumni
Conference, “Repudiated Violence on the Borders,” Berlin, May 25.
Revital Madar Curriculum Vitae January 2020
5
2019 Trajectories of Change Annual Fellows Conference, Zeit-Stiftung,
“The Case for Repudiated Violence – Preliminary Thoughts,” Berlin,
May 11.
2018 Replacement and Replaceability in Contemporary Culture – VIII
Graduate Conference in Culture Studies, “Revenge Beyond the Logic
of Replacement – Rethinking Political Action,” Universidade Católica
Portuguesa, Lisbon, December 6.
2018 Trajectories of Change Annual Fellows Conference, Zeit-Stiftung,
“’Do you know What’s an Arab Bystander?’: The Kafr Qasim Trial as
Case Study for a Sovereign Failure,” Berlin, May 24.
2017 Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference, “Debt and Identity
Politics in the Hebron Shooting Incident,” Georgetown University,
Washington D.C., May 25.
2016 Sartre’s Réflexions sur la Question Juive – 70 Years After:
Antisemitism, Race, and Gender, “A Moment of Inconsistency: Letting
the Black Body into the Sphere of Western Humanity,” the Vidal
Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, December 18.
2015 3rd European Geographies of Sexualities Conference – Crossing
Boundaries: Sexualities, Media and (Urban) Spaces, The Effects of
Acts of Shaming on ‘Safe Spaces,’” Sapienza – Università di Roma,
September 16.
2015 15th Other Sex Annual Conference, “When Comparing Identities and
Oppressions…” Tel Aviv University, June 14.
2013 The 2nd Non-Western Fashion Conference, “Creating Identity Outside
of the Exposed Body,” London University of the Arts, November 20.
10th Lexical Conference of Political Thought, “Revenge,” Minerva
Humanities Center – Tel Aviv University, June 19.
2012 8th Lexical Conference of Political Thought, “Failure,” Minerva
Humanities Center – Tel Aviv University, June 27.
Teaching Experience
Lecturer
Spring 2019, Seminar, “Sovereign Power & Violence – from Territory to
Autumn 2017 Population and Sexuality, General Program, Second Year,
Sciences-Po, Paris.
Autumn 2017 Seminar, “Gender & Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Century,” Europe-
North America Program, Sciences-Po, Reims.
Revital Madar Curriculum Vitae January 2020
6
Section Instructor
Spring 2018, Discussion Session, “The History of Empires in the 20th Century,”
Spring 2017 Europe-North America Program, Second Year, Sciences-Po, Reims.
August 2019, Orientation Week, Methodology Sessions: Introduction, research
August 2018 question, critical reading, bibliography, presentation skills, First year,
Sciences-Po, Reims.
Teaching Assistant
Spring 2013 Elective Course, “Critique of Religion: Marx, Nietzsche and Freud,”
The Interdisciplinary College, Herzliya.
Professional / Research Experience
Research Assistantships
2019-Present Assistant to Prof. Nadim Rouhana, research on the concept of the ger
(gentile), nationality and homeland in Israel/Palestine, International
Affairs and Conflict Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University,
Massachusetts.
2014-2016 Assistant to Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, research on childhood
in Palestine and human rights, including archive research, School for
Social Work, Criminology Institute, and Faculty of Law, The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
2014 Assistant to Prof. Yifat Biton, research on fear of crime, School of
Law, The College of Management Academic Studies, Tel Aviv.
2014 Assistant to Dr. Meital Balmas, research on the interpretation of
international law and language, Communication and Journalism
department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Affiliations and Research Groups
2017 Fellow member of the research group “Matérialités de la Politique,”
directed by Prof. Édouard Delruelle, Philosophy Department,
Université de Liège.
2012-2016 Fellow member of the “Political Lexicon” research group for graduate
students, directed by Prof. Adi Ophir, Minerva Humanities Center, Tel
Aviv University.
2013-2014 Fellow member of the “Living Together” research group for graduate
students, directed by Dr. Raif Zreik. Minerva Humanities Center, Tel
Aviv University.
Revital Madar Curriculum Vitae January 2020
7
2013 Director of “Sexism and Racism,” research group for graduate students,
Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University.
Professional Development
2018 Summer workshop on “Theory from the South: Interrogating the
Global Dis/Order,” with Prof. Jean and John Comaroff.
School for Social Research’s Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, The
New School, New York June 11-16.
2017 International Summer School in Comparative Conflict Studies on
“Religion and Conflict: The Balkans’ Explorations vs. Explorations of
the Balkans,” with Dr. Dino Abazović, Center for Comparative
Conflict Studies at the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK),
Singidunum University, Belgrade, June 25-July 1.
Service to the Department, Field, and Community
2016-2017 Member of the governing council, “Academia for Equality” –
organization promoting social change within and from academia, Israel.
2014-2016 Initiator, organizer, moderator and consultant, “The Academic
Professionalization Training for First Generation Graduate Students,”
Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University (since 2016 I have
acted as supervisor and consultant).
2013-2015 Publicist and author of weekly column “Black Flag,” Haaretz cultural
supplement.
2013-2015 Coordinator and moderator, “Feminist Mizrahi Madrasse” – annual
community course on Mizrahi (oriental) Jewish feminism in South Tel
Aviv and in Sapir College organized by “Achoti Movement for Women
in Israel.”
2012-2013 New media manager, “The Gun on the Table Campaign” – a feminist
grassroots initiative for amelioration of gun supervision in Israel.
2007-2012 English and French translator, Physicians for Human Rights’ Open
Clinic, Israel.
Languages
Hebrew: Native
English: Fluent
French: Fluent
German: Intermediate
israel-academia-monitor.com 