Erica Weiss

Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty

Introduction Chapter 1. The Interrupted Sacrifice Chapter 2. Every Tongues Got to Confess Chapter 3. Confronting Sacrifice Chapter 4. Pacifist? Prove It! The Adjudication of Conscience Chapter 5. The Yoke of Conscience and the Binds of Community Conclusion. False Promises Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

Beyond Mystification: Hegemony, Resistance, and Ethical Responsibility in Israel

This article reevaluates the usefulness of the theoretical continuum between hegemony and resistance in light of recent Israeli experiences. Specifically, through the comparison of “conscientious objection” and “draft evasion,” I find that the breakdown of hegemonic consciousness is not sufficient to understand why some disillusioned Israeli soldiers choose public resistance against the state, while others choose evasive tactics. I argue that the space between ideological discontent and resistance is fraught with social and ethical considerations. The source of political discontent for disillusioned soldiers is problematization of their military service as an ethical dilemma, though the ethical concerns of these soldiers extend well beyond the overtly political sphere. I contend that this presents a challenge to the opposition of hegemony and resistance, but also to many accounts in political anthropology that implicitly privilege the political sphere as a natural site of self-fulfillment. Many accounts of hegemony and resistance isolate political consciousness from the broader ethical life in which people engage, and thus do not recognize that rejecting public action can be based on prioritizing other values, not only mystification. I find that one’s readiness to resist the state is dependent on the degree of “metonymization” of the individual with the state project, and that cynicism is one way that people articulate the differentiation of their interests from those of the state.

Provincializing empathy: Humanitarian sentiment and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

This article considers the role of the humanitarian sentiment empathy in peace initiatives in the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Recently, a sustained critique of humanitarianism has emerged. While many of these accounts focus on the ethical effects of specific manifestations of humanitarian governance, there is a significant strain criticizing the inherent logical structure of humanitarian empathy, and questioning the innate ability of the humanitarian tradition to understand ethical questions politically. This critique does not resonate with my fieldwork experiences with Jewish Israeli conscientious objectors, who are explicitly inspired by empathetic experiences with Palestinians, and interpret these experiences politically. Thus, following Dipesh Chakrabarty’s example, I suggest that provincializing the humanitarian tradition is a more productive anthropological stance than critique, because it similarly allows us to criticize universal claims and abuses of power, while not subscribing to determinism, and not repudiating our interlocutors’ core ethical beliefs.

Sacrifice as Social Capital among Israeli Conscientious Objectors

This article considers counterhegemonic sacrifices as a means of social intervention, and in doing so explores the social efficacy of non-ritual sacrifice in the modern era. Ethnographically, this article examines the way Israeli conscientious objectors succeed in having their refusal of military service and the social costs they incur understood as sacrifices by the Israeli public. Ex-soldiers accumulate social capital in light of public perception that they have ‘paid the price’ for their beliefs. Other ethnographic contexts that further elucidate the ability of socially abject to use sacrifice to counterhegemonic effect are presented. I claim that the recognition of sacrifice depends on an intersubjective combination of sacrificial intention and community recognition. This article suggests that the meaning of sacrifice is determined by how sacrifice is used and understood in social context, and as such breaks ranks with literatures on sacrifice concerned with the intrinsic coherence of ritual sacrifice.