Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Marks, Susan

Area of Concentration

International and Area Studies and Religion

Abstract

Law and human rights research regarding the Palestinian child has long focused on physical abuse by Israeli security forces and the Israeli state’s violation of international human rights law. A small but emergent field works to problematize the legal structures that enable the abuse of Palestinian children, critiquing both Israeli law and the international human rights structures that fail to adequately address such abuses. This thesis contributes to that body of research by examining the legal bifurcation of Israeli and Jewish law into “rules” and “exceptions.” Building upon the work of Heidi Viterbo, Orna Ben-Naftali and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, this thesis calls into question the human rights language and concept of protective child law, as utilized by Israel. Finding that the Israeli military court system is dominated by legal “exception” clauses, this work argues that a gauze of legality is created, allowing the circumvention of law that professes to restrict abuses against Palestinian children. This thesis provides alternative pathways to addressing accountability and examinations of human rights violations. Considering a Jewish ethical approach to the treatment of the non-Jew, this project turns to Jewish law, Halacha, only to discover a duplicate bifurcation between “rule” and “exception.” Re-examining Jewish legal interpretation, this thesis addresses the paradoxical nature of establishing definitive legal categories for the non-Jew. It presents both biblical text and contemporary Jewish commentary as routes for extending a biblical and legally Jewish obligation to protect the non-Jew. Ultimately, in both contemporary Israeli and ancient Jewish corpora of legal literature, “exceptional” interpretations and applications of law have been normalized, codified as the “norm.” In both spheres, this thesis questions the assumption of this law’s normality and insists upon an application of Jewish ethics to the struggle for legal equity faced by Palestinian children in the Occupied West Bank. This work takes an intentional turn away from current Western, secularized systems of accountability: reaching instead to a dialogue based on Jewish ethics and literature to provide accountability for the actions of Israel as a self-identifying Jewish state.

Download

Share

COinS