This article explores the paradoxical phenomenon of far-right “philosemitism,” in which political movements historically steeped in antisemitism present themselves as defenders of Jews and allies of Israel. Drawing on contemporary examples—such as the French National Rally’s claim to be a “shield for Jews,” and the American evangelical alliances with Israel—the study situates these gestures within a longer trajectory of far-right ambivalence toward Jews. While often dismissed by pundits and scholars as simply opportunistic weaponization of antisemitism, these pro-Jewish stances also reveal deeper discursive and ideological functions: self-legitimation, moral licensing, and the repositioning of Jews as symbolic allies against other outgroups. This article identifies such ambivalence in early 20th-century European thought, highlighting case studies from the German Empire where figures such as Börries von Münchhausen, Wilhelm Schwaner, and Max Hildebert Boehm articulated versions of philosemitism that combined admiration with exclusionary imperatives. Across contexts, a recurring logic emerges: a dualistic “Good Jew/Bad Jew” distinction, whereby “authentic” Jews—biblical, assimilated, or nationalist—are praised, while “inauthentic” Jews—cosmopolitan, liberal, or diasporic—are condemned. By historicizing far-right “philosemitism,” its function, and significance, this article is an attempt to combat its harmful normalizing effects.

The Local Government Pension Scheme (“LGPS”) is typically administered by local authorities. Somewhat incongruously with its localised nature, or even recent pooling measures, there are attempts by those campaigning for boycott, divestment and sanctions (“BDS”) against the State of Israel to extend the reach of the town hall into the geopolitical arena. The decision in R. (on the Application of Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ltd.) v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2020] UKSC 16 is seen by those BDS activists as providing a self-contained roadmap for LGPS divestments and boycotts. They are mistaken. This article considers the questions that remain to be addressed and the need for local government lawyers to look beyond local government law to the rules of equity. When the principles and rules of equity are violated in adopting divestment or exclusion policies, a court of equity will not hesitate to intervene. This is not equity’s incursion into the local government arena. For insofar as the conduct of administering authorities as fiduciaries, or quasi-trustees, is concerned, it was always there.

War is a lucrative business for the military industry, particularly in contexts of mass and structural violence, extensive violations of international law and genocide. For economically advanced states, the profits generated by military businesses are often seen as beneficial under the dynamics of the military-industrial complex. Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has caused untold suffering that has ‘scarred the consciousness of humanity’, aptly illustrates this dynamic.

In such a context, states and corporations arguably have a duty under international law not to contribute to or benefit from the war economy of the state committing such violations. In practice, however, adhering to these obligations conflicts with the lucrative economic and geopolitical opportunities that this war economy provides. This essay reflects on the argumentative techniques used by states and corporations to justify continued military support for Israel, despite its clear contradiction with their international legal obligations.

In 1958, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority established a fifteen-minute daily Persian-language program targeting Iranian listeners, restarting segments that had begun almost a decade earlier. These broadcasts were written and produced by recent Iranian Jewish immigrants to the country, who brought press and activism experience and expertise from their country of origin. The purpose of these broadcasts was to highlight Israel’s economic and technological achievements, convey its foreign policy perspectives, and strengthen elite connections with Iran. In the process, such broadcasts also became the focal point for an increasingly internationalizing Iranian population, a fact that remained true up to and beyond the country’s 1978–79 revolution. Studies of radio in Israel have noted the medium’s function in both domestic constructions of the new state’s identity and culture as well as public diplomacy facing its enemies and allies. This article shows that Persian-language radio broadcasts served both these purposes, as well as positing a further function in their use as a point of transnational connectivity, beyond relations with Israel alone. In so doing, this article points to the power of listeners in structuring their own communities, even in response to state-centric media campaigns.

This article explores how emotions can affect policies of hostage rescue and recovery. Any hostage rescue/recovery strategy must consider the relative weights of at least three major goals: 1) maximising chance of recovering/rescuing the hostages; 2) punishment of the kidnappers; and 3) avoidance of collateral damage and killing of bystanders. This article will show how an understanding of emotion can help explain why one of these goals comes to dominate another, why one goal fades in importance. The article will argue that a specific combination of two emotions – anger and contempt – drives the elevation of the punishment goal above that of maximising chances of hostage recovery while also greatly diminishing any value of collateral damage avoidance. The article considers these issues with a short case study of hostage taking at Attica Prison in 1971, which serves as a link to the main case – Israel’s post–October 7 hostage policy towards Gaza.

Building on untapped archival documents and press reports, I explore a seeming contradiction underpinning the Israeli authorities’ War on Drugs from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. While the state authorities clamped down on local cannabis users, it was heavily invested in covert cannabis trafficking operations into Egypt, its main enemy at the time. The primary targets of the domestic clampdown were the country’s Jewish consumers of the drug, mainly first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (collectively known as Mizrahim). Provoking latent class, racial, and gendered anxieties, the state authorities used hashish to further marginalize and criminalize Mizrahim in Israel. However, while the state cracked down on Mizrahi hashish dealers and users, the Israeli military was directly involved in large-scale hashish trafficking operations to Egypt. This enterprise aimed to immerse and immobilize the Egyptian population generally—and the Egyptian armed forces specifically—with hashish.

This article examines whether strategic narratives and grand strategies exhibit continuity or change after traumatic geopolitical events. It scrutinises Israel’s response to the 7 October 2023 attacks and Czechia’s reaction to Russia’s February 2022 Ukraine invasion. Through (i) qualitative content analysis of leaders’ speeches and (ii) delineating Israeli and Czech grand strategies, it finds that the degree of change was proportional to the level of shock and threat. Israel responded to a first order critical situation with a grand strategic overhaul; Czechia answered a second order critical situation with a less substantial grand strategic adjustment. Yet both cases exhibited a key commonality: leaders drew on existing perceptions to frame and justify policy shifts, demonstrating that continuity and change are co-dependent in grand strategy. In sum, this article contributes new primary source data pertinent to two contemporary conflicts, challenges grand strategy’s great power centrism, and demonstrates the importance of rhetoric in preventing or facilitating grand strategic change.

The Gaza war, which started on 7 October 2023 through the horrendous attack by Hamas on Israel, has caused a depressing measure of human suffering on all sides. As far as Israel’s use of force is concerned, this war also constitutes a challenging case for the application of the jus contra bellum. This chiefly arises from the genuine legal uncertainty concerning the applicability of the right of self-defence when an armed attack by a non-state organisation emanates from the territory of a state that has proven unable to prevent said armed attack. Arguably, the situation in the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023 presents the rare variation of such an ‘unable host state scenario’ where the non-state armed attack (by Hamas) against a state (Israel) has originated from a territory (the Gaza Strip) destined for the realisation of the right to self-determination of a people (the Palestinian people). In such a case, the dilemmatic conflict that underlies the uncertainty about the applicability of the right of self-defence is between the legally protected interests of the state that is the victim of the armed attack and those of the ‘host people’ of the non-state attacker.

This article critiques the assessment by exporting states of assurances that exported arms will not be misused by recipient states, with a focus on the Gaza conflict. First, the article develops a transferable framework for evaluating assurances. Building on the arms export obligations in the Geneva Conventions, and the implementation of those export obligations in the Arms Trade Treaty and EU Common Position, the article synthesises a due diligence test. It also draws on assurance assessment in another field where assurances are routinely given to overcome risk: when assurances attempt to address the risk of mistreatment to an expelled person implicating non-refoulement. The methodology for assurances assessments in risk prediction has been developed extensively in that area and closely resembles a similar approach emerging for arms exports. The article articulates the relevant criteria for assessing assurances when completing a due diligence risk assessment for arms exports and then applies that framework to the US arms exports in relation to the Gaza conflict. Under National Security Memorandum 20, the United States released a public report on its assurances assessment, offering a rare partial glimpse into the use of assurances in arms exports and an opportunity to examine whether assurances are being assessed in alignment with international practice. The result of the article is a clear practical checklist for lawful reliance on assurances and a tentative conclusion that the assessment by the US was not in compliance with international standards.

In the present study, we examine the determinants associated with variations in the level of funding allocations among 112 grant-making philanthropic institutions in Israel. Drawing upon the hypotheses developed in Creative Philanthropy and the New Philanthropy approaches, we test the extent that social, economic, and organizational performance affects the level of funding allocations. Evidence indicates that (a) the level of resources raises the level of funding allocations to economic performance but not social performance; (b) a higher number of institutional stakeholders from the public sector, local authorities, and private organizations, eligible for support, raises the level of funding allocations to social performance; and (c) a higher number of volunteers in the workforce increases economic performance. The results assess assumptions promoted in the New Philanthropy approach, suggesting that philanthropic institutions in Israel develop a clear focus on professional management and a wise rather than “romantic” approach to philanthropy and altruism.

This study of 161 nonprofit organizations in Israel was aimed at exploring the composition of boards, the methods employed to recruit new board members, and the selection criteria of board members. The results suggest that boards tend to be closed, elitist circles. Most organizations use mainly informal means to recruit new board members. The most important selection criteria were those related to interpersonal relationships, willingness to contribute time, and expressing an interest in working for the organization.

Nonprofits have unique strategic concerns, including their dependence on external resources, the management of multiple stakeholders, perceptions about their organizational legitimacy as well as their primary focus on the social value of their organizational mission (Stone and Brush 1996). For shared Jewish–Arab organizations in Israel that are seeking to promote a ‘shared society,’ the obstacles in navigating these various challenges are particularly pronounced and require a very unique kind of adaptive capacity (see Letts et al. 1999; Connolly and York 2003; Strichman et al. 2007). Often operating outside of the general consensus, these organizations are faced with the significant challenge of promoting values of partnership, equality and mutual interests among two populations that are often at odds. This research seeks to shed light on how shared Arab–Jewish nonprofits are continually working to strengthen organizational capacities to more effectively carry out their particular organizational mission, given the myriad of challenges they face.

The study examined positive and negative responses to volunteering (satisfaction with volunteering, perceived contribution to beneficiaries, and burnout) among 102 adolescents in Israel. The conceptual framework for explaining those responses was the ecological approach to the study of human development. In that context, the paper deals with the combined contribution of two ecological systems—the ontogenic system and the microsystem. The ontogenic system included sociodemographic variables (gender and religiosity), as well as empowerment resources. The microsystem included variables related to family context (parental volunteer activity and family support for volunteering), as well as to the context of volunteer activity (perceived rewards, difficulties with volunteering, and professional supervision). Sociodemographic variables and difficulties in relations with the provider organization predicted burnout, whereas rewards and professional supervision predicted satisfaction with volunteering. Empowerment contributed most to explaining volunteers’ perceived contribution to the beneficiaries of services.

The article examines the recent emergence of ‘volunteering’ as a publicly significant notion and practice. Based on an extensive fieldwork in a prominent intermediary NGO in Israel, the article follows the efforts to promote and expand ‘volunteering’ pursued by the organization’s board and staff members. Affiliated with the privileged social strata of Ashkenazi (European) Jews, whose hegemonic position has been eroded during the neoliberal transformations in Israel, the NGO staff seek to retain their privileged status through a managerial activity in the field of ‘volunteering’. They promote a particular, liberally inspired construction of ‘volunteering’, while universalizing it as a professional, a-political and consensual realm. Inspired by critical studies of ‘whiteness’, the article describes how the privileged character of this managerial activity is being successfully obscured through the representation of ‘volunteering’ as an all-inclusive aspiration.

Diaspora philanthropy, sending donations to the homeland, has evolved with worldwide migration. While scholars have explored diaspora philanthropy in diverse communities, no research focuses on migrant worker communities ineligible for permanent settlement in their host country. This study posits that donations within such communities should be considered to be a component of diaspora philanthropy. Based on a qualitative and quantitative study on the Filipino community in Israel, this research compares transnational and communal philanthropies among migrant workers. Analysis of the targets, mechanisms and amounts of donations, revealed meaningful differences. The transnational philanthropy, mostly proactive and long term, focuses on collective needs in the home country, thus fostering a better and steady future, while strengthening migrant worker links with their homeland. The communal philanthropy, mostly reactive and short term, focuses on migrant workers' immediate individual needs, contributes to their survival and enhances solidarity in the host country.