Locus standi: the question of Israel’s public response to antisemitic incidents in early Israeli diplomacy, 1950–1960 by Tom Eshed
Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture. 11.12.2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2025.2596437
This article analyzes Israeli diplomats’ attitudes toward confronting antisemitism in the 1950s. While combating antisemitism is now a strategic priority in Israel’s foreign policy, in the state’s early years, Israeli diplomats were often ambivalent about taking an official public stance. They sought to avoid accusations of interfering in the internal affairs of other states or Jewish diaspora communities. Consequently, they often argued that officially and publicly addressing antisemitism was mainly the responsibility of international and local Jewish organizations and questioned whether Israel had the legal standing to respond publicly to such issues. By exploring these debates, the article follows Israel’s transition from reluctance to actively addressing antisemitism on the international stage. It shows how early ideological attitudes toward the Jewish diaspora constrained diplomats’ responses and examines the influence of two key political challenges: Israel’s efforts to assert its right to speak on behalf of the Jewish people internationally and the ongoing Israel-Arab conflict. Together, these factors shaped Israeli diplomats’ evolving attitudes and strategies for addressing antisemitism.
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Ally against Ally: The Zionist-Genevese Front against British Policy in Palestine, 1929–1931 by Eran Shlomi
AJS Review, Vol. 49(2), 504–530. 22.11.2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ajs.2025.a974647
This article examines Jewish and Zionist diplomacy at the League of Nations in response to British attempts to restrict Jewish immigration and land acquisition following the 1929 riots in Palestine. Although they regarded the league with ambivalence, by 1930, the Zionists exerted considerable influence in Geneva. They owed this leverage to the local Zionist bureau, headed by Zionist internationalist Victor Jacobson, and to the personal diplomacy of the president of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann. This influence culminated in an informal Zionist-Genevese front in June 1930, when the league's Permanent Mandates Commission issued a report harshly critical of the British government and its endeavors to modify its Jewish national home policy. The report helped the Zionists in their diplomatic campaign to prevent restrictions on Jewish immigration and land acquisition. Still, it came with a price, straining the Anglo-Zionist alliance enshrined in the Balfour Declaration and the mandate.
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Give the Benefit of the Doubt: Between the Death Penalty and Demjanjuk’s Acquittal Due to Reasonable Doubt by Yehudit Dori-Deston
Ma’asei Mishpat Vol. 16, 2025
This Article argues that punishment severity shapes the evidentiary threshold, illustrated by Demjanjuk’s trial under Israel’s 1950 Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law. Because conviction mandated death, the Supreme Court acquitted on reasonable doubt; with a lesser penalty, it might have upheld the District Court conviction. The law’s categorical “shall be sentenced to death” clause, intended as a moral-educational statement, forced an all-or-nothing outcome, ignored variation among offenses and defendants, and tied the symbolic death penalty to legal doubt, thereby hindering justice and frustrating the law’s aims.
Between the Individual and the Group: Minority Rights in Interwar Estonia by Timo Aava
Journal of Baltic Studies, 14.10.2025, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2025.2559988
This article revisits theoretical debates over group rights and their impact on the individual in a democratic setting by looking at the Estonian example of collective minority self-government in the 1920s and 1930s. Several authors have analyzed the compatibility of group rights within a liberal democratic system, highlighting the possibility of overriding the interests of individuals. The article shows the importance of flexible membership criteria and highlights some of the instances where potential conflict did not materialize. It further touches upon cases when the majority within the institution implemented its policies and marginalized weaker groups, and more ambivalent outcomes, such as the impact on women.
"Flogging Jack Nafte: Corporal Punishment, Imperial Assimilation, and Jewish Whiteness in Pre-Apartheid South Africa" by Rotem Giladi
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 10.10.2025, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2025.2566783
This article focusses on the whip and the body to examine an imperial variety of Jewish assimilation. Empire, the article argues, not only provided Jews more diverse opportunities for social mobility and economic and political integration than the nation-state; its variegated categories and racial hierarchies made Jewish whiteness – at any rate, some kind of Jewish whiteness – more attainable than the imagined ethnic homogeneity of the nation-state. In the imperial space of the Union of South Africa, where they were neither ‘native’ nor ‘English’ or ‘Boer’, Jews could strive to attain whiteness that was relative, flexible, and variegated; unstable, yet more readily negotiable. To this end, the article reconstructs the ‘notorious’ trial and controversial flogging sentence imposed in 1929 Transvaal on a Jewish farmer who was classified as ‘European’ and ‘white’ in court records and in press reports throughout the British empire and beyond. The flogging of Jack Nafte illustrates how individual Jews and Jewish community institutions negotiated different shades of whiteness in imperial settings and how, in order to contend with the bar of Jewish ‘unassimilability’ in pre-apartheid South Africa, they could devise two pathways to whiteness: one English, the other Afrikaner.
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“Extraterritorial Militarism: Emigrants as Soldiers in Israel” by Jonathan Grossman
Comparative Migration Studies, Vol. 13(50), 08.07.2025, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-025-00465-9
This article contends that states can project militaristic discourse onto citizens living outside their territory, thus creating an extraterritorial variant of militarism. When home-state elites construct overseas citizens as soldiers, they evaluate them based on their military record or their potential as prospective soldiers. The paradigmatic case of Israel reveals three forms of extraterritorial militarism: constructing citizens abroad as non-soldiers, past soldiers, or future soldiers. A discourse analysis of parliamentary debates illustrates how Israeli elites framed those emigrants and children of emigrants who served or were willing to serve in the Israel Defense Forces as better extraterritorial citizens than those who did not or would not serve. Additionally, the article examines who is excluded from the discourse of extraterritorial militarism in Israel, and how and why this discourse has changed over time.
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"‘It’s All Personal’: State-led mobilisation of diaspora individuals" by Jason Silverman, Yehonatan Abramson and Jonathan Grossman
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. 28.05.2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481251339473
This article examines how states select and mobilize powerful and well-connected diaspora individuals to advance their national interests abroad. It argues that such mobilization is both tailored and personalized: governments assess whether a given diasporan possesses the position, networks, and influence required to complete a specific task, and whether they are likely to accept the role, based on their prior interactions with the state and their personal values. The theoretical argument is illustrated through a historical analysis of three prominent Jewish individuals in the United States whom Israel engaged to promote its security and foreign policy objectives during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s: businessman and political fundraiser Abraham "Abe" Feinberg, who maintained close ties to the Democratic administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; Republican Senator Jacob Javits; and public relations specialist Julius Klein, whose extensive network spanned the United States and West Germany. Drawing on archival research conducted in both the United States and Israel, the article underscores the significance of interpersonal relations and mutual trust in the practice of diaspora diplomacy.
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"Claiming the Dead: Israeli Postmortem Citizenship for Holocaust Victims, 1950–1955" by Tom Eshed
History & Memory, Vol. 37(1), 64-90. 24.03.2025 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.2979/ham.00016
This article examines the Israeli initiative in the 1950s to confer postmortem citizenship upon Holocaust victims. This commemoration initiative, which became a clause in the law establishing Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Center, failed. Jewish communities in the diaspora refused to make their dead an endowment to the State of Israel. Tracing the history of this extraordinary idea and the various discussions about it, I show that it was not merely a national Holocaust commemoration initiative, but a transnational legal, political and moral debate between a new nation-state and its diaspora regarding the terms and boundaries of a new national citizenship.
"Displacement and Compensation in Germany after the First and Second World Wars" by Iris Nachum and Cristiano La Lumia
Central European History, 1-21. 25.03.2025 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938925000020
After the two world wars, numerous Germans were forcibly removed or fled their homelands in eastern Europe, resettling in Germany. In both postwar periods, the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany established compensation systems to indemnify the material losses and damages suffered by these refugees: the Gewaltschädengesetze (Violent Damages Laws) of 1921 and the Lastenausgleichsgesetz (Equalization of Burdens Law) of 1952. The article offers a unique comparative insight into the functioning of the two compensation mechanisms, examining six cases of applicants (or their heirs) who lost their homes twice in their lives and applied for compensation twice: first after the end of the First World War and then following the Second World War. The diachronic comparison reveals the complex nature of German national belonging, the persistence of the term Volksgemeinschaft in modern German history, and the role of class status in the context of compensation after both wars.
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"Jewish nationalism and international diplomacy: Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Zionists at the League of Nations" by Eran Shlomi
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 1–24. 13.03.2025 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2025.2476533
This article examines the engagement of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Zionists with the League of Nations during the interwar period, illuminating a paradox: the utilization of an international institution traditionally associated with liberal ideals by a right-wing nationalist leader. The study posits that the Revisionists perceived the League and its institutions as critical vehicles for advancing their agenda. It elucidates the complex dynamics of intra-Zionist rivalry in Geneva and investigates the challenges encountered by the Revisionists at the League. The article analyses the Revisionists’ attempts to influence the League through petitions and press conferences, highlighting their limited efficacy. Their uncompromising stance and limited diplomatic acumen contrasted with the World Zionist Organization's established presence and cultivation of relationships.
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"Diaspora Exclusion in Divided Home States: Israel and Turkey Compared" by Jonathan Grossman
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 1–23, 01.03.2025 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754251324679
This article explores how countries define who belongs in "their" diaspora and who is excluded from it. By comparing Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the article shows how states use diaspora-oriented policies, discourses, and practices to reinforce their own sense of identity, often excluding certain groups and individuals abroad based on their ethnicity, religion, or political beliefs. While diaspora engagement is usually seen positively – as building bridges between countries and their overseas communities – the article highlights that it can also have negative aspects, including the marginalization, securitization, and even persecution of emigrants and co-ethnics abroad. This dynamic is particularly evident in divided societies like Israel and Turkey, where domestic conflicts and identity struggles may be exported abroad, shaping the treatment of diasporic populations.
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"A Trial without a Defendant: The Mock Trial of Dr. Josef Mengele in Jerusalem" by Yehudit Dori-Deston, in "Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions", eds. Mark A. Drumbl & Caroline Fournet
Studies in International Criminal Law, Vol. 6, 271–291. 08.08.2024
In February 1985, a mock trial was conducted in Jerusalem to SS officer Dr. Josef Mengele. Despite the absence of the defendant, the event resembled a regular criminal trial: Seven judges presided over the proceedings, thirty survivors were questioned on a witness stand, and a verdict was rendered at the end of the proceedings. The paper seeks to examine the goals of conducting such trial, and to claim that while the proceedings focused on the defendant and the crimes he committed, as it turned out, the surviving witnesses and their personal stories took center stage. The proceedings were therefore about achieving justice for the victims of the crimes more than serving justice upon the defendant himself. Nevertheless, the fading of this trial from public memory illustrates the differences between criminal and other forms of proceedings for the purposes of documenting, commemorating, and shaping the collective memory of the Holocaust.
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"The evolution of home-state positions towards diaspora formation: Israel and its two diasporas" by Jonathan Grossman
Global Networks, 20.03.2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12481
How do home-state elites react to emigrants who form diaspora communities abroad, and how do these attitudes change over time?
The article explores these questions through an analysis of the discourse and policies of Israeli elites towards emigrants who created distinct diaspora communities and established ties with local Jewish diaspora communities between 1977 and 2023.
The article highlights the influence of ethnic and national identities, as well as emigrants' potential return, on attitude shifts.
Initially viewed negatively, diaspora formation may deter repatriation and ethnic immigration. However, with low return rates, home-state elites may endorse new diaspora communities to prevent assimilation and boost attachment to the home state.
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“Photography between Empire and Nation: German-Jewish Displacement and the Global Camera,” by Rebekka Grossmann, in "Contemporary Europe in the Historical Imagination", eds. Skye Doney and Darcy Buerkle
University of Wisconsin Press, 234-252, 27.06.2023
In this article Rebekka Grossmann examines German-Jewish photographer Tim Gidal's 1940 travels between India and Palestine. Gidal, a stateless refugee, captured both colonial and anticolonial contexts, shaping Western views of the "Global South." His photos aimed to portray colonized societies from the perspective of their inhabitants, yet also reflected a naive Western gaze.
"'Aryanization' in Central and Eastern Europe and the Equalization of Burdens Files: The Case of the Sudetenland" by Iris Nachum
Journal of Modern European History, Vol. 21 Issue 3, 15.06.2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944231180433
This article deals with compensation files created under the 1952 West German Equalization of Burdens Law [Lastenausgleichsgesetz, (LAG]) which was meant to indemnify ethnic Germans for property they lost when they were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe after WWII. The article demonstrates that LAG files can provide new insights into the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe. They can be especially illuminating of the interaction between Nazi profiteers and Jewish victims of Aryanisation in the Sudetenland.
"A Prisoner, Legislator, and Jurist: Joseph Lamm’s Legal Legacy in Relation to the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 1950" by Yehudit Dori Deston and Dan Porat
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 37, Issue 1, 74–89, 23.03.2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcac059
Most of the recent studies point out how these trials blurred the lines between criminal law and moral judgment, focusing on either the legislators, the defendants, or the court. In contrast, the present article examines the trials through the lens of one individual who was central to shaping and implementing the law: Joseph Lamm. The article argues that Lamm’s personal experiences shaped his perceptions of the dual function of the law as both practical and declarative. This, in turn, affected his understanding of the law’s content (as a legislator) and how it should be interpreted (as a judge).
“Gabriel Bach and the Holocaust Trials – Four Affairs and One Memory” by Yehudit Dori Deston
Tel Aviv University Law Review (Iyunei Mishpat), 03.31.2022
The essay discusses the part taken by Gabriel Bach, a former Israel Supreme Court justice and a former state attorney who passed away last year, in the prosecution of Nazi criminals in Israel. While Bach's part in the Eichmann trial is well known, the essay spotlights his role in other cases. Some of these cases are well known, though Bach's part in them is hidden, while other cases have been relegated to the margins of collective memory. Analyzing Bach's part in these four affairs, the essay points out how collective memory is formed and suggests ways that the law helps to shape it.
"Coming to Terms with the Nazi Past'?: The West German Compensation Policy in the Long 1950s" by Iris Nachum
Studies in Jewish History and Culture, Vol. 70, 29.09.2021
This article questions the dichotomous discourse about West Germany’s coming to terms with the Nazi past in the long 1950s. By focusing on West German indemnification payments to both persecutees of Nazism and ethnic German expellees, it suggests a composite approach to this scholarly debate.