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Research Projects | Jacob Robinson Institute

Research Projects

Recognition as Decolonization: An Intellectual-Cultural History of the Two-State Solution, 1948-1988

Dr. Eli Osheroff

The research project examines the journey of the Palestinian National Movement towards
formal recognition of the partition and the State of Israel between 1948 and 1988. It aims to understand what historical conditions allowed the Palestinian national movement to compromise on its most significant ambitions – an unpartitioned, independent homeland – while still considering this compromise a moment of liberation.

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Minorities and the State: Non-Territorial Autonomy in the Baltics, 1914-1940

Dr. Timo Aava

This project studies the intellectual and political history of collective rights in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century based on the case of Estonia. At the heart of this project are the political debates over autonomy in the imperial setting, law-making in the interwar period and practising minority self-government in democratic and authoritarian contexts. 


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Photo Credit: The Central Zionist Archives

The Nonidentical of Human Rights: The Individual and the Concept of Dignity in post-1945 Human Rights Debates

Anne Rethmann

This research reviews post-1945 human rights debates, with special attention to dignity as a legal concept and to the political implications of various interpretations of individual and collective rights. I apply Adorno’s concept of the Nonidentical to the field of human rights and consider how freedom and equity can be institutionalized at all. The project looks at the work of lawyer Franz R. Bienenfeld, whose writings emphasize that the Jewish community’s interests neither supersede nor yield to universal human rights but that the two are instead mutually dependent.

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Sovereignty and the Laws of War: Signaling Civilization Through Law in Israel’s First Decade

Dr. Rotem Giladi

This research examines the laws of war and, in particular, the 1948 war and the making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions as arenas where Israel’s legal-diplomatic apparatus could assert the transition from nonstate community to sovereign polity in order to procure informal, cultural legitimacy and recognition.


 



Israeli Transnational Rights

Dr. Jonathan Grossman

This research analyzes the rights and services the State of Israel has granted to people living outside its territory. It shows how political actors in Israel have tried to give certain rights and services to different groups at different times. The project emphasizes Israel's attitudes toward Israeli emigrants and Jewish communities abroad, and shows how and why various Israeli state actors have tried to strengthen—or constrain—these populations by giving them—or withholding from them—certain rights and services.


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Stateless

StatelesStatelesss Diplomats: The Zionist Diplomacy at the League of Nations, 1919-1939

Dr. Eran Shlomi

This research portrays Zionist diplomatic representation in Geneva, the seat of the League of Nations, during the interwar period. It analyzes the activities and working methods of the principal professional Zionist diplomats in Geneva, Victor (Avigdor) Jacobson and Nahum Goldmann. It also explores the four-way relations among the British, the Zionists, the Arabs, and the League of Nations, and offers an international perspective on Zionist historiography and British Mandate scholarship.


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Gabriel Bach

Gabriel Bach and the Prosecution of Nazis in the State of Israel

Dr. Yehudit Dori Deston

The research reviews the main contributions of prosecutor and Justice Gabriel Bach to four legal cases in which the Holocaust and its perpetrators were prosecuted in Israeli courts: the appeals proceeding in the Gruenwald-Kastner trial (1957), the Eichmann trial (1960-1962), the efforts to prosecute and extradite Gustav Franz Wagner (1978-1979), and the Demjanjuk trial (1993). The research proposes a historical and legal explanation for Bach's actions and portrays the evolution of Israel’s legal efforts vis-à-vis Nazi criminals and their collaborators over the years. 
The paper was published in Tel-Aviv University Law Review (Iyunei Mishpat) on 31.03.2022.
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A Surviver

A Survivor, Legislator and Jurist: Joseph Lamm’s Legal Legacy in Relation to the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law (1950)

Dr. Yehudit Dori Deston & Prof. Dan Porat

The research examines Joseph Lamm's part in the enactment of the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law of 1950 and in rulings based on it in the Israeli courts. The research claims that Lamm's experience as a prisoner in the Dachau camp shaped his legal views with respect to Jews accused of collaborating with the Nazis, as reflected in his roles as both legislator and judge.

 


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A Trial

A Trial Without a Defendant

Dr. Yehudit Dori Deston

The research reveals the records of a mock trial conducted in 1985 in Jerusalem for SS officer Josef Mengele, in the absence of the accused. At the heart of the proceedings stood the testimonies of 30 Auschwitz survivors, which were intended to serve as  proof of Mengele’s crimes when he would be brought to a "real" criminal trial. The research examines the difference between criminal proceedings and other stages, including semi-legal proceedings, for the purposes of documentation, commemoration, and shaping the collective memory of the Holocaust.


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Law and Emotions in Transit: The Central Court of Honor in Munich (1946-1950)

Dr. Rivka Brot

The research deals with the Munich Central Court of Honor (Erngericht in Yiddish). Established by Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in the ​​American zone of occupation in Germany (1946-1950), the court was authorized to resolve disputes between DP officials. The research offers a textual analysis of court records, arguing that they reflect the challenging living conditions of Holocaust survivors in the immediate postwar period.


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“Hast thou murdered, and also taken possession?” Nazi Wrongs and the West German Equalization of Burdens Law

Dr. Iris Nachum

The research investigates how the West German Equalization of Burdens Law (Lastenausgleichsgesetz) coped with cases involving Nazi wrongs. The law was intended to financially compensate Germans who had been compelled to leave Central and Eastern Europe for West Germany after the war, leaving behind all their belongings, from household goods to factories. What happened when expellees demanded compensation for lost assets that they had obtained through Nazi plunder — or that had been used as sites of forced labor during World War II?

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picture alliance / APNegotiating German Identity – On the Complex Encounters Between Central and Eastern European Holocaust Survivors and German Postwar Legal Categories

Dr. Iris Nachum ֿֿֿ& Prof. José Brunner

The project studies the complex encounters between the West German bureaucracy and Jewish Holocaust survivors claiming payments under three postwar West German laws: the Federal Compensation Law for Victims of Nazi Persecution, the Equalization of Burdens Law for displaced ethnic Germans, and the Social Security Act. How did these laws -- and their attendant bureaucracies -- construct German identity? And how did Jewish claimants respond to these legal norms and practices?  

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