State and Religion

The 2019 Israeli elections will be determined on the issue of how many right-wing parties pass the 3.25% threshold and what their relative strength will be vis-à-vis the left bloc. Who are the rightwing parties, how did the religious and ultra-religious parties become “the natural partners” of Netanyahu's ruling Likud party, and what is the subtle interplay between them in view of the 2019 elections?

April 9, 2019, is the date set for elections to State of Israel’s 21st Knesset. These elections are important and challenging from many aspects, but this article will focus mainly on the perspective of the Arab minority within the Israeli citizenry. This group constitutes approximately one fifth of the state’s citizens and approximately 16.5% of eligible voters.

March 23rd was the last in a series of 14 day-long sessions billed as "stage one" of the year long Galilee Climate Fellows Program envisioned and implemented by the Town Association (TAEQ) and HBS partner The Heschel Center for Sustainability; in and of itself, a Jewish-Arab cooperation. Launched just a few short months ago, when nobody yet knew what fruits this enigmatic name of a program would bring.  

The ‘Zionist Camp’ needs the Arab parties in order to form a government. Its decision to vote for disqualifying Zoabi makes that support less and less likely (+972 Magazine).

The basic federal law in Germany begins with the words "Aware of its responsibility before God". With regard to approximately one-third of the population, which is not affiliated with any religious community, this is a bold statement. What is then the strutural relathionship between the German "secular state" and religion?

Feminist Rereading is never enough to correct the harms done to women by the subordination suffered and engendered by religious texts. And only a state, dedicated to universal, human rights, can best mitigate the effects of those harms.

While in South and Southeast Asia, South Africa, and the USA Islamic feminism and feminist Islamic theology can be traced back to the early 1980s, having in some cases even had political impact, the situation among the Muslim communities in Germany is characterised primarily by the defence of a conservative religious gender order.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence of 1948 specifically refers to Israel as “The Jewish State”, while simultaneously guaranteeing “the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex”. This assumed legal standing through the delegation of personal status to religious authorities (for the majority of the country’s citizens, to the monopolistic control of the orthodox Chief Rabbinate). Since, from the outset, matters of marriage and divorce in the Jewish tradition discriminate against women, aspects of gender inequality have been embedded into the structure of the state.

In the aftermath of the 1948 war, a significant number of Arab-Palestinians found themselves within the borders of the newly established State of Israel.  They are a homeland minority within a State whose declared identity they do not share and, while they hold Israeli citizenship, they hold a distinct national identity.

On May 11th, 2012 the Heinrich Böll Foundation and Mossawa Center organized a seminar, public discussion based on the release of the book, "Haifa Before and After1948: Narratives of a Mixed City,” published by the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation. Here is the report on the event.

Over 400 people came to find out more about German-Israeli relations. The Heinrich Boell Foundation hosted a conference dealing with the idea of the nation state, the approach towards military violence and multiculturalism in both countries. German and Israeli experts were exploring what unites and what divides the two countries and how the relations will develop in the future.

On Saturday night, August 1st, a masked gunman walked into the “youthbar” - a social youth program run by the Tel Aviv LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) association - lifted an automatic machine-gun and began shooting aimlessly and killing two people, and wounding ten others before fleeing into the night.