Abstract
Nations that devote extensive resources to their political security—borders, citizenship determinations, ethnic and religious distinctions, and so forth—dedicate fewer resources to their citizens’ well-being. This thesis, applied to Israel, constitutes the core of Madelaine Adelman’s book Battering States: The Politics of Domestic Violence in Israel. Because of its excessive focus on external security, Israel correlatively neglects the safety and security of civilians—in particular, abused women and children. In this regard, Israel is a “battering state.” Its focus on securitism translates into “ongoing political conflict [that] renders crisis as normative, borders unsettled, and putative lines between military and civilian life obfuscated” (p. 126).
In securitism-focused nations, “the political is personal,” meaning political actions of the state take priority over citizens’ domestic welfare. Adelman conceptualizes the relationship between domestic violence and the cultural politics of the state in light of Israel’s history and current status, hoping to inspire similar analyses of the dynamic in other nations. Concerns with securitism affect Israel’s response to domestic violence and help to account for why it was recognized as a social problem only recently. Whereas Norway, with a similar-sized population, had 47 shelters for battered women in 1992, Israel had zero. Even in 2012, Israel had only 14, and several were specialized—for example, for only Orthodox Jewish women or only Bedouin immigrant women.
Ethnic and religious diversity—in addition to immigrant status and social class—complicate not only recognition of domestic violence as a social problem but women’s options for obtaining relief. Israel, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, warmly embraced the neoliberal principle of “individual responsibility” over state-provided welfare, with the result that women (and others) experienced decreased internal security. Budget cutbacks for citizens’ welfare were (and are) emphasized, whereas the resources and energy dedicated to Israel’s external security continued to increase.
A practice that hinders abused women’s ability to obtain help is called “status quo,” which requires rabbinical—not civil—courts to address personal status issues, including family and divorce. Adelman notes that rabbinical courts were instituted when Israel was founded and continue to operate today. With four varieties—Jewish, Muslim, Druze, and Christian—women who seek relief from an abusive partner must seek it through rabbinical courts. In addressing the domestic politics of “just leaving” to avoid violence, Adelman says rabbinical courts rarely override a husband who will not agree to a divorce, even when the husband is violent. Family and friends are, in Adelman’s view, unwise to counsel women to just leave because two situations make leaving risky: “men’s escalation of physical violence [when a woman tries to leave] and a set of legal tactics men use during the divorce process to control and punish their wives” (p.55). Furthermore, the state resists intervening in such matters. Divorce, which is more prevalent than before, remains disapproved of, and, according to Adelman, Israel offers minimal support to “solo” (single) mothers, favoring two-parent families instead.
Adelman reviews the origins of a grassroots movement called Gun Free Kitchen Tables that was begun by women because men who worked as security guards brought home weapons and left them on the kitchen table, often contributing to injuries, including homicide. Israel has many armed private security guards—at schools, restaurants, parks, cafes, hospitals, malls, government offices, and so on—and guns on the kitchen table make the domicile susceptible to tragedy. The Kitchen Tables movement asked that security-related guns be stored at work. In due course, the government encouraged this practice and/or provided a safe for storing guns at home.
Adelman argues that the kind of masculinity that securitism and militarism encourage (indeed, require) does not bode well for the treatment of women in Israel. Military status is very important for Israeli men. Every prime minister since 1948 except for Golda Meir has had a military career. Israeli men are required to serve for 32 months in the military, and while women are also legally required to serve (for 24 months), exceptions allow them to opt out if they are married or pregnant. The United States provides about one-fifth of Israel’s military budget, totaling billions of dollars.
An anthropologist, Adelman became involved in violence against women work in 1992 as a telephone hotline volunteer at a rape crisis center in Haifa; later, she worked with battered women’s children at a shelter. The book reports on women in both contexts (via stories garnered through fieldwork) and employs a range of narrative styles including “ethnographic, confessional, chronological, empirical, mediated, bureaucratic, legal, and transformational” (p. 12). Official and newspaper sources were utilized, too. In addition to a focus on the evolution of domestic violence in Israel, Adelman overviews the history of Israel from its founding in 1948 to 2012, with a focus on its political economy and responses (or lack thereof) to women at risk of interpersonal violence.
Adelman addresses Israeli women and also Palestinian and immigrant women who live within Israel’s borders. Israel has about 8 million people, 75 percent of whom are Israeli and 4 percent of whom are Palestinian, with the remainder belonging to other ethnicities. She says she collected stories from various social locations based on “national identity, religion, religiosity, ethnicity, citizenship, and geography” (p. 12). Theoretically, the book employs an interdisciplinary anthropological and social problems approach to the study of gender violence. Her review of Israel’s history allows her to address multiple sociological/demographic dynamics in light of a feminist perspective on the founding and evolution of Israel relative to gender.
A lesson for the United States can be drawn from the book. As more of our resources are dedicated to securitism—protecting borders, fighting terrorism, patrolling citizenship—fewer are available for civil society. The choice in our country may come down to that between a “wall” on our southern border and a bigger military versus a safe environment—relative to air, water, pollution, climate change, flooding—with infrastructure improvements and universal health care. For many reasons, Israel prioritizes the state over its citizenry. Is the United States following suit?