Neturei Karta

What is the relationship between Mizrahi feminism and Israeli ultranationalism? What is the relevance of gender justice activism to the 2014 Gaza War and Israel’s foreign policy?

Wrapped in the Flag of Israel Second Edition examines neoliberal bureaucracy in the Global South using feminist critical race theories. It interrogates the relationship between the State of Israel and its Mizrahi single mothers who are at the forefront of Mizrahi feminism. It also presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology that preempts the agency of disenfranchised Mizrahim who are Israel’s demographic majority. Mizrahi protests fall flat when the Israel-Palestine conflict dominates the headlines. While most studies of neoliberal bureaucracy employ a Foucauldian or Marxian lens, this book illustrates how Israeli bureaucracy draws on a theological essence that fuses religion, gender, and race into the foundations of citizenship. It sets out to understand why Mizrahi mothers remain loyal to a state that injures them though its bureaucratic system.

The extensive Afterword to the Second Edition connects intra-Jewish racial and gendered dynamics to the 2014 Gaza War. It tracks sequences that began with social protest and ended with elections that bolstered Israel’s political right. In between came bloodletting between the IDF, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel’s neighboring Arab states. The 2014 Gaza War was a watershed, but not only in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Under the smokescreen of war, Israel accelerated neoliberal economic reform. The first victims of this restructuring were Mizrahi single mothers. Palestinians, however, would pay the highest price for Israel’s Mizrahi-Ashkenazi rift.

Neturei Karta is a Jewish group that usually considered belongs to larger ‘ultra-Orthodox’ Judaism. This group established its community in Jerusalem since early 19th century, but never acknowledges the modern state of Israel and its administration. Its members never take Israeli Shekel notes, never join the Army Reserve, which is compulsory for adult Israeli, never sing Israel’s national anthem, never celebrate Israel Independence Day, and never set foot to the holiest place in the Judaism, the Wailing Wall – but they pay taxes to the state they hate so much. This paper explores the nature of this group and its position against Zionism. The main focus is about their anti-Zionism ideology in connection with the notion of Jewish ‘homeland’ and ‘diaspora’. Neturei Karta is a transnational religious phenomenon. It may differ from other transnational religious groups in its challenge to Zionism on the issues of ‘(Jewish) homeland’ and ‘Jewish diaspora’. This dissident voice within the Jewish history is deemed important to reassess the the exercise of power by Israeli in dominating and colonizing the Other, the Palestinians.

Neturei Karta is a Jewish group that usually considered belongs to larger ‘ultra-Orthodox’ Judaism. This group established its community in Jerusalem since early 19th century, but never acknowledges the modern state of Israel and its administration. Its members never take Israeli Shekel notes, never join the Army Reserve, which is compulsory for adult Israeli, never sing Israel’s national anthem, never celebrate Israel Independence Day, and never set foot to the holiest place in the Judaism, the Wailing Wall – but they pay taxes to the state they hate so much. This paper explores the nature of this group and its position against Zionism. The main focus is about their anti-Zionism ideology in connection with the notion of Jewish ‘homeland’ and ‘diaspora’. Neturei Karta is a transnational religious phenomenon. It may differ from other transnational religious groups in its challenge to Zionism on the issues of ‘(Jewish) homeland’ and ‘Jewish diaspora’. This dissident voice within the Jewish history is deemed important to reassess the the exercise of power by Israeli in dominating and colonizing the Other, the Palestinians.