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In this article we articulate a case from moral responsibility to assist Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We contextualize this responsibility by focusing on access to healthcare and the provision of vaccines against COVID‐19. We specifically present two arguments from responsibility, one that is global or cosmopolitan, and one that is country‐specific. For the latter, we focus on Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at six months of the author's repeated attempts to obtain the approval of three Helsinki Committees (HCs, Israeli hospitals' research ethics committees) to conduct ethnographic research with Palestinian physicians in Israeli hospitals. While the research was eventually approved and carried out in two of these institutions, correspondence with HC representatives, as well as evidence of their informal moves with institutions' management, reflect their perceptions of the risks the study posed. In the Israeli hospital, acknowledging Palestinian political subjectivity challenges the definition of Israeli nationhood as exclusively Jewish and contaminates the allegedly politically neutral medical sphere. These committees exerted their power to serve their institutions and state ideology. This, I argue, should not be understood as anomalous instances of negligence. I show how the committees' censorship was attuned to the Declaration of Helsinki as their guiding text and Zionism as their underlying ideology. Embedded in the powerful regimes of ethics, bureaucracy, science, and health, ethics committees employ "unarmed power" that is beyond critique. They are well‐oiled "anti‐politics machines," rearticulating political concerns into a depoliticized moral discourse. As such, they not only limit academic inquiry but also redefine, in political terms, the realm of the moral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some ethnic nation‐states employ simultaneously inconsistent policies toward ethnic minorities, accommodating them in one sphere but excluding them from another? This article argues that this incoherent treatment of minorities results from the delegation of authority to bureaucrats. Building on the principal‐agent approach and nationalism scholarship, this work develops a causal mechanism explaining the conditions under which bureaucrats can shift state policies toward ethnic minorities and the types of policy preferences they seek to materialize. Defining policy problems, strategically framing optimal solutions, and building support for policy initiatives are the mechanisms through which nonelected officials challenge the existing status quo and seek to shift state policies toward ethnic minorities. This theoretical framework is applied to education and land policies in Israel vis‐à‐vis the Palestinian Arab citizens to illustrate how entrepreneurial bureaucrats can bring about diverse policy outcomes toward the same minority. Related Articles: Ben‐Bassat, Avi, and Momi Dahan. 2018. "Biased Policy and Political Behavior: The Case of Uneven Removal of Elected Mayors in Israel." Politics & Policy 46(6): 912–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12280. Harel‐Shalev, Ayelet. 2009. "Lingual and Educational Policy toward 'Homeland Minorities' in Deeply Divided Societies: India and Israel as Case Studies." Politics & Policy 37(5): 951–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2009.00206.x. Tusalem, Rollin F. 2015. "Ethnic Minority Governments, Democracy, and Human Rights." Politics & Policy 43(4): 502–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12125. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new perspective on the early stages of Zionism, adopting the ethno‐symbolic approach to the study of nationalism. Scholars who follow this approach assert that in order to achieve a complete understanding of nationalism, we must address its cultural pre‐modern dimension. I argue that in the case study of Jewish nationalism presented here, this approach offers us a more nuanced understanding of early Zionism. First, the article explores the formation of the Zionist conception of the Jewish past and shows that this developed in the second half of the nineteenth century before the inception of political Zionism. Second, the article demonstrates that political Zionism was deeply connected with cultural issues. Two key issues that generated much internal debate and conflict during the early years of the Zionist movement are presented as examples: the schism between 'East' and 'West', and the debate over 'the people versus the land'. Exploring these political conflicts from a cultural perspective highlights the strong connection between the Zionist movement and the pre‐modern Jewish past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]