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Israeli teachers who teach Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seeking children find themselves struggling to accommodate these children against the background of a polarized environment. The strategies teachers employ to cope with this tension are shaped by the broader socio-political context and the hostilities directed toward African asylum seekers in Israel. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 22 teachers in different schools in Israel, we observed that in the absence of any official educational policy for the integration, teachers employ strategies of avoidance and de-politicization of asylum seeking. We argue that when it comes to the controversies around asylum seekers, Israeli teachers adopt strategies that are similar to the ways they have coped with the long-term Israel-Palestinian conflict. Based on this observation, the paper suggests the local socio-political context is crucial in understanding teachers' attitudes, practices and responses towards asylum-seekers.

This study examines the use of formulaic language in an intercultural communication encounter. It focuses particularly on phatic expressions used in an online discussion about gender stereotypes in English among 167 undergraduate university students in Taiwan, Israel, and the US. Content analysis methodology was used to examine whether there are differences in the openings and closings that the students from the different countries used in their self-introductions. The analysis also sought to discover whether the participants regard online discussion as writing or speaking by analyzing the types and frequency of expressions used. While the results did offer strong support for there being cultural differences in the usage of phatics, the analysis of these formulaic responses does point to the use of an informal style of writing rather than the interactions imitating oral communication. Therefore, rather than being a form of speaking or writing, or a combination of the two, perhaps online writing is evolving into a specific form of communication with its own conventions for using phatics to establish and maintain connections in the online environment.

This study examines whether and how online discussions used in learning situations help to develop interactive intercultural communication. Undergraduate university students in the US, Taiwan, and Israel engaged in an online discussion about gender stereotypes. This study examines their perceptions of the interactions. There were 31 undergraduate participants from the US, 119 participants from Taiwan, and 28 participants from Israel. The study compares pre- and post-assignment questionnaires with a mixture of scaled responses and short narrative responses to determine the participants' perceptions of the assignment as a learning activity and as interactive intercultural communication. The analysis identifies and evaluates technical, logistical, and linguistic issues which can be used to refine this assignment to better meet the goal of developing interactive intercultural communication.

Despite increased interest in studying school violence, much less attention has been given to examining students' fear of experiencing this violence. A better understanding is important, because fear of victimization can generate negative academic consequences for the individual student and larger school environment. To explore students' fear, our study takes a cross-national approach and compares the United States and Israel. Previous victimization experience is universally associated with fear at school. With regard to other correlates, greater similarities are found between U.S. and Israeli-Jewish students than for either group with Israeli-Arab students. Our study also examines students' fear while traveling to school. Here, similarities are found among all students. Girls and students victimized at school report being fearful more often while traveling to school than boys and students who were not victimized. Explanations for our findings are discussed as well as possible implications for future policy and research. (Contains 4 tables and 7 notes.)

While previous research suggests that students feel safe at school, little attention has been given to studying adolescent feelings of safety in various locations. Such direct comparisons would provide a context for evaluating and better understanding students' perceptions of safety at school. The present study examines this issue by comparing Israeli students' feelings of safety in school with seven locations outside school frequented by adolescents. While all students perceived school to be the safest place and walking in the street at night the least safe, boys and Jewish students reported feeling safer than girls and Arab students. Of all groups, Arab girls consistently reported feeling the least safe in every location. In addition, the neighborhood where a school is located was more influential on students' feelings of safety at school than the school's own characteristics. These findings support the need to take an ecological perspective to assessing school safety and provide a foundation for future research. (Contains 2 tables.)

Background: While clinical outcomes from colorectal cancer (CRC) are influenced by stage at diagnosis and treatment, mounting evidence suggests that an enhanced lymphocytic reaction to a tumor may also be an informative prognostic indicator.Methods: The roles of intratumoral T lymphocyte infiltration (TIL), peritumoral Crohn's-like lymphoid reaction (CLR), microsatellite instability (MSI), and clinicopathological characteristics in survival from CRC were examined using 2369 incident CRCs from a population-based case-control study in northern Israel. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for CRC-specific and all-cause mortality in multivariable models adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, grade, stage, and MSI. All statistical tests were two-sided.Results: Tumors with TIL/high-powered field (HPF) of 2 or greater were associated with a statistically significant increase in CRC-specific (P < .001) and overall survival (P < .001) compared with tumors with TIL/HPF of less than 2. Similarly, tumors with a prominent CLR experienced better CRC-specific (P < .001) and overall survival (P < .001) as compared with those with no response. High TILs (HR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.64 to 0.89, P < .001) and a prominent CLR (HR = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.62 to 0.80, P < .001), but not MSI, were associated with a statistically significant reduction in all-cause mortality after adjustment for established prognostic factors.Conclusions: TILs and CLR are both prognostic indicators for CRC after adjusting for traditional prognostic indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the complex politics of housing and residency in modern-day Jerusalem in Israel. Topics discussed include the implementation of the "center of life" policy which compels Palestinian residents to prove their residence within the city's municipal boundaries and the prohibition of family reunification of Palestinian spouses with different legal status. The impact of these separation mechanisms on the community structure and family formation is explored.

The kin-cohort design has been proposed as an alternative to traditional case-control and cohort measures to evaluate inherited susceptibility to cancer in population-based studies. Here, we used this design to evaluate inherited susceptibility to prostate cancer associated with APC I1307K using data from the Molecular Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer study. Two techniques were used to compare the incidence of prostate cancer in APC I1307K carriers. First, we compared the incidence of prostate cancer in relatives of mutation carriers and noncarriers using standard techniques for survival analysis. Second, we used the marginal maximum likelihood method for kin-cohort analysis to infer the genotypes in the relatives. We also evaluated APC I1307K in 75 Ashkenazi Jewish individuals with prostate cancer from 27 families enrolled in the University of Michigan Prostate Cancer Genetic Study. We observed a slightly increased risk of prostate cancer in relatives of APC I1307K carriers, however, this difference was not statistically significant (hazard ratio, 1.6; 95% confidence intervals, 0.7-3.4). Similar conclusions were drawn using both techniques for kin-cohort analysis. APC I1307K was found in 7.4% of families genotyped, which is slightly higher than the allele prevalence reported in Ashkenazi Jews in the general population. In addition, we did not observe loss of heterozygosity at APC or a somatic mutation near APC I1307K using microdissected tumor DNA from mutation carriers enrolled in the Prostate Cancer Genetic Study. Overall, the evidence for an association between APC I1307K and prostate cancer is not compelling. APC I1307K is unlikely to play a clinically meaningful role in susceptibility to prostate cancer.

Background: Mutations in BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) profoundly increase the risks of breast and ovarian cancers, but it is unclear whether mutations in these genes increase the risk of colorectal cancer. We investigated BRCA1/2 founder mutations and a family history of breast cancer as potential risk factors for colorectal cancer., Methods: In the population-based Molecular Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer study in northern Israel, 1422 case patients with incident colorectal cancer, diagnosed between March 31, 1998, and December 31, 2002, and 1566 control subjects without colorectal cancer were genotyped for the BRCA1 187delAG, BRCA1 5385insC, and BRCA2 6174delT founder mutations. Genotypes and interview data from all case patients and control subjects and from only those of Ashkenazi Jewish descent (1002 case patients and 1038 control subjects) were used to calculate odds ratios [ORs] from logistic regression., Results: Twenty-four (2.4%) case patients and 20 (1.9%) control subjects carried one of the three mutations (OR = 1.24, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.68 to 2.26). A family history of breast cancer in a female relative was not associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer, even after adjustment for the presence of a BRCA founder mutation (OR = 1.03, 95% CI = 0.75 to 1.41)., Conclusions: Although weak associations cannot be excluded, Ashkenazi BRCA founder mutations do not confer a strongly elevated risk of colorectal cancer. Similarly, a family history of breast cancer does not appear to be a strong risk factor for colorectal cancer in this population.