Ben-Yehuda presents an in-depth inquiry into the nature and patterns of political assassinations and executions by Jews in Palestine and Israel. Extensive empirical evidence is used to analyze the social construction of violent and aggressive human behavior, using a sociology of deviance perspective. Political assassinations and executions are placed within their particular cultural matrix to describe how this specific form of killing has been conceptualized as part of an alternative system of justice.
‘The taking of a human life is generally regarded as the ultimate evil. Given this fact, it is important to examine and understand how it is explained, justified, and cloaked in a ‘vocabulary of motives.’ Such acts are, in the author’s words, ‘socially constructed and interpreted, ‘ dependent on the observer’s location in a specific ‘symbolic-moral universe.’Moreover, such acts (political assassination specifically) are manifestations of struggles that represent attempts to legitimate these world-views, rhetorical devices that serve to define ‘boundary-markers’ between such universes – moral crusades that attempt to validate one view vis-a-vis another.
This general approach to political assassinations is original. Its application to assassinations by Israelis is original. The fact that the book is empirical marks it off from many speculations on the subject. A number of the author’s findings make a distinct contribution.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
List of Cases
Introduction
Part 1: Theoretical Background and Methodology
Chapter 1 Theoretical Orientation, Plan of the Book and Main Findings
Chapter 2 Political Assassinations: Theoretical Background
Chapter 3 Methodology and Research Experience
Part 2: Actual Cases
Chapter 4 Historical Background
Chapter 5 Political Assassinations by Jews in the Bible, The Sicariis, and in Europe
Chapter 6 Political Assassinations by Jews in Palestine between 1882-1918—The Turkish Period
Chapter 7 Political Assassinations by Jews in Palestine between 1919-1948—The British Period
Chapter 8 Political Assassinations by Jews in Israel between 1949-1988—The Israeli Period
Chapter 9 Political Executions
Chapter 10 Political Assassinations, Terror, and Tangential Cases
Part 3: Analysis, Discussion, and Summary
Chapter 11 The Criminological Pattern of Political Assassinations in a Comparative Perspective
Chapter 12 Political Assassinations as Rhetorical Devices: Patterns, Reasons, and Interpretations
Chapter 13 Integrative Summary
Notes
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Nachman Ben-Yehuda is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is the author of The Politics and Morality of Deviance: Moral Panics, Drug Abuse, Deviant Science, and Reversed Stigmatization, also published by SUNY Press.
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