In this Book
- Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice
- Book
- 1993
- Published by: State University of New York Press
summary
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 Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xii
- LIST OF CASES
- pp. xiii-xx
- INTRODUCTION
- p. xxi
- PART 2 Actual Cases
- p. 77
- CHAPTER 4 Historical Background
- pp. 79-98
- CHAPTER 9 Political Executions
- pp. 299-320
- CHAPTER 13 Integrative Summary
- pp. 413-422
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- pp. 471-502
Additional Information
ISBN
9780791496374
MARC Record
OCLC
42856375
Pages
527
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No