From bioethics to biopolitics: "Playing the Nazi card" in public health ethics-the case of Israel.

While bioethicist Arthur Caplan claims that "The Nazi analogy is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb in ethical battles about science and medicine", we claim that such total exclusion of this analogy is equally problematic. Our analysis builds on Roberto Esposito's conceptualization of immunitas and communitas as key elements of biopolitics. Within public health theories and practices there is an inherent tension between exclusion (immunitas) and inclusion (communitas) forces. Taking the immunitas logic to the extreme, as National Socialist medicine did in the name of securing the German race, is a constant danger that needs to be taken seriously into consideration when discussing public health policies. The tension between the silencing of the Holocaust in bioethical debates on one side, and the persistent use of National Socialist medicine metaphors, on the other hand, is the focus of this paper. By delving into the meanings and the implications of this two-edged discourse, we argue that comparing post-war bioethics with pre-war medical practices from a biopolitical perspective has the potential to depict a more nuanced account of continuities and discontinuities in bioethics.

The course of professionalization: Jewish nursing in Poland in the interwar period.

ArgumentThis paper focuses on the Jewish nursing profession in Poland during the interwar period. We argue that the integration of Jewish women in medical activity under the AJDC (American Jewish Distribution Committee) and TOZ (Towarzystwa Ochrony Zdrowia Ludnosci Zydowskiej [the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish People]) emerged in Poland less from the adoption of gender equality and more out of necessity. On the one hand, JDC and TOZ needed Jewish nurses and public health nurses to carry out their health campaigns and build a public health infrastructure. On the other hand, a new generation of Jewish women needed job opportunities that would enable them to make a living and be independent. More broadly this case study shows that the implementation of American "reformative" ideals into the local Polish reality, including in the newly emerging public health field, involved adaptation, negotiation, and in some cases, resentment.

Pasteur in Palestine: the politics of the laboratory.

We examine the creation and functioning of the "Pasteur Institute in Palestine" focusing on the relationship between biological science, health policy, and the creation of a "new society" within the framework of Zionism. Similar to other bacteriological institutes founded by colonial powers, this laboratory was developed in response to public health needs. But it also had a political role. Dr. Leo Böhm, a Zionist physician, strived to establish his institution along the lines of the Zionist aspiration to develop a national entity based on strong scientific foundations. Even though the institute enjoyed several fruitful years of operation, mainly during World War I, it achieved no lasting national or scientific importance in the country. Böhm failed to adapt to new ways of knowledge production, scientifically and socially. The case study of the "Pasteur Institute in Palestine" serves as a prism to view the role of the public health laboratory in the history of Palestine with its ongoing changes of scientific, organizational, and political context.

[Lipman Halpern--the 70th anniversary of the Department of Neurology at the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center].

The paper describes the establishment of the Department of Neurology at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, as well as the department's early activity, emphasizing the role of Dr. Lipman Halpern, one the founders. The paper further illustrates the neurological and psychiatric infrastructure in Palestine of the 1930's, as well as major professional and organizational issues faced by Dr. Halpern, particularly the relationship between psychiatry and neurology. Thus, the paper claims, not only did Dr. Halpern's German neuro-psychiatric training influence his personal and professional choices, but it had also shaped the department of neurology in its early days. Furthermore, Dr. Halpern's training had an impact on the neuro-psychiatric community in Palestine, one of the main features of which was the strong interaction between psychiatry and neurology.

"Air, sun, water": ideology and activities of OZE (Society for the Preservation of the Health of the Jewish Population) during the interwar period.

This paper follows the social and political history of OZE, the Society for the Preservation of the Health of the Jewish Population, in the interwar period. We focus on two campaigns against typhus and favus, the first two disease oriented efforts by OZE, in order to reconstruct the operational approaches, considerations and obstacles faced by OZE as a Jewish organization and transnational participant in the discourse on the health and politics of minorities between two world wars. The analysis of OZE as a transnational Jewish relief organization has a wider significance as an example of international organizations originating from civil initiatives to promote the health of minorities through field work and politics.

Last resort? Lobotomy operations in Israel, 1946-60.

In this paper we examine lobotomy operations in mandatory Palestine and Israel between 1946 and 1960. The aim is to reconstruct the circumstances in which these operations were done, and to examine: which patients were lobotomized and why; how lobotomy was perceived by the local psychiatric profession; and the reasons for its decline. Apart from shedding new light on the history of lobotomy, which is usually analysed from the viewpoint of the USA and Europe, this study provides an opportunity to investigate the relation between various concepts of the healthy and ill body in the unique context of Israel, as an immigrant country influenced by its Zionist ideology.

Measuring adaptability: psychological examinations of Jewish detainees in Cyprus internment camps.

Two medical delegations, one from Palestine and one from the United States, were sent to detainment camps in Cyprus in the summer of 1947. The British Mandatory government had set up these camps in the summer of 1946 to stem the flow of Jewish immigrants into Palestine after World War II. The purpose of the medical delegations was to screen the camps' inhabitants and to propose a mental-health program for their life in Palestine. We examine the activities of these two delegations within the context of their scientific interest in the psycho-pathology of displaced persons after World War II and as part of a broader project of mental hygiene. According to the delegations, the detainees would be a potential source of strength for building a new society if they adapted to life in Palestine. However, they would become a burden if they failed to be absorbed. At the same time, the medical delegations also saw the detainee camps as a potential "living laboratory" for scientific exploration. The case of the two medical delegations in Cyprus is also a story about constructing and transgressing medical borders. Apart from the obvious fact that this case study deals with movement of people, refugees as well as health-care workers, it is also about the transmission of knowledge and professions across the ocean.

Psychiatry, ethnicity and migration: the case of Palestine, 1920-1948.

The aim of the paper is to explore the development of psychiatry in Palestine from two main perspectives: ethnicity and immigration. In Palestine the subject of immigration and psychiatry were highly complicated and had unique features. Thus, both psychiatrists and patients were immigrants who belonged to the same ethnic group sharing the same ideology and objectives. The examination will uncover the social construction of mental diseases among Jewish immigrants in Palestine - patients and psychiatrists - and elucidate another layer in the development of the Zionist Jewish society in Palestine up to the establishment of the State of Israel.

The psychiatric asylum in Bnei-Brak and "The Society for the Help of the Insane," 1929-1939.

The article explores the activity of the Bnei-Brak psychiatric asylum and "The Society for the Help of the Insane" in the years 1929-1939 and its role in the development of mental health care in mandatory Palestine. Based on archival materials from the municipal archive of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa and the Israeli State Archive, as well as on the Hebrew daily press, the article concentrates on the administrative, the medical and the political aspects of the Bnei-Brak asylum and on the activities of "The Society for the Help of the Insane" discussing the central problems of the psychiatric field and the mentally ill people in the country during the reviewed period.