Leora Bilsky
Biographic Data
| ID | 1241342 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leora Bilsky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leora |
| FAMILY NAME | Bilsky |
| SIGNATURE | BILSKY L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tel Aviv University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4357-3696 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Political Trials, Neo-Legalism, and Gaza
This Article examines the relation between law, politics, and history in the initial phase of the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It analyzes how both parties invoked and mobilized the past within their legal strategies. While the proceedings centered on the pressing issue of applying the legal category of “genocide” to the devastating reality in Gaza, they also involved a turn to …
The Earth Does Not Want to Keep Secrets
This article examines two pioneering texts written by Jewish authors who developed an early material-environmental approach to the death camp of Treblinka: Vasily Grossman (1944) and Rachel Auerbach (1947). Both writers visited Treblinka immediately after the war and found themselves compelled to solicit the assistance of nonhuman testimony—the natural environment, everyday objects and human remains—which they transformed into witnesses to a new …
The Desk Perpetrator, the Expert Witness, and the Role of Law
The phenomenon of the desk perpetrator continues to pose a challenge for the law. During the sixty-odd years since the Eichmann trial, legal scholarship has mainly focused on the need to develop doctrines about participation/complicity in order to attribute responsibility to the perpetrator behind the desk. It has failed to address the more basic problem of the involvement of the law in the phenomenon of the desk perpetrator. We suggest that the …
Rachel Auerbach and the Eichmann Trial
Since the 1990s, international criminal law has struggled to find the proper role for victims in mass-atrocities trials. Notwithstanding the rise of the victim-centered trial, victims still participate in these trials mainly as witnesses for the prosecution, but not as full and proactive participants. In this article, I return to the forgotten contribution of Rachel Auerbach (1903-1976), a Jewish-Polish journalist, historian, and Holocaust surviv…
Silent Witnesses
Silent Witnesses:The Testimony of Objects in Holocaust Poetry and Prose Leora Bilsky (bio) and Vered Lev Kenaan1 (bio) The Holocaust brought about a crisis of testimony that led to critical engagement with the limits of representation by lawyers, historians, psychoanalysts, and poets. This question was first addressed by the architects of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945) who preferred incriminating documents produced by the…
The judicial review of legality
In comparative constitutional law, the various models of judicial review require courts to examine either the substantive content of legislation or the procedure through which legislation was passed. This article offers a new model of judicial review – ‘the judicial review of legality’ – in which courts review instead the forms of law. The forms of law are the ways in which law communicates its norms to the persons who are meant to comply with th…
Cultural Genocide and Restitution
Cultural restitution in international law typically aims to restore cultural property to the state of origin. The experience of World War II raised the question of how to adapt this framework to deal with states that persecuted cultural groups within their own borders. Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews and its attempt to destroy their cultural heritage began before the war and was carried out systematically throughout the war in the conquered te…
The Return of Cultural Genocide
Cultural genocide, despite contemporary thinking, is not a new problem in need of normative solution, rather it is as old as the concept of genocide itself. The lens of law and history allows us to see that the original conceptualization of the crime of genocide - as presented by Raphael Lemkin - gave cultural genocide centre stage. As Nazi crime was a methodical attempt to destroy a group and as what makes up a group's identity is its culture, f…
Political Trials
The Eichmann Trial
For many years, the Eichmann Judgment has been overshadowed by the Nuremberg proceedings, considered as the more important precedent for international criminal law. In this article, I question this understanding by positioning the Eichmann trial at the head of the series of international criminal trials, which have become more familiar over the past two decades. The main part of this article addresses the role of witnesses in light of the framewo…
Transnational Holocaust Litigation
International adjudication of the Holocaust has played a defining role in the development of international criminal law. Its legacy has recently been challenged by the Holocaust restitution actions brought before American courts in the 1990s. Settled for unprecedented amounts, the litigation has been sharply criticized by legal scholars and historians, who raise doubts as to the justice achieved for victims, and criticize the representation of th…
The Habibi Libel Trial
Does the link between national community and criminal law reflect a practical limitation on the jurisdiction of domestic courts or is there a more intrinsic relation between the two? This question stands at the centre of the ongoing debate over the principle of universal jurisdiction – the ability of third-party national courts to adjudicate criminal cases that involve communities outside their territories. This article suggests that we can find …
Strangers Within
Muslim headscarves in France and army uniforms in Israel
On 15 March 2004 the French government passed a law that banned the wearing of ‘conspicuous signs’ of religious affiliation in public schools. The ban was the result of an ongoing controversy in France about the admissibility of the hijab worn by Muslim schoolgirls. On 8 November 2007 Professor Nizar Hassan, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, asked a Jewish student of his, who came to class wearing his army uniform, to refrain from wearing it to hi…
Speaking through the Mask
On May 14, 2006 The Israeli Supereme Court issued its decision in a case known as the 'family unification case' that dealt with the constitutionality of an amendement to the Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law. The temporary amendment prevents Palestinian residents of the occupied territories (of certain age) from entering the territory of Israel and gaining citizenship or residence status through family unification. A divided court upheld the am…
Citizenship as Mask
Transformative Justice
Can Israel be both Jewish and democratic? Transformative Justice, Leora Bilsky's landmark study of Israeli political trials, poses this deceptively simple question. The four trials that she analyzes focus on identity, the nature of pluralism, human rights, and the rule of law-issues whose importance extends far beyond Israel's borders. Drawing on the latest work in philosophy, law, history, and rhetoric, Bilsky exposes the many narratives that co…
Judging and Understanding
What is the relationship between judging and understanding? Does the process of understanding undermine our ability to judge? Or maybe the contrary is true, that judgment is possible only when its subject is understandable? If judgment requires distance and understanding requires empathy (overcoming distance), is there an inherent impossibility in trying to judge the Holocaust by trying to understand it? Language itself betrays a sense in which u…
Judging Evil in the Trial of Kastner
When Hannah Arendt came to Jerusalem in 1961 to attend the Eichmann trial she expected to find Evil incarnated in the person of Eichmann. How surprised she was to see the man in the glass booth. The word she used repeatedly to describe him was “mediocre,” referring to the very average qualities of his person. To Arendt the dissonance between Eichmann's horrifying actions and the bureaucratic character of the man demanded an explanation. Like so m…
Giving Voice to Women
THIS PAPER EXAMINES A RECENT Israeli court decision from the District Court of Tel-Aviv that involved a young woman who had suffered from a series of rapes and violent attacks from her boyfriend. The issue of violence against women has become a topic of legal discussions and reforms in the last few years in Israel. The Israeli Supreme Court has responded to growing public criticism about the legal system with several precedential decisions, among…
The Return of Cultural Genocide
Cultural genocide, despite contemporary thinking, is not a new problem in need of normative solution, rather it is as old as the concept of genocide itself. The lens of law and history allows us to see that the original conceptualization of the crime of genocide - as presented by Raphael Lemkin - gave cultural genocide centre stage. As Nazi crime was a methodical attempt to destroy a group and as what makes up a group's identity is its culture, f…
Muslim headscarves in France and army uniforms in Israel
On 15 March 2004 the French government passed a law that banned the wearing of ‘conspicuous signs’ of religious affiliation in public schools. The ban was the result of an ongoing controversy in France about the admissibility of the hijab worn by Muslim schoolgirls. On 8 November 2007 Professor Nizar Hassan, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, asked a Jewish student of his, who came to class wearing his army uniform, to refrain from wearing it to hi…
Cultural Genocide and Restitution
Cultural restitution in international law typically aims to restore cultural property to the state of origin. The experience of World War II raised the question of how to adapt this framework to deal with states that persecuted cultural groups within their own borders. Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews and its attempt to destroy their cultural heritage began before the war and was carried out systematically throughout the war in the conquered te…
Judging Evil in the Trial of Kastner
When Hannah Arendt came to Jerusalem in 1961 to attend the Eichmann trial she expected to find Evil incarnated in the person of Eichmann. How surprised she was to see the man in the glass booth. The word she used repeatedly to describe him was “mediocre,” referring to the very average qualities of his person. To Arendt the dissonance between Eichmann's horrifying actions and the bureaucratic character of the man demanded an explanation. Like so m…
Speaking through the Mask
On May 14, 2006 The Israeli Supereme Court issued its decision in a case known as the 'family unification case' that dealt with the constitutionality of an amendement to the Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law. The temporary amendment prevents Palestinian residents of the occupied territories (of certain age) from entering the territory of Israel and gaining citizenship or residence status through family unification. A divided court upheld the am…
Citizenship as Mask
Judging and Understanding
What is the relationship between judging and understanding? Does the process of understanding undermine our ability to judge? Or maybe the contrary is true, that judgment is possible only when its subject is understandable? If judgment requires distance and understanding requires empathy (overcoming distance), is there an inherent impossibility in trying to judge the Holocaust by trying to understand it? Language itself betrays a sense in which u…
Giving Voice to Women
THIS PAPER EXAMINES A RECENT Israeli court decision from the District Court of Tel-Aviv that involved a young woman who had suffered from a series of rapes and violent attacks from her boyfriend. The issue of violence against women has become a topic of legal discussions and reforms in the last few years in Israel. The Israeli Supreme Court has responded to growing public criticism about the legal system with several precedential decisions, among…
The Eichmann Trial
For many years, the Eichmann Judgment has been overshadowed by the Nuremberg proceedings, considered as the more important precedent for international criminal law. In this article, I question this understanding by positioning the Eichmann trial at the head of the series of international criminal trials, which have become more familiar over the past two decades. The main part of this article addresses the role of witnesses in light of the framewo…
Giving Voice to Women
THIS PAPER EXAMINES A RECENT Israeli court decision from the District Court of Tel-Aviv that involved a young woman who had suffered from a series of rapes and violent attacks from her boyfriend. The issue of violence against women has become a topic of legal discussions and reforms in the last few years in Israel. The Israeli Supreme Court has responded to growing public criticism about the legal system with several precedential decisions, among…
Judging and Understanding
What is the relationship between judging and understanding? Does the process of understanding undermine our ability to judge? Or maybe the contrary is true, that judgment is possible only when its subject is understandable? If judgment requires distance and understanding requires empathy (overcoming distance), is there an inherent impossibility in trying to judge the Holocaust by trying to understand it? Language itself betrays a sense in which u…
Judging Evil in the Trial of Kastner
When Hannah Arendt came to Jerusalem in 1961 to attend the Eichmann trial she expected to find Evil incarnated in the person of Eichmann. How surprised she was to see the man in the glass booth. The word she used repeatedly to describe him was “mediocre,” referring to the very average qualities of his person. To Arendt the dissonance between Eichmann's horrifying actions and the bureaucratic character of the man demanded an explanation. Like so m…
Transformative Justice
Can Israel be both Jewish and democratic? Transformative Justice, Leora Bilsky's landmark study of Israeli political trials, poses this deceptively simple question. The four trials that she analyzes focus on identity, the nature of pluralism, human rights, and the rule of law-issues whose importance extends far beyond Israel's borders. Drawing on the latest work in philosophy, law, history, and rhetoric, Bilsky exposes the many narratives that co…
Citizenship as Mask
Muslim headscarves in France and army uniforms in Israel
On 15 March 2004 the French government passed a law that banned the wearing of ‘conspicuous signs’ of religious affiliation in public schools. The ban was the result of an ongoing controversy in France about the admissibility of the hijab worn by Muslim schoolgirls. On 8 November 2007 Professor Nizar Hassan, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, asked a Jewish student of his, who came to class wearing his army uniform, to refrain from wearing it to hi…
Speaking through the Mask
On May 14, 2006 The Israeli Supereme Court issued its decision in a case known as the 'family unification case' that dealt with the constitutionality of an amendement to the Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law. The temporary amendment prevents Palestinian residents of the occupied territories (of certain age) from entering the territory of Israel and gaining citizenship or residence status through family unification. A divided court upheld the am…
Strangers Within
The Habibi Libel Trial
Does the link between national community and criminal law reflect a practical limitation on the jurisdiction of domestic courts or is there a more intrinsic relation between the two? This question stands at the centre of the ongoing debate over the principle of universal jurisdiction – the ability of third-party national courts to adjudicate criminal cases that involve communities outside their territories. This article suggests that we can find …
Transnational Holocaust Litigation
International adjudication of the Holocaust has played a defining role in the development of international criminal law. Its legacy has recently been challenged by the Holocaust restitution actions brought before American courts in the 1990s. Settled for unprecedented amounts, the litigation has been sharply criticized by legal scholars and historians, who raise doubts as to the justice achieved for victims, and criticize the representation of th…
The Eichmann Trial
For many years, the Eichmann Judgment has been overshadowed by the Nuremberg proceedings, considered as the more important precedent for international criminal law. In this article, I question this understanding by positioning the Eichmann trial at the head of the series of international criminal trials, which have become more familiar over the past two decades. The main part of this article addresses the role of witnesses in light of the framewo…
Political Trials
The Return of Cultural Genocide
Cultural genocide, despite contemporary thinking, is not a new problem in need of normative solution, rather it is as old as the concept of genocide itself. The lens of law and history allows us to see that the original conceptualization of the crime of genocide - as presented by Raphael Lemkin - gave cultural genocide centre stage. As Nazi crime was a methodical attempt to destroy a group and as what makes up a group's identity is its culture, f…
Cultural Genocide and Restitution
Cultural restitution in international law typically aims to restore cultural property to the state of origin. The experience of World War II raised the question of how to adapt this framework to deal with states that persecuted cultural groups within their own borders. Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews and its attempt to destroy their cultural heritage began before the war and was carried out systematically throughout the war in the conquered te…
The judicial review of legality
In comparative constitutional law, the various models of judicial review require courts to examine either the substantive content of legislation or the procedure through which legislation was passed. This article offers a new model of judicial review – ‘the judicial review of legality’ – in which courts review instead the forms of law. The forms of law are the ways in which law communicates its norms to the persons who are meant to comply with th…
Rachel Auerbach and the Eichmann Trial
Since the 1990s, international criminal law has struggled to find the proper role for victims in mass-atrocities trials. Notwithstanding the rise of the victim-centered trial, victims still participate in these trials mainly as witnesses for the prosecution, but not as full and proactive participants. In this article, I return to the forgotten contribution of Rachel Auerbach (1903-1976), a Jewish-Polish journalist, historian, and Holocaust surviv…
Silent Witnesses
Silent Witnesses:The Testimony of Objects in Holocaust Poetry and Prose Leora Bilsky (bio) and Vered Lev Kenaan1 (bio) The Holocaust brought about a crisis of testimony that led to critical engagement with the limits of representation by lawyers, historians, psychoanalysts, and poets. This question was first addressed by the architects of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945) who preferred incriminating documents produced by the…
The Earth Does Not Want to Keep Secrets
This article examines two pioneering texts written by Jewish authors who developed an early material-environmental approach to the death camp of Treblinka: Vasily Grossman (1944) and Rachel Auerbach (1947). Both writers visited Treblinka immediately after the war and found themselves compelled to solicit the assistance of nonhuman testimony—the natural environment, everyday objects and human remains—which they transformed into witnesses to a new …
The Desk Perpetrator, the Expert Witness, and the Role of Law
The phenomenon of the desk perpetrator continues to pose a challenge for the law. During the sixty-odd years since the Eichmann trial, legal scholarship has mainly focused on the need to develop doctrines about participation/complicity in order to attribute responsibility to the perpetrator behind the desk. It has failed to address the more basic problem of the involvement of the law in the phenomenon of the desk perpetrator. We suggest that the …
Political Trials, Neo-Legalism, and Gaza
This Article examines the relation between law, politics, and history in the initial phase of the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It analyzes how both parties invoked and mobilized the past within their legal strategies. While the proceedings centered on the pressing issue of applying the legal category of “genocide” to the devastating reality in Gaza, they also involved a turn to …
Political science (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · International Law and Human Rights (9 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Law in Society and Culture (5 works) · Economic Justice (4 works) · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics (4 works)