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In this article, I explain why some of the most elite and dedicated soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces ultimately became conscientious objectors. I argue that because the sacrificial moral economy, and not the state as supersubject, was hegemonically inculcated in these young people, resistance was possible. This case prompts a reconsideration of anthropological understandings of the relationship between hegemonic inculcation and resistance. Specifically, we cannot only ask to what degree subjects subscribe to hegemony but we must also ask what specifically is inculcated and how this alters agency and its object.

In this article, I consider the shifting politics of animal rights activism in Israel in relation to human rights activism. I find that whereas in the past, human and animal rights activism were tightly linked, today they have become decoupled, for reasons I explore in this article. Although human and animal rights activism once shared social and ideological foundations in Israeli society, today much of the current animal rights activism is assertive and explicit in its disregard for human rights issues, such as the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the treatment of Palestinians. This decoupling has been heightened by the appropriation of animal rights politics by a right-wing state for the purposes of ethical legitimation. This article considers the dilemmas of ethical responsibilities towards humans and animals as it plays out in one of the most vexed political environments in the world. I consider the shifting politics of human and animal rights activism, and demonstrate how they implicate and entangle each other in the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I further consider what the decoupling of the human and animal rights movements might suggest regarding the ongoing academic critique of human rights and humanism.

The Israeli military's Conscience Committee evaluates and exempts pacifists from obligatory military service, based explicitly on concern for liberal tolerance. However, I found that liberal pacifist applicants’ principled objections to violence challenged the state, and as such, applicants who articulated their refusal in such terms are rejected by the military review board. By contrast, pacifist conscientious objection based in embodied visceral revulsion to violence did not challenge the state and moral order, and such cases were granted exemption. Objections based in understanding pacifism as a physical incapacity depoliticizes it by making it incommensurable with public moral debate concerning military service. The pathologization of pacifism demonstrates a contradiction between liberalism's ideology and its practices, revealing that the limits of liberalism are not only exterior, in nonliberal alterity, but also on liberalism's own interior frontiers. [conscience, military, liberalism, ethics]

All Jewish military refusers in Israel defy state law and incur public acrimony for their transgression. Yet different social groups use distinct ethical regimes to justify this controversial act. While liberal Ashkenazi refusers cite personal conscience, ultra‐Orthodox refusers rely on scriptural authority, and Mizrahi refusers often appeal to familial responsibilities. In addition, refusers of different groups condemn one another as ethically misguided, despite their shared act. The stakes of these ethical rifts concern not only questions of military service and legitimate refusal but also larger issues of cultural hegemony, the social contract, and collective legitimation within the Israeli state. The framework of “competing ethical regimes” captures the intersection of the ethical and the political, revealing the deep entanglement of cultural values and civic virtues.