Enemization and Solidarity in Times of War: The Case of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel

Enemization and Solidarity in Times of War: The Case of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel

Speaker: Dr. Manal Totry-Jubran (GCDC Visiting Academic, Bar Ilan University)

Commentators: Dr Julie Norman (UCL) , Prof Jeff King (UCL Laws)

Chair: Dr Ewan Smith (UCL Laws)

About the seminar

This seminar examines how solidarity operates as a mechanism of exclusion in deeply divided societies, focusing on the treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel after October 7, 2023. It argues that solidarity and enemization are mutually constitutive processes: calls for national unity are often predicated on the construction of an internal enemy. Drawing on theories of ethnic boundary-making and security-oriented criminal law, the seminar shows how expressions of grief, humanitarian concern, or solidarity with civilians in Gaza were reclassified as criminal acts of incitement or identification with terrorism. Through analysis of emergency directives, protest restrictions, and enforcement data, it demonstrates how criminal law was used to police political belonging along ethnonational lines. The Israeli case reveals solidarity’s darker side: not as a democratic practice of mutual recognition, but as a coercive, legally mediated instrument that redraws the boundaries of citizenship under conditions of crisis.

This seminar is part of the Public Law Seminar Series.

Please note that this talk will be filmed and photographed for promotional and publicity purposes.

About the Speaker

Dr Manal Totry-Jubran is an associate professor at the Law Faculty, Bar Ilan University, and she is the founder and director of the program for promoting the Arab students in the Law Faculty. She is currently a visiting professor at the Global Centre of Democratic Constitutionalism at UCL, Law School. In 2024 and 2025 she was a visiting professor at the Luiss Law School, Rome. In 2023 and 2025 she was a visiting professor at the Bicocca Law School, Milano. She was a Post Doctorial Fellow at the Faculty of Law, the Hebrew University. She received her LL.M. (Magna cum Laude) and Ph.D. from the Faculty of Law, University of Tel- Aviv. In 2023 she was awarded the “Cegla Prize” for Exceptional Legal Articles in Hebrew. In 2019 she was awarded the “Gorni Prize”, by the Israeli Association of Public Law young researchers for Excellent young researcher in public Law. In 2018 she was selected by “Calcalist” newspaper and “Bank Hapoalim” as one of ten Young Promising Arab leaders in the Arab Society. In 2015 she was awarded the Ma’of scholarship for outstanding Arab students, The Council for Higher Education. In 2025, she received a research grant on “Selective Moderation and Democratic Resilience: The Role of Social Platforms in Shaping Freedom of Speech During Emergencies in Israel”, funded by Chief Justice Meir Shamgar Center for Digital Law and Innovation. In 2019, she received a three-year research grant on “Conceptualizing Environmental Justice in the Israeli Legal and Regulative System: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives”, funded by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). In 2017, she received a research grant on Social Rights in Israel: Distributing Burdens between the state and the Local Government in Supplying Welfare Services and its Effect on the Creation of Social and Economic Gaps between Local Authorities funded by the National Insurance Institute of Israel; a research grant on “Examining Legal and Spatial Aspects Rothschild Foundation Mode of Work” funded by Rothschild Foundation; a research grant on “Minority Judge, Judge of Minorities: Salim Joubran” funded by the Center for Jewish and Democratic Law. In 2016 she received a research grant on “The Legal Regulation of Acquisition Groups in Israel”, funded by the Gazit- Globe Real Estate Institution. She attended several local and international conferences and academic workshops and published articles in international leading Law journals. 

Her main fields of interests are: Constitutional and Administrative Law, Law and Society, Critical Legal Geography, Multiculturalism, Minority Rights, Environmental and Transitional Justice. 

About the commentators

Dr. Julie Norman is an Associate Professor (Teaching) in Politics and International Relations at UCL, specialising in conflict, political violence, and the Middle East. She coordinates UCL’s Israel-Palestine Initiative and is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

She is the author of Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare (Polity, 2025) and Understanding Nonviolence (Polity, 2015), and has published widely on conflict and peacebuilding. She has also advised organisations including the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the US Institute of Peace, and frequently provides media commentary on international affairs.

Jeff King joined the UCL Laws in 2011 and has been Professor of Law since 2016. He is the Deputy Director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism.  He sits on the Editorial Committees of the journals Public Law and the Federal Law Review, and on the General Council of the International Society of Public Law (ICON Society), and is a member of the Study of Parliament Group.  He was previously the Co-Editor of Current Legal Problems and the Co-Editor of the UK Constitutional Law Blog. Prior to coming to UCL, he was a Fellow and Tutor in law at Balliol College, and CUF Lecturer for the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford (2008-2011), a Research Fellow and Tutor law at Keble College, Oxford (2007-08), and an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York City (2003-04). He has held visiting posts at the University of Oxford (2019-2022), University of Toronto (2013, 2020), Renmin University (Beijing), the University of New South Wales, and in 2014-15 was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation visiting fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His book Judging Social Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the Society of Legal Scholars 2014 Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship, and in 2017 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law.

About the chair

Dr Ewan Smith joined UCL Laws as Associate Professor of Public Law in 2022. Prior to that he was a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, the Shaw Foundation Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and an Early Career Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.

Ewan read law at Oxford, at the University of Paris and at Harvard Law School. He has previously worked at Peking, Tsinghua and Renmin Universities in China and at the National University of Singapore. In 2023, Ewan was a Hauser Global Fellow at New York University Law School and in 2024 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Bologna. 

Ewan is admitted to practice in New York, where he worked for Debevoise and Plimpton LLP. Between 2005 and 2015, he worked for the UK Foreign Office.

Picture by Anna Shvets on Pexels