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In summer 2003, Vicky Knafo marched 125 miles from her desolate development town to the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem to protest welfare cuts for Israel's single mothers. Single mothers from all parts of Israel joined her. Most of the mothers were Mizrahim—Jews with origins in the Arab and Muslim World. They constitute 50% of Israel's citizenry. But like the 20% Palestinian Israeli citizens, they are treated as a racinated minority by the ruling 30% Ashkenazim (European Jews of Yiddish-speaking origins). This article consists of diary fragments recording the author's participation in the protest as a single welfare mother, ethnographer, and Mizrahi feminist.

This article attempts a re-configuration of silence, suicidal identity deconstruction and the politics of anti-racism. I will explore the potential of dismantling whiteness by way of a silence that involves the refusal to claim whiteness, a whiteness that, in effect, denies humanity to 'others'. Such silences are insubordinate, as they challenge the hegemony of a racialized polity, attempting to resist its privileges, as well as its destructive and restrictive consequences.

Economic sanctions are emerging as one of the major tools of international governance in the post-Cold War era. Sanctions have long been seen as a form of political intervention that does not cause serious human damage, and therefore does not raise pressing ethical questions. However, the nature of sanctions is that they effectively target the most vulnerable and least political sectors of society, and for this reason they must be subject to ethical scrutiny.This essay looks at sanctions in the context of three ethical frameworks: just war doctrine, deontological ethics, and utilitarianism. It argues that sanctions are inconsistent with the principle of discrimination from just war doctrine; that sanctions reduce individuals to nothing more than means to an end by using the suffering of innocents as a means of persuasion, thereby violating the Kantian principle that human beings are "ends in themselves"; and that sanctions are unacceptable from a utilitarian perspective because their economic effectiveness necessarily entails considerable human damage, while their likelihood of achieving political objectives is low.