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Acknowledgments

It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the many people and institutions who have supported me and contributed to the research and writing of this book.

During several periods of fieldwork, spanning more than a decade, I met and became friends with many incredible women, and some men, Palestinian and Jewish, whose struggles to live full, dignified lives filled me with awe and inspiration, and whose kindness and generosity in letting me into their lives continue to imbue me with gratitude and humility. These women are not mentioned here by name because I am committed to protect their privacy. I hope that those of them who read the book will feel that I have communicated their perspectives with fairness and respect, although, of course, the presentation and interpretations are solely my responsibility.

I was blessed with numerous talented assistants who took part in various stages of the research. Most of them were my graduate students; some even wrote their MA theses on specific topics within the larger frame of the research. I thank Chava Nishri, Chava Rubin, Tamar Kaneh-Shalit, Ya’ara Buksbaum, Itay Alter, Guy Bruker, Nisreen Mazzawi, Adi Romano, Yevgenia Gorbachevich, Ma’ayan Agmon, Yael Shostak-Pascal, Noor Falah, Kifah Daghash, and Samiyya Sharkawi for conducting sensitive interviews, collecting archival and public materials, coding and analyzing, and helping me think through the many paradoxes that emerged with the unfolding of the research.

A wonderful reward of working on this book was the opportunity to forge intellectual partnerships with other feminist colleagues who, like me, have been fascinated by the effects of the neoliberal turn on Israeli civil society, and by the penetration of the ideology of self-governmentality into feminist and human rights circles. I am grateful to Nitza Berkovitch, Adriana Kemp, and Mimi Ajzenstadt for inviting me to the Van Leer research group on the NGOization of civil spaces and for the opportunity to converse in a common theoretical language. Additional critical sustenance came from friends and colleagues in the field itself, who were a constant source of ideological and intellectual innovation. I thank Ruti Gur, Khawla Reihani, Michal Dagan, Nabila Espanioly, and Johayna Hussain for allowing me a close look at the wonderful work they have been doing, and my many friends at Isha-L-Isha, the Haifa Feminist Center, which has been my political home for so many years and which has served as a springboard for important feminist empowerment initiatives. I thank and acknowledge, with love, Ayelet Ilany for her wisdom and insights, for teaching me so much that I did not know, and for inspiring me with her capacity to imagine and fight for a better society, while keeping her heart open to human injustices and human beauty.

I wrote the book in Boston, during my sabbatical year at the Department of Anthropology at Boston University. I thank Rob Weller for offering me the affiliation and for his kind and warm hospitality. My gratitude to Chuck Lindholm, also from Boston University, dates long before this book, whose progress he accompanied with careful reading and thoughtful comments. As my former dissertation adviser, Chuck has been a true teacher, setting a very high intellectual standard combined with an open mind and a good sense of humor. Diana Wylie read and commented on the entire manuscript and contributed to making my year in Boston a nourishing writing period by engaging me in stimulating intellectual conversation along with wonderful social and cultural recreation. I thank Val Moghadam, whose rich feminist scholarship on women in the Middle East and North Africa has been a major analytical reference point for me, for her warm, generous friendship during my stay in Boston and for her attentive reading of some of the chapters of this book. Other colleagues who enriched and supported me during the writing period away from home were Michal Frenkel, Alanna Cooper, Joyce Dalsheim, Pnina Lahav, Shahla Haeri, and Paula Rayman, and of course my beloved aunt and cousins Lea (Loly), Tammy, Marc, and Daniel Kamionkowski.

In Israel, I thank my colleagues at the University of Haifa Department of Anthropology and surrounding departments, Tamar Katriel, Carol Kidron, Nurit Bird-David, Yuval Yonay, Debbie Bernstain, Dalit Simchai, Alisa Lewin, Tally Katz-Gerro, Asaf Darr, Rebeca Raijman, and Regev Nathanson, for providing a sound intellectual environment for debate and discussion. Particular thanks go to Tsipy Ivry, whose feminist anthropological outlook converges so perfectly with mine and who therefore has been among the most immediate partners for sharing ideas, dilemmas, frustrations, and revelations.

I have been fortunate to receive generous financial support for several of the projects that comprise this research. I thank the Israel National Insurance Institute, whose three-year research grant to evaluate an empowerment project effectively jump-started my decade-long immersion in the field. This grant was followed by a three-year grant from the Israel Science Foundation, which allowed me to reorient my research to broader theoretical questions and to conduct time-consuming ethnographic fieldwork. The Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, where I enjoyed a share of a two-year group research grant, allowed me to add an in-depth exploration of the structural contours of Israeli social economy. Lastly, I thank a philanthropic foundation, which preferred to remain anonymous, for a one-year grant to document and explore a back-to-work project for Palestinian women in Nazareth.

I am grateful to Berghahn Books for believing in this manuscript and for the smooth production process of the book, and I thank the anonymous readers for their excellent comments.

Lastly, at home, Murray Rosovsky was a pillar of strength and reassurance throughout. I thank him for his careful language editing of the entire book, and much more—for taking care of our daughter when I was out doing fieldwork and during the long hours of writing. I thank him for believing in me, and for his unconditional love. I thank my family—Oscar and Olga Sircovich-Sa’ar, Yashi Sa’ar, and Dafi Hochman-Sa’ar—for their love and support, and Lyla for being the light of my life.