Infanticide, Orientalism, and British Law in Mandate Palestine

Abstract: In the summer of 1939, the Jewish community in mandatory Palestine was rocked by a terrible case of infanticide: a father was charged in the British Mandatory court with murder, having buried his five-day-old infant son alive. Unlike other crimes of homicide that were discussed in court, in this case the intervention of a scholar after the final verdict had been handed down changed the court’s decision altogether. This paper shows how a forgotten story can serve as a case study for the wider cultural, social, and legal contexts in which it took place. Using an interdisciplinary examination of a specific case, the paper explores the power relations and cultural negotiations between Jewish inhabitants and British officials in Palestine, as well as among Jews of different origins and backgrounds and also within British legal system itself. This examination uncovers the role of European-Jewish orientalists in mediating between British authorities and Mizrahi Jews by making efficient use of the changing attitudes of imperial legal high officials toward the colonial subjects. It underlines a unique trait of Jewish academic orientalism: integrating into a Jewish-national society involved previously unfamiliar duties that had to do with the overall Zionist social initiative.