Speaking of Guns

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Notes on Contributor

Rela Mazali works at creating knowledge, prose, action, stories, thought, relationships and life arrangements in the spirit of Simone de Beauvoir's expression, “one life, one work.” Among other things, she is an author, an independent scholar, a feminist anti-militarist activist and co-coordinator of Gun Free Kitchen Tables.

Notes

1 I was one of the founders of the New Profile Movement for the Demilitarization of Israeli Society (http://newprofile.org/english), which grew out of my work with independent study groups on women in Israel's militarized society.

2 The GFKT campaign members are the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Coalition of Women for Peace, Hollaback! Israel, Itach-Maaki – Women Lawyers for Social Justice, Isha L'Isha Feminist Center, Israel Women's Network, New Profile, Noga – The Israeli Center for Rights of Crime Victims, No2Violence Against Women, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Psychoactive, Tmura – The Antidiscrimination Legal Center and Women and Their Bodies. We also benefit from participation in a consultancy capacity from Agenda – Israeli Center for Strategic Communications.

3 Initially, we knew of the 2005 government decision. It was Smadar Ben Natan's legal research which unearthed Clause 10c of the Firearms Act, enacted in 2008 but virtually unknown.

4 A term I have gratefully borrowed from Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2010).

5 GFKT extends gratitude to Urgent Action Fund (USA) for enabling this swift survey and Kvinna till Kvinna (Sweden), a steady supporter, for assisting media outreach after the survey.