This article explores the developing ‘right to live in the community’ for people with disabilities under international law and the domestic laws of two countries: the United States and Israel. In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). This Convention embraces a human rights approach to disability, based on the principles of equality, dignity, freedom and inclusion. Based on these principles, Article 19 of the CRPD includes a specific right of all people with disabilities ‘to live in the community, with choices equal to others’. The author argues that the mandate of community living in Article 19 supports an explicit legal right of all people with disabilities not only to live in the community, but to choose where to live and with whom, and with supports, as needed. This new international legal right to live in one's home in the community also advances the goals and principles of the domestic laws of the US and Israel.

In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects the right of people with disabilities to receive services in ‘the most integrated’ setting. Relying on this ‘integration mandate’, the US Supreme Court, in 1999, upheld a limited right of people with disabilities to live in the community in Olmstead v LC and EW. In Israel, the Parliament (Knesset) enacted a law similar to the ADA in 1998. This law, the Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities Law (‘Equal Rights Law’) includes a general right of people with disabilities to equality and non-discrimination. Although the current version of the Equal Rights Law does not include a specific article on the right to live in the community, the basis for such a right may be found in other articles of the law as well as other Israeli laws. In addition, in the recent case of Lior Levy et al., the Israeli High Court of Justice was asked to consider the right to live in the community under Israeli law. While the Court in this case recognised a limited right to live in the community, it failed to invalidate as discriminatory the Israeli government's policy of placing people with disabilities in large institution-like hostels rather than in homes in the community. The author concludes the article with a discussion of the scope and meaning of community living and the extent to which institutions, as well as community housing that functions just like institutions, should be prohibited under the CRPD as well as under US and Israeli law.

This article examines the separation of boys and girls in religious schools in Israel and the current Israeli policy that aims to balance the right of equality with the right of denominational education in state-funded, religious schools. It draws on the legacy of the case of United States v Virginia and the subsequent regulations published by the United States Department of Education in 2006 in order to determine when single-sex education may be compatible with equality. It then examines both the relevance and the application of the criteria developed in the United States to religious schools in Israel.

The article reviews and examines the two main justifications for single-sex education: cultural/religious and feminist. The right to establish single-sex educational institutions is perceived to be part of a minority group's right to culture. In conservative cultures, separation between men and women is often justified as a means of preserving modesty and as a necessity in order to educate and train men and women towards their respective social roles. More often than not, their justifications are incompatible with liberal notions of gender equality and dignity.

Separation of men and women in the area of education is often also justified, however, from a feminist standpoint, which is rooted in pedagogical theories. Proponents of single-sex education argue that women-only educational institutions circumvent the inherent bias against women prevalent in coeducational schools, relying on research that indicates that girls perform better in girl-only schools, and attributing this both to the method of study and the educational environment of girl-only schools. They argue that, while separation in other areas of life may be humiliating, in education it has the potential of being empowering.

The goal of this article is to examine how the two types of justification come into play in single-sex religious education in Israel. The article claims that where separation between boys and girls is justified by cultural and religious arguments, it must withstand the tests developed in the case law for the legality of practices that are incompatible with equality. It also argues that even where separation is permissible, the manner in which it is carried out should be regulated and supervised to ensure the minimum violation of equality.

The decision in Noar Kahalacha, an anti-segregation in education case that was recently delivered by the Israeli High Court of Justice, has been ‘naturally’ celebrated as the ‘Israeli Brown’. But is it? This article points to the differences between the monumental US Supreme Court decision of Brown and the Israeli Brown-equivalent – Noar Kahalacha. It contends that the two cases bear differences that stem from the divergent patterns of discrimination they represent, and that they reflect these differences squarely. The discrimination patterns reflected by the cases differ by virtue of traits that are traditionally overlooked in antidiscrimination theoretical analysis. Comparing the two cases, therefore, allows us an opportunity to revisit the notion of discrimination and its antidote, antidiscrimination. Drawing on the dichotomous concepts of de jure/de facto discrimination and difference/sameness discrimination, the article shows how these dual theoretical notions are determinative in shaping the distinctiveness of each of these cases. While the African American victims in Brown were easily recognised as a distinctive group suffering from de jure discrimination, the Mizrahi victims in Noar Kahalacha – who suffer from de facto discrimination within a Jewish hegemonic society – lacked such clear recognition. Accordingly, the discrimination narrative that Noar Kahalacha provides is very incomplete and carries only limited potential for effective application in future struggles to eliminate discriminatory practices against Mizrahis in Israel. Brown, on the other hand, carries a converse trait. Though criticised, Brown, nevertheless, strongly signifies the recognition by White America of its overarching discriminatory practices, and implies a genuine dedication to break from it. This understanding further illuminates the limitations embedded in the possibility of ‘importing’ highly contextual antidiscrimination jurisprudence from abroad into our system's highly contextual reality of discrimination.

Cities in Israel are regulating religion and controlling religious liberty. They decide whether to close down roads during the Sabbath, whether to limit the selling of pork meat within their jurisdiction, whether to prohibit sex stores from opening, and whether to allocate budgets and lands to religious activities. They do all that by using their regular local powers as well as special enablement laws which the Israeli parliament enacts from time to time. The immediacy of these issues, the fact that the traditional powers – business licensing, traffic and road control, spending, and more – of local authorities touch upon many of them, and the inability of central government to obtain a nationwide consensus over religious matters have caused the localisation of religious liberty in Israel. In addition, some legal rules induce and even force religious-based residential segregation, thus resulting in a relative religious homogeneity of local populations. Hence, cities are able to decide to advance a religious – or a secular – agenda much more easily than the national councils. This process, however, has gone unnoticed by most scholars and courts. As a result, religious liberty doctrine has failed to live up to the challenges Israel is now facing: growing religious and national extremism and the ensuing risk of fragmentation and oppression of minorities. This article shifts the focus from the role of central government in regulating religion to that of cities. I argue that the particular form of decentralisation of religious liberty in Israel has a mixed outcome: it has helped to weaken the monopoly of orthodox Judaism in some locations and enabled diverse communities to flourish and express their unique religious vision; but it has also radicalised some religious practices, exacerbated tensions among competing religions and denominations, heightened religious-based residential segregation and jeopardised minorities.

This article explores the significance of the reference, in proportionality analyses, to proper purpose and legitimate ends, given the traditional aversion of international humanitarian law (IHL) to questions of (political) legitimacy. It demonstrates the centrality of that aversion in doctrinal assertions concerning the goals, characteristics and operational strategy of IHL yet argues that, at its historical and conceptual foundations, the law draws on a construction of war that presupposes legitimacy of the political type. That construction remains embedded, though implicit, in contemporary proportionality analyses.

Thus, the instrumental understanding of war by Carl von Clausewitz poses several challenges to entrenched contemporary doctrinal claims about the law, how it operates and the effects it produces. This provides an impetus for critical reassessment of the aversion to politics and the interaction between the humanitarian, military and political spheres in the operation of IHL norms. Such critique helps to identify novel strategies of humanitarian protection in war outside the confines demarcated by orthodox doctrine.

The killing of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces on 2 May 2011 raises several questions of international law with regard to the legality of this particular operation and the permissibility of targeted killings of international terrorists in general. In this article it will be argued, on the basis of an analysis of the applicable international law, that the killing of bin Laden cannot be justified under international humanitarian law because there is no armed conflict between the United States and Al Qaeda. Even if one were to assume the existence of such an armed conflict, bin Laden's killing would only have been lawful if Al Qaeda were to be considered an organised armed group within the meaning of international humanitarian law and bin Laden could have been killed qua membership of this group. Otherwise, his killing could only have been lawful if he was (still) taking a direct part in hostilities. In any case, in the absence of an armed conflict, under the applicable legal regime of peacetime, the killing could only be justified in a situation of self-defence or an immediate danger for others. As this situation apparently did not exist, the killing of bin Laden amounted to an extrajudicial execution. On another note, the operation may also have violated international law by failing to respect Pakistan's territorial sovereignty. Ultimately, this depends on the recognition of a (pre-emptive) right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, in particular taking into account the immediacy criterion.

The reactions to the reports of Osama bin Laden's death were many: shock, relief, joy, wariness, elation, reservation. Not surprisingly, an intense debate soon emerged over the legality of killing Osama bin Laden. Critics – including the authors of the article, ‘Has “Justice Been Done”? The Legality of Bin Laden's Killing under International Law’, Kai Ambos and Josef Alkatout – raise many interesting and thought-provoking questions. The purpose of this submission is to respond to the arguments of Ambos and Alkatout. This response article argues that the killing of Osama bin Laden was lawful under international humanitarian law. More specifically, a careful legal analysis demonstrates that a non-international armed conflict exists between the United States and Al Qaeda. The evidence overwhelmingly establishes that Al Qaeda is an organised armed group under international humanitarian law. Osama bin Laden most accurately could be thought of as a strategic level commander of Al Qaeda. He has been actively involved in planning and co-ordinating armed attacks against military and civilian targets for years, including the most recent planning of attacks commemorating the tenth anniversary of September 11. As such, he is clearly targetable under international law. Finally, the United States was well within its rights under international law to launch an attack into Pakistan against bin Laden.