Search Results

This chapter demonstrates the effect of the mobilization of ideas and manpower on the Zionist movement during the two world wars as well as a smaller international conflict that adumbrated World War II. During World War I, the Zionist movement sponsored the formation of Jewish units for the British armed forces, and although these units' military accomplishments were modest, they had a galvanizing effect on Jewish collective solidarity throughout the western world. A very different type of international mobilization sent thousands of Jews into the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Ideologically, these wars were perceived as serving Jewish interests, albeit often conflicting ones such as Zionism, on the one hand, and international socialism, on the other. Operationally, these were, for Jews, international conflicts, involving mass movements of Jews not only as refugees or inducted soldiers but also as volunteer fighters.

This chapter calls for the mobilization of private international law, reflecting on the pitfalls of private international law’s outreach and the lack of awareness of the potential that its methodologies and techniques have in contributing to the necessary accommodation of different legal cultures. Bridging legal diversity is more often than not a complex task. Private international law thinking, however, is developed to do just that. The challenge is how to tailor the streaming of private international law thinking in a manner that becomes relevant to the day-to-day life of lawyers and ordinary people. The question is how to do so openly and effectively. To this purpose, this chapter introduces the concept of ‘pluralistic thinking’ as developed in social psychology, with the aim of grasping where the cognitive barriers to fully understand the potential of private international law come from, and of generating ideas in relation to the building blocks for further embracement of diversity. This final chapter engages with culturalist approaches to provide insights that could prove enlightening to private international law practice, particularly in the context of regional integration. Bringing together several threads in this book, this final chapter portrays private international law as a methodology that embraces multiplicity and pluralism in the accommodation of legal diversity.