Hanny Ben-Israel

Hanny Ben-Israel

Tel Aviv University

ChainGE Lab Research Fellow

Hanny Ben-Israel is a legal scholar whose research explores the relationship between law and political economy, with a particular focus on the legal mechanisms that produce or exacerbate precarity and labor unfreedom. Her work examines both contemporary and historical forms of labor unfreedom, ranging from the governance of temporary labor migration programs to colonial and postcolonial labor regimes in Israel-Palestine.

Hanny is currently completing her PhD at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. Her dissertation, Labor Unfreedom and Its Regulation in Palestine-Israel, 1919–1959, uncovers a largely forgotten history of labor unfreedom in Mandate Palestine and during the first decade of Israeli statehood. Based on extensive archival research, the project contributes to global socio-legal histories of labor unfreedom and offers a critical perspective on the intersection of labor, colonialism, and state-building in Israel-Palestine.

Hanny teaches at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and directs Intellectual Journeys, a program within TAU’s DEI unit dedicated to fostering intellectual leadership among students from underrepresented backgrounds, run in partnership with the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She holds an LL.B from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an LL.M from Columbia University, where she was a Human Rights Fellow. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she worked for nearly a decade as an attorney at Kav LaOved (Worker’s Hotline), Israel’s leading labor rights NGO.

As part of the ChainGE Lab, Hanny will examine the intersections between migration law and labor law, focusing on how ideas of migrant consent are used to legitimize exclusions from otherwise non-waivable labor protections. She also plans to research more broadly how the political economy of non-citizen labor in Israel - particularly the regulatory modes that structure human supply chains - has been reshaped in the aftermath of October 7.