state building (part 3). israel: the political system ( crystallized by 1949) a parliamentary...

State Building (Part 3)

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.



Israel: the political system (crystallized by 1949)

A parliamentary democracy.

A unicameral legislature (the Knesset) composed of 120 elected representatives.

Different:

Political views held; Languages spoken; Cultural norms; Conception of Judaism;

Understandings of what should be the role of religion in politics.

Diversity and the political party system:

This diversity played an important role in the formation of a complex political party system.

The popular vote is divided among many different parties.

Electoral system: proportional representation.

Electoral and legislative coalitions

No absolute majority for any single political party in the Knesset.

It is normal for each Knesset to contain representatives from 10 to 15 different parties.

Liberal, democratic principles of the state

Free press.

Israel itself is two states:

On the one hand there is a Hebrew speaking civil society, very successfully globalized (starting businesses, living with civil rights).

It is one that is appealing not just to the Jews but also to all kind of immigrants who come in and also to some Israeli Arabs.

Israeli Arabs and Jews

2/3 of Israeli Arabs are now born into a Hebrew speaking civil society.

(According to a poll conducted by a sociologist from the Haifa University), of all Israeli Arabs, some 45% say that they feel closer to the Jews than to the Palestinians.

On the other hand…

there is a Jewish state, which is a state within a state.

The religious basis of the state: Religious (rabbinical) courts

Since 1948 awarded exclusive jurisdiction in matters of personal status (marriage, divorce, the confirmation of wills, and the determination of who qualified as a Jew).

Since 1953 formal part of the state judicial system;

The courts were exclusively controlled by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment.

The religious basis of the state: Also enforced by granting the non-Jewish communities

of Israel -- made up mainly of Muslim and Christian Arabs -- the right to follow their own laws in matters of personal status.

Public institutions (including the military): required to observe kosher dietary laws

Public education: state funding for both secular and religious schools.

The West Bank: The Haaretz on racism and intolerance

routinely report incidents of rabbinical or settler racism,

in the past decade a kind of casual anti-Arab rhetoric has infected political life.

There are fewer inhibitions now about expressing hatred for the Arabs.

In this political atmosphere…

Most young Israelis believe that: Israeli Arabs do not deserve equal rights.

Discriminatory statements regarding women:

Elyakim Levanon (the chief rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus): Orthodox soldiers should prefer to face a firing squad rather than sit

through events at which women sing, has forbidden women to run for public office, because the husband

presents the family’s opinion.

There are reports of ultra-Orthodox men spitting on schoolgirls whose attire they consider insufficiently demure, and demanding that women sit at the back of public buses.



Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Foreign Minister from 12/09-12/12:

called for: citizens to swear loyalty oaths to the Jewish state; restrictions on human-rights organizations, like the

New Israel Fund; and laws constricting freedom of expression.

QuickTime™ and a decompressorare needed to see this picture.

The 2012 poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute

found that fifty-one per cent of Israelis believed that people should be prohibited from harshly criticizing the State of Israel in public.

Development of intolerant culture: shift to the political right?

Electorate? Political parties? Both?

poll after poll reveals that many younger Israelis are losing touch with the liberal, democratic principles of the state.

A profoundly anti-democratic, even racist, political culture

has become endemic among much of the Jewish population in the West Bank,

jeopardizes Israel proper.

Warnings from two former Prime Ministers

Ehud Barak (1999-2001) and

Ehud Olmert (2006-2009) have both warned of a descent into apartheid, xenophobia, and isolation





Warnings from Jewish American journalists and scholars

Gershom Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel;

Peter Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism;

Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New Directions in Critical Theory)

David Remnick, The Party Faithful:The Settlers move to annex the West Bank -- and Israeli politics (The New Yorker).

What about democracy in Israel?

The Israeli left: the separation from the Palestinians to preserve democracy.

Should Israel be a democracy? Does it have to be a democracy? Benny Katzover, a leader in the settlement of Elon

Moreh: Israeli democracy has finished its historical role, and it must be dismantled and bow before Judaism.

What explains the apparent move to the right?

The impasse of the peace process?

Unstable region? (David Horowitz)

The rise of religious conservatives?

The movement to return to Israel

Nationalism.

Horror, and

The hope of redemption.

The horrors

Exodus from Spain in 1492 (like a subsequent expulsion of Muslims form Spain about a century later);

1648-1656 Khmelnytsky massacres (mostly Ukraine but also Russia);

The WW2 massacres (the term “Holocaust” since the 1960s).

Zionism is associated with

the trial of Alfred Dreifus...in France and

the experience of Theodor Hertzl.

Herzl in “The Jewish State”:

“We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes superloyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country...”



Herzl: “The Jewish State”

the restoration of the Jewish State: to stop the plight of the Jews; to create security for an endangered people.

“The Jews who will try it shall achieve their State; and they will deserve it.”

At the heart of the issue was

the status of Jews in Europe not the status of Jews in the Middle East.

The Jewish Question was talked about in Europe and the US particularly in the early 20th century after the large immigration of Jews from E. Europe from the early 1880s onward.

Zionism: stronger in Europe than in the US.

Moses Hess: “Rome and Jerusalem, the last national question.”

The Jews are not normal people.

What would make them normal?

The expectation that if they would have their own land that they return to..if they could only be peasants growing their own crops they would be normal. That is what normal people do.



Hess

The idea that the crucial thing was not simply to have a land but to WORK on the land.

Redemption through tilling the soil.

Herzl and Hess were not religious men.

Their Zionism was not driven by Jewish religion!

Herzl envisioned a pluralist Zionism in which rabbis would enjoy no privileged voice in the state.

Herzl

Wanted a Jewish state that cherished liberal ideals.

In 1902, he wrote a novel called Altneuland (Old New Land) about a future Jewish state. It guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion; rabbis enjoy “no privileged voice in the state.”

Herzl and Hess’s Zionism was Labor Zionism

Committed to the idea of collective ownership of

property, collective living in kibutz communities and laboring on the land as agriculturalist.

Driven by socialist ideas.

David Ben Gurion: a paramount (political) figure of labor Zionism. QuickTime™ and a decompressorare needed to see this picture.

What was the aim of Zionism? The aspiration to establish a homeland for the Jewish people

(pre-state Zionist pioneers shaping the future borders of the Jewish state).

Eretz Yisrael: is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area of Southern Levant, Canaan Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land.

The Balfour Declaration:

April 1917: the British cabinet was worried that Germany might make a declaration in support of Zionist aims and thus attract a sympathetic response from US Jewry.

The chance to secure British strategic interests.

The text of the Balfour Declaration:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National House for the Jewish people, and will use their best endevours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that, or the rights and nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Britain failed

To create political institutions in its mandate;

Instead it left the Arab and Jewish communities to struggle for supremacy.

Zionism

Not united within itself.

Types of Zionism in terms of the ideological nature of the future state

Labor Revisionist Cultural Religious

Labor Zionism (Nachman Syrkin, Ber Borochov, Haim Arlosoroff, Berl Katznelson)

desire to establish an agricultural society on the basis of moral equality.

Revisionist Zionism (Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin)

The founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel.

Nationalism.

Today revisionism is represented primarily by the Likud Party.

Cultural Zionism (Ahad Ha'am, Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg) A strain that values Jewish culture and history, including language

and historical roots.

Ahad HaAm: to achieve independence in the land of Israel would bring Jews into conflict with the native Arab population, as well as with the Ottomans and European colonial powers.

The fulfillment of the national revival of the Jewish People by creating a cultural center in the Land of Israel and an educational center to the Jewish Diaspora (to prevent assimilation that threatens the existence of the Jewish People).

Religious Zionism (Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, Abraham Isaac Kook) Eretz Yisrael was promised to the ancient Israelites by God.

Jerusalem has been a symbol of the Holy Land and of their return to it, as promised by God.

The right of the Jews to the land is permanent and inalienable.

Jewish nationality and the establishment of the State of Israel is a religious duty derived from the Torah.

The haredim, the ultra-Orthodox groups, opposed religious Zionism

On the grounds that an attempt to re-establish Jewish rule in Israel by human agency was blasphemous.

The Jews should return to their Biblical homeland only after the appearance of the mashiach, the Messiah.

Hastening salvation and the coming of the Messiah was considered religiously forbidden, and Zionism was seen as a sign of disbelief in God's power and therefore a rebellion against God.

A theological answer that gave Zionism a religious legitimacy:

"Zionism was not merely a political movement by secular Jews. It was actually a tool of God to promote His divine scheme and to initiate the return of the Jews to their homeland - the land He promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God wants the children of Israel to return to their home in order to establish a Jewish sovereign state in which Jews could live according to the laws of Torah and Halakha and commit the Mitzvot of Eretz Israel (these are religious commandments which can be performed only in the land of Israel)… settling Israel is an obligation of the religious Jews and helping Zionism is actually following God's will.”

Types of Zionism in terms of how to create the state:

Political

Practical

Revolutionary/Revisionist

Political Zionism

originated in Russia, where anti-Semitism was most virulent;

inspired as much by nationalism as by religious belief;

for some it offered an alternative hope for escape from persecutions.

Political Zionism (Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau).

The Zionist Organization: establishing for the Jewish people a legally assured home in Palestine.

Included initial steps to obtain approvals from the established powers that controlled the area.

Political Zionism and religion:

Religion not at the center of attention during the British mandate.

The struggle of the Yishuv to gain independence pushed the problem aside.

Practical Zionism (Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Leon Pinsker)

The Hovevei Zion organization.

Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, aliyah, settlement of the land, as soon as possible, even if a charter over the Land is not obtained.

Political and Practical Zionism (Chaim Weizmann, Leo Motzkin, and Nahum Sokolow)

Weizmann: (supported grass-roots colonization efforts as well as high-level diplomatic activity).

Lobbied for the founding of a Jewish institution of higher

learning (science, engineering in Palestine):

the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in 1912; The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Revisionist

Relentless pressure on Great Britain, including petitions and mass demonstrations, for Jewish statehood on both banks of the Jordan River;

a Jewish majority in Palestine;

a reestablishment of the Jewish regiments; and military training for youth.

Revolutionary Zionism (Avraham Stern, Israel Eldad, and Uri Zvi Greenberg):

Many of its adherents (Lehi) engaged in guerilla warfare against the British administration.

The state of Israel is a tool to be used in realizing the goal of Zionism, which they called Malkhut Yisrael (the Kingdom of Israel).



Territorial aspirations (revisionist and revolutionary Zionists)



Types of Zionism in terms of the relevance of religion

Secular Zionism: LaborRevisionist/Nationalist/Political Zionism

Religious Zionism

Secular Zionism

The historically dominant stream.

Rooted in a concept of the Jews as a people that have a right to self-determination.

To have a state where Jews would not be afraid of anti-Semitic attacks and live in peace.

Religious Zionists:

Religious beliefs and traditional practices are central to Jewish peoplehood (or nation-ness).

Assimilating to be a secular "nation like any other" would harm more than help the Jewish people.

Israel has a mandate to promote Judaism, to be the center of Jewish culture and center of its population, perhaps even the sole legitimate representative of Jews worldwide.

Religious Zionists:

Liberal Israelis - like the adherents of Uganda Program - are simply interested in a place where Jews can live in peace, and care little about restoring past historical or religious glories.

A state should not be centered on Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Coastal Plain - areas where the ancestral mountain-dwelling Hebrews of Biblical times did not dwell.

Secular and religious Zionists Have argued passionately about:

what an Israeli state should represent; whether a Jewish state should exist at all.

Should Israel maintain and strengthen its status as a state for the Jewish people, or transition to being a state purely for "all of its citizens,” or identify as both?

And, if both, how to resolve any tensions that arise from their coexistence.

The formation of Israeli national identity

a contested process in which proponents of religious law clashed with secular pragmatists and socialist visionaries.

In the secular sphere

A new nationalist culture took shape that stamped Yishuva Jews as distinctive from Jews living elsewhere.

The most important manifestation of this new identity was the establishment of Hebrew as a national language.

David Ben-Gurion in a letter dated June 19, 1947

The future government will make sure that the religious demands be answered concerning personal status issues, such as marriage, divorce, and conversions.

All government-operated kitchens (army, police, hospitals, etc.) will have kosher food.

The Ben-Gurion letter (cont.)

The Sabbath will be the official day of rest for Jews.

Autonomy in education: the state will not intervene in religious education but will demand and regulate a minimum curriculum in secular subjects such as science, grammar and history.

In constructing their national identity

Israelis collectively sought to break with: the European Jewish past, to the Diaspora, with its memories of victimization.

Social tensions

Between Jews that came form European countries and the immigrants from the Levant and North Africa.

At times these tensions even resulted in violence.

From 1948 to 1967:

Socialist ideology dominated the ethos and the public institutions of Israel.

Zionism was a predominantly secular form of nationalism, and a challenge to the Biblical version of Jewish history.

Politically, the National Religious Party was a perennial coalition partner, generally dovish on foreign policy issues in Mapai governments.

The labor-oriented Mapai Party

The body that dominated the political life of the Yishuv (during the British mandate).

Moderately socialist.

Resulted from the merger of two labor groups.

For decades

the leaders of the state, the Israel has never dominant figures in government, the

military, the media, culture, and academia were mainly secular.

had a religious Prime Minister.

No constitutional settlement

the first Knesset (a constituent assembly) became deadlocked over the issue of whether or not to write a written constitution,

the religious parties being opposed to a constitution other than the Torah and halakhah.

Open questions:

Which institution within the state is to authenticate an individual’s Jewishness?

Is religious law to regulate all of public life?

How will the government be organized

theocracy, constitutional theocracy, constitutional republic, parliamentary democracy

More open questions:

Should the justice system be based on secular common law, secular civil law, a combination of Jewish and common law, a combination of Jewish and civil law, or pure Jewish law?

On what legal principles should the constitution of a Jewish state be based?

How to deal with the non-Jewish Arab minority in Israel?

Hertzl failed to anticipate

an Arab national movement demanding a state in Palestine of its own.

Wars: 1948-9, 1956, 1967, 1973.

The 1967 war

Some Israelis viewed as an unjustifiable occupation;

Others saw it as a God-given opportunity to lay claim to all the lands of ancient Israel.

The policy vacuum

Settlement was a Zionist value, especially a Labor Zionist value. Now there was new land to settle.

Labor governments approved new settlements on a piecemeal basis.

The map of what they expected Israel to keep was drawn one fact at a time.

indecision allowed pro-settlement ministers -- led by Allon, Galili, Dayan, and Dayan’s successor as defense minister, Shimon Peres -- to pursue creeping expansion.

The unplanned war of 1967 and the ill-considered settlement effort:

An unintended consequence: the transformation of religious Zionism from a moderate

political movement to a sect with Jewish control of the Whole Land of Israel as its primary principles of faith.

Hertzl could not have anticipated:

the co-option of Zionism by a right-wing religious movement (he vowed to keep the theocrats in their temples, just as much as keeping professional Army in the barracks).

Theological justification for settling land Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook (chief rabbi during the

British Mandate). Kook’s teachings melded Jewish mystical doctrine and European nationalist theory. The Jews’ return to their land, he had taught, was part of God’s plan for redemption of the world, and secular Zionists were unconciously doing God’s will.

For many religious Jews, especially younger ones, the miraculous victory (in 1967) demanded explanation. The rabbi’s son, Tzvi Yehuda Kook provided one: the conquests were the next step in God’s plan, in the process of redemption.

For Kook

the Kingdom of God was being established in Biblical Israel through the firepower of the I.D.F.

There was a general sense of intoxication in the country and beyond.



Mystical nationalism:

Not only justified taking part in the secular project of nation building.

It taught that the world’s spiritual condition was measured by Jewish military power and territorial expansion.

Religion absorbed the hard-line nationalism of soil, power, and ethnic superiority.

1977: Menachem Begin comes to power

a coalition of constituencies that resented the Labor elite and felt excluded from the mainstream of Israeli life.

Begin’s support came from the poorer immigrants from North Africa and Arab states; Jabotinskyite conservatives; the ultra-Orthodox; and religious Zionists, including the settlers.

Begin:

Israel must rule the Whole Land of Israel (he had not changed since his underground years).

The Likud built large suburbs and small ex-urban bedroom communities, offering massive subsidies to attract settlers.



Ariel Sharon (head of the Ministerial Settlement Committee)

took a major role in drawing the map of new settlement, aimed at driving wedges between Palestinian towns and preventing the emergence of a contiguous Palestinian state (facts on the ground…”just like in the War of Independence, when most of the places where Jews lived ended up on the Jewish side”).



Violence by settlers

In 1984, authorities uncovered plots by a settler group known as the Jewish Underground to bomb Arab buses and to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount.

The national-religious camp: from the fringes of political life to its center

made a concerted effort to penetrate national institutions and the business world.

Demographics and time on their side; the birth rate among religious families much higher than in the secular community.

No longer have to worship the secular inventors of this country.

state building (part 3). israel: the political system ( crystallized by 1949) a parliamentary...

Documents

political system

israeli arabs

state funding

state judicial system

jewish state

state building

political views

political life