When you ask an Israeli, how are you? The most common response is “I'm fine”, this has a double meaning, conveying both the situation of the individual and the involvement, therefore, of the political body in general. In fact, the 2016 Democracy Index found that three-quarters of Israelis report that their personal situation is “good,” while only a third think the country's situation is good. On the other hand, almost two thirds of those surveyed believe that the situation in the country is “regular” and some “bad.”
However, there is an important sense that collective existence in Israel is stuck and that the public sphere is damaged in some fundamental ways. For years, bitterness has been smelling in the air, tinged with disbelief, dissatisfaction and self-criticism. The Zionist project seems to have been lost. This intuition is not only a characteristic of the Israeli left but of the dominant majority tendency, also of many of those who are firmly attached to right-wing politics.
As such, Independence Day is an appropriate time to consider this sense of crisis and ask: Do the facts support it? At first glance, the answer is no.
From a safety perspective, we have never been better. Israel is a military power, whose traditional enemies no longer represent an existential threat. Its economy is strong and stable. Israel withstood the crises that affected Europe and the United States. It excels in future information-based industries and has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world.
Similarly, things are improving on the diplomatic stage. The prime minister recently met with the leaders of the world's three great powers, the United States, Russia and China. Even the skies over the United Nations are clearing.
We seem to be moving forward, with momentum that should project optimism. So why the pessimism?
Our Achilles heel is a fundamental disagreement about the Israeli vision. In our first years of sovereignty we dealt with existential issues: security, conflict, the absorption of immigrants and economic development. We have worked together on the basis of an alliance of our destiny that was revealed in the face of the challenges of those years. However, we could not take the time necessary to define the objective of that pact, the purpose of Israeli sovereignty.
Then, in 1967, when he was still a “young man” of 19 years, the young and beautiful State of Israel was struck by a spell, just like the puncture that felled Sleeping Beauty, in contact with the territories of the ancestral homeland. Israeli civil society fell into a deep sleep.
The question of the future of the territories became a black hole that sucked in all Israeli civil discourse. Subsequently, the central issue addressed for 50 years is the question of where the borders will be drawn, rather than what kind of country and society will exist within them. As a result of this deep dream, harsh and loud voices, proud to sow discord, reverberate from the margins of Israeli society.
Touted by the inveterate ideologues among us, who in the absence of serious discussion about a shared Israeli vision, devote their energies to defending a single, inflexible meaning behind the national day. They include people like Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, leader of extreme ultra-Orthodoxy, as well as Arab Knesset member Hanin Zoabi, who driven by their nationalist views, see the country as the epitome of evil. We also see journalist Yossi Klein, who writes for Haaretz in Hebrew, and Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, one of the leaders of a pre-military academy “Eli,” each of them jealous of their own vision, do not hesitate to launch their poisonous tongue against the idealists of other parties. What these four people have in common is an ideological fundamentalism that drives them to see in each other the incarnation of the devil.
Extreme devotion to a particular vision pushes them to bury the idea of a joint 'Israelness'. The general public is led to perceive that the extremism of these four people and others like them, is representative of the entire sector to which they belong. This atmosphere of total war between sectors that label each other as illegitimate is what underlies the feeling of crisis in which we have found ourselves immersed in recent years.
But if we are willing to turn down the volume on the extreme voices and listen instead to representatives of each of the four currents, we will find cause for optimism about the future of a shared Israel. No, I don't mean that there will be a prince on the horizon whose kiss will produce the perfect solution that will absolve us from debating the territories and awaken us from our civic lethargy. Unfortunately, there is no realistic chance for a fairy tale ending in the near future.
However, it seems that the internal discourse in each sector is moving towards the center and that the enveloping centrifuges that separate us are slowing down.
Although this conclusion is not generally shared, it is based on facts: Haredis (ultra-Orthodox Jews) are becoming increasingly integrated into Israeli society. For example, nearly half of Haredi men and more than two-thirds of women have joined the workforce. Even though rabbis claim that higher education is a spiritual holocaust “worse than Auschwitz,” haredis by the thousands are flocking to colleges and universities. Among them, the tough pioneers are still deep in the water and the rest are preparing to dive in the coming years. They still prefer social isolation, not serving in the army and are far from internalizing liberal values, but the Rubicon has been crossed.
Haredis are now involved in national decision-making, participating in the Zionist project, and are feeling the touch of Adam Smith's “invisible hand,” which within a generation will lift this group of people from poverty to the middle class. . We should not expect complete integration of the haredis or other Israelis, this is not going to happen, but the paths in this sense are not hermetically closed.
Typical positions of citizens Israeli Arabs with respect to the State are very different from the confrontational position of political leaders.
According to the Democracy Index, Arabs in Israel with a majority (55%) are “proud” or “very proud” to be Israeli. When asked which identity is most important to them, they primarily chose their religion (29%), Israel (25%) and their Arab identity (24%). Only a minority of Israeli Arabs, one-eighth, said their Palestinian identity is the most important. It is true that Israeli Arabs do not accept the definition that Israel is the country of the Jewish people and only 40 percent feel part of the country and its problems "to a large extent." However, a third of this population group expresses confidence in the army.
The National Religious, who for the last generation have been the main source of enervation in the central conflicts of our public life, now hold a disproportionate share of the key leadership positions in the country. For years, the group's ideological engine ran primarily on the messianic energy that came out of the influential national ultra-Orthodox yeshivot (Torah study centers). But the threat posed by a messianic agenda ignorant of the realities of history has diminished in recent years. The National ultra-Orthodoxy has lost power, both in numbers (representing only 6% of the national religious field) and in its influence over the rest of the national religious sector.
The nationally religious derive their political preferences and perspectives from a realistic analysis of events, just like any other group. The undisguised desire of the leaders of the “Jewish House” (Bait Yehudi) party for a divorce from the Tkuma faction is a powerful expression of the waning strength of the ultra-Orthodox national messianic movement.
A study by Prof. Tamar Hermann found that, contrary to common belief, there is a substantial overlap between the attitude of the national religious camp toward democracy and that of the Israeli public as a whole. The group's satisfaction with the functioning of Israeli democracy is higher than that of the rest of the public. Religious Zionists maintain a nearly monolithic right-wing stance, but display a plurality of views on issues of religion and state. A clear majority opposes the religious legislation and the frequent statements by members of this sector that they refuse to obey military orders and that they should withdraw from the territories, while they are not backed by a real desire to cause an explosion. The disengagement from Gaza demonstrated this. Finally, the vast majority of Israeli left He is very far from the unpatriotic stereotype that the right could pin on him. According to the Democratic Index, although leftists are more pessimistic than others about the country's future, a solid majority, approximately two-thirds, report that they feel proud to be Israeli, four out of five feel part of the country and its issues. Considering the length of time the right held political power, and the depth of disagreements over the country's borders, these are impressive numbers and express the left's deep commitment to the shared Israeli project.
It seems that a realistic evaluation of Israel produces a more positive image than the image we have of ourselves. There are many shadows in our national life and we are certainly not going to minimize their seriousness. However, facts show that this sense of crisis regarding Israel's identity and solidarity is unfounded. On the contrary, contrary to the headlines that shout that we have become accustomed to the general trend, it is a softening of our internal disagreements. In the context of the current crisis of democracy in the West, Israelis can be proud of this fact: 85 percent of Israelis believe that in order to meet the challenges we must cling to the democratic character of the state.
Israel is not what you think.
Source: Prof. Yedidia Z. Stern. The Israel Democracy Institute ■
The left never, they are traitors and we already know it. They are with the Zahobi
Comment sponsored by the progressive left in an impartial manner, of course. There was more to go.