Israel: The first hundred years. 3 : Israeli society and politics since 1948 : problems of collective identity

268 Pages·2·11.631 MB·English

by  Karsh, Efraim

ISRAEL: THE FIRST HUND RED YEARS
CASS SERIES: ISRAELI HISTORY, POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Series Editor: Efraim Karsh
ISSN: 1368-4795
This se ries provides a multidisciplinary examination of all aspects of Israeli history,
politics and society, and serves as a means of communication between the various
communities interested in Israel: academics, policy-makers, practitioners, journalists
and the informed public.
1. Peace in the Middle East: The Challenge for Israel, edited by Efraim Karsh.
2. The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory and Trauma, edited by Robert
Wistrich and David Ohana.
3. Between War and Peace: Dilemmas of Israeli Security, edited by Efraim Karsh.
4. V.S.-Israeli Relations at the Crossroads, edited by Gabriel Sheffer.
5. Revisiting the Yom Kippur War, edited by P. R. Kumaraswamy.
6. Israel: The Dynamics of Change and Continuity, edited by David Levi-Faur,
Gabriel Sheffer and David Vogel.
7. In Search of Identity: jewish Aspects in Israeli Culture, edited by Dan Urian and
Efraim Karsh.
8. Israel at the Polis, 1996, edited by Daniel J. Elazar and Shmuel Sandler.
9. From Rabin to Netanyahu: Israel's Troubled Agenda, edited by Efraim Karsh.
10. Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians', second revised edition, by
Efraim Karsh.
11. Divided Against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition in Britain to a jewish State in
Palestine, 1945-1948, by Rory Miller.
12. Peacemaking in a Divided Society: Israel After Rabin, edited by Sasson Sofer.
13. A Twenty-Year Retrospective of Egyptian-Israeli Relations: Peace in Spite of
Everything, by Ephraim Dowek.
14. Global Politics: Essays in Honour of David Vital, edited by Abraham Ben-Zvi
and Aharon Klieman.
15. Parties, Elections and Cleavages; Israel in Comparative and Theoretical
Perspective, edited by Reuven Y. Hazan and Moshe Maor.
16. Israel at the Polis 1999, edited by Daniel J. Elazar and M. Ben Mollov.
17. Public Policy in Israel, edited by David Nachmias and Gila Menahem.
Israel: The First Hundred Years (Mini Series), edited by Efraim Karsh.
1. Israel's Transition from Community to State, edited by Efraim Karsh.
2. From War to Peace? edited by Efraim Karsh.
3. Politics and Society Since 1948, edited by Efraim Karsh.
4. Israel in the International Arena, edited by Efraim Karsh.
Israel:
The First Hundred Years
VOLUMEIII
Israeli Society and Politics
Since 1948:
Problems of Collective Identity
Editor
Efraim Karsh
First published in 2002 by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
This edition published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXI4 4RN
711 ThirdAvenue, NewYork, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2002 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Israel : the first hundred years
Vol. 3: Israeli society and politics since 1948 : problems
of collective identity editor, Efraim Karsh. - (Israeli
history, politics and society)
l.Jews - Palestine - History - 20th century 2. Palestine -
History - 20th century
l.Karsh, Efraim
956.9'4'05
ISBN 0 7146 4961 9 (cloth)
ISBN 0 71468022 2 (paper)
ISSN 1368-4795
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog re cord for this book is available trom the Library of Congress.
This group of studies first appeared as 'Israeli Politics and Society Since 1948: Problems of
Collective Identity', a special issue of Israel Affairs, Vo1.8, Nos.] &2 (AutumnIWinter 2002),
published by Frank Cass and Co. Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publieation may be reprodueed, stored in or introdueed into a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, eleetronie, meehanieal, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.
Contents
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
Israel 1948-98: Purpose and Predicament in
History Mordechai Nisan 3
The Fracturing of the Jewish Self-Image:
The End of 'We Are One'? Judith Elizur 14
Shifting the Centre from Nation to Individual
and Universe: The New 'Democratic Faith' of Israel Oz Almog 31
Zionism in the Israeli Theatre Dan Urian 43
POUTICS
To Fantasy and Back: David Ben-Gurion's First
Resignation, 1953 Yechiam Weitz 59
Labour and Likud: Roots of their
Ideological-Political Struggle for Hegemony
over Zionism, 1925-35 Yaacov N. Goldstein 79
Likud and the Search for Eretz Israel:
From the Bible to the Twenty-First Century Colin Shindler 91
The Delicate Framework of Israeli Democracy
During the 1980s:
Retrospect and Appraisal Raphael Cohen-Almagor 118
State-Religion Relations in Israel:
The Subtle Issue Underlying the Rabin
Assassination Efraim Ben-Zadok 139
Referenda in a Post-Consociational Democracy:
The Case of Israel Dana Arieli-Horowitz 146
SOCIETY
Kibbutz or Moshav? Priority Changes of Settlement
Types in Israel, 1949-53 Yossi Ben-Artzi 163
Mass Immigration and the Demographie
Revolution in Israel Dvora Hacohen 177
The IDF and the Mass Immigration of the
Early 1950s: Aid to the Immigrant Camps Moshe Gat 191
Public Service Broadcasting vs Public Service
Broadcasting: The Crisis in the Service as the
Outcome of the Clash between State and Civil
Society - The Israeli-Lebanese War, 1982 Mira Moshe 211
The Bank-Shares Regulation Affair and Illegality in
Israeli Society: A Theoretical Perspective of David De Vries
Unethical Managerial Behaviour and Yoav Vardi 226
Abstracts 253
Index 259
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
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Israel 1948-98:
Purpose and Predicament
in History
MORDECHAI NISAN
BETWEEN EXISTENCE AND IDENTITY
One hundred years of modern Zionism and fifty years of the State of Israel
provide convenient historical landmarks to reflect on the political return
of the Jewish people to history. It was a vibrant collective memory that
enabled this people to imagine that a national renaissance could be
wrought from the legacy of an extraordinary march through time. The
memory bank of the Jews meandered comfortably from Abraham to
Moses, to David and Hillel - and from exile to homeland: it constituted
the spiritual strength of an ancient people, which was compromised by
contact with modernity and its assimilationist pull. The history of the Jews
demanded a reconstruction to escape the dirn shadows of Diaspora life, its
indignities and insecurities, on the way toward redirecting the path of
Jewish his tory, in concrete ideological, geographical and political ways.
Memory, in short, provided the Jewish people with the springboard for a
return to history.
Yet, the political return that culminated in the founding of the State of
Israel in 1948 is but one aspect of this extraordinary human triumph. The
broader context of Israel's place in the Middle East and the world touches
on the civilizational and religious matrix of its situation in relation to both
the Muslim East and the Christian West. While the Zionist movement
addressed the 'Jewish Question' of powerlessness and homelessness by
proposing (and achieving) a radical territorial and political solution, it was
unable to transcend the deeper and older problem of the Jewish people as
outcasts in history. Israel has inherited the traditional 'Jewish Problem'
and it has become an aspect of modern international political history.
Mordechai Nisan teaches Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the
Rothberg International Schoo!. An earlier version of this essay was presented as a paper at the
International Conference on World Affairs: A Clash of Cultures, Florida Atlantic University, Boca
Raton, 14 January 1998.