The State of the Nation: Contemporary Challenges to Zionism in Israel

Abstract

Observers of Israeli society are struck by the turmoil it has evinced in the 1990s. This study proposes a new perspective for the analysis of Israel based on the opposition of the global and the local. The study advances in three steps: i) it presents in outline the concepts of "post-nationalism" and "neo-nationalism"; ii) it applies these concepts schematically to the case of Israel; and iii) it explores in particular the two polar positions of the new terrain of identity within the dominant group in Israel: neo-Zionism and post-Zionism. On the Concepts of Post-Nationalism and Neo-NationalismBroadly speaking, post-nationalism is a phenomenon of the late twentieth century, just as nationalism was a phenomenon of the late nineteenth century. In order to elaborate the concept of post-nationalism, two pairs of seminal terms may be of use: one comes from the theoretical arsenal of the last fin-de-siècle, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft; the other is taken from the theoretical arsenal of our own time, the local and the global. (Both pairs are obviously ideal typical poles in a conceptual continuum; "reality" exposes many mixed and blurred combinations.)As the founders of sociology grappled with the Great Transformation, associated with industrialization, commodification, state-and empire-building, as well as with secularization, differentiation, and rationalization, they came to see all these related phenomena as part of a general process of modernization; their general conclusions about its significance were condensed in the conceptual pair, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. This seminal terminology came of course from the pen of Tönnies, but Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, each in his own terms and with his specific accent, shared this general view. The Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft distinction underlies the overarching dichotomies of classical sociology, such as Marx's feudalism vs. capitalism, Durkheim's mechanic vs. organic solidarity, and Weber's traditional vs. rational legitimation. Similarly, the collective sociological wisdom concerning the Great Transformation which is underway today, associated with economic post-industrialization and cultural post-modernization, may be condensed under the overarching conceptualization of the local vs. the global, or what Benjamin Barber calls Jihad vs. McWorld. 1 These two pairs of concepts frame the trajectory of nationalism between the late nineteenth and the late twentieth century. To put it bluntly, in the late nineteenth

Why Secularism Fails? Secular Nationalism and Religious Revivalism in Israel

“…The purpose of this article is to explain in the case of Israel, why and how distinct modules were formed, became dominant, or came to decline over time. As we shall see, in the discussed case, within roughly 100 years, the dominant module of the Israeli nationalism/religionism blend has shifted from its beginning in square 4-traditional Diasporic Judaism, to square 1-secular nationalism, which reached its apogee in the late 1960s; while contemporary Israeli political culture is split between square 2-religious nationalism, and square 3-liberal constitutionalism (what I term elsewhere as neo-Zionism and post-Zionism, respectively (Ram 1999).…”

Drifting Away from Democracy A Micropolitical Critique of the Relation between the “I“ and the “We“ in Israel

“…Some Israeli scholars have argued that, when combined with the signing of the peace accord with Egypt in 1979, as well as with the impact of globalization and the privatization of national industries and social services over the last twenty-five years, these events have created the conditions for a shift, admittedly gradual, in Israelis' political identity, from a collectivist to a more individualistic one (Horowitz and Lissak 1989;Ram 1999). If their argument is accurate then, by necessity, this shift has important political implications.…”

Cultural citizenship and performing homecoming: Russian Jewish immigrants decipher the Zionist national ethos

“…Nevertheless, their interpretations are not unusual or singular, but rather are interwoven, with the local critical discourse on the essence of Israeliness and Zionism since the 1990s (Ram 1999). Yet when the same students engaged themselves with national memory, they simultaneously espoused and challenged the local discourse.…”