Monthly Archives: December 2008

Isreality

In Memoriam of Prof. Samuel Huntington: Israel vs. Hamas

Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar, Brown University

Last week my PhD supervisor/mentor passed away. This would normally not be material for a blog post regarding Israel but the timing of his death is extremely interesting. Harvard’s Prof. Samuel Huntington – among other major studies he wrote – is famous as the author of what has come to be called the “Clash of Civilizations”. I can think of no better title for what is currently happening in Gaza!

His thesis runs like this: the world is currently divided into several “civilizations”, i.e. major groupings of peoples, each with a common world perspective and common values, goals etc. Thus, the Euro-American civilization is one such mega-grouping, the Sino-Asiatic another, and so on. Included among these contemporary civilizations is, of course, the Islamic one.

According to Prof. Huntington who wrote up this study in the early 1990s, well before Al-Qaida had become a household name, the Islamic and Euro-American civilizations are on a collision course – hence the clash of civilizations. When his book appeared, many scoffed and called his thesis overly simplistic. Certainly, it is somewhat over-generalized, but no one is scoffing anymore after Sept. 11, 2001 and subsequent mega-terror travesties – Mumbai being merely the latest one.

However, terrorism comes in many forms – sometimes even appearing as a “state apparatus”. Such is the case of Hamas that now rules Gaza. Despite massive economic and political pressure, it has consistently held to its stated ideology that the State of Israel is illegitimate and must be eliminated. Israel might have been able to swallow this bitter pill if Hamas’s actions had remained exclusively rhetorical, but this is a terrorist organization that puts its money (and guns) where its mouth is – firing missiles indiscriminately into civilian areas, the precise definition of “terrorism”.

Hamas is a microcosmic example of Huntington’s civilizational clash. He did not necessarily foresee a “world war” a la the 1940s but rather a decades-long war of attrition between the two politico-cultural adversaries from the (Middle) East and the West. And unfortunately Israel is caught in the middle. On the one hand, territorially it resides in the Islamic Middle East; culturally and religiously it is far more attuned to the (Judaeo)Christian West. Thus, Israel finds itself on the very front lines of the Huntingtonian clash of civilizations, doing what it has to do to protect itself well in advance of the day the rest of the West will have to do the same (Iranian inter-continental ballistic missiles anyone?).

A further irony can be found in earlier works of Huntington – dealing with the relationship of the military and the state. Here too the connection with current events is palpable. One of the major sources of Islamic fundamentalist resurgence stems precisely from the Middle East’s penchant to have the military control the state, thereby suppressing any nascent democracy and impoverishing the public that ultimately turned to Allah for succor. The examples are legion: the Shah led to Khomeini; Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak (all military men) have spawned a growing Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; Arafat’s leadership by the gun barrel has spawned Hamas; Assad father and son have been hanging on but for how much longer before radical Islam takes over there too?

What Israel is doing today in Gaza is necessary but in reality it’s only a holding action. What needs to be done over the long term is precisely what President Bush (W.) sought to do but carried out so incompetently: start the process of democratization in the Middle East (yes, we all know that “Islam can’t be democratic”; neither could “Catholic Italy” etc…). It is only when the Islamic world begins to share some values with the West (which is not to say that the West couldn’t learn a thing or two from the East about family values, social cohesion etc.) that Huntington’s thesis can be put to rest. Meanwhile, Israel has to do the best it can to ensure that it is not squashed in the violent vise of this mega-cultural clash.

As for Prof. Huntington personally, I can say that beyond his intellectual brilliance and vast scholarship, he was a model mentor for young scholars. I would inevitably receive back within 48 hours any chapter I submitted to him from my evolving PhD dissertation – a remarkable feat for someone (already back then in the 1970s) so busy and famous.

May he rest in peace – and may the day come that his major thesis rests in peace too. For the time being, as we can see from recent events in Mumbai, Gaza and elsewhere, it is unfortunately only too alive and kicking.

Dec. 30, 2008

Isreality

 The Paradox of Israeli “Democracy”

Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar, Brown University

The American tourist to Israel is immediately struck by how vociferous Israelis tend to be about their countries and the myriad issues that it has to deal with. “Opinionated” is probably too mild a word to describe Israelis’ penchant for mouthing off on any and all topics, large and small. And if that tourist were to dig a little deeper, s/he would be further impressed by Israel’s relatively high voting turnout – far higher than in the States (especially when one takes into account that Israeli voting percentages are artificially depressed by hundreds of thousands of Israeli emigrants living abroad who continue to appear on the voter register but are barred by Israeli law from voting while overseas). Israeli democracy, seemingly, is alive and kicking.

           However, when one looks at the whole picture, the scene changes drastically. Democracy is not merely the election campaign and Election Day – it is a matter of daily functioning throughout the year. Moreover, it is not only something that one “does” within the political realm; true democracy carries over into all fields of public life. From this dual (and wider) perspective, Israeli democracy has a long way to go in order to join the advanced democratic world.

           I shall start with an example from my own profession. As a visiting professor at Brown University this year, I too get mass e-mailings from the administration. Recently, I received a message that solicited faculty members’ input into Brown’s upcoming five-year policy and course structure reassessment – and several reminders followed urging the faculty to participate in this important process. I have been teaching at Bar-Ilan University for three decades and have never received such a request – not even when I was chairman of one of the university’s largest departments! My colleagues from other Israeli universities report exactly the same (non)experience. In other words, in Israeli academia the Rector and President decide what’s best for everyone, without asking their “public” – by all lights a most intelligent one – for educated input.

           This week the Israeli and American press offered another such example – from the world of journalism. The internet has upended many journalistic practices and dogmas, chief of which was that editorial content was to be written only by professionals; the public merely chose what to read from the menu offered. Today, however, the interactivity afforded by the internet (Web 2.0) has in theory empowered the reading public to become “prosumers”: producing and publishing what they and others will also read/consume. But when one compares Israeli journalistic practice with that of their American counterparts in the age Web 2.0, the difference is striking: 58% of all American newspapers on a regular basis publish editorial content (articles, op-ed pieces, news photos etc.) submitted by readers. In Israel, the percentage is close to zero – except for what Israelis call “Talkbacks”, i.e. on the papers’ websites, readers’ commenting on regular news items. In other words, the Israeli press is grudgingly willing to allow some semblance of reaction to its product, but does not countenance enabling readers to initiate news product.

           One could add example after example from all walks of Israeli life. Members of Knesset who almost never solicit their constituents’ opinions; planning commissions that consider public input to be a nuisance in the arduous process of approving projects; university professors who as a general rule view the teaching process as one of “I talk, you listen and write, then you regurgitate, and finally I grade”; and so on.

           How to explain this paradox of oral volubility and practical passivity? It strikes me that true Jewish behavioral culture is one of democratic participation, but in the early development of Zionism and then during the early years of the Jewish State itself, such natural activism became stymied as a result of what came to be called “mamlakhtiyut” – Statism, the idea that the government would provide for the (mostly uneducated and poor) populace that was immigrating to Israel in droves. At the time, such an approach may have even made sense given the very limited public resources that were stretched to the breaking point. But once the economic crisis passed, Israelis were ready to return to their more participatory culture – only to find an institutional structure that was built for top-to-bottom guidance and not bottom-to-top input.

           So Israelis continue to kvetch, and complain, and occasionally demonstrate in the streets, but it will be awhile yet until the “elites” in Israel begin to discover what has become conventional wisdom in the rest of the west: knowledge lies at the bottom of the pyramid, far more than at the top (see Wikipedia vs. Britannica); organizational hierarchy cannot compete with the efficiency of the network (the campaigns of McCain vs. Obama). May the Jewish State live a very long life, but may the ethos of Statism have a very fast demise…

Dec. 24, 2008

Isreality

 Israel and Chanukah: Then and Now

Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar, Brown University

Note: The sharp of eye may have noticed that I have slightly changed the spelling of this blog from “Israelity” to “Isreality”. The reason: it was pointed out to me that there already exists a blog called “Israelity” at Israel21: http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enPage=HomePage. So as not to confuse everyone, my blog’s name now has more “reality” and a bit less “Israel”.

Chanukah is upon us once again. Normally it is a time for reawakened national pride and spiritual uplift (not to mention gifts, games and jelly doughnuts). I would like to add some reflection to the proceedings.

It seems to me that Chanukah has much to offer the contemporary scene, for as Ecclesiastes opined: “there is nothing new under the sun”. I discern three separate but somewhat related themes in the original holiday that are relevant to present day politics and society in Israel.

First, the question of what precisely is “Jewish Heroism”: is this something military or spiritual? The Chanukah story itself seems to support the former but the Rabbis thought otherwise as can be seen in a key sentence from the Sabbath Haftorah reading that the rabbis decided to canonize on this holiday, of all possible holidays: “not by soldiers and not by power but rather by my spirit, sayeth the Lord of Hosts“.

Israeli society is also caught in the conundrum. On the one hand, it glorifies its generals (and soldiers); on the other hand, it is one of the few countries in the world (perhaps the only one!) that celebrates Independence Day with a Bible contest as well as handing out the Israel Prize to its leading intellectual lights. Indeed, the issue has become very prosaically political: to spend more on national defense or on education? The coming elections could well be decided by those who feel the latter needs more resources, after decades of feeding the former.

Second, the issue of “Hellenism”, or as it is called today: “Westernization”, “secularization”, “modernization” – to separate from the “modern” world or to integrate into it? Here too it is not coincidental that the Sabbath Chanukah Torah reading includes the story of Joseph in Egypt who does precisely that – changes his name and appearance to the extent that his brothers cannot even recognize him, but who ultimately returns to his family traditions.

Israel is awash in matters from the West. Even Hebrew is becoming unrecognizable to old-timers brought up on the Hebraically rooted poetry of Bialik and the prose of Agnon. And yet, as I have noted in a previous post, non-religiously-observant Jews in Israel have begun a quest for their spiritual roots (e.g. “secular yeshivas”). Basic customs are held as strongly as ever: Passover Seder, mezuzahs on the door, etc. Most Israelis are not seeking to leave Judaism but rather to find the right synthesis between modernity and hoary tradition.

Third and finally, the original Chanukah story started a process that raised the most fundamental political issue of all: sovereign independence at any cost? How should a small country like Israel (then and now) deal with the Great Powers? Is it better to have peace and mere political autonomy or risk all for ultimate political sovereignty? The eventual destruction of the Second Temple and subsequent catastrophic Bar-Kochba revolt argue for the former approach, but as the Holocaust clearly showed, a lack of political sovereignty can also be disastrous for the Jewish people. (Here too the Chanukah Torah portion shows what can happen when Jews leave their homeland: slavery in Egypt.)

Most interesting of all is the fact that Chanukah is the only significant Jewish national holiday that does not have its “story” canonized somewhere in the Bible – despite the fact that there are at least two extant versions of the “Book of the Maccabees” (in the Apocrypha). Of course, this does not mean that we today can’t or shouldn’t learn lessons from the Chanukah story; it just means that we have to be very careful (as were the Rabbis) what particular lesson we want to learn.

Dec. 18, 2008

Israelity

Child Allowance and the Future of Zionism

Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar, Brown University

Between 1980 and 2000 there was only one population sector in the entire world whose birth rate actually increased: ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. The reason? The Likud government back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, headed by Menachem Begin, changed Israel’s Social Security (Bituakh Leumi) law and started increasing the amount of child allowance paid out for each child above a certain minimum. Simple economic logic dictates that costs for each successive child in a family should decrease per capita in the family — clothes can be hand-me-down, economies of scale in food purchases, etc. But the nationalist Likud government wished to provide strong incentives for Jewish birth as well as keeping the ultra-Orthodox happy within the coalition.

The results have been economically debilitating for the country as a whole and in particular for the ultra-Orthodox themselves. As most ultra-Orthodox (called “Haredim”) males do not work because they study Torah as their “livelihood” — in large part to enable the continuation of their army draft deferment — Israel has one of the lowest employees-to-population ratios in the industrialized world. The economy (production, tax base, etc.) suffers as a result. The Haredim have also found this to be a burden. In a country where newlyweds must immediately buy an apartment (1/3 wedding gift respectively from each family and 1/3 mortgage), having 8 children and within 20 years 64 grandchildren has proved an intolerable burden for non-working Haredim. Their house of cards (loans, overseas charity, etc.) has come crashing down.

But the macro and micro-economic ramifications are only  half the story. The longer term problem is that at present rates of fertility, the Haredim (today about 8 children per family) and the Israeli Arabs (4.5 per family) — the only two major anti-Zionist (or at least, non-Zionist) groups in Israel — will constitute in a few decades about half of the country’s entire population! Already today, 50% of all first grade pupils in Israel are either Haredim or Israeli-Arabs. 

This is a very touchy issue and when it is raised lots of people cry “racism”. But this has nothing to do with “ethnicity” or “race” — it has everything to do with retaining the underlying raison d’etre for establishing the Jewish State in the first place as a haven for displaced Jews around the world and as a place that Jews can express themselves culturally in a relatively free and democratic framework. Haredim, of course, are very Jewish but their definition of “Jewish State” is the antithesis of “democracy”; Israeli Arabs don’t even accept the concept of “Jewish State” in any form.

What is to be done? In 2002, then Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu drastically cut the Child Allowance for successive children. The Haredim cried foul (much louder than other poor Jewish sectors who were somewhat harmed by this), but he stuck to his guns — not only for economic reasons but (perhaps especially) for Zionist reasons. Recently, Tzippi Livni (no less a Zionist) also refused to bow to Haredi demands and because of this was unable to form a government which is why we are having elections in February 2009. 

With everything else on Israel’s plate — nuclearizing Iran, peace process with the Palestinians and perhaps also with Syria, dealing with the economic tidal wave sweeping the world — it might seem almost frivolous to have governments rise and fall on the issue of “Child Allowances”. But for Israel, it has become a matter of long-term Zionist life or death. Despite the fact that in most other religion and state matters the chasm between the Haredim and secular Israelis has actually narrowed over time, the real “battle” in the long term is demographic. It seems that Zionists across the board have placed a line in the sand. It will be interesting to see whether the Haredi demographic tidal wave will abate as a result.

Dec. 9, 2008

Israelity

After the Elections: A National Unity Government?

Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar, Brown University

The term “national unity government” in Israel is generally considered to be an oxymoron for two reasons: Israeli society itself is far from even being close to united on almost any important issue; the current two main parties’ antipathy for each other (Likud and Kadima) goes well beyond the mutual dislike one normally finds in politics. And yet, this time it may actually happen for several good reasons.

           First, the next government will have to deal in real, practical terms with what is arguably the greatest existential threat that Israel has ever faced since its war of Independence: nuclear Iran. This is not a problem that lends itself to ideological infighting but rather demands a rally-round-the-flag, all-hands-on-deck approach. Given the stakes (military and political) in case of success and especially failure, Netanyahu and Livni would most probably prefer to cover their back(side) on this critical issue (see what happened to Defense Minister Peretz and ultimately PM Olmert as a result of the Second Lebanon War debacle).

           Second, both Livni and Netanyahu – and indeed almost every large party for the past two decades – very much want to change the election system once and for all. True, direct election of the prime minister was tried in the 1990s and canceled a decade later but the problem then was that the Knesset election system stayed the same. By almost all accounts what is needed is a system that reduces the number of parties, provides territorial (“district”) representation, and in general enables Israeli coalitions to govern in stable fashion. By forming a national unity government between the Likud and Kadima, and perhaps even constituting a majority by themselves (the latest polls give both together a bit more than the required 61 seats), election system reform could finally come to pass. That would reduce political “blackmail” by the smaller parties – especially the ultra-Orthodox – and enable policy to be set by truly Zionist parties.

           Third and related to the last point, both Netanyahu and Livni have shown that they are willing to pay a steep political price for not succumbing to ultra-Orthodox demands to return the high Child Allowances that Netanyahu lowered several years ago. This is an issue that Livni too would not concede, and paid the price of failing to form a new government, thus necessitating the current election campaign. “Child Allowance” might seem to the outside observer to be a very “peripheral” issue, but it strikes at the very heart of the continued future of the State of Israel as a Zionist enterprise. I shall devote my next blog post to this issue, but for now suffice it to say that Kadima and the Likud see eye to eye on the critical necessity of maintaining the current policy.

           To be sure, there are several good reasons against the establishment of such a government, not least of which is the enmity of the Likud Party to former Likud “defectors” who helped form Kadima under Ariel Sharon’s leadership. But that’s the past – and this election is about Israel’s future.

           Speaking of the past, does Israeli history offer any perspective? Absolutely yes! In 1984 the Israeli economy was on the verge of complete collapse, with hyper-inflation running at 400% (yes, four hundred percent, i.e. 1% a day!). The election outcome between Labor and the Likud was a virtually tie and a National Unity government was set up between Shamir and Peres with a rotation agreement of two years apiece as prime minister. With PM Peres at the helm along with Likud Finance Minister Moda’i the economy was brought back from the brink and set on a stable course that has lasted until this very day. True, the national unity arrangement continued for 6 years and towards the end it turned into a National Paralysis government, but the two-headed political hydra had accomplished the main goal.

           Political prognostication is a dangerous exercise, especially when dealing with the future. But this time around, the logic for a national unity is stronger than it has been for decades. I wouldn’t bet my last shekel that it will happen – but I also won’t be very surprised if it does. It certainly should.

 Dec. 1, 2008