Ariel Center for
Policy Research

A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS

 

NATIV   ■   Volume Fifteen   ■   Number 1 (84)  ■  January 2002   ■  Ariel Center for Policy Research

 

SYNOPSIS

 


The Settlements and Their Fight for Legitimization

Yitzhak Dahan

In a period of continual conflict, integrated with the significant rise in power of the mass media, there is a great importance in focusing attention on the deep well-springs that shape consciousness and attitudes in the Israeli social-political field. In that context, this article is trying to analyze and discuss two issues:

1.   The interaction between two distinctive social-cultural groups, who have a contribution in creating the image of the Yehuda and Samaria inhabitants (“Mitnahalim”). The first group is the mass media, (or information producers); the second is the “mass” of people (information consumers).

2.   The inadequacy between the Israeli Post-Zionist practices (that identify with “information producers”) as against Post-Zionist ethics.

The fact that the mass media channels are being more and more controlled by people that in their life style and their spirit are tending to connect with “Post-Zionist” ideas, is deeply contradictory to post-Zionist ethics. That is because the main base of the post-modernism attitude (the “spiritual father” of post-Zionist thought), relies on undermining the modern social hierarchy, thus “constructing” social groups as minorities. Similarly, Post-Zionist criticism blames Israeli Zionist “nature” as an efficient instrument for constructing minorities (like Arabs, oriental Jews etc.) and pushing them to the bottom of Israeli social status. Such claims were found as a paradox if not a hypocritical one in the Israeli realty of the last decade.

A consideration of internal social change, shows that the 1990s decade was characterized by a basic reshuffle in the academic and the media institutions (the main sources for information and knowledge). In this process, more and more young Israelis (freed from the ‘big’ Zionist ideological obligation) take the place of the old generation. Henceforth, those institutions were monolithic (in terms of ideas, persons, agenda, etc.) and powerful. Therefore, they have an enormous influence potential on public attitudes, namely, to reshape the social hierarchy.

In fact, the old hierarchies were replaced by another one. The religious groups, especially the Mitnahalim, were excluded and proscribed as a dangerous people.

In respect of the relationship between the media and the “mass” of the people (“Ha’am”), indeed there is a significant gap between the basic conceptions of the Israeli media (values, conceptions, etc.) toward the consumers. This gap represents the core of identity of most Israeli’s Jewish citizens. At first sight, such a gap appears impossible under a democratic society’s conditions. However, such an anomaly is possible if we turn to the cultural system of both sides: the suppliers (“core”) and the consumers (“periphery”) of information. It seems to me, that the fact that the Jewish identity is quite assimilated in most Israeli People, – this maintains the Zionist base among the consumers, and does not allow “full” automatic (re)construction. This fact is not contradicting (in interpretive terms) the relatively passive position toward political action, which characterizes the consumers. These passive orientations will be also analyzed in a future cultural study. 

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