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.