Ariel Center for
Policy Research

A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS

 

NATIV   ■   Volume Sixteen   ■   Number 1 (90)  ■  January 2003   ■  Ariel Center for Policy Research

 

SYNOPSIS

 


Transforming Israeli Society: Redefining the Israeli Ethos

Yoav Gelber

The post-Zionists’ critique of Israel and the Zionist enterprise revolves around the struggle over who and what will determine Israel’s cultural-ideological future. That struggle focuses on secularism versus religious orientations, particularist national identity versus cosmopolitan assimilationsim, individualism versus the collectivity, Jewish national identity for Israel versus ethnic relativism. These topics have been in dispute among Jews since the earliest days of Zionism. In addition to these well-known conflicts, the Israeli version of anti-Zionism includes the conflict over the legitimacy of accepted national symbols shared by all of Israel’s Jewish citizens as opposed to the adoption of other national symbols representing the Arabs. The post-Zionist myths concentrate on the right to self-centeredness to replace the collectivity as the critical substance of the Jewish-Zionist ethos. The latter would replace Zionism’s Jewish identity with an individualistic, a-historical, cultural amalgam. The author argues that these latter approaches indubitably lead to a dismantling of the Jewish state.

 

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