In an oft-quoted remark Henry Kissinger observed that “Israel has no foreign policy, it has only a domestic policy.” Israel keeps on proving Kissinger right and by now his bon mot has become a sad truism. But recently the truism has turned to farce as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relentlessly takes apart Israel’s Foreign Ministry and its professional Foreign Service.

In an act of political payoff, Netanyahu did not appoint a Foreign Minister in his new cabinet at the request of Avigdor Lieberman, the former Foreign Minister, who is currently standing trial for Breach of Trust and fraud. Netanyahu has decided to keep the position open for Lieberman until the end of the trial. In the meantime, he himself is acting as the Foreign Minister. Needless to say, the Prime Minister hardly has the time to manage the daily matters of the Ministry, though he started his public career as a diplomat, and a very adept one.

Additionally, to further weaken the ministry, Netanyahu redistributed many of the traditional responsibilities of the Foreign Ministry among other ministries, some of them new and bogus creations, such as the gimmicky Ministry of International Relations. Other related ministries include the Ministry for Regional Cooperation, a Minister for Diasporas, and a Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, who is also responsible for diplomatic initiatives and peace talks with the Palestinians. Considering that Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps for himself and in his office some key aspects of Israel’s foreign relations, what we get is a beheaded and enfeebled Foreign Ministry, lacking political backing, which competes with several artificial and bogus ministries. Why is this so? Why does Netanyahu sacrifice the Foreign Ministry with its years of experience and professionalism?

One may argue that by weakening the ministry and establishing evermore competing entities, Netanyahu is trying to divide and rule, a well-worn strategy of playing all against all, so as to ‎secure his own agenda. However, in my judgment, there is no agenda as it appears that in Israel, everyone is in charge and no one is in command.

There are two possible alternative reasons for the establishment of these “bogus international ministries.” The first is the deep-seated animosity Netanyahu bears towards what is called the “old elite.” This animosity was very explicit in his first administration, between 1996 and 1999, and was targeted at various strongholds of the old elites, like the Supreme Court, national media, and academia. Though more restrained in his second and third administrations, it seems that his stand towards the diplomatic service still echoes with this rancor. The second reason for the proliferation of ministries is related to Netanyahu’s weakness. Contrary to the widespread perception of him as a strong leader (see, for example the May 2012 Time Magazine coverage of “King Bibi”), he is in fact a weak politician who is coerced and arm-twisted rather easily. The political spread of these various “international bogus ministries” is a sure sign of this weakness.

The minister charged with regional cooperation, Silvan Shalom from the Likud is a harsh internal opponent of Netanyahu, who every now and then receives some political goods to keep him at bay. The Minister of International Relations (whatever that may be) is Yuval Steinitz, a close ally and devotee of Netanyahu who had to be compensated for being “robbed” of his post as Finance Minister. The creation of the Ministry of International Relations serves no other purpose. The minister in charge of the Diasporas, Naftali Bennett, is the head of the Jewish Home, the right-wing partner in Netanyahu’s coalition. While Tzipi Livni, on the other hand, is the head of the splinter centrist party, the Movement. Each got his or her share of the spoils. And on top of them all, presides Lieberman who for years now has successfully wrested most of his wants and whims from Netanyahu, including his demand not to appoint a Foreign Minister in his place.

All these facts are a bit tedious, especially to theorists who tend to look at the macro level and examine the structure of global politics. But boring as they are, the facts are crucial in understanding and explaining Israel’s international behavior (think Goldfarb’s The Politics of Small Things and Putnam’s two-level-game). The appointments, driven as they are by various political moves and calculations, create an impossible political mosaic; impossible, that is, in terms of forming and executing coherent agendas and policies.

I doubt anyone can identify Israel’s preferences regarding the negotiation with the Palestinians and what its vision is for a final settlement. I wonder: Does John Kerry think he does today after his recent experiment in shuttle diplomacy?

Prime Minister Netanyahu declares every now and then his commitment to a two-state solution. On June 5^th 2013, for example, he called on Abu Mazen not to miss yet another opportunity, asking him to “give peace a chance.” Yet, the same month it was revealed that more housing plans were being approved and built in the Occupied Territories. At the same time, Likud’s MP and Deputy Minister of Defense, Danny Danon, mocked the idea of a two-state solution. The same goes for many other Likud MPs and other coalition members who oppose any negotiation. This duplicity clearly hampers efforts by international actors, such as Kerry’s. He, like many others, receives mixed, confusing and practically impossible signals to decipher from the Israelis (as well as from the Palestinians).

The same duplicity was evident in a recent attempt to craft a joint Israeli/Polish declaration prior to Netanyahu’s official visit to Poland. Mid-level bureaucrats met and published a very moderate declaration approving the two-state solution. Not a day passed before Netanyahu distanced himself from the statement and effectively voided it. Maybe if the professional and skilled diplomats of the Foreign Ministry had been involved in the process, none of the subsequent diplomatic embarrassment would have occurred. But nowadays who consults the Israeli Foreign Ministry? No wonder the frustrated Israeli diplomats have been on strike for the past three months or so, partly because of their deteriorating salaries and partly as a result of the steady gutting of their ministry. It should not come as a surprise that the Prime Minister (who is also the Acting Foreign Minister) does not even meet with the striking diplomats. It seems that no one in the government really cares.

But then again, how could the diplomats, skilled as they are, solve those problems if no one provides them with a coherent agenda and agreed upon policies? And those agendas and policies will not be formed by themselves. They must be developed by a government that acts as Plato’s Captain of the Ship. And the seas that Israel rides, it should be noted, are rough indeed and full of existential challenges; but also, we should not ignore, of opportunities. The regional seclusion of Israel that has lasted for decades is being challenged now by changing circumstances, for example the Arab uprisings and the recent discoveries of Eastern Mediterranean gas. Thus, there are those in Israel who call upon the government to rethink its position in the region following the Arab Spring, to embrace the Arab Peace Initiative, and adopt a more regional integrationist position. This was, for example, the message of Meir Dagan, former head of the Mossad, in his address at the Israeli Presidential Conference, on June 19th 2013. However, also those calls fall prey to the aimless drifting of the ship.

Without a captain and without a skilled and trusted crew, such as the Foreign Ministry diplomats, the Israeli ship would appear to be hazardously drifting to the shoals. ‎

This post is an abbreviated version of a working paper published by The Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).

As my partner and I were taking what has become our routine journey (twice a month) from my parents’ home in Al-Ram (between Jerusalem and Ramallah) to the Sheikh Hussein Bridge heading for Amman-Jordan, he raised an interesting question. Noting that the State of Israel has devoted so much energy and resources to “protect” itself through occupation, the separation wall and check points, he wondered whether Israelis foresee a solution, or do they believe that the current situation is a final solution? Our bi-weekly trip to the bridge provides the context for this question.

My parents’ home is on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which under normal circumstances could have been a natural expansion of Jerusalem. It could have been a desirable suburb in a normal setting, as it has access to the northern exit, making a northern trip swift. This was a plus when my father decided to buy that plot of land, as he is originally from the Nazareth area, and we used to make the trip up north almost weekly to visit family.

With the continuing Palestinian Israeli conflict and the resulting decision by the Israeli government to build the wall, Al-Ram neighborhood was one of the areas that suffered. To make matters worse, the State of Israel has an Industrial zone (“Atarot”) opposite our neighborhood, which means that they needed access to it. As a result the “Wall” was erected in the middle of the street dividing it into two parallel streets and declaring one side of it as Israeli and part of Jerusalem while the other side as Area B. (Area B: The Oslo II Accord of Sep. 28th 1995 has created three “temporary” distinct administrative divisions of the Palestinian territories thus creating what have become areas A, B and C. According to Oslo Accord, Area B is Israeli controlled but administered by Palestinian Authority.)

This arrangement meant that we no longer have the convenient access of the northern route and now in order to leave our neighborhood and reach Jerusalem, we have two options. The first is Qalandya checkpoint, the main checkpoint that separates Ramallah from Jerusalem; this means killing plenty of time (delay on a good day is at least half an hour and reaches up to a few hours) each day as this checkpoint is always congested. It also means exposure to utter humiliation, as one is physically faced by the formula of ruled and ruler, occupied and occupier, the powerful and the weak, oppressor and oppressed. The Israeli Member of Knesset Adi Kol got a taste of this humiliation recently when passing through Qalandya checkpoint.

This confrontation on the checkpoint is utterly debilitating for Palestinians as it has become a norm and one must abide by the rules (stop at the white line, do as is asked…) or else the experience might get worse, or the time that it takes could be prolonged. It should be noted that this checkpoint is used mainly by Palestinians Jerusalemites holding an Israeli residency cards and drive Israeli cars, or Palestinians with permits to enter Israel.

The second route is via the settlement road. Such roads scattered throughout the West Bank connect West Bank settlements with Israel. Palestinians with the proper Identity cards are allowed to use those roads. At the connecting points between the settlements road and Israeli roads (those that are located in Israel proper) there are checkpoints, which ensure that Palestinians of the west Bank do not use Israeli roads.

The “Hizma” checkpoint which is on the northeast part of Jerusalem is a more forgiving one since most who take it are Jewish settlers. It is, thus, smoother. The trip is longer, but usually faster, becuase the checkpoint authorities are more lenient since most of the travelers are Israeli settlers. Unlike the Qalandya checkpoint, not all cars are stopped for inspection, only suspected Palestinians are usually stopped (women with Muslim headscarves or Men who look “Palestinian”).

Luckily, we are almost never stopped at this checkpoint, Yet, each time I pass, I dispair, knowing I was able to cross because I have hidden my identity (in the sense of the term used in its shallow and crude form; in other words as categorized by others or in its stereotypical form).

As we leave Jerusalem and head north through Highway 6, we are driving along Palestinian cities of the West Bank, such as Qalqilya and Tulakrm. The wall separates the Palestinian and Israeli areas and from the Israeli side the wall looks like a fence (nice looking walls with colorful facades with flower bushes and trees adorning its side).

So many Israelis drive through this road and probably only a minority think what the wall means to the lives of the Palestinians on the other side; they probably prefer to think that it is only a line that separates the Israeli side from the Palestinian while in fact the wall is wrapped around areas to enclose, isolate and separate one Palestinian area from the other.

For many Israelis the issue with the Palestinians is only one factor of state policy and of what the State of Israel is; true it is occupying another people, but in Israel proper the State stands on the pillars of democracy and equality. They may recognize a small minority who is non-Jewish and is affected with some inequality procedures, judging this, though as only a minor matter.

Being in the country from February till now is difficult for someone who is not an Israeli-Jew; first came the elections, which are constant reminders of how Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship are irrelevant to the State and its democratic mechanisms. Many Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship have surrendered to the fact that their voice in elections do not count because even for leftist parties a coalition with Arab parties is not an option. Especially now as we are witnessing a move to the right in Israeli politics, Palestinian parties have to accept being in the opposition, a role they are accustomed to take. This means permanent marginalization, and the marginalization of those who have elected them.

This year’s election was not that different from previous ones. It is true that now we have Yair Lapid’s new party emerging as second with 19 seats, which promoted itself as an advocate of “Social Justice.” Many perceive the party’s success as a response to the massive protests of summer 2011. It is true many of his campaign slogans had a social tint to them and catered for the majority of the citizens of the State (Middle Class) such as “Our children will be able to buy apartments” and “we will pay less for electricity and water.” Yet, without ambiguity Yair Lapid and his party advocate a Jewish State and of Jerusalem undivided as the capitals of that state.

It is interesting to see how the political map has changed in the past two decades; now the Jewishness of the State of Israel is perceived as a right. Most Israelis do not question what this means and how or whether it can work with the democratic nature of the state. It is also interesting to see how the Palestinian issue has become an external problem; the same as Israel’s relation with its other neighbors, but not as one that is intricately embedded in the state’s very nature.

The Palestinians living in Israel will never be fully-fledged citizens of the State of Israel and it is for this reason that I hesitate to put a hyphen between Palestinian and Israeli. The Palestinians living in Israel have been diluted into Arab-Israelis as if they are brought from the different parts of the Arab world and do not have their own culture and identity which was only some decades ago a part of the whole Palestinian culture and identity. Even though many have accepted this categorization in order to integrate within Israeli society, the matter of the fact is that they are not and cannot be a part of the Israeli society. The election, the recent holidays Yom Hazikaron “remembrance day,” Yom Ha’atzmaot “Independence day” are constant reminders that Palestinians in Israel are at best a nuisance or at worst a threat. Palestinians and Israeli Jews live parallel lives within the state; sometimes the paths of an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Israeli intersect at work, in a restaurant, on the street, but they do not share a healthy social environment.

Palestinians living in Israel might have been perceived by many during the election period as apathetic, but I think what could be more appropriate is a state of alert. They have lost confidence in the democratic nature of the state. This feeling is strengthened with proposing new laws by government officials and sometimes passing such laws in the Knesset (such as the law of allegiance which requires all citizens to pledge allegiance to the state as a Jewish one). This results in further alienation of Palestinians living in Israel from the rest of the society and jeopardizes their right to exist in their home country.

As we learned from history, totalitarian regimes provide their citizens with limited horizon, with an impotence to see alternatives to the status quo, and they constantly affirm that the government knows best. As a result, citizens usually succumb to the State apparatus and focus on their own business. I am not saying that Israel is a totalitarian country, but its recent transformation should worry all of its citizens. The rights of Palestinians are infringed upon constantly, and recent developments should worry women, secularist and whoever cherishes the democratic nature of the state.

In today’s “in-depth” post, Hilla Dayan provides critical insight into the Israeli political landscape, following the recent elections. She paints a stark reality. The elections in her judgment have a “Groundhog Day” quality. Once again, a centrist, anti-religious, patriotic party appeared from nowhere. Once again, the left was not a significant factor, and once again the right-wing ruling party prevailed to form the coalition. Dayan presents a much more radical response than did Michael Weinman in his inquiry into the future prospects following the elections for Israel. Weinman foresees a fundamental challenge to Israeli democracy, worries about theocratic and authoritarian dangers, and sees in the modest quest for a normal society a possible key for a democratic future.

In Dayan’s account, in contrast, the key question is whether the strong anti-democratic agenda of the far right will proceed, whether Israel’s present regime, combining an unsteady and receding liberal democracy for Jewish citizens and second class Palestinian citizens, with dictatorship over the Palestinians in the occupied territories, will be replaced by a more pure authoritarian indeed fascist regime, with the potential of a genocidal approach to the Palestinian other.

While for Weinman hope lies in the internal dynamics of Israeli society, for Dayan hope can be found in the potential common project linking the post if not anti-Zionist left within Israel and in the occupied territories. Both see the elections as indecisive. Both see real dangers. Yet, both also provide some grounds for hope: Weinman in the possibility of incremental steps toward a two state solution, between now and a better then, Dayan in the radical step that must be taken for a just secular one state solution.

My ambivalent response: as a matter of temperament and personal experience, I am attracted to the quest for a normal society as a wise political end in the face of gross injustice.  I know from my experience in Central Europe that this quest involves more than its critics imagine, especially because it can be realized immediately, its self limiting means can constitute its end. This project would be especially powerful if it included Palestinians.

On the other hand, the degree of injustice and suffering among Palestinians, clearly calls for a radical resolution. The peace process over the past decades has only intensified this for many if not most Palestinians, as Nahed Habbiballah has highlighted here. The peace process has led to few improvements for Palestinians, especially when considering their longing for a normal life.

Hilla and Michael are both former students, colleagues and friends. I learn from both of them, in these posts and in their other writings. Their reflections on the election results both require serious and deliberate consideration. My intuition tells me that their shared deep concerns are more important than their differences. More on that in an upcoming post.

To read today’s In-Depth post, “Israel Against Democracy: Post-Elections Analysis,” by Hilla Dayan, click here.

The massive vote for Lapid, riding on a general discontent with politics, made it painfully clear how sectorial the “social justice” protest in the summer of 2011 was after all, which drew primarily on middle-class frustrations with dwindling economic prospects for future generations. The amazing creativity and energy of many young and more radicalized 2011 protestors dissipated much too soon. Difficult yet promising alliances forged at the time between Mizrahi neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and Palestinian activists in Jaffa found no political expression. The summer of 2011 was a moment when hundreds of thousands poured to the streets to demonstrate against the rule of the so-called “tycoons,” Israel’s business oligarchy. This seemed to have the potential to lead to an even broader, more threatening mobilization against the existing order. It didn’t happen. No serious opposition to the reign of the neoliberal hawkish right emerged from this outburst. The 2011 protest did not generate any visible crack in the tectonic structures of Israeli politics. The main players on the Israeli political map remain Netanyahu-Liberman, a spineless, inflated center, and a disproportionately strong settler-dominated extreme right. Together, and with the ultra- orthodox parties in opposition for the first time in decades, they form the next coalition government. The so-called capital-rule [Hon-Shilton] nexus is under no serious threat, at least for the time being.

What remains to be seen is whether Yesh Atid, with its newcomers plucked from the media, cultural and business elite will manage to prevent this Knesset session from finishing off the attack on the liberal foundations of the state. In the past four years, the Israeli parliament has orchestrated a legislative blitz, introducing dozens of anti-democratic bills undermining basic rights, attacking minorities and civil society organizations in particular. The anti-Zionist left was the focus of concerted persecution. The vicious campaign was utterly disproportionate, considering how tiny, fragmented and largely politically disorganized the anti-Zionist left is. The new MKs of Yair Lapid, although a significant block, are inexperienced in dealing with the extreme-right legislators’ tactical use of the law as a tool for political persecution and will have a difficult time matching their political cunning. Yair Lapid himself, in a gesture complacent with the extreme-right agenda, mocked Palestinian Member of Knesset Hanin Zoabi immediately after the elections, denouncing her as a political pariah. And so the question remains: will this patriotic center save the Israeli liberal order by pushing back racist legislation? Will it cooperate with political persecution or choose to protect the Palestinian minority against its own ethnocentric inclinations, merely for the sake of maintaining some semblance of the rule of law?

If the de-democratization trend continues, it would be interesting to see what impact it will have on the twin pillars of the Israeli system of rule, namely, the Israeli dictatorship. I am referring here to the political system that the ‘average Israeli’ perceives as something external to themselves, existing in the twilight zone of the occupation, when in fact it is integral to the political order in Israel/Palestine as a whole. The 45-year-old denial of voting rights and rule over the Palestinian population was of course irrelevant to the Israeli media covering the elections. Mainstream US and international media, devoting pages towards the Jewish-Israeli ‘left’, ‘center’ and ‘right’, also completely ignored it. The irrelevance of the occupation to the Israeli voter in these free and democratic elections must be understood as being painstakingly manufactured. The occupation grinds on as if taking place in an unrelated, autonomous universe. During the week of the elections several so-called ‘shooting incidents’ occurred, in which four innocent civilians were killed in the West Bank. One of them was a 16-year-old boy, who was shot point-blank by soldiers near the separation wall south of Hebron. And just before the elections the army violently evacuated hundreds of Palestinian activists from the so-called ‘E1 zone’ in the West Bank, where they had erected a makeshift settlement to protest Netanyahu’s plan to build more illegal Jewish settlements.

This new non-violent method of resistance in the occupied territories not only gave rise to a new social category – the Palestinian ‘settler’ – but more profoundly tore the mask of hypocrisy off the Israeli regime of separation, with its rigidly separate mechanisms of ruling over citizens (Jews and the Palestinian citizen minority) and disenfranchised out-groups (Palestinians in the occupied territories). The methodology employed by the Bab Al Shams activists draws attention to this dual system of rule specifically and makes its existence impossible to deny. The few times the state orchestrated an evacuation of Jewish settlers from “illegal outposts,” these were media spectacles showing soldiers shedding tears (rather than shooting tear gas) and hugging settlers in broad daylight. The violent beatings and mass arrests of the Palestinian settlers in the Bab Al Shams outpost, conversely, were conducted in the dead of night, and not before the army had first removed all Israeli and foreign journalists from the area in the usual dictatorial fashion.

Israel’s regime of separation must continuously separate the democratic from the dictatorial and conceal their relations of dependence, and ultimately their systemic unity. What would happen, however, if the gradual erosion of the liberal order continues, and the democratic space for both Jews and Palestinians, who are luckily still somewhat protected by the democratic order, continues to shrink? Will it take its course until there is no liberal order to speak of? What would happen to a regime, whose entire edifice leans on the two pillars of democracy and dictatorship, if the democratic pillar collapses? Ironically, the de-democratization process, which is marked by anti-democratic legislation, a sustained attack on basic civil liberties, the repression of dissent, the denial of cultural autonomy for minorities and the decimation of organized opposition, is a serious threat to the stability of the regime. It is threatening because it logically leads to a regime collapse, but what exactly would this regime collapse scenario entail?

Critics of the Israeli regime argue that the occupation, combined with the ethnic cleansing ideologies and the racist agendas touted by candidates in the Israeli elections, make it difficult to call the Israeli “democracy” anything but a façade for an apartheid system. Skeptics of Israeli democracy rightfully point out that a democracy for Jews only cannot be seriously called a democracy. But, what this perspective fails to appreciate is exactly how critical it is to the Israeli system of rule to maintain both democracy and dictatorship in tandem. What is lost is how democratic legitimization enables the permanent dictatorship, not as a mere façade but as a fundamental logic of the state, a raison d’état. What follows then from the fact that liberal institutions and above all the parliament and elections are being turned into mere instruments of brute force is some sort of a totalitarian fascist mobilization. In such a scenario there is no room for disagreement, no vaguely centrist middle ground, and only one shade of extreme right. We are then faced with a sovereign that declares itself to be beyond the law, representing directly the “will of the people.” Israel indeed puts the demos above the law often enough to deserve the label of crypto-fascist state. But my idea is that what this analysis ultimately entails is different from what defines the current regime of separation, operating within the logic of inclusive exclusion, the logic of control and containment. For, when Israel becomes a truly fascist state, it is likely to transform itself into a regime operating with a totally different logic: the logic of cleansing, and taken to its most logical extreme – of genocide. In my careful estimation, notwithstanding the indiscriminate shooting of civilians and the killing of 140 civilians in Gaza this October, we are not quite there yet.

Sure enough, the scenario of mass fascist mobilization (perhaps as a backlash of the progressive mobilization of the summer of 2011) is not entirely implausible. Yet, it seems remotely likely also because the white middle-class Yair Lapid voters, the everyday type of “salt of the earth” patriots, are all major beneficiaries of the status quo. Any change to the status quo is going to be perceived as unfairly aggravating their “share of the burden” to use a Yesh Atid-like slogan. It will be resisted as unnecessarily steering the country away from what this rather homogenous group covets for securing a Western OECD-level quality of life. So there is reason to believe that with their 17 seats in the Knesset, Yesh Atid will be compelled to put up a strong fight for maintaining the status quo if only to block the deterioration of the liberal order and the collapse of the regime of separation. More than anything, this election proved that Israeli society is not yet ready for the alternative scenario, one in which society enters the permanent crisis that Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci identified as “terminal,” a trigger for “crossing a regime threshold.” Mass mobilization in 2011 did not generate such a political crisis. It did not lead to the emergence of new resistance to the powers that be or to new power blocs. In fact, the recent elections buried the existing chance of hegemonic change, though hopefully not for good.

For the majority of Jewish-Israelis the recognition that the current regime of separation is evil and unsustainable and that a more just and inclusive democratic order must come about is beyond the pale, not something that in Gramsci’s terms they can “identify” with. Instead, in this election, despite strong undercurrents of criticism directed at the current socio-economic order, perhaps the most radical to date, many more chose to passively accept the existing political order as fait accompli.

This is not to say that there is no alternative reading of the political reality. It does exist, and is largely shared within the milieu of Israeli civil society organizations, but it is not widely shared beyond its narrow confines. This alternative reading demands that Jewish-Israelis give up their special privileges as Jewish citizens of the Jewish state. Most Israelis cannot identify with this, not simply because they are too racist, crudely put, but because they do not consider themselves as particularly privileged. As Israeli sociologist Nissim Mizrahi succinctly put it, for many, the only card they can play to better their situation is the claim that the state is theirs. We have to ask why: why is Israeli civil society perceived as representing nothing but itself, and the socio-economic privilege of its members? Why are the critical perspective and the democratic alternative it promotes so vehemently rejected? Why has civil society played such a minor role in the summer of 2011 protests, and why have we not managed to connect the popular struggle for social justice to the struggle to end the occupation? Why have we not been able to produce entrepreneurs of hegemonic change with an agenda that can actually convince the majority that dismantling the dictatorship and truly democratizing Israel/Palestine is the way forward?

I have no clear answer to these questions, only some painful realizations. Firstly, that progressive forces in Israel need to find a more authentic language for political opposition than the lofty language of universalisms and human rights, which rings hollow to so many ears. Secondly, that Israeli civil society must look critically at its own usefulness and contribution to the separation regime and the maintenance of the status quo. Finally, and most devastatingly, we must consider that even while undergoing this process of self-reflection, a future scenario of a terminal crisis leading to a process of genuine democratization may not involve Israeli civil society in any meaningful way.

I do not wish to paint here a picture of Israeli society and its civil society as immune to change and under the firm grasp of the current regime. One should always consider the opposite: that the regime is relatively stable but that there are already social undercurrents strong enough to constantly threaten its stability from within. I believe that we can speak of a movement in the direction of “terminal crisis” in the Gramcian sense only if and when opposition from within Israeli society joins that from out-groups in the occupied territories. Moreover, it is imperative that we look at the state of the Israeli liberal democracy as a sort of seismographic indication for the stability of the regime. At the moment, it seems that the incurable contradictions of democracy and dictatorship have not matured yet into a full- blown crisis, a political earthquake.

To end on a more hopeful note, in case the process of elimination of Israel’s liberal democracy continues after the elections, this process will inevitably bring us closer to the moment of truth. If the extreme right in power successfully completes its mission, it will unwittingly bring down the separation regime. This will be a clear wake-up call for mass mobilization. This time for a whole new order, fascist or not.

In the immediate aftermath of the latest elections in Israel, my (somewhat snide, but really felt) response was “good thing there is a future; there’s surely no present.” Meaning, I suppose, something like: nice to see that folks really made a statement that the current political system is fundamentally broken (by voting in droves for the newly-minted Yesh Atid [i.e., there is a future] party), but that doesn’t mean that anything has actually changed, or can be expected to change, any time soon. I had wanted to try to develop that reaction into a sustained thought, but failed. Then, in the build-up to Obama’s visit and the drama of Netanyahu’s troubled, but ultimately (and predictably) successful, attempt to forge a coalition, I thought that there was a real moment to expand on my initial response. I failed again. Obama’s visit itself would have been a nice occasion to revisit my thesis and see how it was holding up against “facts on the ground.” But, alas, that moment passed as well.

Who would have thought that the “critical mass” would have been reached through a seemingly benign, almost anodyne, gesture by Yair Lapid (head of the afore-mentioned party) in saying that any structural changes to Israeli economic and fiscal policy—and such changes, it is universally agreed (and, seriously, now, how often is universal agreement reached on anything in Israel?)—must first of all resolve the difficulties faced by the “ideal typical” family of “Riki Cohen” who (it so happens) is said to hail from Hadera, the suburban semi-city between Tel Aviv and Haifa where my wife’s parents have lived for 25 years.

So, I am sitting here in their house in Hadera, looking over the pages and pages devoted to “Rikigate” in the thick Friday [think: Sunday] editions of Yediot Ahronot and HaAretz (including prized positions on the front covers thereof), and I realize: this is the evidence that the January version of me would have wanted to rip from the near future and point to in making my comment about the lack of a political present in Israel. Basically, it seems to me, the situation is like this: a relatively (and surprisingly) broad swath of Israeli society got together to say that while there is no organized left worth voting for anymore in Israel, and while the centrist parties of the 1990s and 2000s have shown themselves to be equal parts feckless and selfish opportunists, the domestic policies of the right and further-right are fundamentally disastrous for the modern, liberal Israel these folks believe themselves to live in and be a part of. These people agree about this, and this is not nothing, but it is by no means the basis of a platform around which the kind of structural reformation of public policy and economic development that was the demand of the massive protest movement in the summer of 2011. And so, to the extent that Lapid and his party have been given more or less a free hand to set the domestic policy of the current government—a costly but necessary concession given that he and the nationalist “Bayit HaYehudi” [Jewish Home] party leader Naftali Bennet formed an “in government together or in opposition together” pact, which meant that Lapid effectively controlled as many seats as Netanyahu at the time of the coalition negotiations—he now gets to face the same stalemate we saw in the time of the Trajtenberg Committee. Israelis know that the current state of affairs is untenable, but there remains no consensus about the concrete steps that need to be taken in order to stand the country on legs that can actually carry it to the future. “Yesh atid,” you might say, but we have no (shared) idea of how to get there.

And this brings us to Riki Cohen from Hadera. Maybe you haven’t heard of her, but she’s been the beginning and/or the end of news broadcasts here in Israel throughout the week I’ve been visiting. (Pretty impressive for someone who doesn’t exist!) Basically, Lapid said this: there are a number of families in this country like this imaginary case I have for you. You have a pair of working parents with, say, two or three children. They are professionals and successful. They earn well above the average annual income in Israel (which includes the far too many un- and under-employed), and a decent amount more than the average income for families with two working adults. (This turns out to be the source of much of the controversy, but it is critical to Lapid’s thought experiment.) They bring home enough to keep paying down the house, to keep their cars on the road (fuel is very expensive in Israel, remember), to feed the family, and (and here, again, much controversy) to travel once every two years to a destination outside Israel. But they have no chance to buy a house for any of their kids, and no security for their retirement. The economic and fiscal policy of this government, said Lapid in the meeting where he introduced this character, will first of all take into consideration the need to improve the situation for families like this.

And what followed? In the phrase of my dearly departed mother: a shitstorm. A shitstorm that perfectly shows why there is no present in Israel. All kinds of different constituencies jumped on this one. There are those (and there are many) who assail Lapid (from the left, I suppose) for speaking about people who bring home something like3500 USD/month after tax, when there are many working families that bring home something like 2000 USD/month after tax. There are those (and there are many) who assail him (from the right) for speaking about trips abroad and buying a house for the kids, when we are at war and always at war, and people have sacrificed and will sacrifice much more than a trip to Venice for the sake of the continued existence of Israel. Both of these responses are predictable: they are the source of the stagnation of the past generation. And both of them fundamentally miss the point.

Let me be clear: I am no fan of Lapid, I wouldn’t have voted for him in January had I had the chance, and I haven’t liked him on Facebook, either. But I do recognize that he represented and represents the hope of many young and youngish people that Israel can be “a normal country.” These people don’t all agree (maybe even: don’t agree at all) about the conflict with the Palestinians, or about “the Iranian threat,” and they might very well disagree about tax and spending policy if they were transplanted to the US or to a European country. But they agree that, given Israel’s current realities, people who are more or less advocates of a limited government (neo-) liberal economic model and people who are more or less advocates of a continental European-style social democratic economic model need to make common cause to “rescue” the state from (on the one hand) its vastly too great financial commitments to some sectors (read: the ultra-religious and the settlers, two populations with a fair amount of overlap, but less than you would think) and, on the other hand, from its vastly too advanced (under Netanyahu I and Netanyahu II) program of “economic liberalization” with respect to other sectors.

At the risk of seeming tendentious, I’d like to call these people (the Lapid voters and, say, the people who see why the Lapid voters voted for Lapid) “the adults.” The adults face a stiff challenge: political discourse in Israel is rich and multifarious. All those statements about Israel being a flourishing democracy (albeit with the horrific stain of the occupation, which must end “speedily, speedily in our days”) are true. But the discourse is also often beside the point. If there’s one thing that can come and must come from the most recent election, it is progress on the path toward economic and fiscal normalization. And that will demand that political actors don’t return to bromides about Israel being a socialist country (on the one hand) or nonsense about the perpetual endangerment of tiny Israel meaning that “we all have to make sacrifices.” Both the left, at least in the current form of Avoda (the Labor Party) and its populist-nonsensical-obstructionist rhetoric, and the right are wrong about the future of Israel: where Israel needs to be in 25 years is neither returned to its solidarity-bootstraps (“Socialist-Zionist youth”) roots of the 1948-67 period—with “khol ha-kavod” to those “Pioneers”—and certainly not in some bizarre semi-theocracy of a center-right political faction joined together with a nationalist right and a theocratic faction. It needs to be, as the adults say (and say rightly), “a normal country.”

What is “a normal country”? In this case, at least, it must mean something like this: Israel as a moderate, perhaps somewhat (right or left) populist-leaning liberal democracy standing alongside an at least nominally independent (but economically and militarily coordinated) state of Palestine. That this is Israel’s only sustainable future is clear.  The problem is that there is next to no connection between the present and that future. A significant step in that direction would be to secure the economic future of families like Lapid’s “Riki Cohen from Hadera.” If these people (and they are the sector of Israeli society with which I am the most familiar, I confess) can’t live a life that is analogous to people living and working in economies of similar size whose educational backgrounds and career trajectories are similar to their own, then (even leaving aside “the security issue,” as one can do only ever do in abstraction), contra the name of Lapid’s party and all the interest it generated, there is no future for the State of Israel.

Not, in any case, as a liberal democracy.

To skip this introduction and go directly to read Zachary Metz’s In-Depth Analysis, “Peace Writ Small: Reflections on  “Peacebuilding” in Iraq, Burma, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans and Beyond,” click here.

In today’s “in-depth post,” Zachary Metz, a veteran conflict resolution practitioner, reflects on his vast experience exploring the potential of “peacebuilding.” He notes that, in recent years, the concern among practitioners has turned away from the simple cessation of violence, toward “positive peace,” a term advocated by Johan Galtung, working for “peace writ large,” in which peace includes a focus on long term, large scale, social change. Metz appreciates this move and has applied it, but he also recognizes its limits. Conflict is embedded in everyday social practices, he notes, in the small interactions that lead toward or away from violence, which promote conflicts or understandings. He thus focuses this piece on what he calls “peace writ small.” After explaining how his close focus on interaction responds to problems of the day and problems among conflict resolution practitioners, and after he draws on relevant theoretical developments, Metz illuminates how his approach looks like in practice. He describes and analyzes a moving example of “peace writ small” in a group he led in Iraq in 2005. In Iraq in 2005!

I am first impressed by the bravery involved, but even more significant is that Metz clearly illuminates the type of work that needs to happen for the Iraqis to have any chance in the aftermath of this tragic war. In miniature, I think I see in Zach’s account the only way for an alternative to the again escalating strife in that long-suffering country. In the ten year anniversary post mortem of the war, reflections have all been writ large, too often repeating thread worn partisan positions. Metz shows how we see and can do much more when we pay attention to everyday experience and concerns, and respond accordingly.

P.S. As the author of The Politics of Small Things, from which Metz draws insight, I find his approach quite compelling. I believe it has broad significance. Thus, as I was reading and preparing this post for publication, I was trying to understand the remarkable success of President Obama’s trip to Israel. The response in Israel was surprising. In a country where the Obama magic had not played well, it has finally arrived. Even as Obama continued to push hard for a two state solution and said things that no Israeli leader dare say, about understanding the Palestinian experience and the righteousness of their claim for a state of their own, there is confidence in Obama across the political spectrum, and a sense that something fundamental has changed.

Palestinians were not thrilled with the speech. It got a decided two thumbs down in a piece in Al Jazeera, “Obama’s Israel visit is an insult to the Palestinians.” “Obama’s visit to Israel endorsed their narrative and was a slap in the face to Palestinians.” Yet, it is interesting to note that forceful leftist critics of the occupation and the Israeli right, including the governing coalition, saw in Obama’s visit a real basis for hope. Gideon Levy: “Barack Obama has a dream and we should listen.” Bradley Burston: “After Obama this year for Passover I am burning my cynicism.”

I think the Israeli enthusiasm was based upon the fact that Obama’s speech to Israeli people clearly spoke to their experience, and dared to link an understanding of their story and insecurities with an aspiration for a lasting peace with their Palestinian neighbors. It was the “peace writ small” dimension of his address that enabled him to move in a “writ large” direction.

In order to broker a deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis, Obama needed to have the Israeli people more or less behind him. They needed to trust that he understands their concerns. Now he has to do the same with the Palestinians. No small task, or should I say a small task just like Zach’s in Iraq.

To read Zachary Metz’s In-Depth Analysis, “Peace Writ Small: Reflections on “Peacebuilding” in Iraq, Burma, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans and Beyond,” click here.

– Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

Over the course of my career as a practitioner and researcher in the field known as “peacebuilding,” I have worked alongside thousands of people in conflicted societies, including in Iraq, Burma, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans, and elsewhere. In this article, I explore a dilemma I see in the field, namely the increasingly singular emphasis on grand narratives of peace, known as “Peace Writ Large.” I fear that this frame, while valuable in many ways, may have the unintended consequence of actually undermining inquiry into and support for the powerful micro interactions that occur in even the most polarized conflicts. I argue that we must not lose sight of the power embodied in “peace writ small.”

Since the mid-1990s, approaches to theory-building, policy-making and intervention in conflict have increasingly emphasized macro, long-term societal changes, first under the rubric of “conflict transformation” and now “peacebuilding”.

Building on Johann Galtung’s fundamental concept of positive peace (meant to contrast with “negative peace,” meaning the cessation of violence), “Peace Writ Large” articulates an expansive vision, embracing human rights, environmental sensitivity, sustainable development, gender equity, and other normative and structural transformations. (Chigas & Woodrow, 2009). Anderson and Olsen (2003:12) define Peace Writ Large as comprising change “at the broader level of society as a whole,” which addresses “political, economic, and social grievances that may be driving conflict.” Lederach (1997:84), integrates Peace Writ Large into his definition of peacebuilding, which is:

“…a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates and sustains the full array of processes, approaches and stages needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful relationships…Metaphorically, peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or a condition.  It is seen as a dynamic social construct.”

The focus in this article does not allow space for a full discussion of the rich dialogues and debates relevant to peacebuilding or Peace Writ Large. That said, I note that in my own work I have found that this meta approach expands our tools of engagement and pushes us to move beyond official “Track I” diplomacy and state-based mechanisms, to involve civil society, youth, women, faith leaders and others left out of traditional approaches to violent conflict.  I have worked with university educators in Iraq, police in Northern Ireland, resistance leaders in Burma, human rights defenders in Maldives, Lebanese youth, international observers in the West Bank, development practitioners in Timor-Leste, and others, to support them in articulating and strengthening their own roles in relation to peace. I have seen how a broad view of peacebuilding is critical for deeply transforming intractable conflicts.

However, I see that this trend also presents serious problems for theory and practice. Fundamentally, the problem comes down to what is being noticed and privileged in research and practice. As the lens widens to embrace a grander narrative of peace, dynamics of conflict and violence appear even more monolithic and without solutions. The fragile seams and small spaces, in which people and institutions do take enormous risks to engage across conflict lines, are overlooked or disregarded. They are obscured like hairline cracks in a massive obelisk.  These cracks represent micro peace capacities that must be noticed, analyzed, and strengthened. In fact, a recent report by a leading institution in the field explicitly prescribes this approach: “Rather than focusing on micro-level interventions, a systems approach to peace allows for macro-level planning and cumulative impact.” (Alliance for Peacebuilding, 2012:6)  My concern is that the increasing focus on Peace Writ Large actually leads us away from the very sites that offer some of the most innovative and powerful opportunities to change the dynamics of intractable conflict. I suggest that this could be one of many reasons that observers write increasingly of “incomplete” and “unconsolidated” peace (Daadler & Froman, 1999).

Therefore, I suggest we explore the power of the small in the context of the monolithic. Important preliminary research has already been done on the impacts of “peace writ little,” defined as “a local or community level of sustainable peace…coming from work on more effective mechanisms for resolving interpersonal disputes, land conflicts…or political, cultural and/or ethnic tensions at a local level.” (CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program, 2012:2)  However, I am here arguing for the need to look at an even more granular level of interaction, at what might be termed “peace writ small”.

Several social theorists have worked to illuminate the intrinsic power of the very small. In Violence, his epic exploration of the dynamics of social violence, Randall Collins focuses on micro interactions and face-to-face encounters, from muggings to the 9/11 cockpit fights. In explaining the importance of interaction, versus structures or institutions, Collins argues that, “…everything we have hitherto referred to as ‘structure’…can be found in the real behavior of everyday life, primarily in repetitive encounters. (Collins, 2008:17)

Social psychologist Peter Coleman’s groundbreaking work on intractable conflict focuses primarily on broad systemic and structural concerns.  However, some key concepts in his “Attractor Landscape Model” shed light on the power of micro interactions. For instance, “latent attractors”, are small but important anomalies in the conflict narrative. Individuals who transgress conflict norms to do business with enemies, serendipitous encounters, and mundane, (if hidden) interactions go against the script of the hegemonic conflict narrative. He calls these “latent attractors” because they may have the power to begin coaxing conflict out of its intractability. Coleman argues that, “These cracks in the foundation of our understanding of the conflict and of the other parties are often important sources of different information.  These latent attractors may prove to be avenues for escaping the conflict.” (Coleman, 2011:101)

Jeffrey Goldfarb’s work has influenced my own thinking and practice. Goldfarb describes the often hidden political power of everyday social interaction (Goldfarb, 2006). This power is particularly important in contexts of total institutions, authoritarian regimes, and intractable conflicts.

Goldfarb describes the overall framework as “the politics of small things.” He theorizes that everyday life is a significant domain for politics. Concurring with Foucault’s analysis, he notes that control, discipline and subversion are present and observable in everyday life. (Goldfarb, 2008).  However, Goldfarb sees something that Foucault missed: in such interactions, there are also possibilities for change. Goldfarb (2009) explains that

The politics of small things happens when people meet, speak and develop a capacity to act together on the basis of shared commitments, principles or ideals. Through these contacts, they develop political power. This power is constituted in social interaction. It has its basis in the definition of the situation, the power of people to define their social reality. In the power of definition, alternatives are constituted to the existing order of things.

He further asserts that when this power involves the “meeting of equals, respectful of factual truth and open to alternative interpretations of the problems they face,” it has the capacity to democratize relations and the social order. In my work, I have seen that these are precisely the conditions for building peace.

In illustrating the politics of small things, Goldfarb offers the example of a small group of people in an oppressive society sitting around a kitchen table, sharing frustrations, identifying “seams” in the smothering fabric of the regime, and discussing coping strategies. Alternative interactions, not condoned within the intractable conflict, are acted out at these tables. Therefore, these apparently mundane interactions become extraordinary sites in which people can reach outside of the constraints of repression and conflict. If we peer into markets, theaters, hospitals, pubs, schools, and even military checkpoints, Goldfarb asserts that we may see that “…people make history in their social interactions…democracy is in the details.” (Goldfarb, 2006:1) I have repeatedly found this to be the case in some of the world’s worst conflicts.

Microscopes in Action

I conclude my discussion with an example of “peace writ small” and the politics of small things in action. In 2005, I led a training and dialogue on peacebuilding with a group of Iraqis involved in economic development. The participants shared some goals, but the stratifications within the group were also significant, and the group was reflective of Iraq’s demographic diversity.

The event focused on increasing community participation in economic and political development.  One hallmark of the facilitating methodology I used in this initiative is allowing participants a great deal of freedom during the process.[1] Small groups engaged, discussed, and planned action. Participants moved freely from group to group, often appearing to exit the formal process altogether. People drank tea, smoked in the garden, and shared food. To a great degree, they met as equals.

Much of the interaction appeared totally unrelated to the task. At one point, one of my Iraqi colleagues suggested I should bring order back to the apparently chaotic process. I chose to not intervene.

In the closing plenary, participants each reflected on the experience, as they passed a symbolic item (a branch from an olive tree) around the circle. When the olive branch reached a young woman from the minority Turkoman community, she began speaking in the Turkoman language, rather than in Arabic or Kurdish, the two official (and dominant) languages of the country.

Suddenly, an older Sunni Arab man interrupted loudly, scolding her for not speaking in Arabic. He shouted, “Iraqis speak Arabic! Why are you here if you are not a real Iraqi? Speak in Arabic!” This man came from Baquba, a city that had seen intense violence. As we had agreed to allow people to conclude in any language, I reminded him not to interrupt. The woman quietly finished her comments.

When the olive branch reached the man who had interrupted, he started to say the foundational Muslim blessing, often invoked at important moments: “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim – In the name of God, most Gracious, Most Compassionate…” After several words, he faltered and stopped. People prompted him with the next words of the blessing, but he held up his hand for silence. Then he started to weep, unable to complete his thoughts. He passed the olive branch to the next participant.

At the conclusion of the event, a participant complained that I had not really “taught” the group about democracy (one of their objectives). Suddenly, the elderly man who had interrupted earlier spoke up again, disagreeing strongly with the criticism. He insisted that the group had, in fact, “truly practiced democracy…because we were allowed to speak in our Mother Tongue and say what we needed to!” Others agreed, and the mood shifted to joyous celebration, unity and optimism, and away from tension and polarization.[2]

I maintain that this interaction was an example of the transformative power of the politics of small things and peace writ small. In this experience, the group transgressed the stultifying intractable conflict narratives. The historical pluralism in Iraq was re-embraced, and the ethnically divisive and anti-minority narrative of the Baath party (and of the current sectarian violence) was actively resisted. This group had met and spoken as equals, had developed a capacity to act, and ultimately had redefined the situation. This group engaged alternatives, which is miraculous in the context of intractable conflict. The man’s angry ethnocentrism, rooted in the intractable conflict narrative, had given way to tears and a renewed sense of freedom and possibility. A new narrative was enacted in that room, which, I believe, has long-ranging and important consequences for peace.

Conclusion

While I remain passionately committed to the optimistic vision of Peace Writ Large, I increasingly also believe in the power of the small to help guide the practice and study of peace building. A recent report by the Alliance for Peacebuilding (2012) argues that “Peacebuilding is on the cusp of a true revolution”. I concur, and I believe that the real revolution for the field will be in the details.

References

Peacebuilding 2.0: Mapping the Boundaries of an Expanding Field, Alliance for Peacebuilding, Fall 2012

Anderson, Mary B., Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1999

Anderson, Mary B. & Olson, Laura, Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace Practitioners. Cambridge, MA: The Collaborative for Development Action, Inc., 2003

CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program. Issue Paper: “CLAIMS AND REALITY OF LINKAGES BETWEEN PEACE WRIT LARGE AND peace writ little”, 12 March 2012

Chigas, Diana and Woodrow, Peter, “Envisioning and Pursuing Peace Writ Large”, Berghof Handbook Dialogue No. 7, Peacebuilding at a Crossroads? Dilemmas and Paths for Another Generation, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, (2009), accessed at this Web address.

Coleman, P.T., Vallacher, R., Nowak, A. and Bue Ngoc, L., Intractable Conflict as an Attractor: Presenting a Dynamical Model of Conflict, Escalation, and Intractability (June 1, 2005). IACM 18th Annual Conference.

Coleman, Peter T., The Five Percent: finding solutions for seemingly impossible conflicts, New York: Public Affairs, 2011

—- “Polarized Collective Identities: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature”, International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Teachers College Columbia University, p.3

Collins, Randall, Violence: a micro-sociological theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008

Daalder, Ivo & Froman, Michael, “Dayton’s Incomplete Peace”, Foreign Affairs

Vol. 78, No. 6 (Nov. – Dec., 1999), pp. 106-113, Council on Foreign Relations

Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980

—-Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House, 1995

Goffman, Erving, The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959

Galtung, Johann, True worlds: a transitional perspective. New York: Free Press, 1981

Goldfarb, Jeffrey, the politics of small things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006

—- “The Sociology of Micro-politics: An Examination of a Neglected Field of Political Action in the Middle East and Beyond”, Sociology Compass, Vol. 2, Issue 6, Nov. 2008, 1816-2008

—-“Resistance and Creativity in Social Interaction: For and Against Memory in Poland, Israel–Palestine, and the United States”, International Journal of Politics Culture and Society, Springer, Vol. 22 No 2, June 2009

—-Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012

Lederach, John Paul, Building peace. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1997

—-Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996

Ross, Marc Howard, Cultural contestation in ethnic conflilct. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Vallacher, R. R., Coleman, P. T., & Nowak, A. (in press).  “When do conflicts become intractable? The dynamical perspective on malignant social relations.”  In L. Trop (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict.  New York: Oxford University Press.

[2] From ZM personal field notes.

During my sabbatical, I have had the luxury of reading in a leisurely fashion, without courses and writing projects in mind, going where my interests take me. It has been a pleasure and, as it happens, a fruitful practice. Without intention, it has led me to a new project, as I have already reported: an exploration of the unresolvable dilemmas built into the social fabric, the study of the social condition. Today, another example, the tensions between religion and politics in modern society: I returned to this problem reading Nachman Ben Yehuda’s latest book, Theocratic Democracy: The Social Construction of Religious and Secular Extremism.

Ben Yehuda, my old friend and colleague, is studying in his book Jewish extremism in the Jewish state. He investigates deviance in the religious community as a way to analyze the conflict between the religious and secular in Israel. Central religious and political commitments in Israel as a matter of the identity of the national community pose serious problems. Not only has the recognition of Israel as a Jewish Democratic state become a key demand and obstacle in negotiations with the Palestinians: it has become a problematic challenge to the relationship among Israeli Jews. Nachman, an occasional Deliberately Considered contributor explores this. His central findings are presented in part 2 of Theocratic Democracy, on the deviance and the non-conformity of the ultra orthodox, and part 3 on cultural conflict in the media.

In part 2, a selection of “illustrative events and affairs” is presented, among many others: a 1958 affair surrounding the building of a swimming pool for mixed, male and female, bathing, in ultra-orthodox rendering the “abomination pool,” and the 1981 ultra-orthodox attack on an archaeological dig of the City of David, near the old city of Jerusalem, leading to a series of conflicts, ultimately resulting in the fine tuning of the law of archaeology. During 1985-6, there were Haredi attacks on advertising posters.  Further, there were attacks on movie theaters open on the Saturday Sabbath, and many other attacks against free secular activity understood as abominations according to religious orthodoxy. Most heart rendering are the reports on controversies revolving around the question of who is a Jew? (And therefore, who has full citizenship rights in the Jewish state). Some of the tensions have had less to do with principle, more to do with raw politics and corruption: thus, the decade long controversy concerning the Ayeh Deri. I particularly liked Chapter 7 “Themes of Deviance and Unconventionality,” which presents media reports from 1948 to 1998 in alphabetic order from ‘”Archeological Excavations to “Violence in the Family.” Using the alphabet demonstrates how broad and deep his selected examples go.

Ben Yehuda’s careful analysis of how these various events and affairs were reported differently in secular and the religious mass media is especially important. He shows how the tensions between subgroups in the society are perpetuated by how the groups perceive their connections and conflicts and how these are reported. Thus, for example,

“In 1987 Yeduit Aharonot reported:

‘A yeshiva student spat on a woman soldier because of an immodest dress and called her ‘slut.’ A police officer arrested the offender….About 30 other yeshiva students ….attacked the police officers in order to free the arrested yeshiva student. Police arrested 10 of them.’

Hamodea’s version was that the yeshiva student was arrested because he ‘was badly offended when [he saw] that near the [Western Wall] a woman soldier …offended the holiness of the place in public. The yeshiva student was arrested when he expressed his protest.’”

Agency and responsibility are reversed, confirming each side in its attitude towards the other. I am struck by how in this, and the many other media accounts Nachman reviews, the fundamental tension in the Democratic Jewish state is reinforced by the media, and this is not necessarily the result of bad will or tendentiousness (though it may sometimes be).

Many critics of Israel take from this situation proof that the secular Zionist project is fundamentally flawed, moving religious Zionists to emphasize the religious side of the Jewish state and secular critics to post or anti-Zionism (especially when considering the Palestinian problem). My friend is less radical, more moderate and modest in his appraisal.

Ben Yehuda believes that the conflict in “a theocratic democracy [by which he means “a democracy with strong theocratic colors in some areas”] … can be managed, mitigated and handled, but it cannot be ‘solved’ at a reasonable social price.” And that this implies “instability, never-ending negotiations, and chronic tensions, and requires politicians to have the dexterity and skills to keep such a political structure viable.”

As far as the Israeli case, I remain perplexed.  Considering that the fundamental tragedy includes the Palestinians, I think that the conflict may be beyond the dexterity and skills of any politician, that the relationship between democracy and religion is truly complex. But as I read Theocratic Democracy, a difficult title naming a very difficult political situation, I think that my friend is exploring a very important general issue, his is a case study of the inherent tension between religion and politics, an important element of the social condition, and he is right that the only way to understand the social condition is by theoretically and politically muddling through. There are no easy answers.

On the one hand, societies in general are based on common cultural commitments and understanding, and these are quite often religious, while on the other, the conflation of politics and religion makes an autonomous politics impossible.

Israelis struggle with this, as do many political communities. Tocqueville considered this social condition in the opening chapters of volume 2 of Democracy in America. It is a fundamental problem in the Muslim world, obviously in Egypt today. Perhaps the case of Turkey demonstrates that political leaders with dexterity and skills can address it. But even in the U.S., which Tocqueville believed had resolved the religion – politics dilemma long ago, the conflicts persist, sometimes as comedy, as revealed in the season of the “war on Christmas,” but looming as a tragedy, as Catholics, Jews and Muslims, among others, have been excluded by some from full citizenship in our society’s history.

I particularly appreciate that Nachman addresses an important case of the social condition revealing complexity, eschewing easy theoretical and political answers.

This is the first part of a two-part post. Today I focus on Israel and point to comparisons. In part 2, I explore the comparisons. –Jeff

I am mimicking the title of my second book, On Cultural Freedom: An Exploration of Public Life in Poland and America in the title of this post, as I am imagining writing a second volume, a case study focusing the theory in my book written thirty years ago to a particular cultural domain today. My thought experiment is motivated by a concern for my intellectual home, the university.

While the immediate stimulus for these reflections is the attack upon the Politics and Government Department at Ben Gurion University in Israel, first reported here on Tuesday, I think the crudeness of the attack is matched by more subtle, but also powerful, challenges to academic freedom and quality quite apparent in the United States, and elsewhere. I write about these concerns, thinking of my students and particularly of a Deliberately Considered contributor from Pakistan, Daniyal Khan.

The attack on the academic freedom of the politics and government of Ben Gurion University is straightforward political repression. There is an attempt on the part of the Israeli right to cleanse the Israeli academy of what it takes to be “anti-Zionism.” A NGO, sometimes labeled as Fascist, Im Tirtzu, has led the charge. Right-wing politicians have used institutional means to attempt a purge. There are only days left to forestall this dire outcome. (protest against these developments here)

An international review panel recommended reforms to broaden the intellectual profile of Ben Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government (something I for one am not sure is a good idea) and the recommendations have been creatively misinterpreted by the Israeli Council for Higher Education (CHE), a government-appointed body charged with the supervision and financing of universities and colleges in Israel, to justify closing the department down. The independence of the university is under direct political assault.

This is classic case of political repression of cultural freedom, reminiscent of the fate of Socrates. The Israeli government, right-wing politicians and a segment of civil society are concerned that the Ben Gurion professors are corrupting the young, turning them away from patriotic feeling and commitment. A nice irony: the president of the university, Professor Rivka Carmi, is a leading critic of the left-wing professors of her institution, but has forcefully defended them:

The sub-committee’s decision was reached without any factual base to back it up; it is unreasonable and disproportional and most notably, it does not in any way reflect the opinion of the international committee which oversaw the process. We therefore wonder what is actually behind this decision.

A critic of the left, but also a critic of political repression, Professor Carmi is a defender of academic freedom. I would interview her for my imagined book. I would like to know in detail her reasoning and explore her judgment. I suspect a fundamental commitment to the goods of scholarship and teaching as a priority over politics and the ethos of the state would be the basis of both of her critical moves. I imagine her commitment would be to cultural freedom.

From my point of view, as the author of On Cultural Freedom, Carmi’s commitment to academic freedom can be understood in terms of three different, though related, conversations that are threaten by the actions of the Israeli state apparatus: the conversation the political scientists and theorists in the department have with their predecessors, the conversation they have with their peers, fellow researchers and thinkers in Israel and around the world, and the conversation they have with their students. Ideology and the interest of the state are disrupting these conversations.

I explained cultural freedom in terms of the conversations in On Cultural Freedom (formulated a bit differently). My point now, informed by my earlier inquiry, is that academic freedom exists if such conversations are ongoing and vibrant. It is under attack when forces interrupt them. Clearly in Israel this is happening. Even if the Department of Politics and Government is not closed down, there is an escalating demand for ideological correctness from researchers and teachers, and students learn from this. Politics is challenging academic life. I believe comparisons to McCarthyism are understatements.

Young researchers will wonder if they will get a job if their work crosses a political line. Established professors will think twice about questioning political orthodoxy, fearing for the secure positions of their departments and colleagues, and for themselves. Closing the department at Ben Gurion will close the Israeli political mind.

The academy and Israeli democracy will then suffer a serious blow. This is extremely worrying for those concerned about the independence of scholarship and education, and for democracy in Israel. Academic quality and state enforced political correctness don’t mix, and informed decision without academic quality is unlikely in a modern democracy. In my imagined book, I would spell this out.

But I would want to underscore that the threat to academic freedom does not only come in the form of overt political repression. This was a key point of On Cultural Freedom. I showed how, despite overt political repression, the three conversations were sustained, with varying degrees of success, around the old Soviet bloc. And I showed how the repressive aspects of the market sometimes worked to kill cultural freedom just as effectively as a powerful state: analyzing how this worked specifically in the cases of theater in Poland and America. In my imagined book, I would explore this insight, concerned as I am by the escalating penetration of market and corporate logic into university practice in America. In my new book, I would examine the case of the attempted firing of Theresa Sullivan as President of the University of Virginia. I would also explore how both political and economic interference in academic life affects the prospects of a new generation supporting the life of the mind on universities around the world, including a young aspiring academic in Pakistan. More on that in my next post.

The members of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University have agreed among themselves not to individually publish opinion pieces on the threat of closing of their department. For this reason, I have taken down the first version of this post. Instead I reproduce here the explanation of the situation of the department and the state of academic freedom in Israel given on the site Israel Academy Under Attack. For more information on the attack, go to the site, which includes suggestions for ways concerned readers can effectively respond to this assault on academic freedom.  -Jeff

On September 4th 2012 the sub-committee for quality control of the Israeli Council of Higher Education recommended that the department of Politics and Government at BGU be prevented from registering new students for the 2013-14 academic year. This recommendation — which, if implemented, will lead to the closure of the department — will be voted on by the CHE in its next general meeting, due to take place on October 23rd. Below we provide an overview of the events that led to the sub-committee’s decision.

The saga began when the Israeli Council of Higher Education established an international evaluation committee to scrutinize political science departments in Israel.

From the very beginning, the process was mired by irregularities. First, Prof. Ian Lustick, a prominent American political scientist from U of Penn and an internationally recognized expert on Israeli society and politics, was removed from the evaluation committee for unknown reasons. In response, the original committee chair, Prof. Robert Shapiro of Columbia University, resigned and the political science department at Hebrew University stopped cooperating with the committee. The committee was subsequently recomposed with Prof. Thomas Risse from Frei University in Berlin taking the helm (Risse was aware that the other people resigned and still took it on), and included such people as Israeli Prof. Avraham Diskin who had previously written articles in support of the radical right wing group Im Tirzu.

This committee, whose members are praised as positivist and empiricist political scientists produced a report that was not only biased but erred on key facts, errors that facilitated its unprecedented conclusion – the department of Politics and Government, which was established purposefully in order to foster and advance interdisciplinary, critical and qualitative research (the kind of research which is currently under represented in all other political science departments in Israel) was instructed to introduce mainstream positivist political science into its research and curricula. Failing to do so, the Council of Higher Education should consider shutting it down.

This evaluation, which was biased both politically and disciplinarily, was also based on basic factual errors. For example: The committee counted only 50% of the refereed articles published by department members. And while criticizing the department at BGU, they praised the department of political science at Tel-Aviv University which published the same amount of articles but have twice as many faculty members. Furthermore, in the original report the evaluation committee erroneously stated that faculty members have not published books in leading academic publishing houses, but the nine full-time faculty have, in fact, published six books in the three years prior to the report, of which three appeared in the top 10 academic publishing houses (California, Cornell, Columbia), two more with Routledge, and a sixth with the top press in France.

The excellent quality of scholarship members of the department have produced, and the fact that they are frequent and welcome guest at the best academic institutes (the Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, the school of public health at Chicago, or Cambridge University) has found little echo in the report. The committee was also not impressed with the average grant per faculty member, which is over $100,000, a relatively high sum in the discipline, and perhaps the highest among political science departments in Israel. Finally, it ignored the fact that this fall graduates from the department are beginning their PhDs at universities like Columbia and Northwestern.

On the basis of such errors the committee under-evaluated the department in terms of individual merit, and could easily direct its criticism to the “excessive social activism” of its members – which means nothing but their leftist political leaning – and to the interdisciplinary ethos and of the department (where half of the faculty come from fields like political geography, public health, and history).

For obvious bureaucratic and political reasons, the administration of Ben Gurion University felt it had to comply with the report and directed the department to hire three faculty members in areas mentioned in the report: comparative politics, quantitative methods and political theory and to introduce some changes to the curriculum. Two international evaluators – Thomas Risse and Ellen M. Immergut, appointed by the Council to oversee the implementation of the report, wrote in a letter sent to the Council that they “congratulate the department on successfully recruiting three new faculty members in the areas of comparative politics, quantitative methods, and political theory, and for its plans for a fourth recruitment next year.” They called upon the University to allow these young scholars “the time, resources, and mentoring to publish in top ranked international refereed journals and university presses,” in a way that would help the department “fulfill its deficits in mainstream political science,” adding that “the department should increase its diversity in terms of methods and theoretical orientations in future recruitments”. No criticism or sanctions were mentioned in this letter.

And yet, on September 4th 2012 a sub-committee within the Council of Higher Education followed this letter with a proposal to shut down the department because it failed to comply with the report of the international committee. The gap between the report filed by Risse and Immergut and the decision reached by the sub-committee of the Council of Higher Education underscores that this whole “evaluation process” has turned into a witch hunt, or was such a hunt in disguise from the beginning. For reasons which are difficult – or too easy? – to understand, the authors of the abovementioned letter, professors Risse and Immegut, have failed so far to clarify their opinion about the way their service to the Council of Higher Education has been abused so as to silence excellent academics some of whom happen to be identified as active members of the left in Israel.