Jaga,
Interesting article. I see some similarities with my own views. Especially in the case of the links between Israel, Poland, Hungary and Austria. Maybe that is not such a strange phenomenon, because much of the European-Jewish Ashkenazi immigrants to Palestine were Polish jews, Hungarian jews and probably Austrian jews too. Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians and leaders don't give so much about Diaspora jews, because you have millions of Israeli jews with a different identity and political affiliation than the progressive liberal American jews and the Social democratic and European Liberal European jews. He has conservative Christian allies (there are more Christian Zionists than Jewish Zionists in the world) and he has his secular conservative, secular nationalist and Religious Zionist support base in Israel.
The jewish world is very complicated, as complicated as the Christian world and the Muslim world. Like the Muslims and Christians the jews are very divided, polarized and different from each other. A saying says; “Ask two Jews, get three opinions.” (Rabbi Susan Grossman:
www.beliefnet.com/columnists/virtualtalmud/2007/05/two-jews-three-opinions.html ). Fact is that today many American, Canadian, European, Australian, New Zealandish and maybe also South-African jews are dissatisfied with the direction Israeli is going under the present thirty-fourth government of Israel, also known as the Fourth Netanyahu Government. Dear friends a decade ago I left a Dutch jewish forum after fierce clashes on that forum between Dutch Diaspora jews and rightwing Israeli Settler who were National Union (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_(Israel) , Moledet (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moledet ), Yesha Council (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesha_Council ), and the rightwing, National conservative, Right-wing populist and Revisionist Zionist wing of the Likud party. I saw a fierce battle between jews amongst themselves which looked like an online battle between for instance Pro-palestinian BDS movement ( Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement ) and Free Palestine movement and Electronic Intifada people on one side and Likud, The Jewish Home ((Hebrew: הַבַּיִת הַיְהוּדִי, HaBayit HaYehudi) and Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu (Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל בֵּיתֵנוּ, lit. Israel Our Home) on the other side. Very aggressive, very intolerant, very heated, very personal attacks. The Israeli settler of Duch decent attacked a leftwing Dutch Rabbi, called the Red Rabbi (red is the color of socialism and the left in Europe in contrast with the USA where Red stands for the Republican conservatives and Blue stands for the Democatic liberals.). The moderatar/administrator of the Forum Raya Lichansky had to stop the Forum, because it became too tense. That was very unfortunate. I was active on that Forum before I started engaging in Jaga's Bella Polish Culture Forum.
I learned a great deal about Dutch Judaism, my own Polish jewish family, Diaspora Judaism vs Israeli judaism, and got some connections out of that. My great desire is with my Roman-Catholic and Protestant and secular native Duch Ruach group in the Norbertine Abbey of Heewsijk Dinther to organise a Jewish day in 2019. One big problem in that is that the Jewish Sabath takes place from friday evening when the sun goes down to saturday evening when the sun goes down. So, I have 2 choices. One. I have to have secular jewish experts who can tell me something about the Jewish faith, history and culture or I have to convince my fellow members that we should have our day one time on Sunday, so that an Orthodox Rabbi can join us to explain Judaism, the jewish faith and all aspects of jewish culture to us in one day? I had a successful Muslim day with Turkish friends in early 2018 and I hope that I can repeat that with a Jewish day in 2019.
Back to the subject. Israel from it's start was based on nation building and in my opinion had a Nietschian ideal with it's pioneer jews, the new jews that built Israel. I want to separate Nietsche's philosophy very strictly from the abuse the Nazi's made of his philosophy, because Nietsche wasn't an anti-semite.
The early Zionists were deeply concerned with the authenticity of the modern Jew qua person and with the content and direction of the reawakening Hebrew culture. Nietzsche too was propagating his highest ideal of a personal authenticity. Yet the affinities in their thought, and the formative impact of Nietzsche on the first leaders and writers of the Zionist movement, have attracted very little attention from intellectual historians. Indeed, the antisemitic uses to which Nietzsche's thought was turned after his death have led most commentators to assume the philosopher's antipathy to Jewish aspirations. Jacob Golomb proposes a Nietzsche whose sympathies overturn such preconceptions and details for the first time how Nietzsche's philosophy inspired Zionist leaders, ideologues, and writers to create a modern Hebrew culture.
Ahad Ha'am,
Micha Josef Berdichevski,
Martin Buber,
Theodor Herzl,
Max Nordau, and
Hillel Zeitlin as examples of
Zionists who "
dared to look into Nietzsche's abyss."
Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (18 August 1856 – 2 January 1927), primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am (Hebrew: אחד העם, lit. 'one of the people', Genesis 26:10), was a Hebrew essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel, he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews". Cultural Zionism (Hebrew: צִיּוֹנוּת רוּחָנִית, translit. Tsiyonut ruchanit) is a strain of the concept of Zionism that values creating a Jewish state with its own secular Jewish culture and history, including language and historical roots, rather than other Zionist ideas such as political Zionism.In 1890 the Little Russian-born writer of Hebrew, a journalist, and a scholar
Micha Josef Berdyczewski (Mikhah Yosef Bin-Gorion; 1865 – 1921) went to
Germany and
Switzerland, studied at the universities of
Berlin,
Breslau (the present day Polish city
Wrocław) and
Bern, and completed his
Doctor of Philosophy degree. In this period
Berdyczewski studied the works of the great German philosophers
Nietzsche and
Hegel, and was deeply influenced by them. In the ten years until his return to
Ukraine he published many articles and stories in Hebrew journals. Up to 1900, the year in which he married
Rahel Ramberg,
Berdyczewski had published ten books. His work had influence in both
the European Diaspora Jewish world as in
Zionist circles in
Palestine,
Israel and the
USA. Via his work
Nietzsche's philosophy,
ideas and
work had influence on
Zionism.
Micha Josef BerdyczewskiMartin Buber (Hebrew: מרטין בובר; German: Martin Buber; Yiddish: מארטין בובער; February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) was an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I–Thou relationship and the I–It relationship.
Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher Martin BuberDespite
Buber's connection to
the Davidic line as a descendant of
Katzenellenbogen, a personal religious crisis led him to break with
Jewish religious customs. He began reading
Immanuel Kant,
Søren Kierkegaard, and
Friedrich Nietzsche. The latter two, in particular, inspired him to pursue studies in philosophy. In
1896,
Buber went to study in
Vienna (philosophy, art history,
German studies, philology).
In
1898, he joined
the Zionist movement, participating in congresses and
organizational work. In
1899, while studying in
Zürich,
Buber met his future wife,
Paula Winkler, a "
brilliant Catholic writer from a Bavarian peasant family" who later
converted to Judaism.
Buber, initially, supported and celebrated
the Great War as a '
world historical mission' for
Germany along with
Jewish intellectuals to
civilize the Near East.
Theodor Herzl (1860 – 1904), the
father of modern political Zionism lived and worked in the same time as
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) and read and knew
Nietzsche's work.
Herzl published
Nietzsche's work in his Viennese newspaper
the Neue Freie Presse.
As a young man,
Herzl was an ardent
Germanophile who saw
the Germans as the best
Kulturvolk (
cultured people) in
Central Europe and embraced
the German ideal of Bildung, whereby reading great works of literature by
Goethe and
Shakespeare could allow one to appreciate the beautiful things in life, and thus become a morally better person (
the Bildung theory tended to equate beauty with goodness). Through
Bildung,
Herzl believed that
Hungarian Jews such as himself could shake off their "
shameful Jewish characteristics" caused by long centuries of
impoverishment and
oppression, and become
civilized Central Europeans, a true
Kulturvolk along
the German lines.
The father of modern political Zionism Theodor HerzAt the
University of Vienna,
Herzl studied law. As a young law student, Herzl became a member of
the German nationalist Burschenschaft (
fraternity)
Albia, which had the motto
Ehre,
Freiheit,
Vaterland ("
Honor, Freedom, Fatherland").
He later resigned in protest at the organisation's antisemitism.
The anti-semitic Dreyfus Affair (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair ) and the
Austrian and
French anti-semitism he witnessed turned
Theodor Herzl into
a Zionist. He became convinced that there was no place for jews in Europe and that they had to find and create their own homeland.
In the concept of
Muscular Judaism you see the clear influence of
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German:
Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen) on Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic
Max Simon Nordau (1849 – 1923).
Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic Max Simon NordauNordau, at the 1898 Zionist Congress, coined the term "
muscular Judaism" (
muskel-Judenthum) as a descriptor of a Jewish culture and religion which directed its adherents to reach for certain moral and corporeal ideals which, through
discipline,
agility and
strength, would result in a
stronger,
more physically assured Jew ("
Übermensch") who would outshine the long-held
stereotype of
the weak,
intellectually sustained Jew ( "
Untermensch" ). He would further explore the concept of the "
muscle Jew" in a
1900 article of
the Jewish Gymnastics Journal.
Fact is that in the Jewish world in Europe, the USA and Israel German, Austrian, British, French, Dutch, Belgian and maybe Swiss jews formed an Ashkenazi elite of assimilated European jews. The Jews of the German speaking world, the German jews tend to look down on the
Ost Jude (
Eastern jew), meaning Polish-, Russian-, Ukrainian-, Belarussian-, Baltic-, Romenian-Moldovan (Bessarabian), Georgian-, Bulgarian- and Armenian jews as oriental people, as
Yiddish speakers (Weiber Deutsch, female German, in the words of the German Jewish philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn, who is the father of the
Haskalah, the '
Jewish enlightenment'.
Weiber Deutsch ment dat the [primitive] Yiddish speaking
Eastern jewish mom taught
Yiddish to her child. Yiddish (ייִדיש, יידיש or אידיש, yidish/idish, lit. "Jewish", pronounced [ˈjɪdɪʃ] [ˈɪdɪʃ]; in older sources ייִדיש-טײַטש Yidish-Taitsh, lit. Judaeo-German) is
the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in
Central Europe, providing the nascent
Ashkenazi community with
a High German-based vernacular fused with elements taken from
Hebrew and
Aramaic as well as from
Slavic languages and
traces of Romance languages.
Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized version of
the Hebrew alphabet. As a assimilated Hochdeutsch or Standarddeutsch (Standard German) speaking German jew
Moses Mendelssohn had difficulties with the language Yiddish which he considered an Eastern-European German dialect in which a strange mix of German, Hebrew, Slavic and Romance elements create a crazy German slang. Like later
Zionists who saw
Zionism as an ideology, movement and goal to get the Eastern-European jews out of their backward, impoverished, humiliated and inferior position as pauper masses. And the modern Hebrew (Ivriet) of the '
new'
jew that came out of the
Old Eastern-European Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi jews, should replace the old
Central-European and Eastern-Euroepean Yiddish speaking Diaspora identity of the
Schlemiel (
Schlemihl in German), "
incompentent person" or "
fool." A schlemiel is "
irredeemably what they are."
German was the language of the enlightened, Western, German jew, who was equal to the Native European christian German with his high culture) and as poor, primitive, Ultra-Orthodox, shtetl and ghetto jews. This way of looking at Central- and Eastern-European Ashkenazi jews by the assimilated German jews was nearly the same way as non-Jewish christian native European anti-semites looked down with contempt at European jews.
Moses Mendelssohn (6 September 1729[2] – 4 January 1786) was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the 'Jewish enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is indebted.I remember reading that during the thirties Dutch jews (of whom many had Polish Ashkenazi jewish, Russian Ashkenazi jewish, Ukrainian Ashkenazi jewish and Lithuanian Ashkenazi jewish heritages next to the Portuguese Sephardic jewish elite in the Netherlands) had problems with the arrogant assimilated, very German, German jews who came to the Netherlands. The Dutch jews saw these German jews as more German than native Germans. These German jews felt very humiliated that they weren't seen as Germans, because they built German industries, factories, contributed to German science and culture and fought in the First World War as German soldiers and officers. I hear this story of German or West-European jews looking down on the
Ost-Jude (=
Central-European and Eastern-European jews) over and over by European historians, Israeli writers and historians and American jewish historians. I don't dislike German jews personally and think that we must watch out to generalise them as '
arrogant', '
discriminatory' and '
racist' jews within the jewish world, but I think it is true that the German jews formed in the beginning some sort of elite in the USA, in Israel and in Europe. Maybe because they were assimilated and had some political, financial-economical and military power in the German empire, the Weimar republic and in Austria before the Anschluss ( the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938). I don't believe that present day
German jews and
Austrian jews stil have that prejudice attitude towards the '
Ost Juden' (Eastern-jews; Central- and Eastern European jews east of Germany and Austria), but the German and Austrian German speaking jews have to deal with that image that exists of them from the past and their being perceived as being a
yekke (also
Jecke) a Jew of German-speaking origin. Stereotypes of the German jew is that they are known for their attention to detail and punctuality. In countries like Switzerland, Eastern France (Alsace and Lorraine), the Netherlands and Luxembourg you can find many people with a
yekke (German Jewish) background (Often offspring of refugees from Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria, from those families who survived the Holocaust and returned to these countries in staid of going back to Germany and Austria).
Nietzsche and ZionismJacob Golomb observed, "Nietzsche's ideas were widely disseminated among and appropriated by the first Hebrew Zionist writers and leaders." According to Steven Aschheim, "Classical Zionism, that essentially secular and modernizing movement, was acutely aware of the crisis of Jewish tradition and its supporting institutions. Nietzsche was enlisted as an authority for articulating the movement's ruptured relationship with the past and a force in its drive to normalization and its activist ideal of self-creating Hebraic New Man."
Francis R. Nicosia notes, "At the height of his fame between 1895 and 1902, some of Nietzsche's ideas seemed to have a particular resonance for some Zionists, including Theodore Herzl." Among many other facts that show Herzl had a serious interest in Nietzsche, at least for a time (including the fact that under his editorship the Neue Freie Presse dedicated seven consecutive issues to Nietzsche obituaries), Golomb points out that Herzl's cousin Raoul Auernheimer claimed, in a memorial tribute, that Herzl was familiar with Nietzsche and had "absorbed his style".
On the other hand, Gabriel Sheffer suggests that Herzl was too bourgeois and too eager to be accepted into mainstream society to be much of a (even if "aristocratic") revolutionary, and hence could not have been strongly influenced by Nietzsche, but remarks, "Some East European Jewish intellectuals, such as the writers Yosef Hayyim Brenner and Micha Josef Berdyczewski, followed after Herzl because they thought that Zionism offered the chance for a Nietzschean 'transvaluation of values' within Jewry". Nietzsche also influenced Theodor Lessing.
Martin Buber was fascinated by Nietzsche, whom he praised as a heroic figure, and he strove to introduce "a Nietzschean perspective into Zionist affairs." In 1901, Buber, who had just been appointed the editor of Die Welt, the primary publication of the World Zionist Organization, published a poem in Zarathustrastil ( a style reminiscent of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra) calling for the return of Jewish literature, art and scholarship.
However, praise for Nietzsche was not by any means universal among Zionists. Max Nordau, an early Zionist orator and controversial racial anthropologist, insisted that Nietzsche had been insane since birth, and advocated "branding his disciples [...] as hysterical and imbecile."
Israel todayBack to today folks. Israel exists for 70 years now and many Israeli's with an European Ashkenazi background, Sephardic jewish backround and Mizrahi background are simply Israeli's born in Israel in a country where Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, French, Armenian, Greek, Berber, Iranian Farsi, Kurdic languages and Turkish are spoken, but where Hebrew is dominant. These jews were born in
British Palestine in the Jewish community Yishuv of that time in Jewish neighbourhoods, towns or cities or in socialist or religious (Orthodox jewish)
kibbutzim (
collective agricultural communities) or
moshavim (
cooperative agricultural communities). Generations of Israeli jews received the collective Israeli identity and the feeling of connection and beloning to Israel via military service in the
Israeli Defense Forces (
Tzahal) and the Israeli education system.
IDF - Israel Defense Forces - Women Speed up and simplify the pistol loading process with the RAE Industries Magazine Loader. National military service is mandatory for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18, although Arab (but not Druze) citizens are exempted if they so please, and other exceptions may be made on religious, physical or psychological grounds (see Profile 21). The Tal law, which exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews from service, has been the subject of several court cases as well as considerable legislative controversy.
Until the draft of July 2015, men served three years in the IDF. Men drafted as of July 2015 and later will serve two years and eight months (32 months), with some roles requiring an additional four months of Permanent service. Women serve two years. The IDF women who volunteer for several combat positions often serve for three years, due to the longer period of training. Women in other positions, such as programmers, who also require lengthy training time, may also serve three years.
Israel is one of only a few nations that conscript women or deploy them in combat roles, although in practice, women can avoid conscription through a religious exemption and over a third of Israeli women do so. As of 2010, 88% of all roles in the IDF are open to female candidates, and women could be found in 69% of all IDF positions.
For a long time military service in the IDF was some sort of integration course for new jewish immigrants in Israel. The army shaped the Israeli identity. You learned Hebrew there and brotherhood and serving the nation.
For millennia medieval European antisemitism often forbade the Jews from owning land and farming, which limited their career choices for making a decent living. This forced many Jews to place a much higher premium on education allowing them to seek alternative career options that involved entrepreneurial and white-collar professional pursuits such as merchant trading, science, medicine, law, accountancy, and moneylending as these professions required higher levels of verbal, mathematical, and scientific literacy. The emphasis of education within Israeli society has its modern roots at least since the Jewish diaspora from the Renaissance and Enlightenment Movement all the way to the roots of Zionism in the 1880s. Jewish communities in the Levant were the first to introduce compulsory education for which the organized community, not less than the parents, was responsible for the education of the next generation. With contemporary Jewish culture's strong emphasis, promotion of scholarship and learning and the strong propensity to promote cultivation of intellectual pursuits as well as the nation's high university educational attainment rate exemplifies how highly Israeli society values higher education.
Arab sectorA women walks past a campaign billboard for the Joint (Arab) List in Umm el-Fahm in the Haifa District of Israel in March 2015. (photo credit: REUTERS)Israel is a signatory of the Convention against Discrimination in Education, and ratified it in 1961. The convention has the status of law in Israeli courts.
Israel operates an
Arab education system for
the Israeli-Arab minority, teaching
Arab students, in
Arabic, about their history and culture. However, there have been claims that the Jewish education system gets more resources. According to the Follow-Up Committee for
Arab Education,
the Israeli government spends an average of $192 per year on each
Arab student, and $1,100 per
Jewish student. It also notes that drop-out rate for
Israeli Arab citizens is twice as high as that of their
Jewish counterparts (12 percent versus 6 percent). The same group also noted that in
2005, there was a 5,000-classroom shortage in
the Arab sector.
In
1999, in attempt to close the gap between
Arab and
Jewish education sectors, the Israeli education minister,
Yossi Sarid, announced an affirmative action policy, promising that Arabs would be granted 25% of the education budget, more than their proportional share in the population (18%). He also added that the ministry would support the creations of an
Arab academic college.
In
2001, a Human Rights Watch report stated that students in government-run
Arab schools received inferior education due to fewer teachers, inadequate school construction, and lack of libraries and recreational space. Jewish schools were found to be better equipped, some offering film editing studios and theater rooms. In 2009, Sorel Cahan of
Hebrew University's School of Education claimed that the average per-student budget allocation for students with special needs at
Arab junior high schools was five times lower.
In
2007, the
Israeli Education Ministry announced a plan to increase funding for schools in
Arab communities. According to a ministry official, "
At the end of the process, a lot of money will be directed toward schools with students from families with low education and income levels, mainly in the Arab sector." The Education Ministry prepared a five-year plan to close the gaps and raise the number of students eligible for high school matriculation.
A
2009 report showed that obstacles to
Arab students participating in higher education resulted in over 5,000 moving to study in nearby
Jordan.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and various scholars have criticized wide disparities in education access between
Jewish Israelis and
Arab Israelis, and underfunding of
Arab schools.
Again back to the subject of this thread. It is a fact that many jews today have problems with the present day Israeli government, the direction
Israel is heading and the way Israel is behaving towards
American Judaism,
European Judaism and
world Judaism. It is a fact that in contrast with 70, 80 or 90 years ago when the jewish community in British Palestine or early Israel was still small if you compared it to
American Judaism, today the
Israeli jews are a dominant force in
the Jewish world. Fact is that with
6,336,400 jews in
Israel there are more jews in
Israel than in the
USA where
5,700,000 jews live.
But, but, if you count the 5,700,000
American jews with the 460,000 in France, 388,000 jews in Canada, 290,000 in Argentina, 179,500 in Russia, 117,000 jews in Germany, 113,000 jews in Australia, 94,200 jews in Brazil, 69,500 jews in South-Africa, 56,000 jews in Ukraine, 47,600 jews in Hungary, 40,000 jews in Mexico, 29,900 jews in the Netherlands (they are invisible over here and have fewer and fewer influence in the Netherlands where you have a Muslim community of 850,000 people on a total population of 17,249,632 people), 29,500 Belgian jews, 27,400 Italian jews, 18,800 Swiss jews, 18,300 Chilian jews, 17,000 Uruguayan jews, 15,500 Turkish jews, 15,000 Swedish jews and 167,400 in the rest of the world, than you see that Israel has stil a minority of the world Judaism. But due to Modern Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox jews the Israeli Jewish population is growing and also due to Jewish immigration from Europe and other continents. European jews immigrate for various reasons to Israel. Some of the reasons are intolerance and Islamic anti-semitism, far right anti-semitism, extreme left anti-semitism and countries who prohibited Ritual slaughter by Orthodox jews and Muslims.
I personally believe and see
Israel as a
Jewish-Arab state with
a Hebrew-Arab linguistic culture and
a Jewish-Arab future. Not out of naive idealism, a leftist or liberal desire for a 2 state solution or universal humanism and social equality ideas. Fact is that today there is inequaltiy in
Israel between
Jews and
non-Jews, inequality between
Ashkenazi jews with an European and American background (
the Israeli elite) and people of
Sephardic and
Mizrahi background who have been
Ashkenaziated (integrated or assimilated into the Ashkenazi jewish group via marriage, work relationship or by abandoning their own Sephardic and Mizrahi background by acting and behaving as Ashkenazi jews) on one side and the
Sephardic and
Mizrahi jews on the other side. Fact is that Mizrahi jews due to their middle eastern looks often got discriminated and received racist behaviour of Native European looking (blond, blue eyed, European brunette or redhead) Ashkenazi police officers, border police patrols or maybe even army patrols, because they look Arab, Iranian, Kurd, Berber or like a bedouin. Because many of these Middle eastern Mizrahi jews have an Arab culture, lived as bedouins in Yemen or as Berbers in Northern-Africa, because they were and are Berber jews. For these middle eastern jews living in Israel is tough, because they have the constant stress that they will be seen as Palestinians, Israeli Arabs or bedouins. In the Netherlands dark looking, Ashkenazi jewish boys with dark curly hair and dark eyes were refused in Amsterdam discotheques, because the doormen though they were Moroccans.
Moroccan Jews living in Israel accuse Israeli authorities of discriminating against Sephardic Jews. They told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that they were “robbed of their Arab Mizrahi culture and Arab identity.” ( Source:
www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/07/192272/moroccan-jews-accuse-israeli-authorities-discrimination/ )
Israel has to deal with it's identity, with it's
Israeli Druze,
Israeli Arabs,
Israeli bedouins,
Israeli christians (Armenians, Greeks, Coptic christians, Maronites, Chaldean christians, Assyrian christians and etc.) and it's own
Sephardic jews and
Mizrahi jews and
black Ethiopian jews and it's problems with non-Jewish foreign guest workers from
the Philippines and
Thailand, and it's non-jewish African refugees from Sudan who live under difficult circumstances in Tel-Aviv, Arad, Eilat and Bnei Brak. You have xenophobia, racism and discrimination against the latter by rightwing and far right Israeli's.
Personally I don't believe in a 2 state solution, but in a one state solution, a Jewish-Arab state or a Jewish-Arab Federal state, with jewish and Arab states in it. Palestine in the West-Bank, the Gaza strip in South-West-Israel and for instance an Israeli-Arab state in Northern-Israel. Fact is that all people are divided in Israel. In the Arab community some feel and say that they are Israeli Arabs and don't want anything to have to do with the Palestinian Authority, other Israeli Arabs feel and call themselves Palestinians, maybe some Palestinians in East-Jeruslam stil feel themselves as Jordanians like before 1967 when East-Jerusalem was Jordanian. Some Gazans might want to be Egytpians? With Israeli's the same, some Israeli jews feel themselves as Israelu Sabra's, just Israeli's without an ethnic and cultural connotation of their parents and grandparents past, while others feel themselves to be Ashkenazi, Sephardic or Mirzahi in the sense that they say I am Moroccan Berber Jewish, Yemenite Arab jewish, Egyptian Arab jewish, Algerian Berber or Arab jewish, Tunesian Berber or Arab jewish, Iraqi Arab jewish, Syrian Arab jewish, Lebanese Arab jewish, Iranian Persian (Farsi) jewish, Kurd (Northern-Iraq or Syrian) Jewish or Turkish jewish?
It is very complicated, very difficult, but it is for the Israeli jews to take responsibility and think about their '
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People'. Is it right, is it just, does it keeps the country united, what goal does it serve? is the long term strategic goal to Judaize the country and minimize the influence and presence of non-jews? This will fail I can predict you. The Israeli Arabs won't leave, the Israeli Druze won't leave, the Bedouins of the Negev desert won't leave and the Palestinians of the Gaza strip and the Westbank (Samaria and Judea) won't leave either. I am certain that the Israeli's don't want an uprising or rebellion of their Druze minority, neither do they want unrest in the Arab sector of Israel. In the end how difficult it is Israel should have a reform policy in which the equal rights and equal education, housing, employment and health care is guaranteed for the non-jewish and the non-Ashkenazi jewish communities. Next to that Israel needs to go back to the negotiation table with the
Palestinians and the Western powers should work hard to help
the Israeli's and
Palestinians with that.
Demonstrators attend a rally to protest the “Jewish nation-state bill” in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on July 14, 2018. Jack Guez/AFP/Getty ImagesThe political process in IsraelThe Knesset is the unicameral national legislature of Israel.National and local elections in Israel are by universal, direct suffrage, with secret balloting. All resident Israeli citizens are enfranchised from age 18, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and candidates for election must be at least 21 years old. For national races, the system of election is by proportional representation, and each party receives the number of Knesset seats that is proportional to the number of votes it receives.
Israel’s party system has traditionally been complex and volatile:
splinter groups are commonly formed, and party alliances often change. Cabinets are therefore invariably coalitions, often of broad political composition, since no single party has ever been able to obtain an absolute majority in
the Knesset. Electoral reform in
1992 brought about two significant changes: direct election of the prime minister—formerly the de facto head of government by dint of being leader of the governing coalition—and primary elections to choose lists of party candidates. The primary system enhanced participatory democracy within the parties, while the prime ministerial ballot increased the power of smaller parties, further splintering the composition of the Knesset and making governing coalitions more difficult to maintain. As a consequence,
Knesset representation among the two traditional major parties,
the Israeli Labor Party (
HaAvoda) and
Likud, diminished.
the Israeli Labor Party is a member of
the Progressive Alliance and an observer member of
the Party of European Socialists.
Likud's European affiliation is with
the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (
ACRE) and International affiliation is with
the International Democrat Union(
IDU), an
international alliance of centre-right political parties. Headquartered in
Munich,
Germany, the
IDU comprises
73 full and associate members from
63 different countries. It is chaired by
Stephen Harper, former
Prime Minister of Canada.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Allianceen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_European_Socialistsen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_Conservatives_and_Reformists_in_Europeen.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Democrat_UnionDirect elections for the premiership were repealed in
2001, and
Israel returned to its earlier practice, in which the governing coalition’s leader sits as prime minister. Despite the change, the two main parties continued to face challenges, not only from minor parties but also from new ones. Since
the 2001 reform, a number of newly formed parties centred on strong personalities—such as
Kadima (Ariel Sharon),
Yesh Atid (Yair Lapid),
Hatnua (Tzipi Livni), and
Kulanu (Moshe Kahlon)—have played prominently in most elections.
Early elections for
the twentieth Knesset were held in
Israel on
17 March 2015. Disagreements within the governing coalition, particularly over the budget and a "
Jewish state" proposal, led to the dissolution of the government in
December 2014. The
Labor Party (
HaAvoda) and
Hatnuah formed a coalition, called
Zionist Union, with the hope of defeating
the Likud party, which had led the previous governing coalition along with
Yisrael Beiteinu,
Yesh Atid,
The Jewish Home and
Hatnuah.
The incumbent
Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu of
Likud, declared victory in the election with
Likud picking up the highest number of votes. President
Reuven Rivlin granted
Netanyahu an extension until
6 May 2015 to build a coalition when one had not been finalized in the first four weeks of negotiations. He formed a coalition government within two hours of the midnight
May 6 deadline. His
Likud party formed the coalition with
the Jewish Home,
United Torah Judaism,
Kulanu, and the
ultra-Orthodox ("
Torah-Observant Sephardim")
Shas party, with the bare minimum 61 seats.
Avigdor Lieberman's rightwing populist, Nationalist, National conservative, Revisionist Zionist, Russian speakers'
Yisrael Beiteinu later joined the coalition in May 2016.
Political parties are secular or religious: the Jewish secular parties are
Zionist and range in orientation from
left-wing socialist to
capitalist, and
the religious parties tend to have ethnic appeal (
Sephardi or
Ashkenazi). There are also several small parties that represent primarily
Arab constituents (the communist
Hadash party, the anti-zionist and Arab nationalist
Balad party, the secular, anti-zionist, Israeli Arab interests, Arab nationalist and Big tent [
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_tent ]
Ta'al party and the Israeli Arab interest, Islamist and Anti-Zionist and Big tent
United Arab List ( القائمة العربية الموحدة, al-Qā'ima al-'Arabiyya al-Muwaḥḥada) . After the election threshold for representation in
the Knesset was raised in
2014,
the Arab parties and the multi-ethnic
Hadash party ran on a single list in
2015 (as
the Joint List) and became
the third largest group in
the Knesset.
Labour (
HaAvoda), meanwhile, formed its own list (
the Zionist Union) with
Hatnua and
the Green Movement in order to
maximize gains
against the right-wing coalition and
earned second place in the elections for the first time since
2006.
Israeli citizens take an active interest in public affairs above and beyond membership in political parties. The pattern of Israel’s social and economic organization favours participation in trade unions, employers’ organizations, and interest groups concerned with state and public affairs.
Cheers,
Pieter
Sources: Wikipedia, encyclopedia Britannica, Pieters memories and knowledge and personal (subjective) opinions