Abstract
In 2015, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin launched a new civic initiative: “Israeli Hope”. The main thrust of this initiative was to establish a new Israeli civic order based on mutual recognition and cooperation between four different “tribes,” in Rivlin’s words, that are in an ever-increasing state of mutual hostility. These are: the secular tribe, the Arab tribe, the ultra-orthodox tribe, and the national-religious tribe. President Rivlin presented a dire picture of a conflicted Israeli society but stated his belief that it is possible to generate consensus around four pillars: “each sector’s feeling of security, a shared responsibility for the fate and future of the state of Israel, fairness and equality, and the creation of a common Israeli identity”. This brings to mind Joseph Agassi’s view that any Israeli political initiative is tantamount to crossing the Rubicon, since it challenges the Jewish “ghetto mentality” and the passive tradition of diaspora Jewry (Agassi 1993, 208, fn. 56). In his speech, President Rivlin emphasized the fact that two out of four of these “tribes” do not serve in the Israeli military, but that all of them can find themselves side by side in the academy and in the workplace. Needless to say, the Israeli army, which is commonly referred to as “the people’s army” cannot live up to this title if only two of four of its tribes are eligible for service. In the absence of a substitute for this function in Israeli society, can the academy become the site for the formation of an Israeli national identity?
Certain conditions have to obtain before serious attempts can start to implement great ideas; in the case of autonomy these conditions include relative peace and relative prosperity.
(Joseph Agassi, The Siblinghood of Humanity, p. 253)
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Notes
- 1.
In his 2015 “Four Tribes” speech, given at the Herzliya Conference at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Rivlin spoke about “a boy from Beit El, a boy from Rahat, a girl from Herzliya, a girl from Beitar Ilit – not only do they never meet, but they are also raised on completely different perceptions of the basic values and desired nature of the state of Israel. Will this be a secular and liberal, Jewish and democratic state? Will it be a Jewish theocracy? Or a halachic democracy? Will it be a state of its citizens or of its nations? Tribe, tribe, tribe, tribe – and each with its own media campfire.” See: https://israeli-hope.gov.il.
- 2.
“Academia is the first meeting place [for all sectors] of Israeli society, and therefore it is also the most effective space for the creation of a shared language and goals. Higher education is the ticket to economic influence and the gate to the fulfilment of the Israeli dream. Academia is the most significant force driving the realization of Israeli talent wherever and whatever it may be, and it is also the space and the key for the creation of a diverse leadership and elite.” See: https://israeli-hope.gov.il/Academy-Launch
- 3.
- 4.
See Israeli Security Service Law (amendment no. 21) 2015.
- 5.
In 1948–9, when David Ben-Gurion was plotting to banish the Israeli Communist party and right-wing “Herut” party from the Israeli consensus, he “bought” the ultra-orthodox parties’ parliamentary support by granting an exemption from the army to a few hundred yeshiva students. Later on, this exemption was given to all ultra-orthodox Jews.
- 6.
In July 1954, there was a short-lived changed in the Israeli Security Service Law, allowing Muslim Arabs to enlist into the security services. No less than 4000 young Arab men signed up for service, however, the Israeli military preferred not to enlist these young men. (Kais 2011, 59)
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
The statistics about Bedouins in the Negev are unclear at best and suspicious at worse. Many strange numbers appear in the national statistics, such as a 38% rate of polygamy in Bedouin families, a birth rate in the unrecognized villages of 11%, that the Bedouins double their population every 15 years, and more. The numbers that can be partially trusted are those that present the minimum and maximum figures. The above numbers, even if only an estimation, pull the rug out from under the age-old Zionist demographic principle that “time is on our side” (Agassi 1993, 230).
- 11.
In this paper, I focus on guidelines for academic liberalism.
- 12.
“[…] Rationality does not need defense; it needs improvement,” writes Agassi. And we may try to improve it piecemeal. We are all rational to some degree and are all interested from time to time in using reason more effectively than we now do. We cannot help but be rational, since thinking is, like seeing, innate to some extent. No one is always rational or perfectly rational any time. Our best hope, then, is to use rationality to improve the partial and limited rationality which we all use to one degree or another. We use a bootstrap process in that we use the rational methods we now have at hand to develop better methods, whereby the methods we use may very well be corrected or even discarded.” Accessed at http://www.iep.utm.edu/cr-ratio/
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Meital, A. (2017). Can the Israeli Academia Replace Mandatory Conscription?. In: Bar-Am, N., Gattei, S. (eds) Encouraging Openness. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 325. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57669-5_24
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