Avraham Burg - The house of Israel: a divided society
Conflict over Israeli
territory is a historically sensitive issue. But should past injustices
and fear legitimize recent crimes against humanity? Avraham Burg’s home truths
on current Israeli societal division assess critical ideological, economic and
constitutional issues.
The ‘house of Israel’
has four metaphorical, communal floors. Unlike a standard house, in this
analogy each tenant is forced to live simultaneously at all four floors, which
is not always easy or possible. This Israel is bipolar: creative and
conservative, arrogant and frightened, special and yet iconic. You either love
or hate it; it can hardly be ignored.
The social floor: Like many other societies in the world, Israel displays inherent and natural tensions. Friction exists between locals and immigrants, ethnic groups of different origins (Jews from Islamic countries and those from Christian ones), national communities (Jews and Arabs), the religious and the secular, those in the centre and those on the periphery, the haves and have nots. Unlike similar tensions that exist elsewhere, especially in the Western world, Israel has an additional, particular characteristic – most of its tensions merged into one augmented rift that deeply and painfully dissected society along sectarian/religious-traditional, economic and ideological lines.
On both sides of the sociopolitical barricade, one can find almost the opposing mirror image: on the right side of the map, religious and nationalist conservatives, commonly from Islamic Asian and African countries with low socio-economic status, are resident on the periphery; and secular, educated, established, liberal, immigrants with more humanistic and universal world views from the West and the Christian hemisphere are positioned on the flip side.
Anyone who tries to deal with any of the above social tensions in Israel has to face the entire ‘package’: religion and state, economic gaps, privileges and deprivation, and voting patterns. All are fused together, seemingly never to be separated. …
