Description: Since the 1980s, relationships between secular and religious Israelis
have gone from bad to worse. What was formerly a politics of
accommodation, one whose main objective was the avoidance of strife
through "arrangements" and compromises, has become a winner-take-all,
zero-sum game. The conflict is not over who gets what. Rather, it is
a conflict over the very character of the polity, a struggle to
define Israel's collective character.
In Israel and the Politics of Jewish Identity Asher Cohen and Bernard
Susser show how this transformation has been caused by structural
changes in Israel's public sphere. Surveying many different levels of
public life, they explore the change of Israel's politics from a
dominant-party system to a balanced two-camp system. They trace the
rise of the Haredi parties and the growing consonance of religiosity
with right-wing politics. Other topics include the new Basic Laws on
Freedom, Dignity, and Occupation; the effects of massive immigration
of secular Jews from the former Soviet Union; the greater emphasis on
liberal "good government"; and the rise of an aggressive
investigative press and electronic media.
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