Nation-Building, Pluralism,
and Democracy in Israel

Yaakov Kop

Israeli society is highly diverse and heterogeneous-characteristics that can be traced to the way in which the country was formed. In most "immigrant countries," a large nuclear population absorbed waves of immigrants. In Israel, immigration itself created most of the core population. Immigrants and their offspring make up the vast majority of the Jewish population and a significant majority of the population at large. Therefore, state-building and the forging of a cohesive nation are naturally topics of utmost importance for Israel.
The expression "nation-building" may sound strange when applied to the Jewish people. After all, Jewry is one of the oldest of peoples, and it has maintained its identity for thousands of years. However, 1,900 years of exile took away one of the important shared fundamentals of national life-territory. In this sense, Israeli independence in 1948 ushered in a new era in Jewish history and reintroduced the concept of nation-building.

The main difficulty Israeli society has faced since independence has been to turn various Jewish immigrant groups and a significant Arab minority into a cohesive national unit. The complexity of integrating the Arab minority into society with all the accompanying political issues is obvious; however, the integration of masses of Jews from various locations also presents problems. The Jews who gathered in Israel not only came from all over the world but also brought totally different life styles-as evidenced by language and culture, and by more trivial features such as cuisine and clothing.

The instinctive tendency was to attempt to conjoin the disparate immigrant groups or to use the historical Jewish term, to "ingather the exiles." This approach is closely associated with David Ben-Gurion, independent Israel's dominant, first leader. The original approach of the authorities at all levels was to pour all immigrants into a standard "Israeli cast." They did not succeed; life proved to be stronger. While, in the past, attempts to impose a culture simply did not work, it is simply unacceptable today given the importance of political correctness. Today, the prevailing approach is a pluralistic one that seeks to reconcile unity and diversity. Parenthetically, Israel is not alone in making this effort; it is conventional in many societies around the globe.

Israeli society has three competing and complementary long-term goals. First, there is the effort to build a cohesive, functioning nation; second, the attempt to tolerate particularistic preferences of different subgroups; and third, the desire to maintain its democratic foundations. Efforts to cope with these three challenges are overshadowed by an overarching mission to defend itself against a continued threat against its very existence. The dynamic problems created by these three goals express themselves in a variety of ways, but especially in the following tensions…

Yaakov Kop is Director of the Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel.