Minority Rights, Jewish Political Traditions, and Zionism

Abstract

One of the central puzzles of Israeli politics is the general strength of democratic institutions, given the fact that relatively few of the immigrants to Palestine or to Israel over the last century came from countries with a viable democratic tradition. A second puzzle is that one of the weaker aspects of these democratic institutions is respect for minority rights, though it is precisely as a minority group that Jewish historical experience is most extensive. A number of influences have clearly contributed to this outcome. The general currents of Western liberalism, the role of the British model, and populist aspects of East European socialist ideologies all pushed the Zionist movement and Israeli governance a democratic direction. On the other hand, Zionism, like contemporary nationalisms to which it was both an imitation and a reaction, focused on the rights of those who shared a Jewish identity rather than their relations with those who did not. As Jews knew all too well from their own experience with modern nationalism, the place of minorities a state based on the principle of nationality was highly problematic. Furthermore, Zionism functioned a Middle Eastern context where ethnoreligious particularism the delineation of all rights and privileges according to group identity was the rule even before the advent of modern nationalism. And finally, Zionism and Israel both have had to contend with an ethnic group considered to represent a basic threat to the security or survival of the Jewish community. While these influences may be important, one cannot overlook the impact of political traditions developed during centuries of Jewish communal life. Attitudes toward democratic procedures and non-Jewish rights were inevitably shaped by the way that Jews had customarily organized their political life; as Shlomo Avineri argues, in the Jewish kehilla [community] lie the origins of Israeli democracy as well as some of the lack of elegance which ac-