Newman D. Ram U., Introduction : Hegemonic Identities
Newman D. Ram U., « Introduction : Hegemonic Identities », pp.1-18
Kemp A., Newman D., Ram U., Yiftachel O. (edit) (2004), Israelis in Conflict, Sussex Academic Press, p.333
One major ‘sector’ is missing – Mizrachi Jews (those Jews whose place of origin before migrating to Israel was in North Africa or Asia and who constitute the poorer and more underprivileged sectors of Israel society). Mizrachi Jews are the ‘present absentees’ off Israeli politics. While being the major ‘identity’ group who ‘challenged’ Labor ‘hegemony’, and deposed from power in 1977, via the instrument of Likud party, and while being the electorate behind the most dynamic movement in Israel in the 1990s’, Shas, Mazrachi identity is not only absent but has, until recently, been tadoo in official Israeli discourse. The ‘ethnic gap’ is recognized in socio-economic terms, and dealt with (or not) by state policies. The inter-Jewish ethnic split is perceived as a threat to Jewish national unity, the very justification of the Jewish state.
p.5
Despite its unique history, Israel can, and must, be examined from a comparative perspective on the continuum of identity change which parallels the transition from a highly nationalist to post-nationalist society. This can be seen in a number of ways:
1. In the formative period of state formation, the creation of hegemonic ideologies are central to the way in which national belonging is defined. These ideologies are socially constructed through agencies such as the educational system, the media and other forms of public dissemination of information. The messages focus on the need for an all-encompassing ideology, to which all- or most- of the population identify and demonstrate a basic allegiance and loyalty. Such messages relate to the very raison d’être of the state’s existence, a common theme without which the pre-state struggle for independence, and the contemporary justification for continuing to exist as self-defined nation state, would be difficult to uphold. Where states have come into being as a result of a struggle for independence, and /or where a state perceives itself as being under threat and in a state of existential danger, the socialized messages of a single ideology are all the more important, as states seek to construct the glue which will hold the population together as part if a common cause. Such hegemonic ideologies often reflect a lowest common denominator, building on a common fear of existential threat, while papering over many internal differences – ethnic, economic, religious- which are ignored in preference for the ‘common’ good.
2. The impact of globalization, coupled with an increased awareness of cultural heterogeneity and the politics of identity that ensue, have had a major impact of states whose identity has traditionally been defined in terms of an exclusive, often socially constructed, allegiance to the state and a single hegemonic ideology. The traditional boundaries linking the place of residence with a single national identity are breaking down. Boundaries have become more permeable, with greater movement of people, good and ideas. Within states, local and regional identities have come to the fore in tandem with global identities that traverse state boundaries. Movement of people has brought about greater social and cultural diversity within states while notions of multi-culturalism have begun to compete with the hegemonies represented by national identities.
3. Agencies of state socialization are no longer able to impose their own versions of unchallenged state identity, as populations become increasingly aware of alternative and, in many cases, multi-identities with which they affiliate – wholly or partially- and as populations who were marginalized and peripheralized in the past become more aware of their rights as they undergo political and cultural empowerment. Not only are hegemonic ideologies socially constructed in the first place, but they also become increasingly out of touch with the realities of daily life, as social and demographic realities change over time. Institutional perceptions of ‘what constitutes’ the ‘correct’ ideology display a high degree of inertia, drawing on historical and national semantics and symbols as a means of expressing exclusive attachment and loyalty to the state.
pp.5-6
In recent years, this single form of identity has began to be boroken down, as Israeli society has become more heterogeneous on the one hand, and more aware of the dilemma posed by this single notion of state identity for its minorities and marginalized populations on the other. This has paralleled the gradual empowerment of these populations who are increasingly demanding their fair share of power and resources within society.
p.7
A common theme it that they all focus around the trilogy of citizenship, equality and identity in a country experiencing a dialectical relationship between a difficult transition from hegemonic state ethos to multi-cultural civil society on the one hand, and a strengthening of ethnonationalist sentiment and awareness on the other.
p.7
Israel is generally perceived, especially from the outside, as being a homogeneous, united society. At the very most, it is seen as being a country consisting of two national groups – Jews and Arabs – at conflict with each other. The raison d’être of the state is perceived by the vast majority of Jewish Israeli citizens as being focused around a single state ideology of Zionism. At the very least, national unity (amongst the eighty of so percent of the population defined as Jewish) is perceived as being held together by common feeling of destiny and fear of existential threat, a socially constructed form of negative unity.
p.8
Israel has, during its short fifty years history, faced a structural dilemma in term of its desire to be part of the western family of post-World War II democraties on the one hand, while maintaining an ethnoantional ideological and institutional character on the other.
p.8
The notion of that the Jews are a single united people, despite their internal ethnic diversity, because they have a common cultural/religious tradition and/or because they face a common external threat from the neighboring countries, has constituted the socially constructed, ideologically imposed, hegemonic way of looking at the state since its inception.
p.9
The hegemonic ideology consisted of a number of key composents:
• Israel is a Jewish State and, as such, is a homeland for Jews desiring to leave their countries of birth and residence and take up citizenship.
• Israel is in a state of existential threat, faced on all sides by hostile neighbors, and as such it is the duty of every (Jewish) citizen to take up arms in defense of the state.
• The Jewish population of the state, regardless of their background or geographic origins, constitutes a single group, with common culture and beliefs, who have more in common with each other than with any other external group.
• Israel is, at one and the same time, a Jewish State and a democracy, such that the Arab-Palestinian minority population only have equal rights at the formal level, but not necessarily in practice.
The internal differences within Jewish society, such as that between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’, the Ashkenazi and the Mizrahi Jews, gender differences, and religious-secular animosities, were normally perceived as being no more than insignificant sub-constructs that would, over time, sort themselves out as society modernizes.
p.9
We can identify at least four major groups of citizens, all of whom are discussed in the book, who do necessarily identify with the single ideology of Zionism as constituting the raison d’être for the existence of the state:
1; Group that have been disenfranchised within the Jewish collective- such as the Mizrachi population, women, ultra-orthodox- but have undergone a process of empowerment in recent years and are demanding more say in the corridors of power and amongst the decision making elites.
2.Palestinian-Arab community, making up nearly twenty percent of the citizen population of the state, but who have been disenfranchised- economically, politically and socially with respect to the Jewish majority and who, for many Israelis, can not be full members of the Jewish State.
3.Third and fourth generation Israelis, born into the reality of a state which no longer faces the threat of extinction, and are also part of a globalized generation of citizens who are much aware and cognizant of the realities of an outside world. They realize that Israel is not beleaguered or isolated, and refuse to accept the imposition of an exclusive, isolationist state ideology as being of major relevance to their daily lives.
4.Immigrant populations, notably nearly one million Russians, who have arrived in Israel during the past decade, many of whom do not identify with Zionism as a stable ideology with which they automatically express an unquestioning loyalty.
pp-11-12
The formation of national identity is often tied on with a sense of attachment and belonging to a ‘national territory’. Notions of ‘homeland’ and ‘territorial hearth’ play a major role in the way in which national identity is constructed and maintained, and explains the extent to which national groups are often prepared to go in order to defend their home territory against any form of alternative claim. Territory is imbued with symbols, myths and historical significance as part of the process of territorial socialization that is promoted by the state and its agencies of education.
p.12
The process through which groups rethink their identities engenders greater awareness and self empowerment and, hence, active mobilization in challenging the hegemonic identities and their related power structures. The disenfranchisement of the country’s Mizrachi population is taken up in the chapter by Yiftachel and Tzfadia. Their chapter focuses its empirical investigation on Israel’s peripheral and economically deprived ‘development towns’, which were established during the 1950s and have been mainly inhabited by low income Mizrachi (‘Easter’) Jews. It examines the link between the construction of an Ashkenzi (Jewish ‘western’ ‘ethnocracy’ in Israel, its cultural, spatial and economic development policies, and processes of political mobilization and identity transformation among resident if the towns. The data show that although persistent anti-governmental protest activity did take place in the towns, it did not seriously challenge the Israeli regime, despite decades of deprivation. The nature of Mizrachi urban protest thus reflect their ‘trapping’ at the margin of the Israel etnocratic regime. This ‘trapping’ is expressed by their weakness vis-à-vis an expanding state and its Ashkenazi elites, and the lack of meaningful space for mobilization from which to challenge their structural predicament. The ‘trapping’ of peripheral Mizrachi manifests in their long-term position as a marginalized ethno-class within Israel-Jewish society.
p.15
This essays raise questions confronting a society that is faced with an awareness of growing internal diversity and empowerment, but whose state apparatus desires, at the same time, to maintain its ideological hegemony through a single state ethos.
p.17
During the past decade, notion of pluralism, ethnocracy, post-Zionism, Palestinianism, to name but some of them, which initially rejected as illegitimate subjects for discourse, and then were begrudgingly accepted as the discourse of the radical left, have gradually infiltrated their way into mainstream academia as well as the non-ivory tower public discourse and debate.
p.17
Kemp A., Newman D., Ram U., Yiftachel O. (edit) (2004), Israelis in Conflict, Sussex Academic Press, p.333
One major ‘sector’ is missing – Mizrachi Jews (those Jews whose place of origin before migrating to Israel was in North Africa or Asia and who constitute the poorer and more underprivileged sectors of Israel society). Mizrachi Jews are the ‘present absentees’ off Israeli politics. While being the major ‘identity’ group who ‘challenged’ Labor ‘hegemony’, and deposed from power in 1977, via the instrument of Likud party, and while being the electorate behind the most dynamic movement in Israel in the 1990s’, Shas, Mazrachi identity is not only absent but has, until recently, been tadoo in official Israeli discourse. The ‘ethnic gap’ is recognized in socio-economic terms, and dealt with (or not) by state policies. The inter-Jewish ethnic split is perceived as a threat to Jewish national unity, the very justification of the Jewish state.
p.5
Despite its unique history, Israel can, and must, be examined from a comparative perspective on the continuum of identity change which parallels the transition from a highly nationalist to post-nationalist society. This can be seen in a number of ways:
1. In the formative period of state formation, the creation of hegemonic ideologies are central to the way in which national belonging is defined. These ideologies are socially constructed through agencies such as the educational system, the media and other forms of public dissemination of information. The messages focus on the need for an all-encompassing ideology, to which all- or most- of the population identify and demonstrate a basic allegiance and loyalty. Such messages relate to the very raison d’être of the state’s existence, a common theme without which the pre-state struggle for independence, and the contemporary justification for continuing to exist as self-defined nation state, would be difficult to uphold. Where states have come into being as a result of a struggle for independence, and /or where a state perceives itself as being under threat and in a state of existential danger, the socialized messages of a single ideology are all the more important, as states seek to construct the glue which will hold the population together as part if a common cause. Such hegemonic ideologies often reflect a lowest common denominator, building on a common fear of existential threat, while papering over many internal differences – ethnic, economic, religious- which are ignored in preference for the ‘common’ good.
2. The impact of globalization, coupled with an increased awareness of cultural heterogeneity and the politics of identity that ensue, have had a major impact of states whose identity has traditionally been defined in terms of an exclusive, often socially constructed, allegiance to the state and a single hegemonic ideology. The traditional boundaries linking the place of residence with a single national identity are breaking down. Boundaries have become more permeable, with greater movement of people, good and ideas. Within states, local and regional identities have come to the fore in tandem with global identities that traverse state boundaries. Movement of people has brought about greater social and cultural diversity within states while notions of multi-culturalism have begun to compete with the hegemonies represented by national identities.
3. Agencies of state socialization are no longer able to impose their own versions of unchallenged state identity, as populations become increasingly aware of alternative and, in many cases, multi-identities with which they affiliate – wholly or partially- and as populations who were marginalized and peripheralized in the past become more aware of their rights as they undergo political and cultural empowerment. Not only are hegemonic ideologies socially constructed in the first place, but they also become increasingly out of touch with the realities of daily life, as social and demographic realities change over time. Institutional perceptions of ‘what constitutes’ the ‘correct’ ideology display a high degree of inertia, drawing on historical and national semantics and symbols as a means of expressing exclusive attachment and loyalty to the state.
pp.5-6
In recent years, this single form of identity has began to be boroken down, as Israeli society has become more heterogeneous on the one hand, and more aware of the dilemma posed by this single notion of state identity for its minorities and marginalized populations on the other. This has paralleled the gradual empowerment of these populations who are increasingly demanding their fair share of power and resources within society.
p.7
A common theme it that they all focus around the trilogy of citizenship, equality and identity in a country experiencing a dialectical relationship between a difficult transition from hegemonic state ethos to multi-cultural civil society on the one hand, and a strengthening of ethnonationalist sentiment and awareness on the other.
p.7
Israel is generally perceived, especially from the outside, as being a homogeneous, united society. At the very most, it is seen as being a country consisting of two national groups – Jews and Arabs – at conflict with each other. The raison d’être of the state is perceived by the vast majority of Jewish Israeli citizens as being focused around a single state ideology of Zionism. At the very least, national unity (amongst the eighty of so percent of the population defined as Jewish) is perceived as being held together by common feeling of destiny and fear of existential threat, a socially constructed form of negative unity.
p.8
Israel has, during its short fifty years history, faced a structural dilemma in term of its desire to be part of the western family of post-World War II democraties on the one hand, while maintaining an ethnoantional ideological and institutional character on the other.
p.8
The notion of that the Jews are a single united people, despite their internal ethnic diversity, because they have a common cultural/religious tradition and/or because they face a common external threat from the neighboring countries, has constituted the socially constructed, ideologically imposed, hegemonic way of looking at the state since its inception.
p.9
The hegemonic ideology consisted of a number of key composents:
• Israel is a Jewish State and, as such, is a homeland for Jews desiring to leave their countries of birth and residence and take up citizenship.
• Israel is in a state of existential threat, faced on all sides by hostile neighbors, and as such it is the duty of every (Jewish) citizen to take up arms in defense of the state.
• The Jewish population of the state, regardless of their background or geographic origins, constitutes a single group, with common culture and beliefs, who have more in common with each other than with any other external group.
• Israel is, at one and the same time, a Jewish State and a democracy, such that the Arab-Palestinian minority population only have equal rights at the formal level, but not necessarily in practice.
The internal differences within Jewish society, such as that between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’, the Ashkenazi and the Mizrahi Jews, gender differences, and religious-secular animosities, were normally perceived as being no more than insignificant sub-constructs that would, over time, sort themselves out as society modernizes.
p.9
We can identify at least four major groups of citizens, all of whom are discussed in the book, who do necessarily identify with the single ideology of Zionism as constituting the raison d’être for the existence of the state:
1; Group that have been disenfranchised within the Jewish collective- such as the Mizrachi population, women, ultra-orthodox- but have undergone a process of empowerment in recent years and are demanding more say in the corridors of power and amongst the decision making elites.
2.Palestinian-Arab community, making up nearly twenty percent of the citizen population of the state, but who have been disenfranchised- economically, politically and socially with respect to the Jewish majority and who, for many Israelis, can not be full members of the Jewish State.
3.Third and fourth generation Israelis, born into the reality of a state which no longer faces the threat of extinction, and are also part of a globalized generation of citizens who are much aware and cognizant of the realities of an outside world. They realize that Israel is not beleaguered or isolated, and refuse to accept the imposition of an exclusive, isolationist state ideology as being of major relevance to their daily lives.
4.Immigrant populations, notably nearly one million Russians, who have arrived in Israel during the past decade, many of whom do not identify with Zionism as a stable ideology with which they automatically express an unquestioning loyalty.
pp-11-12
The formation of national identity is often tied on with a sense of attachment and belonging to a ‘national territory’. Notions of ‘homeland’ and ‘territorial hearth’ play a major role in the way in which national identity is constructed and maintained, and explains the extent to which national groups are often prepared to go in order to defend their home territory against any form of alternative claim. Territory is imbued with symbols, myths and historical significance as part of the process of territorial socialization that is promoted by the state and its agencies of education.
p.12
The process through which groups rethink their identities engenders greater awareness and self empowerment and, hence, active mobilization in challenging the hegemonic identities and their related power structures. The disenfranchisement of the country’s Mizrachi population is taken up in the chapter by Yiftachel and Tzfadia. Their chapter focuses its empirical investigation on Israel’s peripheral and economically deprived ‘development towns’, which were established during the 1950s and have been mainly inhabited by low income Mizrachi (‘Easter’) Jews. It examines the link between the construction of an Ashkenzi (Jewish ‘western’ ‘ethnocracy’ in Israel, its cultural, spatial and economic development policies, and processes of political mobilization and identity transformation among resident if the towns. The data show that although persistent anti-governmental protest activity did take place in the towns, it did not seriously challenge the Israeli regime, despite decades of deprivation. The nature of Mizrachi urban protest thus reflect their ‘trapping’ at the margin of the Israel etnocratic regime. This ‘trapping’ is expressed by their weakness vis-à-vis an expanding state and its Ashkenazi elites, and the lack of meaningful space for mobilization from which to challenge their structural predicament. The ‘trapping’ of peripheral Mizrachi manifests in their long-term position as a marginalized ethno-class within Israel-Jewish society.
p.15
This essays raise questions confronting a society that is faced with an awareness of growing internal diversity and empowerment, but whose state apparatus desires, at the same time, to maintain its ideological hegemony through a single state ethos.
p.17
During the past decade, notion of pluralism, ethnocracy, post-Zionism, Palestinianism, to name but some of them, which initially rejected as illegitimate subjects for discourse, and then were begrudgingly accepted as the discourse of the radical left, have gradually infiltrated their way into mainstream academia as well as the non-ivory tower public discourse and debate.
p.17