The Hebrew Republic or The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace At Last

Author: Bernard Avishai

Political economist Bernard Avishai has been writing and thinking about Israel since moving there to volunteer during the 1967 War. now he synthesizes his years of study and searching into a short, urgent polemic that posits that the country must become a more complete democracy if it has any chance for a peaceful future. He explores the connection between Israel’s democratic crisis and the problems besetting the nation—the expansion of settlements, the alienation of Israeli Arabs, and the exploding ultraorthodox population. He also makes an intriguing case for Israel’s new global enterprises to change the country’s future for the better.

With every year, peace in Israel seems to recede further into the distance, while Israeli arts and businesses advance. This contradiction cannot endure much longer. But in cutting through the inflammatory arguments of partisans on all sides, Avishai offers something even more enticing than pragmatic solutions—he offers hope.

Publishers Weekly

Addressing the state of Israel's democracy as well as security, Avishai (The Tragedy of Zionism), a contributor to the New York Review of Books, presents a three-fold approach to obtaining long-term peace and security. Most original and no doubt controversial is the idea of establishing a "Hebrew republic" that "would be patently the state of the Jewish people," but would not privilege Jews and Judaism. (Avishai details current discrimination against Arab Israelis.) The other parts are negotiating a peace accord with the Palestinians along the lines of the Geneva Initiative and forming an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian economic union. Avishai distills his approach through conversations with 50 Israeli-Jewish, Israeli-Arab and Palestinian figures, including former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, novelist A.B. Yehoshua and Samir Abdullah, director of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. He also has a fascinating discussion with some young Israeli Jews who wrestle with how Jewish, and how integrated into the Middle East, Israel should be. His plan for economic union will be achievable only with a peace accord, and Avishai has little to say on how to get there. But he covers a great many key topics relating to Israel's internal dynamics as well as its regional and global position, now and in the future. (Apr.)

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Kirkus Reviews

An earnest plan to end sectarian and ethnic violence in Israel by rallying warring factions to a common cause. Israel, observes Harvard Business Review consulting editor Avishai, "is a society where institutional discrimination against individuals for an accident of birth or a profession of faith has been so routine it is hardly noticed"-except, of course, by those most discriminated against, the Palestinian and Arab populations. Of late there has been much discussion concerning the rightness of the Law of Return, with some critics advancing the view that it is essentially unfair that a new Jewish immigrant from, say, Brooklyn, automatically trumps a Palestinian whose family has been on the ground for untold generations. Determining who is properly Jewish is not so much the question-though it is a question-as who is Israeli, and until that question is resolved there will be continued troubles, Avishai predicts. There are more divisions to address. Avishai identifies not 12 but five tribes of Israel, each comprising about 20 percent of the electorate: the Ashkenazim Jews of mostly European descent, the North African Mizrahi Jews, the "hypereducated" and "hypersecular" Russian Jews, the "ultranationalist" and "theocratic" Orthodox Jews and, finally, the Israeli Arabs. The first four tribes are afraid of the fifth, Avishai writes, while "Tribe Three hates Four, condescends to Two, and doubts One; Two hates One, resents Three and (for different reasons) Four; One is afraid of Two, patronizes Three, and hates Four; Four hates One, proselytizes Two, and is afraid of Three." Given such conditions-and given that Four disproportionately manages to pull down about 40 percent of the vote-it seemsunlikely that concord can ever be reached, but Avishai sees hope in measures whereby the Arab population is brought into full citizenship, Israel's economy grows in the global market and a country is built "where people say they are Israeli," not Jewish. Well-intended, well-reasoned and well-written, though how practical a proposal remains to be seen. Agent: Jim Rutman/Sterling Lord Literistic

Table of Contents:

Prologue
The Situation     1
Jewish and Democratic     15
Basic Laws     23
West Bank Settler     59
"A Spade to Dig With"     85
The Decline-and Rise-of the Hebrew Republic     119
The Center's Liberal Demography     128
The Business of Integration     169
Hebrew Revolution     212
Conclusion: Closing the Circle     244
Acknowledgments     269
A Note on Transliteration     273
Endnotes     275
Index     281

Interesting textbook: Endangered Peoples of the Arctic or Study Guide to Accompany Principles of Corp Finance

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgois Society

Author: Jrgen Habermas

This is Jurgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.