Governing Israel: Chosen People, Promised Land and Prophetic Tradition (review)

While Ira Sharkansky moved to Israel many years ago, it is still surprising to discover, in Governing Israel, that he is able to place himself above and beside the occurring events. What comes most vividly across in this book is an image of the author who simultaneously travels the present and the channels of history, making observations very much in the tradition of the "insightful outsiders" established by Alexis de Tocqueville.

The book's most interesting feature is the selection of topics and illustrations. One can make no mistake: Sharkansky is an American scholar writing for American readers, knowing well who they are, and what their interests are. And these seem to be different from the ones held by average Israelis who rarely see themselves (perhaps with the exception of a minority of religious Jews) as "chosen people" continuing a "prophetic tradition." Most Israelis, so I believe, think that they have gathered here not by virtue of being a special "people" but rather because they were everywhere different, and the gentile world could not tolerate this difference. I have rarely encountered people who use the phrase: "promised land" for Israel. "Promised Land" is a late 19^th-century concept that signified the only consensual piece of land property over which the newly established Zionist Movement could mobilize people from many places under a single banner of Jewish Sovereignty. The extremist on the right continue to use this phrase.

The book has nine chapters. They cover the multiple aspects and dimensions that construct the Israeli public space. Chapter three, on the economy; focuses on its politicized form which stemmed from the state's early commitment to socialism. An emphasis on the problem of implementation and on the well-established practice of not solving problems once and for all makes this chapter a clever account of the Israeli economy. The fourth chapter is about religion. It provides an assessment of the saliency of the religious dimension, which has been reduced considerably since the outbreak of the Palestinian upraising in September 2000. According to Sharkansky, religious issues will force themselves back onto the political agenda once the waves of Israeli-Palestinian antagonism subside. His analysis of the secular State's treatment of the Reform Jews' attempts to be recognized (pp. 83–99) is most revealing. Note that most Israelis, including the secular ones and the "Jewish atheists," consider themselves part of the orthodox tradition of Judaism, and hence they are not very interested in the nature of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in general, and between Orthodox and Reform Jews in particular.

The fifth chapter is on the issue of national security and the impact of the Palestinian terror on the Israeli polity. For most Israelis it is difficult to stay politically indifferent when dealing with these issues. Sharkansky is no exception. For example, when dealing with the concept of terror he equates, more or less, the activities of pre-state Jewish terrorist groups (e.g., Irgun) with the present Palestinian acts of terror. In this case, as in others, the author's political perspectives are apparent; the Jewish left receives close to five pages, but only half a page goes to the Israeli right—the same right block that has ruled Israel almost constantly since 1977.

Chapters six and seven are policy-oriented. There the author's analytical skills are most illustrative. He writes on traffic deaths and on the social gap between the rich and the poor, and on university management. The first two are examples of the cultural syndromes associated with Israel's prophetic tradition, which raises questions of morality and fairness in reference to the growing inequality amongst societal members. The third case—the protracted state of crisis Israeli universities have been involved in over the last few years—is also a function of the set of preferences that guides the distribution of wealth amongst the members of our nation. The gap is created not because we live...