Wars, Internal Conflicts, and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East (review)

Book Reviews 119 nationalist platform is predicted by scholars like Hobsbawm, whom Kaufman cites in her opening discussion of ethnicity and nationalism literature. Hobsbawm argues that Marxist movements have been obliged to incorporate nationalism into their socialist ideologies because nationalism is an effective tool for mobilizing workers (p. 9, citing Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality [Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990]). But there is an inherent conflict in this move: national solidarity cuts across class, just as class solidarity cuts across nations. Kaufman illustrates that the CPI did help to cultivate a sense of ethnonational identity among Palestinian-Israelis even before 1965. But the inherent tension between the CPI's socialist goals and its nationalist goals remains unreconciled. Kaufman seems to argue that class developed along ethnic lines in this case of a stratified economic system (pp. 127, 130-131,9). However, she does not argue that only Arabs underwent a process ofproletarianization. So the tension between class and ethnonation remains. Whatever the theoretical or ideological commitments ofthe reader, Kaufman offers a complex, detailed study of Israel's political history through the lens ofthe Communist Party of Israel. She traces the CPI's ties with local, national, and international groups and institutions. She places CPI activities in the context of world historical events. She presents an encyclopedia survey of the political landscape of the Palestinian-Israeli world, always in the context ofIsraeli politics more broadly. In short, her study adds detail, nuance, and important breadth to studies of the social and political history of Israel. Patricia 1. Woods Near and Middle East Studies University of Washington Wars, Internal Conflicts, and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East, by Gad Barzilai. Albany: State of New York University Press, 1996. 301 pp. $23.95. Since the Second World War the general belief has been that wars tend to result in increased consensus and cohesion in democratic countries. Consensus reflects increased support for the political regime in power. Therefore, it is argued, wars bring about political consensus to democratic regimes. Utilizing Israel's experience, Gad Barzilai presents several models and explanations for the relationship between war and a political system, which he argues revolves around consensus and its opposite, political dissent. Wars and military threats require consensus and presuppose a minimum of dissent. 120 SHOFAR Summer 1999 Vol. 17, No.4 How has Israel's democracy responded to its fifty years ofmilitary threat? Barzilai examines chapter by chapter each of Israel's conflicts, except for the 1948 War of Independence. He points out that in all of these military events, no matter what the outward consensus looked like, there was determined dissent. He presents good examples ofthis dissent by MAPAI and the Communist political parties even during the most "popular wars," the Suez Campaign and the Six-Day War. But this dissent was not publicly debated until the crisis was over. Barzilai notes that democracies in wartime, such as Israel, are forced to compromise on how far basic democratic values will be realized. Barzilai shows in what way Israeli political institutions permit democratic values, such as freedom of expression, to interact with the needs of national security. He introduces two concepts: the consensus concept and the dissent concept. His common theme is that consensus and dissent are independent variables explaining the foundation of the democratic nationstate in Israel. Definitions of consensus necessarily include passivity, and definitions of conflict should not include deviation. Rather conflict is a phenomenon that contributes to social and political developments. The book argues that one of the major problems with the consensus model is the idea of "war fatigue." "War fatigue" results over time in the citizenry's growing unwillingness to compromise with the war's goals or consequences. "War fatigue" and liberal democratic values can combine to result the occurrence of dissent during wartime even in the best situation. But, as Barzilai indicates, in the Israeli experience it is not publicly debated until the immediate threat is removed. Once the immediate threat is removed then the dissent flows into a wide-open debate. Barzilai shows that in all ofIsrael's conflicts dissent was postponed, not rejected. In a sense...