[small]Carlo Strenger - Knowledge-Nation Israel - A New Unifying Vision.pdf (179.72 KB)[/small]http://www.balderexlibris.com/index.php ... ing-vision
[justify]Carlo Strenger (born July 16, 1958) is a Swiss-Israeli psychologist, philosopher, existential psychoanalyst and public intellectual. He is Chair of the Clinical Graduate Program at the Department of Psychology of Tel Aviv University. His research centers on the impact of globalization on meaning, personal and group identity. As a publicist he focuses primarily on the Middle Eastern Conflict on which he takes a liberal perspective favoring the two-state solution.[/justify]
[justify]In 1889, Ahad Ha?am shook the Jewish world with his controversial essay ?The Wrong Way.? Criticizing mainstream Zionism?a Zionism of land purchase, settlements, and agriculture?as shortsighted and unsustainable, Ahad Ha?am warned against the movement?s already waning power over the Jews of his day:
Whereas previously the [Zionist] idea grew ever stronger and stronger and spread more and more widely among all sections of the people, while its sponsors looked to the future with exultation and high hopes, now, after its victory, it has ceased to win new adherents, and even its old adherents seem to lose their energy, and ask for nothing more than the well-being of the few poor colonies already in existence, which are what remains of all their pleasant visions of an earlier day. But even this modest demand remains unfulfilled; the land is full of intrigues and quarrels and pettiness?all for the sake and for the glory of the great idea?which give them no peace and endless worry; and who knows what will be the end of it all?1
Though they may have proven overly pessimistic at the time, these ominous words seem sadly pertinent today, 120 years later. Zionism, at least in its classical sense, has lost much of its force as a unifying vision for Israel.2 To be sure, the majority of Israelis are still avowed patriots and regard post-Zionism as the gravest of sins. Yet even they would be hard-pressed to explain why the old national ideals are still relevant, or what part they play in the contemporary Israeli reality. At the same time, others are bitterly disillusioned with Zionism and consider it the root of all evil?from the continuing occupation of the territories to the systematic discrimination against Sephardi Jews and Israeli Arabs. The result of this ideological fragmentation is a politics defined by sectarianism, a country without an inclusive ethos, rapidly disintegrating into tribal structures. The frail cord that binds us together, it seems, is wearing fast.
Despite the general outcry against this trend and the numerous attempts to reverse it, classical Zionism, I believe, can no longer serve as a collective credo for the State of Israel.3 The reasons for its decline are not, as is commonly claimed, ideological bankruptcy and a turn toward radical individualism; rather, they are socioeconomic changes that are sweeping the world over. The first of these is the gradual dispossession of the nation-state by the market-state. The second is the evolution from an agrarian to an industrial to a creative economy, a process that has rendered the romantic ideals of the Jewish national movement somewhat obsolete.4 The third, more local reason for the dissolution of Zionist ideology is Israel?s reality as a multicultural society: Over half of its population is composed of three major subgroups?the Haredim, immigrants from the former ussr, and Arabs?that have never subscribed to Zionism and are not likely to do so in the future.
In analyzing the causes of the eventual demise of the old Zionist worldview this essay also seeks to formulate an alternative. Given Israel?s current character as both a market-state and a creative economy, the alternative herein presented?not unlike that of Ahad Ha?am in his day?is that of a ?knowledge-nation.? The proposal outlined in what follows, which I have labeled KNI (Knowledge-NationIsrael), links the rich cultural heritage of the Jewish past with the new socioeconomic reality of the Israeli present. Drawing on the tradition of study that has dominated Jewish history throughout the ages, KNI proposes to turn the pursuit and production of knowledge into the binding ethos of Israeli society. Potentially meaningful for all sectors of Israel?s population, and perfectly suited to contemporary socioeconomic developments, KNI may serve as an innovative vision?a new form of Zionism?that will usher the Jewish state into the twenty-first century.[/justify]