Israel
is not your run-of-the-mill country and for better or worse its citizens are
anything but a single coherent group. Israelis are a melting pot of various
religions and cultures, and a cacophony of languages. There are Jews,
Arabs, Christians, Muslims, Druse, Bedouins, Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews,
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, secular Arabs, Christians and Jews. On any given day you
can hear Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and French spoken on the streets of
Israel, as well as Tagalog, Thai, Chinese, Farsi or Turkish.
As
such, it wouldn’t surprise many to know that there are numerous social,
political and cultural chasms that divide people here and the spectrum of our
differences is immense. You need to go no further then view the political
parties running in the upcoming elections that cater to
economic, religious, cultural and nationalistic sensibilities. Among the
dozen or so mainstream parties running in the upcoming elections, there is also
an Ultra-Orthodox women’s party, a party to legalize cannabis and another
to lower rent prices.
Some
would view the multi-faceted nature of Israeli society with
apprehension lest it weaken us in the face of those more homogenous
neighboring countries seeking our demise. I would argue that these ardent
differences of ours when expressed within a single yet pluralistic civil
society is perhaps our greatest strength. Like the influx of European immigration
to the US at the beginning of the 20th century and subsequent waves of
immigration from Asia as well as Mexico and Central America, which has had
a net positive effect on the US both culturally and economically, so too our
differences in Israel strengthen our society and ironically make us more
impervious to the vagaries of the shifting sands of the Middle East. While all
of our neighbors have experienced considerable turmoil and tumult
arising from the Arab Spring, Israel has been spared the more violent
internal machinations that have plagued our neighbors precisely because as a
democratic and pluralistic society we are better able to temper such sudden and
drastic changes.
Our
Knesset is a microcosm of Israeli society and debates there are usually heated
and often involve shouting, sometimes even followed by the ejection of a
Knesset Member. The beauty of Israeli democracy is that the Knesset and Israeli
Supreme Court are independent bodies separate from the ruling government
(as is the case with most true democracies) and in effect allow the
“cool and deliberate sense of community to prevail” in times of crises. James
Madison, the fourth president of the US and the father of the US Constitution
believed that there needed to be a counterweight against any ill-advised
decision by a leader who became swept up by the masses.
Madison
wrote so beautifully in 1788 that “there are particular moments in public
affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit
advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may
call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to
lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the
interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to
check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people
against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority
over the public mind?”
While Israel is far from
perfect with a myriad of social and economic problems as well as the
Herculean task of attaining a peaceful and mutually satisfactory
agreement with the Palestinians yet before us, we must
remember that our right to vote in the upcoming election is
an opportunity to not just resolve these issues but also a good time to
pat ourselves on the back for this robust democratic system in the
ever-volatile Middle East, which is no small feat.
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