The renewed polarization of Israeli society is disconcerting for all concerned citizens of the State of Israel and its friends abroad. The polarization that afflicted Israel prior to October 7, by most accounts, contributed to a perception of Israeli weakness, which emboldened Hamas to carry out its massacre on that fateful day.
In the first stages of the war, many articulated the view that diminished the significance of the issues dividing the country, claiming that they were “ inconsequential.”
While the ability of Israeli society to unify in the face of a common threat was impressive, in my view, the issues at stake were not inconsequential as they involved clashing values and deeply held perspectives which coalesced around the fault lines of the government’s judicial reform program that would affect the very shape of Israeli society.
In fact, the respected Jewish People’s Policy Institute suggested that even if a reasonable solution were to be found concerning the judicial program, the fissures within Israeli society would recur around some other issue.
Thus the deeper question is how can the Israeli body politic with its different worldviews, deeply held values often overlapping with sub-groups which former president Reuven Rivlin termed the “tribes of Israel” coexist and even enrich one another in positive interactions.
A melting pot
The Zionist social vision prior to and in the early years of the State sought to create a new pioneering society around the image of a new, proud, secular Sabra Jew of Ashkenazi background and promote unity based on uniformity.
Many of the perceived grievances by various sub-groups, such as the sector represented by Shas, Haredim Ashkenazim, and Arab society, have in effect been a reaction to the previous attempts to impose a uniform Israeli cultural identity as represented by the melting pot or the unity through uniformity model.
From this melting pot model, Israel has effectively become a multicultural society, which is in need of a new paradigm. A possible approach can be based on the work of the eminent political scientist Daniel J. Elazar, who pioneered in the fields of the Jewish political tradition and the area of federalism, which he contended was based on the Jewish idea of “Brit” or Covenant.
Its underlying principles are those of promoting diversity within unity, social partnership even in the absence of agreement on basic definitions, and advancing a sense of mutual responsibility among various and even disparate groups that need to interact and co-exist under a larger umbrella.
Elazar’s ideas of federalism and covenant have served as the basis of a graduate course in Bar-Ilan University’s Graduate Program in Conflict Management, which I initiated and have been running for over 20 years in cooperation with the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The course entitled “New Approaches to Conflict Resolution in Israeli Society” has, in effect, been serving as a social laboratory for testing the ideas of federalism and covenant as a basis for promoting diversity within unity in Israeli society.
The hundreds of students who have been through this course, many from high levels of government, military and education have been exposed, in addition to the ideas of federalism and covenant, to the group narratives of eight Israeli subgroups those being Haredi-Ashkenazi, those affiliated with the Shas movement, Russian speaking population, religious Zionists, liberal secular outlook, Ethiopian Jews, Druze and Arab society. The idea has been to promote “responsible empathy” towards all sectors of Israeli society.
Federalism based on covenant has also been uniquely positioned as an anchor to promote dialogue among these various groups, particularly based on finding commonalities between them. The underlying cultural and religious foundations of the Arab-Israeli conflict have also been discussed, along with interreligious and intercultural strategies for promoting dialogue and conflict moderation between the Jewish and Arab sectors of Israeli society. Indeed, from my experience, the interreligious and intercultural approach has also opened up larger horizons for dialogue and potential peacebuilding rather than a nationalistic dialogue, which inevitably leads to a zero-sum dead end.
Another one of my observations which I have shared with my students, also based on Judaic ideas is that the body politic composed of different subgroups and worldviews must accommodate all of these elements in some kind of reasonable balance in which those holding more traditional and nationalistic views along with those of more liberal outlooks must all feel that they have a place under the “collective tent”. The Israeli tendency to seek a “knock out” of the opposing side is counterproductive if not outright dangerous to the future of this country.
In addition, discourse in the class has illustrated the deep sense of emotional injury that many sectors of Israeli society have experienced over time, immediately leading to an explosion of emotion, preventing constructive and nuanced discussion of critical issues facing this country both domestically and externally. Just as the truism has been articulated that Jews and Arabs will continue to exist together in this land, so must the various “tribes of Israel” continue to exist together in this country.
Another important aspect of this course has been an annual interreligious intercultural seminar held in a mixed Jewish-Arab city, particularly Akko which in its de facto power sharing, such as a permanent slot for an Arab Deputy Mayor affords an example of social partnership even in the absence of agreement on fundamental definitions, in the spirit of federalism.
As the spring holiday cycle has begun with the conclusion of Passover the need for new and compelling ways to achieve a balance of diversity within unity in Israel is all the more urgent particularly if want to avoid a repetition of the deadly atmosphere of intergroup antagonism and discord prevailing in the country prior to the October 7 massacre.
The writer is on the faculty of the Graduate Program in Conflict Management and Resolution, the School of Communication and runs the Project for the Study of Religion, Culture and Peace at Bar-Ilan University, He is also the author of the newly released book Approaches to Jewish Arab Interreligious Dialogue and Peacebuilding: Theory and Practice (IGI Global, 2025).