Pioneers of Creative Disputes

Public debates tend to mirror a society’s state-of-mind. Israel is a hotspot for debates, with Jews and non-Jews alike engaging in very controversial discussions. Israeli society thus emerges as a society in constant transition, not growing tired to challenge its very foundations and conventional assumptions when dealing with questions like: “How should Israeli culture be described: Jewish, Israeli? Eastern, Western, global?”, “To what extent can we speak of social justice or ethnic equality in Israel?” or “Is criticism of Israel a new antisemitism?” This presentation introduces some of the most renowned and at the same time much disputed scholars who have shaped the debates in and about Israel for decades. The focus lies primarily on the topic “Israel: democracy, theocracy or ethnocracy?” − a question to which scholars like Ruth Gavison, Mordechai Kremnitzer, Sammy Smooha or Oren Yiftachel have found diverse and contrasting answers. By introducing these figures and their longstanding, pioneering research in this field, the arguments they invoke are discussed in view of revealing their perspectives ranging from the view that Israel can be both Jewish and democratic, to the assumption that its “ethnocratic features” keep surfacing, with the “Jewish state” failing to qualify as veritable democracy.