When striving for civil consent and civilian cooperation, democracies will try to achieve that without forcing citizens to a stiff set of values. Pluralism and diversity of cultures and groups are a permanent feature of the modern era and the path for civilian cooperation, so it seems, going through accepting that. This debate on diversity does not skip over Israel as a modern state with multiple slits – cultural, regional, and national.
I want to address this subject of constant cultural fragmentation in democracies via Yeshayahu Leibowitz`s theory. Using Israel`s state as my case study, I will offer a different approach to deal with the diversity of culture and groups in the modern state.
In contrast to liberal multiculturalism, which strives to protect minorities by providing them with group rights and special treatment, I want to present an approach that encourages groups not to take anything from the state but rather to fight it, a cultural fight to protect its ends. Thus, Leibowitz sees the group itself, not the state, as responsible for protecting and achieving its values and calls for a struggle that both the group and the state benefit from.
I will argue that Leibowitz`s position provides a different point of view of processes occurring currently in Israeli society, and enable a re-observation of the creation of a stable civil consent in a society with cultural fragmentation, and the relationship between democracies and its minority groups.