Abstract
In April 1998, Israel turned fifty. This was a momentous milestone in Israeli history, if not in the entire history of the Jewish people. After millennia of statelessness, not only did Jews have their own state, but also they had achieved this against what appeared to be great odds. Fifty years earlier, on the evening of Friday, May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel, its existence was in danger of being brutally short-lived. It was home to only about 600,000 Jews—many of them newly arrived refugees from postwar Europe—and it faced a violent struggle for control of the land with its Arab neighbors. The very next day five Arab armies invaded the fledgling state. But the Jewish state survived; and over the course of the next five decades, it thrived despite five major wars, innumerable terrorist attacks, an economic embargo, and international isolation. After fifty years, it had become home to five million Jews, and was by far the most prosperous and militarily powerful state in the Middle East, with an arsenal of nuclear weapons, an internationally competitive high-tech industry, and living standards rivaling those of Western Europe. Although Israel had still not achieved peace with the Palestinians and all its Arab neighbors, a peace process was at least underway. As it proceeded, albeit shakily, Israel was able to cast off its earlier international isolation and finally take its place as a respected member of the international community.
We are fragmenting and globalizing at the same time. We spin out as from a centrifuge, flying apart socially and politically, at the same time that enormous centripetal forces press us all into more and more of a single mass every year … The fundamental and decisive conflicts grow ever sharper over the hard stuff of wealth, access to sources of energy and raw materials, over production, food, trade and military power. These are the conflicts that will decide the fate of the world and its peoples. But these conflicts continue to be ribbed and shaped and fleshed by the soft stuff of group identities, by the ways people see themselves and are seen, how they feel about themselves and about others, and how these feelings cause them to behave.1
—Harold Isaacs
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Notes
Harold R. Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 215.
Terrell A. Northrup, “The Dynamic of Identity in Personal and Social Conflict,” in Intractable Conflicts and their Transformation, ed. Louis Kriesberg, Terrell A. Northrup, and Stuart J. Thorson (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989), 55–82.
Jay Rothman, Resolving Identity-Based Conflict in Nations, Organizations, and Communities (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997);
Jay Rothman and Marie L. Olson, “From Interests to Identities: Towards a New Emphasis in Interactive Conflict Resolution,” Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 3 (2001): 289–305.
Edward Azar, The Management of Protracted Social Conflict: Theory and Cases (Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1990);
John Burton, Conflict: Resolution and Prevention (New York: St. Martins, 1990).
Daniel Bar-Tal, “From Intractable Conflict through Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation: Psychological Analysis,” Political Psychology 21 (2000): 360;
Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, “Dialectics between Stable Peace and Reconciliation,” in From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation, ed. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 75.
This book’s claim that national identities are not easily changed or replaced is thus contrary to a view of identities as always being unstable and fluid, a view associated today with postmodernist theory (see, for example, Madan Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996];
and Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity [London: SAGE Publications, 1996]). The postmodernist depiction of identities as always in flux exaggerates the instability of identities. Identities can be deeply rooted, sedimented in people’s consciousness over time through a host of cultural and social practices.
Craig Calhoun, “The Problem of Identity in Collective Action,” in Macro-Micro linkages in Sociology, ed. Joan Huber (London: SAGE, 1991), 51–75.
Craig Calhoun, Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 217.
This definition of a national identity begs a definition of a nation, which can briefly be defined as “a community whose members share feelings of fraternity, substantial distinctiveness, and exclusivity, as well as beliefs in a common ancestry and a continuous genealogy.” Yael Tamir, “The Enigma of Nationalism,” World Politics 47 (April 1995): 425.
The existence of large cultural differences is not necessary for this. As Iver Neumann writes: “[W]hat is at issue in delineation is not ‘objective’ cultural differences, but the way symbols are activated to become part of the capital of the identity of a given human collective. Any difference, no matter how minuscule, may be inscribed by political importance and serve to delineate identities.” Iver B. Neumann, “Self and Other in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 2, no. 2 (1996): 166.
Iver B. Neumann and Jennifer M. Welsh, “The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society,” Review of International Studies 17, no. 4 (1991): 327–348.
Shibley Telhami and Michael Barnett, “Introduction,” in Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, ed. Telhami and Barnett (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 8.
Anthony Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991), 170.
These are discussed at length in the voluminous scholarly literature on nationalism. In particular see the work of Anthony Smith, National Identity; Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983);
Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994);
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso Press, 1991);
John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985);
Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992);
Craig Calhoun, Nationalism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997);
and Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: SAGE Publications, 1995).
Anthony Smith, “Ethnic Identity and World Order,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 12, no. 2 (1983): 156.
For this claim see, James Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (New York: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1990);
Martin Shaw, Global Society and International Relations (Cambridge: Polity, 1994);
Ken Booth, “Security and Emancipation,” Review of International Studies 17, no. 4 (1991): 314–315.
A process that has been termed “glocalization.” Uri Ram, “The Promised Land of Business Opportunities: Liberal Post-Zionism in the Glocal Age,” in The New Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization, ed. Yoav Peled and Gershon Shafir (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000): 217–240.
After reviewing data from cross-national public opinion surveys, two scholars found little evidence to support the claim that individuals have shifted their identities away from states toward supranational or subnational entities. Peter Dombrowski and Tom Rice, “Changing Identities and International Relations Theory: A Cautionary Note,” Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 6, no. 4 (2000): 83–105.
Uri Ram, “Postnationalist Pasts: The Case of Israel,” Social Science History 22, no. 4(1998): 534.
Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Revisiting the ‘National:’ Toward an Identity Agenda in Neorealism?” In The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Lapid and Kratochwil (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 105.
Jan Jindy Pettman, “Nationalism and After,” Review of International Studies 24 (December 1998): 151.
This effort was heralded by Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil’s edited volume, The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory. Another edited volume by Peter Katzenstein published in the same year also drew scholarly attention to the role of collective identities in foreign policy. Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
Rodney Bruce Hall, National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and International Systems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 8.
George H.W Bush, “In Defense of Saudi Arabia,” speech on August 8, 1990. Quoted in David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 3.
William Wallace, “Foreign Policy and National Identity in the United Kingdom,” International Affairs 67, no. 1 (1991): 66.
Ilya Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 19.
William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Constructivism is concerned with exploring the role of cultural meanings, beliefs, understandings, norms, and identities in international politics. The term “constructivism” was coined by Nicholas Onuf in his book, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).
Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is what States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 391–425.
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 231.
Michael Barnett, “Culture, Strategy and Foreign Policy Change: Israel’s Road to Oslo,” European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 1 (1999): 10.
Shibley Telhami, “Israeli Foreign Policy: A Realist Ideal-Type or a Breed of Its Own?” in Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, ed. Michael Barnett (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996): 29–51.
Marc Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan’s Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 10.
See, for instance, Yair Sheleg, “Israel’s Identity Crisis,” Ha’aretz, October 11, 1998; Judy Dempsey, “Fault lines at 50,” Financial Times, April 29, 1998; “Israel’s Self-analysis,” Washington Post, May 16, 1999; Dan Urian and Efraim Karsh, “Introduction,” in In Search of Identity: Jewish Aspects in Israeli Culture, ed. Dan Urian and Efraim Karsh (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 2;
Lilly Weissbrod, “Israeli Identity in Transition,” Israel Affairs 3, nos. 3–4 (Spring/Summer 1997): 57–61;
Eliot A. Cohen, “Israel after Heroism,” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 6 (November/December 1998): 120.
For Erikson’s work on identity crises, see Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968);
and Erik H. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers by Erik H. Erikson. Psychological Issues, vol. 1 (New York: International Universities Press, 1959).
Lucian Pye, “Identity and the Political Culture,” in Crises and Sequences in Political Development, ed. Leonard Binder et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 110–111.
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© 2006 Dov Waxman
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Waxman, D. (2006). Introduction. In: The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983473_1
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