While demokratiyah has been the motto of the demonstrators who have for the past months gathered daily in Israel’s public places, it is a very specific notion of democracy that they support, one which deviates from the more majoritarian understanding that animates the present government. Arguably that majoritarianism adheres more closely to the vision of David Ben-Gurion. Nir Kedar, in David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy, explores what exactly that vision was. Allan Arkush writes in his review:
If Ben-Gurion’s political theory had to be summed up in a single word, it would be one that is rather difficult to translate: mamlakhtiyut. Kedar, who wrote the book on the subject (in Hebrew), thinks that “civicism” is the best, if awkward, English equivalent. Derived from mamlakhah, the Hebrew word for “kingdom,” it connotes the vital importance of the state, but as Kedar makes clear, Ben-Gurion’s focus on the collective did not override his individualism. Mamlakhtiyut, he writes, “is a political concept that sees the state . . . first and foremost as a framework that places the individual front and center.”
The individual here means all individuals, who should have the freedom to chart their own way in life while participating equally in their own governance. These convictions underlie Ben-Gurion’s insistence on the subordination of the army to democratic government, his strict commitment to the rule of law and freedom of expression, and his depoliticization of the civil service. However, mamlakhtiyut meant more than the empowerment and equality of all citizens; it is also concerned with the way that they relate to each other. They needed to be imbued with “a true sense of belonging to a civil society built on mutual responsibility.”
Kedar shows how, in the spirit of mamlakhtiyut, Ben-Gurion tried to bind Jews of disparate religious orientations and ethnic origins together as Israelis. This entailed, among other things, “tolerance of the religious practices of the new immigrants” in the state’s early years and “support of religious education for children of immigrants who desired it.” Readers who know something of the actual treatment accorded to new immigrants for Arabic-speaking lands in the early 1950s may scoff at these assertions. But they would be mostly wrong to do so.
Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/contemporary-israel/14399/solidarity-and-democracy/