Good afternoon and welcome, everybody.
It's a pleasure to present to you where a historical acquaintance of mine, Professor Elvis, from, uh, the Department of Political Studies.
So it's changing the title. It's a school now.
It's a school of political study that the Tel Aviv University Professor Hobbes's book, the latest book, Last Book,
This Political Philosophy of Zionism Trading Jewish Words for a Hebraic Land, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.
He has also recently won the Israel Science Foundation's prestigious grant for research on the public wall of the University in Israel.
And the title of his talk today is The Emerging Notion of Sovereignty in Contemporary Israel.
Professor Institute, thank you for coming. Thank you for inviting me.
Really a pleasure to come here and thank you for coming here.
My talk today is about two subjects are interrelated.
The broader context is the decline of democracies around the world and an attempt to think about the other of democracy or what
is the other type of regime that manifest the characteristic that most contradict democracy or especially liberal democracy?
And in this context, I'm looking at a military government or military occupation, as in Israel.
And and the specific goal of my talk is to speak about the elective affinity or
connection between the type of regime in the occupied territories and Israeli democracy.
Or, in other words, how military government in the West Bank reshapes Israeli democracy.
Now, I would like to be clear, but I'm not going to argue that Israeli democracy is verging on imminent collapse,
and I'm not going to argue that democracy is not meaningful in Israel, and surely not that Israel is in danger of a military coup.
That's not what I like to say, but I am looking at subtle processes that change the nature of Israeli democracy developing over the years.
And I think that they deserve attention because they can teach us how democracy is in decline or how they become of their relinquish,
their notion of sovereignty to something else.
And that's what I'm trying to explore in my talk. Okay.
So in order to prevent misunderstanding of what I should give this go to these comments.
Politically, we are living at a confusing moment.
Bestseller books of titles such as How Democracies Die Fascism, The Warning, The Road to Unfreedom, How Democracy Ends.
There is a sense, backed by various democracy indexes, that around the world, governments of this type are backsliding.
This backsliding is a very gradual process.
Scholars observe, and it is it has numerous dimensions extending from the weakening of the hand of the judiciary and head of the gatekeepers,
to the attempts to control the media through soft ways,
and from the growing intolerance to minorities and refugees to the rise of authoritarian leaders who cultivate this intolerance and much more.
However, while most of the research underscores this decline,
it is important to note that no alternative, alluring political vision has emerged to replace democracy.
That is to say no one is promising a utopian, classless society of plenitude, nor an organic and pure unity of the people as a nation.
Those days of the thirties, of the 1930s are gone. Rather, we live in an age in which democracy, especially liberal democracy,
is losing some of its grip over the collective imagination as an ideal horizon and as a workable practice.
But we haven't seen the emergence of a new horizon to capture and enliven people's political eras.
Today, it seems that there is no clearly articulated, persuasive, coherent and widely recognised alternative political vision to democracy.
The political imagination. Imagination seems at the moment depleted and smart in hand.
One could argue that in the absence of a real ideological challenger to democracy, it is not doomed.
Only if it will survive democracy. It needs to reach to significantly reinvent itself.
And in order to do so, it must understand the nature of its contemporary challengers.
Indeed, in most cases where backsliding occurs.
Democracy is not explicitly repudiated in countries such as Turkey, Poland,
Hungary and many more democratic, more formal sovereignty is officially still professed and upheld.
Only it is being redefined such that democracy becomes increasingly facade like,
and neither is attempt to consolidate their power and ensure that they stay in the house for a long haul.
Thus, the country may still be democratic in the sense that it has competing parties,
regular elections, rule of law and constitution, free branches of government and more.
And yet, in many democracies nowadays, one could note the growing weight of anti-democratic principles.
And here I would like to concentrate on three and three anti-democratic principles that
I think are particularly important in general and in the Israeli context in particular.
The first one is consolidation of power in the executive branch and in one leader.
This is more familiar mistrust in language and its meaningfulness and the political and the fact that the
political and the moral spheres become increasingly distinguished or that they are become harder to reconcile.
These three principles, rapid or largely unacknowledged by leaders,
do not form a coherent ideology and vision, and surely do not captivate the imagination of people.
But they do gradually introduce a notion of sovereignty that in some respects is a mirror image of the Democratic one,
especially the liberal Democratic one.
In this context, it is illuminating to examine the state of Israel, where these three principles have been mushrooming, mushrooming for years.
Israel, indeed, has a Janus face, if you say yellow space.
Okay. Model of sovereignty, genuine democratic sovereignty and institutions on the one hand, and constitutional dictatorship,
as Carl Friedrich, the Harvard scholar called it, or military rule in the occupied territories.
On the other, as a democracy continuously since its independence,
Israel has combined liberal and ethnic principles according to significant equal political and civil rights to all citizens,
while ensuring the dominance of a Jewish ethnic group and its ownership over the over the state.
I should note that even until 67, until 68, 66, which was a military administration, rule over the Arabs, Arab citizens of Israel.
This is relevant in the context of our talk today.
On the other hand, however,
Israel exercises military rule or government of absolute sovereignty over the Palestinians to varying degrees according to areas A, B and C.
In this area, the level of sovereignty and control is different.
And in military government that Israel exercises,
it recognises few rights of the individual being occupied and practically none of the collectives of the Palestinians,
especially not the right for self-determination.
Since the 1967 war, the question then has become Can Israel occupy all the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River?
Subject the Palestinians in the West Bank to military rule or varying degrees of oppression and still remain meaningfully democratic.
What follows is an attempt to answer this question and to argue,
but at least in the three dimensions mentioned above, regarding concentration of power,
diminishment of language and a gulf between the political, the moral,
military rule and its model of sovereignty are increasingly shaping Israeli democracy.
My aim to repeat is not to examine Israeli occupation and suppression of Palestinians per se.
Other scholars have done this important work much better than I could.
Rather, my aim is to reflect, based on the Israeli case, on the ways democracies could gradually,
wever in aspects that cannot be easily measured while still remaining in every respect democratic.
I would argue that over time,
in all symmetrical an elusive elective affinity emerged in Israel Palestine between the political thinking and rationale,
embodying the military rule and the one embodied in democracy that exercises this result.
Unlikely elected affinity developed for a number of factors among them.
I would like to mention them the exceptional duration of the Israeli occupation and its very beneficial results in the eyes of many Israelis.
The close geographical proximity of the occupied area to the occupying state.
The fact that the IDF and the Israeli security forces in a country where military service is compulsory,
are widely active in operating and maintaining the occupation, and therefore Israeli youth become familiar with it intimately.
For generation, the reality on the ground whereby about 400,000 Israeli settlers living in the densely populated West
Bank are also subject to registering to the jurisdiction of the military government in the area.
The rise of the new Israeli leadership from the right.
Many of them over live in the settlements or closely identify with and represent the settlers and the unusual
number of prominent retired military generals in the Israeli political elite that bring their experience,
including in the occupied territories, to governing Israel itself.
For all these reasons, military occupation has become natural for most Israelis and seen as a legitimate way of governing people.
The political thinking behind occupation allowed so is allowed to penetrate
Israel democracy and to become an integral part of its own civilian institution,
reshaping them from within. While the international indexes of democracy, such as those of Freedom House, the Economist V them and so on,
do not testify to a significant decline in the democratic indicators in Israel.
These indexes are also partly misleading since they are some of the most important questions but are difficult to measure,
such as I mentioned first, however, a few general words about military government are in order.
One of the founding principles of modern democracy has been the separation of the branches of
government and the notion that the people as a sovereign delegate the rights and powers to a divided,
yet mediated set of political institutions.
This idea, first famously articulated by Went to Square, was also espoused by the writers of the Federalist Papers.
We indeed stated that I'm quoting The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands may justly be pronounced.
The very definition of a tyranny federalist number 47.
Military government is the ultimate antithesis to the federalist notion of democratic sovereignty,
advancing unified and monolithic picture of the political will and the muscular view of the executive.
Military government is established in cases of military occupation or belligerent occupation when a sovereign state occupied the territory of another,
usually in the aftermath of a war in contradistinction to annexation,
military occupation is supposed to be a temporary predicament in which the
occupying power does not claim permanent sovereignty over the occupied territory.
Sovereignty remains with the ousted monarch collective government or the people only.
It is suspended now in military occupation.
It should be stressed.
The powers and authority of the military commander are nourished by the rules of public international law concerning belligerent occupation,
particularly the Hague Regulation of 1907. It's pretty early and the Geneva Convention of 1949, the fourth Geneva Convention,
that means of military rule in the occupied territories is regulated by law and is performed through the law.
And it includes demand such as to respect the human rights of the occupied individual as a protected person and to care for the safety,
civic order, property and welfare of the occupied population as a whole.
The military commander, while referred to by some, as I said,
by kind of Frederick as a constitutional dictator, is therefore seen as acting within the law.
As Frederick wrote, he is in fact, appointed by a constitutional government.
He does not control the exercise of his powers is expressly defined in this.
He is subject to recall. His term may be said to be subject to a clear time limit.
Moreover, is subject to criticism of the representative bodies and by the public of his home country.
Beyond its understanding in legal terms, military occupation is of course also a unique political phenomenon,
and it is worth reflecting on its meaning.
One of the most striking aspects of military form of government is that it operates nearly without any separation of powers,
and that ultimately acts of legislation and the judgement of the courts are subordinated
to the interests and the needs of the executive that is the military commander.
This is the case not only in emergency situations, but on a regular basis and as a matter of governing philosophy.
First, regarding the law in occupied territory, the Geneva Convention dictates that I'm quoting the penal laws of the occupied territory.
Territory shall remain in force with the exception that they may be repealed or suspended by the occupying power.
In cases where they constitute a threat to security or an obstacle to the application of the present convention,
the occupying power may suspend existing laws and promulgate new ones for three main reasons the security needs of the occupying power,
the implementation of the norms and regulation demanded by the convention itself,
and the needs to ensure the orderly and secure life of the occupied population and adjust the law to new circumstances.
But these three criteria do not possess the same weight and the security of the occupying powers.
Personal property and lines of communication are permanent.
Legal restrictions on movement, on expression, on association, etc. are made mainly for this reason.
Moreover, the judgement as to which laws needs to be changed and what constitute absolute necessity that allows us to change his.
Largely left to the commander discretion. In short, the reason for legislating and the reason behind governing are therefore one and the same.
There is no distinction. The commander uses the law first and foremost as a flexible instrument to ensure his own
power and its perpetuation and retains and restraints on the law issued by the commander.
Besides, international law are at the bare minimum.
The law issued by the military commander is also the foundation upon which judges in military courts pass their judgement.
In contrast to local courts in the occupied territory, most of the cases in military courts concern security offences as defined by the occupier.
Thus, while the judges are not subjected in passing judgement to the area commander who appoints them,
the Court is nevertheless not an impartial and independent body adjudicating a dispute between the accused and the occupying state.
It does not give equal weight to the right of the defendant and the welfare of the
local community on the one hand and the interest of the occupying force on the other.
Rather, the overarching motivation behind military courts is guarding the safety authority and
property of the occupying force and promoting the interest of the state behind the force,
as noted. This motivation is also reflected in the make up in the personnel of the judges while
they are independent and subject to judicial review in Israel to the High Court.
They are also part of the military staff,
the judges and subject to its hierarchy and line of communication lines of command similar to out of legislation than military courts.
Even when conducted fairly, and I should say from personal experience of witness,
many such crimes are done fairly for the most part on the macro level, which reflect the instrument realisation of the judicial process.
For the executive's interest to some,
then as a legal political phenomenon and practice military government advances a remarkable notion of sovereignty,
one that is action oriented, built on two main principles.
First, separation or balance of the three branches of government is ineffective way of exercising sovereignty.
The military commander has your attention and professorial data from Tel Aviv wrote Is the.
Is this the pinnacle or summit of authority in the occupied territory?
And all functionaries in the administration, whether military or civilian,
including official enlisted locally, must answer to the commander in this vision.
The political will is one and is embodied in one person or institution, the military commander.
The law is enacted solely by this commander without the legislative body and according to shifter circumstances,
and is primarily a tool for guarding and augmenting power.
Second, military government is instituted in belligerent circumstances, forced upon an enemy.
Therefore, the very nature of this government does not allow to transcend the occupier enemy dichotomy, but rather continuously reproduces it.
This reproducing of the enemy is the justification for the constitutional dictatorship of military government,
and the danger from others is a spectre legitimising and monolithic in our article View of sovereignty.
VS Another characteristic of military government are increasingly evident in Israeli democracy and its concept of sovereignty.
Now moving to discuss Israel in recent decades,
some well known Israeli political scientists and legal scholars chided Israeli democracy for poor government ability.
Having argued that the ability of the government to contemplate and seriously examine policy options,
accept clear decisions, implement those decision and monitor the impact of its own policies is very low.
They further suggest that this limited ability of government, given all ability, affects the thrust of Israelis in their democratic system.
This academic conversation, which surely had some basis in reality,
was echoed by leading Israeli politicians first from the centre and then embraced by the right.
It began with the Olmert government. They were, I think,
the first to really take this on as a mission to to increase the vulnerability as it moved across the political spectrum from the centre to the right.
However, government of government ability became less a matter of improving the quality of and coordination among government
ministries and became more a matter of reshaping Israeli democracy and the balance among the three branches of government.
So the. The executive will come here demanding Israel as a parliament parliamentary system inspired by England,
by England's model of election in Israel or nationwide proportional.
And for parties and not for individual candidates representing a constituency now in England, wrote Walter Bagehot.
I hope I'm expressing his name correctly. Somebody knows.
Well, he's a 19th century English scholar, newspaper writer, very famous at the time.
He wrote the ultimate the 14th. The English Constitution is a newly elected House of Commons.
No matter whether the question upon which he decides be administrative or legislative,
no matter whether it considered high matters of essential constitution or small matters of daily detail, it is absolute.
It can rule as it likes and decides at least as it likes the English constitution.
He writes in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign afforded the House of Commons the most important function of the House.
How Bagehot is choosing the leader that would form a cabinet.
A Cabinet that is the delicate and extension of the House and answerable and accountable to it.
But at one point we might ask, is the order reversed and the government in the parliament system become the dominant
force in comparison to the body that supposedly delegated authority in the first place?
Indeed, the most significant development in Israeli democracy is the growing weakness of the Knesset,
the Israeli parliament, in comparison to the government.
In fact, it is in danger of becoming a rubber stamp of sort,
following the lead of the government in legislation and in failing to exercise significant oversight to begin with.
There has been a 40% rise in the government pieces of legislation in the period extending between the 18th Knesset and the 20th,
the one that just finished its work now.
So the last freak Knesset has seen a rise of 40% in government proposed pieces of legislation.
77% of them became law.
At the same time, only 3% of legislative bills initiated by individuals and groups make their way through the final stages of becoming a law.
And the government rejects the vast majority of the proposed bill by the government.
In other words, the government controls the legislation and individuals.
MP has lost any practical ability to shape as the executive branch is able to take the lead in legislation and to defect to dominate the process.
Partly because many of its members of the Knesset are also ministers and deputy ministers and thus part of their eggs,
and they are therefore part of the executive themselves.
But also there is another reason, and that is the change in the Israeli party system as of 2018.
Last year, five parties had no internal elections, comprising five parties, about one third of the total MPAs.
That is 40 out of. One third.
Yeah, that is 40 members out of the 120 members of the Knesset in the election of the for the 21st Knesset due in April 2019, in less than two months.
This number is expected to reach most higher. Only three parties out of 14 but run for the Knesset have open primaries in most part in Israel today.
Practically one, practically one person nominates the candidates and that person, him or herself, or does not face internal elections themselves.
In the Likud Party, the biggest and dominant party. There are internal elections of candidates for the MP.
But the party develop a political culture in which the position of the party leader is not contested and he is.
Hopefully, someday she fully dominates the party without the need of coping with significant internal opposition.
They call it the Likud DNA, but they don't have internal opposition.
In other words, instead of 120 independent employees who are who are accountable to the voters,
what elected them increasingly then pay is in the Israeli Knesset conveys civility,
law, glorification of the party leader, and in fact, mistrust in the very idea of democracy whose keeper they are supposed to be.
The concentration of power in the hands of few party leaders, most of them part of the coalition,
allow the government to dominate the House of Representatives and to pass almost exclusively government sponsored legislation.
The other side of undermining the balance of power in Israel and elevating the executive branch has been the various legislative
initiatives aimed in particular to weaken the Supreme Court and the position of the attorney general and the gatekeepers in general,
as some scorers note, loosening the bonds of constitutional constraints.
Constraints on executive power through legal reform itself is the first sign of autocratic legalism.
Often this loosening is supposedly done in the name of democracy and the interest of the people.
Two recent legislative initiatives in Israel are particularly important in this context.
First, the attempt to introduce a basic law concerning legislation which would limit the ability of the courts to strike down laws in judicial review.
And that would enable the Knesset to enact laws that overcome the annulment of laws by the court in cases where he does occur.
And second, a law changing the procedure for appointing the chief legal advisers and various
government ministries so that instead of being an appointee of the attorney general,
relatively free from political pressures, the advisers would be thought of as essentially a political appointees.
While these two bills and a number of others in the similar vein did not pass,
eventually they demonstrate the type of conversation of the coalition in Israel today,
and in fact they may pass in the Knesset next Knesset contemporaneously.
And perhaps more importantly, there have been unprecedented politicisation of the nomination process of judges and
an effort to appoint conservative judges who would not legislate from the bench,
as it's called. And that would, however,
because of the more passive judicial philosophy or assumed political positions sympathetic to the right would rule in favour of the government.
It is believed that numerous judges that fit this description have been appointed in recent years, including to the Supreme Court.
In addition to these structural and personal changes.
There have been various attempts to shield visiting Prime Minister from police
probes and prosecution while in office by introducing the so-called French law.
It didn't succeed so far, but we don't know as as well as an effort to minimise the role of the police in determining the case for prosecution.
Finally, the Supreme Court has been constantly attacked by and its prestige became a target for politicians,
first and foremost among them, the minister of Justice herself,
Richard Kidd, who reserve who reversed the tradition of the Minister of Justice as the prime defender of the judicial system in public life,
as was the case until she took office.
I uneducated. It has criticised the Supreme Court repeatedly and harshly for intervening where it has no authority, according to her,
whether it is on economic issues in the air, regarding the gas or security matters or land disputes and rights of refugees and many other issues.
Most of the coalition, I should note, agree with her position, even if not all of them are vocal as her to some this point.
Since its early days under Prime Minister Ben Gurion,
Israel had a political tradition of a strong executive and concentration of power in the hands of the Prime Minister.
Since the early sixties.
In the Lavonne affair, however, there was a gradual attempt to disperse power both within the executive branch and among the branches,
but in recent years correlated more or less with the collapse of the two state solution
and the sense of real or imagined sense of being under siege and in constant threat.
Power has gravitated again to the executive branch and within the executive it gravitated to that of
cratic party leaders or also ministers who quietly and have great power in forming the government.
And within the government, power gravitated to the power to the Prime Minister, who currently we thought we changed last Sunday is also the Minister.
He's the Prime Minister is the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Foreign Relation and the Minister of Health.
And only after the Supreme Court ordered him to relinquish one position,
he gave the Foreign Ministry to somebody else for a few months until the election.
So it. We can see that power has moved all the time upwards and became concentrated really in one person.
And if Ben Gurion, after independence, was at least evaluated according to his publicly professed views and stated socialist ideology,
Netanyahu makes sure that his power is not limited by any clearly articulated vision.
Lisa, for one, expressed in his own words. And I want to move to discussion of language.
I will read the section on language and then I will say a few words about the the last part in order to leave time for discussion,
the decline of liberal democracy in the world and the rise of centralised government and authoritarian leaders
are often also especially associated with the diminished status accorded to language in political life.
It is not the land which has disappeared from public life, of course.
Only that it functions less and less as an essential sphere from which citizens exercise their sovereignty by learning about their world,
or by forming opinions, or by deliberating collectively in constituting themselves as a community and language.
Thus, in this function as a medium form for which from which we can hold leaders accountable.
Much has been said in this context about President Trump. We did.
And that is the politics in which transparency about facts, intentions, actions is is submitted, systematically evaded and no transfer at once saw.
A trust worthy account of reality is provided.
Trump cherishes the role of language in politics, but with him as some observe,
the problem is no longer vocational lying in politics, but rather lying as politics.
In other words, sorry.
In other countries where democracy is much weaker than the US, citizens lose trust in the parliament in their public conversation for other reasons.
They see this conversation, the public conversation, as being heavily manipulated, either by direct censorship over the press, media,
universities and the like,
or by self control over these organisations and institutions where private and public powers owners favourable to the government.
Muteness indeed has many faces uttering an avalanche of self contradicting speech that renders it meaningless,
controlling the narrative to the point where it becomes unbelievable.
In failing to give an account of all in all these cases and others,
the persons at the House of Power releases him or herself from the burden of the democratic notion of language and thus fervour arguments.
Power. Military government is exceptional in these contexts, since it essentially exists outside language or has only minimal use for it.
The governments that in contrast,
saw this government stands in contrast not only to the notion of a vibrant public sphere in liberal democracy, but also in contrast to fascism.
Of the 1930s, when public speeches in the plaza or over the radio were essential to gaining popularity and to mobilise people in military government.
Indeed, the sovereign does not seek the legitimation and support of those it rules over and surely does not do so through language.
It expects obedience because it can use violence to impose the law.
And military government does not need to explain the reasons behind its laws and policies, whether oppressive for the occupied or beneficial for them.
As in Kafka's novel, The Trial.
For those of you who read the law in the eyes of the occupied is often distant, arbitrary, non-transparent, overbearing.
The law is not explained nor justified in speech and in writing contemporaneously.
Military government greatly hinders this prospect for a language based public sphere in the occupied territory.
Firstly, this government limits the freedom of speech in all its forms and settings books,
newspapers, media, social media meetings, conferences, universities,
etc. and through monitoring language attempts to prevent the creation of a shared world among the occupied and to keep them separated from each other.
Secondly, even if the public sphere is found among the occupied, it has little effect on the government and thus tend to crumble over time.
The fact that the occupied and the occupier often have different national language is only deepened.
The difference the divide between them.
Israeli occupation of the West Bank is a proof that millions of people could be governed and ruled for decades.
With language playing only a marginal role.
This non-verbal nature of military government is echoed in the diminished weight accorded to language in Israeli politics.
I'm not saying that this is the only reason. I think there is something in Zionism that is anti linguistic for from the first place.
We could talk about it later. But this is another dimension.
There are numerous examples for the diminished status of language in Israel and here are just a few.
First, the Likud, the dominant political party in Israel, has not presented an electoral and election platform for the last three elections.
Maintaining ambiguity regarding its intentions.
On every subject security negotiations with the Palestinians, economy, reducing poverty, environment, education and so forth,
the party deliberately promotes this ambiguity, expecting the voters trust without feeling that it has to be clear about its plans.
Therefore, it cannot be measures measured in light of concrete goals for this ruling party.
Indeed. Word. Words conveying intentions have become an obstacle on the one hand and an empty talk.
But no one expects to be taken seriously. On the other hand. Vote him at example for this disregard for our own commitment.
And on the most vital issue is Netanyahu very last speech,
which was a declaration about acceptance of the two state solution, but in fact nothing was done to promote it or little.
Moreover, during the last election campaign, the Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered.
I'm talking about the last campaign, not this one.
The prime minister delivered only one speech. It was in English to the American Congress about Iran's nuclear program.
He made sure not to speak to Israeli citizens in their own language or to hold a public debate with his opponents in general.
Netanyahu also refuses to be interviewed by the Israeli press, which he sees as hostile.
Sometimes it's true and to expand his analysis, beliefs and plans as well as his questionable personal conduct.
But Netanyahu is not alone. And other leaders such as Sharon Barak in today,
a guy who is running against the denial of use or are using similar strategies of minimising or wholly avoiding interviews and speeches.
For many, not all Israeli leaders. Language has become a medium to be avoided as much as possible.
It is even hindering action and flexibility as demanding undesirable accountability and responsibility which threaten these leaders.
The status of the voters of citizens have been so degraded.
The sovereignty of the people who are deemed so reduced that they do not even see themselves as entitled to the
basic explanations in matter concerning their own lives and are unable to perform their basic right and obligations,
which is forming informed opinions about public affairs at a national level.
The contract, instead of language in this context, also mean that the Israeli political community is increasingly divided into tribes or groups,
each with its own thick identity and with little ability and interests to transcend the social,
political, safe zones and to interact with other such transcendence of group identity could
only take place for working with language and forming the community as a community.
The way by way of what might be called neglected, linguistically created overlap and consensus.
In other words, to create an overlapping consensus rules concept, we need to work through language.
And I think that in a society that has such a profound scepticism towards language, it is very difficult to do so.
The third deferred section, which I will just summarise briefly of the paper,
discusses the growing divide between the political and the ethical in Israel.
If we look at the liberal democracy,
maybe the most important work that discusses liberal democracy after World War Two was John Rolls Theory of Justice, which was just mentioned.
And as you may recall, one of the most famous sentences from this book is that justice is the first virtue of social institutions that we cannot.
In other words, Rawls is saying that we cannot think of political institutions without thinking about them in moral terms,
and they must embody our moral beliefs.
Otherwise, we will not be able to cooperate among ourselves over time.
And we need to be sure that the basic structure of society is just in order to be able to create life together as a political community.
And in this vision world, in politics, really come together as we come together in Aristotle and in many of our political thinkers.
There is, however, another political tradition or another line of thought regarding the relation between politics and ethics in modernity.
And maybe the most important voice in this matter is much of labour.
And for those of you who are familiar with his sociology of religion, he suggests that in modernity there is growing.
Dispersion between different spheres of value in action.
And he counts three different spheres the economic, the radical, the political, the ethical, religious, the scientific, cultural, and maybe a miss.
The most important for Weber is the distance between the ethical sphere and the political sphere.
And he sees the ethical sphere as as it evolves from religion, from Judaism and from Christianity as becoming more and more universal,
where justice and rights and respect for others is seen not in national terms and
not defined by any specific characteristic of the person for whom we act morally.
Okay. Whereas the political sphere we see that politics is more and more understood in national terms,
which are exclusive violence gains, more weight in politics, competition and more nation state become more fierce.
And therefore there is a growing tension between the two spheres, the political and the ethical and moral, and it's become harder to reconcile them.
I should note maybe you can develop in the discussion, but in developing this theory,
I think that the basis for Weber insight in this regard is it his his interpretation of early Judaism?
For those of you who are familiar with his work on Judaism and Judaism, he has a book I mentioned to James and brilliant book.
He in the book, he shows the growing distance between the priests on the one hand and sorry,
not the priest, the prophets on the one hand, beginning with the priests, then the prophets and the kings.
On the other hand, he shows that they act in different universes and are able to create in harmonious vision of of of love,
of the good life and what is the right life for Jews.
So in a way,
modernity echoes early Judaism by creating again a distance between the ethical understood in universal terms and exclusively national on the other.
Now, I think that if we think of military rule, obviously it's it's not a it's not a kind of rule that takes ethical question into into consideration.
It's on the basis of it. It's it's based on unjust foundation.
And because it is built on the idea that there is constant danger and risk, also because of need to protect oneself from that from this danger,
it allows us to think of politics as something that has to do with safety, security and constant protection against the dangers that ever posed to us.
And I think that this notion that politics is not about morality, but politics is about protection,
it's about danger and about fear from others is gradually moving.
We're being introduced more and more into political thinking in Israel proper about how Israelis think
about politics in the same way that is the foundation for military military occupation in the territories.
And therefore, the growing divide between ethics and politics, which Weber fought, is a general characteristic of modernity,
not necessarily ready to, in a specific society, become more pronounced in Israel because of these conditions that exist in the occupied territory.
And I would say the final word,
the ultimate or the most important manifestation of thinking about politics in this terms and
giving less and less place or role to justice is manifested in the recent nationality law.
Because in this law over is the basic requirement for equality does not exist.
And I think that basically what stands behind that and that's my understanding of this law is
introducing the notion that there are two types of human beings living in the same territory.
This logic that exists in the occupied territories were Jewish settlers and are and Palestinians living side by side.
But they have completely different political status.
One citizens of a country never occupied and they live side by side, right?
Introducing the notion that there are two types of human beings in general and politically speaking,
surely introducing this logic inside Israel and creating the same hierarchy in Israel between Arabs and Jews and therefore diminish.
The gap or the cognitive confusion for Israelis between what they see in the territories and what they see in Israel proper.
Right. They learn to accept. They learn to accept the occupation because it seems to them now natural that there are two types of human beings,
because the same principle operate in in Israel. In Israel and in the occupied territories.
Okay. So I think this is a really important example of how this logic separating the political, the ethical is introduced into Israeli democracy.
Okay. Thank you very much.