Israel's Changing Society

"Population, Ethnicity, and Development"

Calvin Goldscheider

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367159740
• eBook ISBN: 9780429711053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Cultural Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides the most up-to-date assessment of Israel's society today, portraying the country's ethnic diversity, its economy, and demographic changes. Revealing linkages between demographic transformation and socioeconomic change, Goldscheider shows how ethnic group formation emerged in Israel to create the present mix of Jewish and Arab populations. He also reviews the policies of Palestinian and Israeli governments concerning immigration, describing the ways in which socioeconomic development within Israel, urbanization, and industrialization have evolved through the use of outside capital and increasing dependency. The book reveals two unique sets of processes about Israel today. The first concerns important changes in marriage, family and intermarriage, educational attainment and occupational achievement, ethnic politics, religion, and the changing role of women. A second but related concern pertains to the social and economic contexts of community life. Here Goldscheider investigates rapid change among Israel's major urban centers, towns, and agricultural centers, including the Kibbutz as well as Arab communities. In concluding chapters, the author discusses the role of government in shaping population policy, including health, fertility, and contraceptive and abortion issues. He also describes the influence of Jewish communities outside of Israel and the impact of the Middle East conflict with Arab states on Israel's domestic policy as well as the conflict with populations in territories administered by Israel since 1967. Likely to be a standard reference for years to come, the book is essential reading for political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians concerned with Israel's politics and society.

PART ONE
Demography, Development, and Ethnicity

1
Nation-Building, Population, and Development

The state of Israel is one of the oldest new societies to have been established in the post-World War II era. Its roots are embedded in the very distant past of the Hebrew Bible and in centuries of minority status and anti-Semitism in Christian and Moslem societies. Emerging politically out of the ashes of a destroyed European Jewry in the Holocaust, Israel was carved out of the nineteenth-century Ottoman empire and was based on European ideologies of nationalism and ethnic politics. Built on Western foundations of justice, independence, and democracy, it has struggled continuously for political legitimacy among its neighbors, and its members have battled over its boundaries and territory, the distribution of its resources, and the treatment of its minorities. Committed to peace, it has been in warfare and ceaseless conflict; defined as a secular state, religion has been an integral element of its politics; dedicated to being an open, pluralistic, and egalitarian society, it is divided by ethnicity and religion; fiercely independent, it remains the major recipient of economic and military aid from the United States and from Jews around the world. Designed as a haven for the remnants of world Jewry, it contains only one-third of the Jewish population of the world after four-and-a-half decades of statehood, immigration, and population growth.

Israeli society has integrated millions of Jewish immigrants from an enormous range of diverse countries, invigorated an ancient language to form a common basis of modern communication, and developed a rich culture of literature, theater, film, and scholarship. It has become one of the leaders in agricultural innovation and rural communal experiments, even as it is one of the most urban of contemporary societies. The deserts have bloomed, and modern technologies have flourished in Israel; major family revolutions have occurred, and extensive health care institutions have been organized. Israel has become a model state for many Third World nations and a major source of identity for Jewish communities around the world. Characterized by heterogeneity and by intense and continuous change, Israel is a small state occupying a disproportionate share of the headlines and stories in the Western press. Indeed, contradictions and paradoxes seem to be some of the defining features of Israeli society, as does its complexity.

This book concerns these complex themes and is in an attempt to understand Israel's changing society. I examine demographic processes and social-economic-political developments to describe the changes that Israel has experienced and to provide clues about the sources of these changes and their consequences. I focus on the linkages between nation-building and population growth and investigate the assimilation of immigrants from diverse societies and their mobilization into a coherent, pluralistic polity. I assess how resources are distributed and how external dependencies and internal conflicts are connected to clarify the basis of ethnic and other inequalities. To grasp the complex in the everyday life of its citizens, I review the normal, recurrent events of the life course—birth, marriage, and family formation, sickness and death. I investigate the communities where people live, the jobs they have, the children they love, their schooling, and their resources. I outline developments in culture, politics, and religion; the retention of minority inequalities and the creation of new communities, their distinctiveness and differential access to opportunities; the significance of gender roles and the sources of family values; the relationship of others to Israelis and their society—Jews and Arab Palestinians in their diasporas. Together, these themes provide a portrait of contemporary Israeli society, an assessment of the historical roots of current patterns, and the basis for conjecture about the future.

To carry out the daunting goals of understanding a complex society, I use some overall theoretical maps to orient readers with the broadest images to fit the details into a coherent whole. I provide in this introductory chapter several points of entry into the complexities of understanding changes in Israeli society over the past several decades. Throughout, I emphasize the links among population processes, economic developments, nation-building, and emergent ethnicity.

I make two core arguments about the patterns of nation-building in Israel: First, I argue that demographic transformations—changes in immigration, health and mortality, fertility and family structure, internal migration and residential concentration—have been critical in shaping nation-building and economic development in Israeli society and that society's generational renewal. Second, I demonstrate how the sources of inequalities within Israel have changed over time and how new divisions among Jews and between Jews and Arabs are emerging. Demographic and social structural factors are at the core of these changing inequalities, transforming communities in the processes of nation-building.

In my examination of Israel's changing society, I note the tensions between its uniqueness and its commonalities that it shares with other countries. Social patterns are emerging in Israel that are similar to other developing, small countries dependent on large and powerful nations for socioeconomic resources and political support. At the same time, other processes reflect the specifics of the Jewish condition in recent history and the relationships between Israeli and non-Israeli Jews. Still other patterns in Israel can be understood only in the light of Israeli's particular history, related to its developments and its role in the Middle East region. Israel is unique in the forces that have shaped its history; it is also a microcosm of population, development, and ethnic relationships. It is one country that comprises many communities; a political entity unified and organized, with official boundaries and administrative networks. Israeli society is an example of the processes of sociopolitical development, economic dependency, and ethnic pluralism; it is at the crossroads of East and West, where Western democracy, European socialism, Jewish and Moslem Fundamentalism blend with Middle Eastern culture and society.¹

It is difficult to generalize from the case of one small country to others in different areas of the world. The historical events that have been specific to the evolution of the Jewish state and the people that live there preclude any sweeping conclusions. Yet it is striking how the processes that have come to characterize Israeli society parallel those that have emerged elsewhere, in old and new states, in more- and less-developed nations, in Western and non-Western countries. The analyses that I present provide a basis for understanding one fascinating case study; my conclusions should be informative for comparative studies. At the end, we should have learned both the unique features of the Israeli case and more general patterns of social change and social inequality.

Demographic Themes

Demography plays a powerful role in understanding the formation of Israeli society and the changes that it has experienced over time. Among the demographic themes are (1) the centrality of immigration in Israel's population growth; (2) the links between increases in population size and economic development; (3) the tie between the geographic distribution of Israelis and the political legitimacy of the state; and (4) the ways that residential patterns have created ethnic networks within a pluralistic society. The relative size of Jewish and Arab populations has been of central political importance; and population processes are associated with social inequalities based on ethnic origins, religion, and gender. Family values and gender roles are linked to the changing size of families; differentials in health and death are connected to social inequalities. The centrality of demography is reflected in its core place within Zionism, the national ideology of Israel. And there are important cultural values about population issues. I expand on these demographic themes throughout my analysis. Here, I outline five basic principles of population analysis.

First, there are only two sources of changes in population size—natural increase (the difference between births and deaths) and the net flow of migration. All social, economic, political, and cultural factors that affect the changing size of a population operate through these two sources. In turn, alterations in the social and economic composition of a population are influenced by the origins and selectivity of migrant flows and the differential reproduction of social groups. Entering and exiting processes indicated by fertility, migration, and mortality are the bases for understanding the changing demography of Israel's population.

Second, communities and families, no less than the populations of states, are shaped by these demographic processes. The number of children people have, where they live, who their neighbors are, and their own health and welfare are important for the generational renewal of society, as are the family roles of men and women, the networks that families sustain, and the values that they convey from generation to generation. Communities shape the national demographic profile, and families are the building blocks of communities. Thus demographic analysis focuses on changes in population size and distribution for the country as a whole, as well as on families, communities, and groups.

Third, demographic processes are interrelated: Fertility, mortality and migration (both internal and international) are linked to each other in dynamic ways. Changes in each process contribute to overall population-size changes and are likely to have effects on the other processes. These population processes can be examined for their impact on demographic phenomena over time and in their different configurations. Each influences the age and sex structure of populations, and often the cohort changes in socioeconomic and ethnic composition. Together, these interrelated demographic processes form a population system.

Fourth, marriage and family formation are significant in a demographic context, since these processes bind families together, linking the generations to each other in a web of relationships. Community is defined as a pattern of interrelated networks. The tighter the networks and the larger the number of linkages between families through marriage, residence, jobs, and places of origin, the greater the community cohesion and the stronger the identification with the community. Demography shapes the shared intensities of interactions within and between generations; in turn, population processes are at the core of societal cohesiveness.

Fifth, demographic processes determine, and are determined by, social processes linked to families, households, and groups and are therefore fundamental social dimensions of communal life. It follows that as social changes occur, demographic processes will be affected; as demographic processes unfold, social changes are likely to follow. When we examine basic demographic processes and focus on population changes, we are confronted with the fundamentals of sociological analysis. Issues of family continuity and social inequality are critical parts of the generational issues highlighted by demography.

Demographic principles focus attention on the examination of how population processes are at the core of nation-building, development, and national political integration in Israel's changing society. They point to the need to investigate the linkages between population processes and group differences, including population changes among groups and demographic convergences among communities. They suggest the importance of population processes in the formation and transmission of social class concentration and the generational overlap of ethnicity and stratification. Studying demography in the contexts of nationbuilding, inequalities, and community provides a basis for understanding Israel's changing society.

Changing Demographic Snapshots

I begin empirically with a simple demographic profile of contemporary Israeli society. A snapshot, cross-sectional demographic view reveals a total 1992 population size in Israel of over 5 million persons and a rate of population growth of 2.6 percent per year between 1983 and 1992.² Israel is an overwhelmingly urban society, with close to 90 percent of the population living in areas so designated. About 3 out of 10 Israelis are below the age of 15, and 9 percent are above the age of 65. During the three years between 1989 and 1992, over 450,000 immigrants arrived in Israel, mainly from the former Soviet Union. Birth rates in the state of Israel (22 births per 1,000 population and a total fertility rate of 2.93 births per woman) were higher than in most industrialized Western countries and lower than in Third World countries; death rates were among the lowest in the world (6 deaths per 1,000 population, an infant mortality rate of 9.4 deaths of children under age one per 1,000 births, and a life expectancy of 77 years). The dominant ethnic-religious population in the state is Jewish, representing 82 percent of the total, with a rather even split between those of European (Western) origins and those of Asian and African (Middle Eastern) origins. Six out of 10 Jews were born in Israel, and 23 percent of the Jewish population in 1990 were Israelis that were born of Israeli-born parents. The Arab population in Israel is largely Moslem (76 percent) and is concentrated in particular regions of the country.

Changes in the demographic portrait of Israeli society can be sketched in a preliminary way by examining these same elements about four-and-a-half decades earlier, when the state of Israel was established. At the end of 1948, there were 872,700 persons living in approximately the same land area in Israel, mostly Jews (82 percent) of European origin (85 percent), and there was a low rate of natural growth. During the first several months subsequent to statehood, there were very high rates of immigration and a potential for continuous Jewish immigration from a wide range of countries. At the same time, there was an exodus of Arab residents as war raged between Israel and neighboring Arab countries. Israel was established in part of the areas of Palestine, as territorial control switched from the British Mandate toward an emerging Jewish administration. There was a low level of industrial activity in 1948 but a high level of urban concentration. Israel was a country without a secure future, as war and political-economic uncertainty marked its birth; it had an unknown capacity then to economically and socially absorb large numbers of immigrants. The Arab population became a demographic, political, and social minority as Jews became the majority in the new state.

The demographic snapshots begin to be sharpened when one reviews the patterns of population growth. The path of demographic growth in Israel has been rather uneven since the 1950s, even as the rate has been high. Data in Figure 1.1 dramatically show the increases in population size and the fluctuations since 1948 for both the Jewish and Arab populations. Starting with a base of 650,000 in mid-1948, the population surpassed its first million within the first year and doubled to 2 million within a decade. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• PART ONE Demography, Development, and Ethnicity
• PART TWO The Formation of Israeli Communities
• PART THREE Ecology, Settlement, and the Development of Communities
• PART FOUR Forms of Inequality: Social Class, Gender, and Death
• PART FIVE Family Formation and Generational Continuities
• PART SIX Diasporas, Dependencies, and Ethnic Continuities
• References
• About the Book and Author
• Index