Israel is a country of paradoxes. Democracy coexists with theocracy; Islamist representatives, resolutely hostile to any idea of a Jewish State, sit in the Knesset; elected members of the extreme right advocate with impunity the expulsion of Israeli Arabs from their native land; Jewish utopians dream of reconstituting the « Great Israel »…
This book presents the current political map of the country: the dislocation of the left, the takeover of the right, centrism, ultra-religious and extremists, Arabs and their Palestinian leaders, as well as the course of Netanyahu and his troubles with the law.
The author analyzes, in particular, the massive right-wing trend of the electorate. He provides keys to understanding these paradoxes and, more generally, the phenomenon of the massive adhesion of the poorest – mostly Sephardic – to two parties: one nationalist, the Likud, and the other ultra-religious, the Shas, which are directly responsible for their precariousness…
The book also paints a picture of a society under high tension, with a fractured identity, notably through an « orientalization » of its culture. It focuses on the conflicting claims of the Arab minority and the ultra-Orthodox Jews, arbiters of governmental combinations. The contrast is striking between this identity disorder and artistic and technological creativity that is admired the world over.