Dr. Gadi Yatziv fancies himself to be something of an expert
in the growing factionalization of the Israeli political
scene and its affect on government and the political
leadership.
In his new book, The Sectoral Society, Dr. Yatziv, who
teaches in the Communications Department of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, and heads the founding team of the
School for Communications in the Academic College of Netanya,
takes aim at what he terms the "enlightened rabble."
Aware of the provocative implications of his catchy phrase,
Dr. Yatziv cautions the reader not to confuse this rabble
with a "a mass of hapless and unschooled people dressed in
rags."
Instead, they should be judged as rabble, not for their
external appearances, but for their basic characteristic,
which is a childish outlooks on politics and policy in Israel
today.
"They are people who are easy prey for manipulation and whose
minds can be swayed by demagogues," Dr. Yatziv writes. "This
rabble does not behave rationally, but rather according to
its emotional reactions. "
And according to this characteristic, we are indeed talking
about rabble
"These are relatively educated citizens, whose personal
language is quite fluent, and who behave in a very rational
manner in their private worlds," Dr. Yatziv points out.
"However, in their public speech they stutter. They are not
interested and not capable of conducting a reasoned public
debate. With respect to various issues on the public agenda,
they generally suffice with expressing a series of emotion-
laden platitudes, which have no fundamental or logical
bearing to each other."
Dr. Yatziv points to typical examples:
"They were the ones who were incensed by the Labor government
during the years following the Yom Kippur War, and
established the Dash party, a party which demanded to make
order in the disorder, and to change things from their
foundations, without knowing the nature of the order their
party strove to institute, or the change to which it
aspired.
"That was why the party totally disintegrated, after it
achieved an unprecedented victory in the 1977 general
elections. They were the ones who were irate over the
corruption in the Histadrut Labor Union, and therefore broke
it up into pieces and passed the worst and most ridiculous
Health Law in the modern world: A law that nationalized the
membership dues of the health funds, and in doing so, imposed
high health taxes on the populace. The result, rather than
narrowing the gap between medical facilities for the rich and
for the poor, they widened it immensely.
"They are the ones who were irate over the ploy which Shimon
Peres, the leader of the Labor party in those days, tried to
pull off, in order to take over from Yitzchak Shamir as Prime
Minister.
"In their extreme anger over this ploy, they enacted
legislation of the Direct Election Law for Prime Minister,
which until today no one understands.
"It is still a mystery why the two large parties supported a
law which expedites their end. They are those who supported
the candidacy of former Chief of Staff Lipkin- Shachak for
Prime Minister, even before they knew his opinion on crucial
issues.
"This is their figurative democracy. Every four years, on
Election Day, they send their favorite team to the field, and
between elections function as spectators in the bleachers.
"They encourage, cheer, rebuke, berate, and even hope that
their favorite team will win. But they don't believe that
there is any link between the victory of their group and
noteworthy improvements in the quality of their lives.
"Because this is so, they are not bothered by the lack of
public rational dialogue, and when they find themselves in a
situation which compels them, so to speak, to denote their
position regarding public matters, they express mainly their
feelings and impulses.
"Such expression does not make the dialogue 'less of a
dialogue,' but makes it less rational, and quite possibly
signifies the form of future public dialogue."
