Summary
Ehud Sprinzak’s term, quoted by Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine in the Shin Bet Affair discussion, for a political culture in which the leadership’s orientation toward the law and the rule of law is instrumental: leaders are not antidemocratic in principle, but their commitment to universal legal principles is very low, and legalism was never an integral part of the system the Zionist parties established (Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine, PDF p.97 / printed p.88).
Details
- Sprinzak traces the tradition to the Yishuv: Shamir, Peres and Rabin “grew up in Palestine of the 1940s, when it was prestigious to cheat on the British and to engage in ‘illegal’ settlement, ‘illegal’ defense, and ‘illegal’ immigration”, and the founding fathers, “great idealists and daring dreamers”, “ignored legalistic details and procedures” because “All they wanted was political power, free of constraints, to make the dreams come true” (PDF p.97-98).
- Amar-Dahl applies it to Peres’s handling of the Shin Bet Affair, in which security was solved against the law while the Attorney General’s authority was not openly questioned (PDF p.97).
Related pages
Ehud Sprinzak, Shin Bet Affair, Illegalism, Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine