Summary
Ehud Sprinzak’s term, as Dowty presents it in Chapters 2 and 4, for a pattern in Israeli political culture: “an orientation that regards respect for the law and respect for the rule of law not as a basic value, but as a specific mode of behavior that one may or may not follow according to considerations of expediency” (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 1660-1680).
Details
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Dowty traces the pattern to the Eastern European shtetl, buttressed by the corrupt practices of the Ottoman system and by the premium put on circumventing British opposition during the Mandatory period (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 1660-1680).
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Its expressions, in Dowty’s presentation of Sprinzak, include corruption, both personal and political; clientalism (protektsia) and patronage, including the traditional role of the macher, or man of influence, in Jewish life; a general contempt for civil law or other universal norms; ideologies that justify skirting the law, in the name of higher principle or for “the good of the movement”; and extraparliamentary political methods, including violence (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 1660-1685).
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Some of these tendencies were curbed or submerged in the Ben-Gurion system, Dowty argues, but the push for Mamlachtiut did not focus on the rule of law and did not even include a legal theory as one of its elements, and there were considerable abuses of power, bordering on corruption, by the parties in power — all in the name of “the good of the movement” (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 1665-1695).
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Dowty instances the prevailing ethos from Levi Eshkol, then treasurer of the Jewish Agency, writing to the agency’s controller about petty corruption among its foreign representatives and quoting Deuteronomy 25:4, “you shall not muzzle the ox when it treads the grain” — in Dowty’s gloss, those working hard for the cause are entitled to some benefits under the table (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 1670-1690).
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In Chapter 2 Dowty had already cited Sprinzak on the pattern as one of the elements of traditional Jewish politics carried into Israeli life (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 620-640).
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In Dowty’s Chapter 6, illegalism returns into the open after Ben-Gurion: nourished, as quoted there, by “the venerable tradition of the shtetl”, it reemerged as public scandals multiplied and corruption at higher levels became increasingly open, exploitation of a public position for private or party needs appearing “almost legitimate”, and violations of law by extreme movements opposed only by political enemies — few figures in public life condemned the illegal acts of groups with which they sympathized. Dowty sets this against a simultaneous opposite trend in the legal sphere: more tolerance in practice, more competitive politics, marginal groups drawn within the system, and arbitrary procedures reduced in specific areas (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 2515-2799).
Related pages
The Jewish State: A Century Later, Ehud Sprinzak, Mamlachtiut