Let’s pick up where last week’s postings left off; they are too rich to leave dangling. (Ergo, for those just joining us, have a look at the “Uri’s Elegy” posting - you’ll see it just below this on the “An Ongoing Conversation” home page.)

So many threads to pursue. I begin with Schlomka vs. Mitchell, the enthusiastic universalist vs. the pragmatic particularist. I quite agree that Israel’s consistency as a democracy is no small achievement. Hardly anyone in Israel in the early years had come from a democratic society. But the determined ideologues who spearheaded the Zionist endeavor were democrats where and when it counted, and the early judges of the High Court of Justice knew what democracy required, and then, of course, there were all those political parties to placate and allow room for. So, democracy - imperfect, to be sure, even incomplete, but sufficiently firm so that for all the current sense of disappointment, there’s no talk of coup. Two cheers for that.
Read on…