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“Nations are formed and are kept alive by the fact that they have a programme for tomorrow”, said Jose Ortega y Gasset'34 and nationalism should be viewed as such a programme. The idea o f nationalism is as follows: the principal object is the nation, the objective is the future o f the nation, the strategy is the promotion and protection o f the nation and its interests. Under interests are understood: the identity, the unity, the recognition and dignity o f the members of the nation, best safeguarded through the attainment and maintenance of a sovereign rule, or a degree o f autonomy, the lack of which carries a permanent threat o f national demise. The basic message o f nationalism is the conviction that belonging to a national group, its existence and survival, are of supreme importance to its members and the right they all share as members o f humanity. Another point to stress is that all nationalisms, whether the state-seeking nationalism, the hegemony-pursuing nationalism o f a majority, an autonomy-seeking minority

nationalism, the homogenising nationalism o f a newly independent state, nationalist movements for devolution or other reorganisation within a multinational state, all share these basic ideas and pursue them with a varying degree of intensity. Thus, depending on circumstances, nationalism takes on various forms - a sentiment, a principle, a political movement, a state policy, but always with the maximisation o f conditions for a

corresponding national group in mind.

The all-encompassing object o f nationalist endeavour - the nation - can be defined as a large social group integrated by a combination o f objective relationships (economic, territorial, political, linguistic, historical and cultural) and their subjective reflection in collective consciousness135.

The idea o f ‘the nation’ however stands for more then just a large social group integrated by many subjective and objective relationships; ‘the nation’ and the

134 cited in Daedalus 121 Spring 1992 p. 140

membership in it are infused with sentiments of dignity and recognition, with historical memories, with the politics o f the present and expectations for the future, all o f which add to one’s identity and thus national identity constitutes a potent force in an

individual’s identity. The political and historical evaluation o f the national group is best observed in the way in which it is generally referred to by its members. Scots are called a nation, the Hungarians in Slovakia a minority, Russians in the Baltic states a minority, the Asian population in Britain ethnic groups, the Kurds a nation, Slovaks within Czechoslovakia were a nation, Yugoslavs were a nation, but now they are different nations, whilst Kosovars are still ethnic Albanians. It appears that there is an inadvertent value judgment attached to these distinctions depending on how big the group, how serious their plight, how far into the past their history reaches, how well defined their territory is, how realistic their chances for independence are etc.

The inconsistency in terminology reflects the general haziness that surrounds the terms nation, ethnic group, the state, the nation-state and minority. All are social groups and the differences between them are o f crucial importance for the politics of democracy and nationalism, yet the perpetual interchangeability o f their usage denotes the

complexity o f that relationship. Ethnicity refers strictly to the belonging to an ethnic group, a particular collectivity based on “real or putative common ancestry and

memories o f shared historical past and cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome o f their peoplehood”136. Ethnicity stresses the importance of subjective perception o f identity137, thus the distinction between the nation and the ethnic group can be summed up by saying that the latter is a similar concept, but narrower in that the binding issue is common ancestry and not the loyalty to a legal structure o f the state (that means not necessarily to the state o f citizenship).

Ethnicity is a cultural trait, it is not defined by state borders, but can transcend them, which explains the strength o f ethnic affiliation in migrant communities and among minorities across borders and continents. Usually, ethnicity is associated with a specific territory138 - ethnic homeland - around which ethnic identity is framed and reproduced

136 R.Schermerhorn ‘Ethnicity and Minority Groups’ J.Hutchinson & A.Smith Ethnicity Oxford, Oxford University Press 1996 p. 17

137 T.Fry ‘Ethnicity, Sovereignty and Transitions from Non-Democratic Rule’ Journal o f International

Affairs 45:2 Winter 1992 p.p.599-623 p. 602

138 For a discussion about ‘homeland’ nationalism see O.Yiftachel ‘Nationalism and Homeland’ in yet unpublished Encyclopedia o f Nationalism (Academic Press ) and ‘Nation-building and the Social

throughout time and which is seen as a ‘cradle’ o f the ethnic/national group. Without the symbolic value given to ‘land’ we could not explain Milosevic s success in mobilizing Serbian nationalism against Kosovo, considered by Serbs to be the cradle of their nation. Without the notion o f ‘homeland’ there would not be the Zionist movement and its culmination the state o f Israel, as there would not be that powerful concept

‘motherland’ (fatherland).

Notwithstanding the fact that it is ethnic solidarity which sets in motion a more political process o f nation-formation, thus nationalism, ethnic identity in itself does not make a nation. Equating ethnic solidarity with national identity and that with the state is precisely where the problem o f nationalism and democracy in a multicultural state lies, for the state is even less an expression o f ethnicity than is nationalism. The state is a legal concept, it describes a definite territory (occupied by one or more ethnic groups/nations), political institutions and an official government, whilst the nation describes a cultural heritage which may or may not be institutionalised in the common state institutions and a group with a sense o f homogeneity. Thus, the loyalty to the state is not necessarily Ihe same as the loyalty to the nation, which is nationalism per se and could also mean the

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loyalty to the ethnic group .

It can be argued that the legal concept o f the state which emerged from the Peace o f Westphalia (1648) predates nations as political entities. This Westphalian state and its legitimacy has only later been enhanced by the principle o f popular sovereignty and by the doctrine o f national self-determination, both o f which have provided as it were the moral principles for a political state, thus creating the nation-state. To some political thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the nation-state and its cultural homogeneity were a precondition for democracy, well demonstrated by the claim that members o f the same nationality (e.g. language, literature) should be united under the same government, “and a government to themselves apart” and more resolutely by the well-known dictum “that free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities”140. Thus, it must be noted that the legitimacy o f the nation-state has always been entangled with two contradictory principles: civic (democracy) and

Division o f Space: Ashkenazi Dominance in the Israeli ‘Ethnocracy’ Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

4:3 1998 p .p.33-58

139 W.Connor Ethnonationalism Princeton N.J. Princeton University Press 1994 p.41

140 J.S.Mill ‘Representative Govemment’in On Liberty and Other Essays Oxford, Oxford University Press 1991 p. 428

ethnic/national (self-determination). This fact gives nationalism a different character depending on which o f the two principles it pursues more actively; nationalism has an integrative quality, which can contribute towards a more civic (democratic) character of its state, or it limits its integrational effort to only one ethnic group, in which case its democratic potential and that of its state remains limited too.

The nation-state is not the universal reality, quite on the contrary, most states are multinational, hence the pursuit o f state-culture congruence (nation-building) is not the same as seeking to establish an united political community (state-building) . The sentiment o f belonging to a culture transcends borders and does not have to be attached to a nation-state, as the conflicts between minorities and majorities in the world today amply illustrate. Ethnic groups, which define themselves as a separate cultural entity from the assumed official culture of the state, are minorities, particularly when across the border is a nation-state whose dominant culture has been erected out o f the same ethnic origin.

In studies o f ethnicity one o f the problems is the confusion over whether ethnic groups are, as is widely assumed, always minorities within nation-states14', or whether there is a more complex relationship between nations and ethnic groups, meaning sub­ national status o f some ethnic groups, the issue o f dispersed ethnic groups (i.e. the Romany), the issues of regionalism etc.143. This thesis distinguishes between an ethnic group as a minority and dominant nation144, to avoid the confusion between the often conflictual demands o f each vis-a-vis each other. There is a tendency to call ethnic groups with specific claims a minority, as there is a tendency to call large ethnic groups with already established territorial boundaries within multinational states nations (Scots; Welsh; Czechs and Slovaks within Czechoslovakia; Serbs, Croats, Slovenes within Yugoslavia; and all republics within the Soviet Union).

141 A. Stepan ‘Multinational democracies’ The State o f the Nation p.226, refers to the former as nation­ state building and to the latter as democracy building, which is how these processes are viewed in this thesis too

l42see J.Hutchinson & A.D.Smith ed. Ethnicity Oxford, Oxford University Press 1996 p. 15 “altogether this remains an under-explored area o f research”

143 see G.Herb D.Kaplan Nested Identities Boulder, New York, Oxford, Rowman&Littlefield Publishers

1998 . . • • , u

144 Dominant in this discussion does not stand for numerical dominance, nor territorial extension, but signifies the collectivity, which has the preeminent “authority to function as the guardians o f the controlling value system and as the prime allocators of rewards in society”. See R.Schermerhorn ‘Ethnicity and Minority Groups’ p. 17

Therefore, multiethnic, multinational and multicultural state, all describe a state with different cultures, which strictly speaking would mean that all states are

multicultural, but not all states declare themselves as such, as not all ethnic groups seek a political arrangement to reflect their separate status - a multinational state is not one that comprises different nations, but one that declares itself as such. Ethnic groups may or may not feel a great sense o f cultural differentiation, or nationalism, but that does not always translate into the need to create a nation-state that corresponds with a given territory, or seek autonomy over the territory they inhabit. For the purpose o f this thesis, nationalism refers to aspirations to political sovereignty, or a degree o f it, within a given territory.

National movements are not restricted to one ethnic group; they can be multiethnic as was the movement for the creation o f Czechoslovakia in 1918, decolonizing national liberation movements post-1945, attached to the territory of a former colony not to ethnicity, and indeed the nationally orientated liberations of 1989. The decoupling o f nationalism from democratisation processes reduces the understanding o f postcommunist transitions and all current revivals o f ethnic self-determination round the world. Nationalism belongs to modernity and to politics; its glorification of national independence does not necessarily spell inequality, on the contrary the principle of national self-determination recognizes the equality o f people and nations. The descent of nationalism from defence of liberty and culture to oppression o f others (and often its own people), belongs to the study of nationalism, but is not a definition o f it.

2.2.4. Explaining the Position of the Present Thesis According to Standard