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Since the 1990s, Israeli scholars have been conceptualizing Israel's post-hegemonic situation as one of multiculturalism. This chapter discusses the distinctive traits of Israel's multicultural condition. Firstly, it describes the ‘war of cultures’ between secular and religious Jews over the basic principles of the regime, political culture, and law of the state. Secondly, it states that twice in the first decade of the 21st century Israel has found itself on the verge of civil war: in July 2005, in the context of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and in October 2000 when Israeli Arabs mounted a series of violent demonstrations. Thirdly, the chapter looks at ‘the crisis of republicanism’, i.e., the failure of the Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, to cultivate a shared perception of the common good. Fourthly, it discusses how the Israeli state provides massive funding to religious institutions that do not accept the basic principles of the current liberal-democratic regime and openly preach against it. Fifthly, it looks into the divide between the Jewish group and the Arab group over the definition and national character of the state. Finally, it looks at ‘the zero-sum game of the Israeli multicultural condition’: the more Israel accentuates traditional Jewish beliefs and practices in its public culture, the more appealing it would be to Jewish religious Israelis, but the more repugnant to Israel's Arab citizens, and vice versa.

To disagree is part of the human condition. When people of different cultures need to reach agreement, it is not only the case that they may lack a shared normative platform on the basis of which to deliberate, but opting for a solution borrowed from one culture might even be interpreted by those of another as a threat to their personality and identity. There is an unbridgeable gap between the uniformity of modern law and the prevalence of disagreement among human beings, as also between the uniformity of modern law and the complexity of the societies to which it applies. The profound disagreement between secular Jews and religious Jews over the nature of the country's regime, political culture, and law has become a central feature of the life of Israel in the waning decades of the 20th century and early years of the 21st century. Additionally, there is an even profounder disagreement between the Jewish group and the Arab group over the definition of the state and the nature of the mechanisms by means of which the country should be run. The two disagreements are interrelated. This is the ‘zero-sum game’ of Israel's multicultural condition. Israel should cultivate the category of Israeliness to denote an overarching Israeli national identity common to all the state's citizens. This should be complemented by the cultivation of the republican notion of the common good.

Common explanations of why the Arab region erupted in 2011 are only partly accurate and have glaring omissions. The youth bulge is real butsuch bulges do not automatically lead to upheavals.Socio-economic conditions in Egypt or Yemen were dismal, but no more so in 2011 than in the previous decades. Tunisia, where the uprisings started, is a middle-income country, and Gulf monarchies are incredibly rich but still fearful of unrest. Artificial borders explain even less about countries’ stability. Syria and Iraq have borders drawn on maps by colonial powers after World War I, but Egypt’s date back millennia.A crucial factor in causing the disaffection of Arab citizens toward their government is the absence of “state projects,” a vision of what the country could and should be, and of inspiring leaders to embody that vision. Egypt had a project and a leader that inspired the entire Arab world in the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, but that is no longer the case.

This chapter relates mass-mediated abuses against Arabs and Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo to relevant U.S.-American films since the 1980s and to Middle Eastern films in order to show how such cultural representations are tied to the international power structure and what ideological premises underpin them. It argues that while depictions of physical abuse in U.S. and Middle Eastern films are interdependent and cross-referential, the two sets of film differ substantially in their choice of genres and modes of representation. Moreover, while characterizations of ethnic difference vary according to the particular political and racialized agenda being espoused, those relating to sexual difference follow a more uniform set of codifications. Emphasis on physical traits, such as weakness, passivity, and penetrability, are crucial to delivering a gendered political message that links recourse to torture to a drive for absolute power and gender domination.

Over a short span of time in the course of the 1980s, Israel's Supreme Court introduced a series of far-reaching changes into its jurisprudence: it adopted highly activist doctrines enabling it to sweepingly intervene in decisions undertaken by other branches of the state; it substituted its formalistic style of reasoning with a value-laden approach; and it adopted a perception of itself as a political institution. These changes should be understood in the context of the great historical processes that began to take place in Israel in the second half of the 1970s: The decline of the political, social, and cultural hegemony of the Labor movement; the rise of Jewish religious fundamentalism; and the renewal of the struggle between secular and religious Jews over the country's future cultural orientation. The Court, the state institution most closely identified with liberal values, collaborated with the secular group in its struggle. The Court has paid a heavy price for its identification with one of the two major groups contending in the struggle over the shaping of Israeli culture. The Court's new jurisprudence resulted in excessive legalization of decision-making processes. It also bred all the malaises associated with the prevalence of rights talk. In addition to the schism within the Jewish group, there is an additional, profound schism between the Jewish group and the Arab group, which constitutes around 20% of the country's population. Israel officially defines itself as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’, but demographically it is a bi-national state. The discrepancy between the definition and the demography will continue to give rise to many of the problems Israel faces in the coming years.