Israel y su modernización

Abstract

This article deals with the issue of the modernization and the modernity of Israel basing itself in the theoretical framework posed by Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt in his theory of Multiple Modernities. According to this kind of analysis each modernization process and modernity appear as a variant, including local and traditional elements, of the original model of Enlightenment. In the case of Israel, whose modern society is mostly immigratory and highly heterogeneous, it could be argued that multiplicity becomes an internal feature of the process. Modernization produces, dialectically, results contrary to the intentions and original plans of those that started it. In the Israeli case, it is manifest through religious revival, the return to traditions and ethnic identities that preceded the attempt to establish a modern society and its Zionist rooted bases, and all this without displacing the local Palestinian society – or Israeli-Arab – absorbed within the general framework of Israeli society.