It is time to stop labeling Israel as a Western nation.
Judging the Jewish state as if it was a quintessential member of "the West" only puts unrealistic and misguided expectations on Israelis and, by extension, the Jewish People.
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This is a guest essay written by Alex Stein of Love of the Land.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
One of Jerusalem’s most revered sacred cows (apart from its more obvious sacred cows) is Kadosh Café Patisserie.
Located in downtown Jerusalem since 1967, it offers a range of high-quality cakes and pastries, and it is rare to get a seat there without having to queue first.
The waiters and waitresses are decked out in smart uniforms and carry the airs and graces one would expect in Europe, but it always feels awkward, the formality out of place with its wider surroundings, a perfect metaphor for the popular myth that Israel is a “Western” country.
A better culinary metaphor for Israel can be found at Tzidkiyahu’s restaurant in the capital’s industrial suburb of Talpiot. It has been there since 1987, serving up numerous shared salatim (small salad plates) — hummus, tabouleh, fried cauliflower, matbucha and more — alongside skewers of meat.
A variety of starter salads were common to both the Palestinian and the Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish) table, resulting in their increased popularity as eating out became more common in the 1980s. The atmosphere is informal, raucous, and anything but Western.
Much of the confusion about Israel’s status often arises because its story is told primarily in terms of the aliyot (Jewish immigration) from Europe, the Holocaust, and the kibbutzim. As Canadian-Israeli journalist and author Matti Friedman notes, this is important in understanding how Israel was founded, but not in understanding what kind of a country it is today, at a time when more than half of its Israeli-Jewish population trace their roots to majority-Muslim countries. As he put it:
“People still tell the story of Israel as: When the Jews of the Islamic world moved to Israel they joined the story of the Ashkenazim — so the story of Israel is the story of the Jews of Europe…”
“It is clear to me that what actually happened is much closer to the opposite. The remnants of the Jews of Europe come to the Middle East and inserted themselves into the story of the Jews of the Islamic world. The State of Israel is shaped by our contact with Islam and Jews who have lived here for centuries. The dominant narrative of European Jews is wrong.”1
But the story doesn’t end there. Israel is located in what’s today known as the Middle East, but as the only non-Islamic country in the region, it is suis generis (“of its own kind” or “in a class by itself”).
If the Jewish state is neither Western nor Eastern, though, then what is it?
Political scientist Samuel Huntingdon was widely criticized for how he depicted civilizational conflicts in his famous work “The Clash of Civilizations,” but his basic description of how the world is divided is much more useful than simplistic notions of East versus West, or Global South versus Global North.
Both these models lump countries like Algeria and Nigeria, India and Iran, and Thailand and Mongolia into the same group, which makes little sense. Huntingdon, by contrast, identifies nine civilizational blocs: Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Japanese.
There are numerous problems with this, for example Sri Lanka has much more in common with India than it does with Thailand (despite both countries being majority Theravada Buddhists). Ukraine now clearly places itself in the Western camp, even though it is majority Orthodox, and African erases the obvious differences between different parts of that continent, but it is more sophisticated than many other efforts.
The point is that cultural-civilizational differences do exist and matter, even if only on a spectrum, and their existence does not make conflict inevitable.
Israel differs from Western countries in three key areas. First, a willingness to fight. Following October 7th, more than 300,000 reservists were called up, and many Israelis quickly returned from abroad so they could serve in the army.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, which is facing an undeniably more existential war than Israel’s, thousands of men are fleeing or hiding to avoid being served enlistment papers. Elsewhere in Europe, there is even less willingness to fight. Herfried Munkler, a German political scientist, called Western democracies “post-heroic” societies, in which “the highest value is the preservation of human life” (which is much easier to aspire to when your society does not face existential threats).2
This is why proximity to war makes citizens more willing to fight and is the reason countries closest to Russia are less dovish. In Israel, meanwhile, aside from the ongoing saga of the attempt to enlist ultra-Orthodox Jews (and of course the blanket exemption for Arab Israelis), young people show a consistently high level of desire to serve in the military.
The second way Israel differs from Western countries is its high birthrate and the centrality of family. As birthrates are plummeting everywhere apart from sub-Saharan Africa, in 2021 Israel’s was 3.00 births per woman, contrasting with 1.56 in the UK, 1.66 in the USA, 1.83 in France, 2.92 in Egypt, 2.03 in India, and 1.3 in Japan.
While this high rate is often attributed to its religious population, Israel’s secular birthrate still hovers around 2.0, a marked difference to their Western counterparts. These figures are naturally reflected in a noticeably child- and family-friendly society.
Across the OECD, a group mostly of rich countries, the average fertility rate has fallen from almost three in 1970 to 1.6, well below the rate of about 2.1 needed to keep a population from shrinking.
Whereas the average British and French woman has 1.6 and 1.8 children, respectively, their Israeli peers are currently having 2.9 children on average.
“If an Israeli woman has fewer than three children, she feels as if she owes everyone an explanation — or an apology,” an Israeli demographer sarcastically said.3
From the State of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 through the 1950s, the fertility rate was 3.4, then declined to 2.6 between 1960 and 1990, before climbing back up to its current level of 2.9. These figures are naturally reflected in the Jewish state’s noticeably child- and family-friendly society.
Much of this increase is caused by Israel’s growing number of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who have a fertility rate of 6.6, more than double the national average and three times the rate of secular Jews. As a result, the share of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel’s population has more or less doubled every generation.
But non-Orthodox Jewish Israelis also have more children than the norm. Some claim that non-Orthodox Jewish Israelis make more babies because they foresee a rosier future. (Indeed, Israel ranks among the world’s top-10 countries in happiness.)
Another reason could be that the state encourages baby-making by, for instance, bankrolling fertility treatments to the tune of $150 million per year. Tiny Israel has about the same number of frozen embryos as the United States. This may have only a slight effect on Israel’s birth rate, but it signals that the government wants its citizens to procreate.
Finally, there is Israel’s tribalism and the key role played by ethno-religious identity. In his famous 2015 “Four Tribes” speech, then-Israeli President Reuven Rivlin warned that our society was divided along tribal lines: secular, national-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Arab (not to mention the more historic Ashkenazi/Mizrahi divide).
“A child from Beit El, a child from Rahat, a child from Herzliya and a child from Beitar Illit — not only do they not meet each other, but they are educated toward a totally different outlook regarding the basic values and desired character of the State of Israel,” said Rivlin.
Unlike the widespread intermarriage between Ashkenazis and Mizrahis, there is barely any intermarriage between these four groups, the only exception being the secular and national-religious tribes, but even here this only usually happens when one of the partners switches their allegiances.
Each group exists somewhat independently of the other and mostly opposes efforts at pluralist integration. This is a huge difference from Western countries, where integration (a word often used as a synonym for assimilation) is always demanded, even if it does not always succeed.
Like anywhere else, there are positives and negatives to what I have described above. Now that we are well past the era of the neocons and Fukuyama’s “The End of History,” we can finally admit that there is no inevitable march towards global liberal democracy.
The benefits of liberal democracy are undeniable, but we can also acknowledge that Western democracies face many problems themselves, and it remains to be seen whether their institutions will stand up to the task of addressing them.
Israel has largely identified as part of the Western camp for political reasons, but this was never inevitable. The first country to grant de jure recognition to Israel was the Soviet Union, in the belief — based among other things on the strength of Communism in many of the kibbutzim — that the nascent Jewish state would join its bloc. This never came to pass, but it is a reminder of what might have been.
Israel, then, does not fit neatly into any of the blocs. It is a mixture of European, Middle Eastern, and New World elements driven by the unique historical experience of the Jewish People and its Palestinian-Arab minority, as well as the diverse history of the land between the River and the Sea.
It is difficult to define, but we should strive to grapple with the Jewish state’s complexity, instead of awkwardly trying to pigeonhole it into something that Israel is not.
“‘Telling Israel’s story in the 21st century will have a lot less to do with the Warsaw Ghetto than it will with Kurdistan and Aleppo.’ An interview with Matti Friedman.” Fathom.
“Would you really die for your country?” The Economist.
“In Israel, birth rates are converging between Jews and Muslims.” The Economist.
 | A guest post by
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Thank you! So interesting!
Wonderful thoughtful piece. I learned a lot. Thank you.