In the Panther's Skin: the Politics of Identification Among the Georgian Jews of Israel (Ideology, Ethnicity).

Abstract

This thesis is a political history of the Georgian Jewish community in Israel and of the Israeli state. The study examines political change on two levels, the day-to-day, competitive, conjunctural world of Georgian Jewish politicians, and the long-term, organic transformation of Israeli society. Placing Georgian conjunctural politics within the framework of Israeli social evolution, the thesis demonstrates how the transformation of hegemony within Israeli society constrains political development within this immigrant community. Two terms, identification and ideology, provide the theoretical focus. Identification is defined as a merging of interests between the individual and the group. Ideology is a statement of or appeal to identification. The power of ideology to transform political relations derives from the invoking of powerful identifications. The political history of Israel presented here outlines the development of Zionist ideologies, one of which, Labor Zionism, provided an effective praxis for building the state and ensuring Labor Zionist hegemony. The development of Zionist opposition--Revisionism-- and the linkage between Revisionism and post-independence Oriental immigrants triggered social processes leading to the shattering of Labor hegemony. Georgian immigrants arrived in the midst of this transformation. Originally Georgian politicians competed within the framework of Labor hegemony, and community politics developed in its own trajectory, spurred by the creation of a Georgian-language newpaper. Struggles to control the newspaper, which carried signal political weight in a Soviet emigre community, soon erupted. To win allegiance among the immigrants, the publisher devised an ideology appealing to identification with "Mother Georgia"; in response, opponents created a second newspaper appealing to Zionist and Jewish identification. In a critical confrontation, the "Georgian" group was forced to acknowledge the primacy of Jewish over Georgian identification, and the "Georgian ideology" disappeared. The conclusion explains the destruction of the Georgian ideology and its political base as the inevitable outcome of hegemonic transformation within Israel: in the hypernationalist and religious atmosphere of the 1980's, a separatist ethnic ideology appeared as politically illegitimate.