To the first Electronic Debating Forum - click here

The Metzilah Center’s first Electronic Debating Forum, to which you have navigated, is meant to encourage thorough public discussions of key issues that relate to the core topics of life in Israel. These issues, in the Center’s reckoning, include the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination in (part of) the Land of Israel, the nature and justification of the State of Israel, the way the human rights of all of its citizens and residents are upheld, contemporary Jewish identities, and principled elements of the conflict between ourselves and the Palestinians.

Such discussions were characteristic of the Zionist enterprise in its early phases and were one of its sources of strength. They helped to disseminate the full range of Zionist ideas among broad Jewish circles and beyond; they reinforced the Zionists’ internal belief in the justice of their cause; they sustained the pluralistic, dynamic, and vibrant nature of the enterprise; and they enabled the enterprise to cope with the hardships that it faced. The debates were accompanied by intense disagreements on weighty issues, but these merely helped to promote thorough public debate and the Jewish public’s ability to act and mobilize.

We believe that such discussions have been lacking in recent times. In many cases, verbal exchanges and disagreements boil down to the pronouncement of slogans and the perpetuation of stereotypes. At this of all times, however, the encouragement of such debates has become much more important due to the feeling – in response to which Metzilah Center came into being – that recognition of the legitimacy of Jewish nationhood has eroded, and the recurrent claims that this nationhood entails, if not justifies, the infringement of others’ personal and collective human rights. Metzilah Center believes that the promotion of thorough public debate is a principal and crucial tool in coping with such argumentation as voiced by Jews and non-Jews in Israel and abroad, as with the other key issues that relate to core issues of life in Israel.

The discussion forum will bring together prominent experts and personalities in their fields for debates composed of several rounds including point-and-counterpoint. The kind of debate that the forum will facilitate is both thorough and public, Accordingly, it will be characterized by writing that is lengthier than an ordinary newspaper column but more accessible than purely academic writing. In choosing the discussion topics, emphasis will be placed on issues of both practical and theoretical nature, i.e., those that are relevant for public, political, and judicial life in contemporaneous Israel but also have deeper theoretical and historical significance. Our goal for the debate is that it will reveal disagreements in their full intensity without obviating mutual respect and openness to the other side’s arguments. Even if such debates do not end with consensus, they should lead to a deeper understanding of the issues discussed, better comprehension of the principled stances represented by the participants, and the enhancement of the sharpness of their arguments.

To expand the discussion beyond its original participants, Metzilah Center refers readers to a public debate of this kind at TheMarker Café (http://cafe.themarker.com/view.php?u=134556). Our hope and goal for our electronic discussion forum, however, is to make a meaningful contribution to the advancement of thorough debate in all forums and forms – and, in turn, to promote the ability to act intelligently – on issues that rest at the core of Israeli anti-Jewish existence in our times, from the point of departure of Zionist, Jewish, liberal, and humanistic commitment.