ISRAEL: THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS
CASS SERIES: ISRAELI HISTORY, POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Series Editor: Efraim Karsh
ISSN: 1368-4795
This series provides a multidisciplinary examination of all aspects of Israeli history, politics and
society, and serves as a means of communication between the various communities interested in
Israel: academics, policy-makers, practitioners, journalists and the informed public.
1. Peace in the Middle East: The Challenge for Israel, edited by Efraim Karsh.
2. The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory and Trauma, edited by Robert Wistrich and David
Ohana.
3. Between War and Peace: Dilemmas of Israeli Security, edited by Efraim Karsh.
4. U.S.-Israeli Relations at the Crossroads, edited by Gabriel Sheffer.
5. Revisiting the Yom Kippur War, edited by P. R. Kumaraswamy.
6. Israel: The Dynamics of Change and Continuity, edited by David Levi-Faur, Gabriel Sheffer and
David Vogel.
7. In Search of Identity: Jewish Aspects in Israeli Culture, edited by Dan Urian and Efraim Karsh.
8. Israel at the Polls, 1996, edited by Daniel J. Elazar and Shmuel Sandler.
9. From Rabin to Netanyahu: Israel's Troubled Agenda, edited by Efraim Karsh.
10. Fabricating Israeli History: The ‘New Historians’, second revised edition, by Efraim Karsh.
11. Divided Against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition in Britain to a Jewish State in Palestine, 19451948, by Rory Miller.
12. Peacemaking in a Divided Society: Israel After Rabin, edited by Sasson Sofer.
13. A Twenty-Year Retrospective of Egyptian-Israeli Relations: Peace in Spite of Everything , by
Ephraim Dowek.
14. Global Politics: Essays in Honour of David Vital, edited by Abraham Ben-Zvi and Aharon
Klieman.
15. Parties, Elections and Cleavages; Israel in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective, edited by
Reuven Y. Hazan and Moshe Maor.
16. Israel at the Polls 1999, edited by Daniel J. Elazar and M. Ben Mollov.
17. Public Policy in Israel, edited by David Nachmias and Gila Menahem.
Israel: The First Hundred Years (Mini Series), edited by Efraim Karsh.
1.
Israel's Transition from Community to State, edited by Efraim Karsh.
2.
From War to Peace? edited by Efraim Karsh.
3.
Politics and Society Since 1948, edited by Efraim Karsh.
4.
Israel in the International Arena, edited by Efraim Karsh.
Israel:
The First Hundred Years
VOLUME III
Israeli Society and Politics Since 1948: Problems of
Collective Identity
Editor
Efraim Karsh
First published in 2002 by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
This edition published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2002 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Israel : the first hundred years
Vol. 3: Israeli society and politics since 1948 : problems
of collective identity editor, Efraim Karsh. – (Israeli
history, politics and society)
l.Jews – Palestine – History – 20th century 2. Palestine –
History – 20th century
I.Karsh, Efraim
956.9′4′05
ISBN 0 7146 4961 9 (cloth)
ISBN 0 7146 8022 2 (paper)
ISSN 1368-4795
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
This group of studies first appeared as ‘Israeli Politics and Society Since 1948: Problems of Collective Identity’, a special issue of
Israel Affairs, Vol.8, Nos.1&2 (Autumn/Winter 2002), published by Frank Cass and Co. Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publishers of this book.
Contents
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
Israel 1948–98: Purpose and Predicament in History
The Fracturing of the Jewish Self-Image:
The End of ‘We Are One’?
Mordechai Nisan
Judith Elizur
Shifting the Centre from Nation to Individual and Universe: The
New ‘Democratic Faith’ of Israel
Oz Almog
Zionism in the Israeli Theatre
Dan Urian
POLITICS
To Fantasy and Back: David Ben-Gurion's First Resignation,
1953
Labour and Likud: Roots of their Ideological-Political Struggle
for Hegemony over Zionism, 1925–35
Likud and the Search for Eretz Israel:
From the Bible to the Twenty-First Century
The Delicate Framework of Israeli Democracy During the 1980s:
Retrospect and Appraisal
State–Religion Relations in Israel:
The Subtle Issue Underlying the Rabin Assassination
Referenda in a Post-Consociational Democracy: The Case of
Israel
Yechiam Weitz
Yaacov N. Goldstein
Colin Shindler
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Efraim Ben-Zadok
Dana Arieli-Horowitz
SOCIETY
Kibbutz or Moshav? Priority Changes of Settlement Types in
Israel, 1949–53
Yossi Ben-Artzi
Mass Immigration and the Demographic Revolution in Israel
Dvora Hacohen
The IDF and the Mass Immigration of the Early 1950s: Aid to the
Immigrant Camps
Moshe Gat
Public Service Broadcasting vs Public Service Broadcasting: The
Crisis in the Service as the Outcome of the Clash between State
and Civil Society – The Israeli–Lebanese War, 1982
The Bank-Shares Regulation Affair and Illegality in Israeli
Society: A Theoretical Perspective of Unethical Managerial
Behaviour
Abstracts
Index
Mira Moshe
David De Vries and Yoav Vardi
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
Israel 1948–98: Purpose and Predicament in
History
MORDECHAI NISAN
BETWEEN EXISTENCE AND IDENTITY
One hundred years of modern Zionism and fifty years of the State of Israel provide convenient
historical landmarks to reflect on the political return of the Jewish people to history. It was a vibrant
collective memory that enabled this people to imagine that a national renaissance could be wrought
from the legacy of an extraordinary march through time. The memory bank of the Jews meandered
comfortably from Abraham to Moses, to David and Hillel – and from exile to homeland: it constituted
the spiritual strength of an ancient people, which was compromised by contact with modernity and its
assimilationist pull. The history of the Jews demanded a reconstruction to escape the dim shadows of
Diaspora life, its indignities and insecurities, on the way toward redirecting the path of Jewish history,
in concrete ideological, geographical and political ways. Memory, in short, provided the Jewish
people with the springboard for a return to history.
Yet, the political return that culminated in the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 is but one
aspect of this extraordinary human triumph. The broader context of Israel's place in the Middle East
and the world touches on the civilizational and religious matrix of its situation in relation to both the
Muslim East and the Christian West. While the Zionist movement addressed the ‘Jewish Question’ of
powerlessness and homelessness by proposing (and achieving) a radical territorial and political
solution, it was unable to transcend the deeper and older problem of the Jewish people as outcasts in
history. Israel has inherited the traditional ‘Jewish Problem’ and it has become an aspect of modern
international political history.
A most original and powerful Israeli thinker, the late Moshe Ben-Yosef, exposed the truth
encapsulated within the myth of Zionism's triumph in 1948. Israel faced a cultural challenge in its
struggle not to be swallowed up by the West or the East. In particular, Ben-Yosef conceived the period
of 1933–45 not only as the vortex for what will be styled as the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish
Problem’, but also as the Holocaust of humanity. The basic malaise of the West, which he considered
to mean the end of Christian history and its moral mission, was a message that the Israelis, however,
failed to learn in 1948. Three years after the full disclosure of Auschwitz, Israel nevertheless sought to
become a cultural and political appendage of the civilization that perpetrated and permitted the ovens
of Auschwitz to mass-murder the Jewish people over a period of years. The virtual ‘Westernization’
of Israel would not only prove politically fatal, but could in addition deny the shaping of an old-new
Jewish national culture in Eretz Israel.1
This perspective provided no room for a synthetic weaving of tradition with modernity, a particular
religion with a universal culture, owing to the fundamental incompatibility between Israel and the
Western nations. Jews could reside comfortably in America, but a Jewish people should not
comfortably accommodate Americanization in Israel.
It is important to mention that Jewish history in the ancient past, though always the struggle of a
small and endangered people, did not and could not avoid confrontation with major world
civilizations. Jewish holidays commemorate this heroic tapestry, of war and liberation from Egypt,
victory over Persia, and triumph over Greece. Nor does it overlook the terrible losses inflicted by
Babylon and Rome. Much of Jewish history is embedded within the fabric of clashing civilizations. In
fact the clash is a series of civilizational assaults by large and expansionist powers against the
vulnerable but proud Jews. Manifestations of Jewish national self-assertion express the spirit of
independence, not always a calculus of power vis-à-vis the predatory hegemonic forces in history.
The contemporary state of Israel is necessarily committed to affirming – despite some native
misunderstandings at home – a narrow and bold political claim to authenticity and independence. This
devolves on the national enterprise by virtue of the cultural mandate dictating Jewish history. The fact
that the Israel airline company El Al officially observes the Sabbath day of rest, and that Israel's
official terminology for the West Bank is Judea and Samaria, highlight that the modern Zionist
movement is grounded in the appropriate Jewish national and religious context.
Being surrounded by twenty Arab states in possession of 5 million square miles of territory (larger
than the United States) – and a Palestinian state edging its way toward political birth and poised
against Israel's ‘soft underbelly’ – is a strategic nightmare for Israel, as one tiny country with less than
8,000 square miles of land (excluding the miniscule areas of Judea and Samaria). Israel's size
approximates that of New Jersey and is but one-seventh the size of Florida. Its population of just
under five million Jews is dwarfed by an Arab world of over 230 million people. Nor should one
forget the one billion Muslims in the world altogether.
Modern Israel is a sensational success story on many fronts, which hostile ‘Israel-bashing’
sensationalist journalism and, admittedly, domestic Israeli ills sometimes distort or camouflage. The
‘ingathering of the exiles’ (or continuing waves of immigration-repatriation) and the rejuvenation of
Hebrew as the spoken national language are testimony to the integrity of Jewish peoplehood and a sign
of cultural authenticity. An earthy spiritual revival and buttressing of proud Jewish identity proceed
apace. Military strategy and boldness have defeated Arabs in war and deterred them from attack. The
Ofeq satellite and the Arrow missile place Israeli technology at the forefront of world technology. As
do information technologies, developments in biomedical science, and innovations in agriculture.2
The impressive economic talent and energy of Israel have brought the Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) to a figure of $100bn. This exceeds the GDP of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the
Palestinian Authority combined. Israeli exports quadrupled from 1980 to 1996, exceeding $20bn. In
1997, Israel's chemical industry exports alone rose to more than $2.4bn. In the same year, 13 million
books were sold in Israel, the tenth highest number of books sold relative to population in the world.
Israeli Jewish males reached an average life expectancy of 75.9 years, the third highest in the world.
Female life expectancy was yet higher and reached 79.8 years.3 All this has been achieved in the face
of almost permanent warfare, urban terrorism, international pressures and a growing and hostile
domestic Arab minority.
It should be noted that, despite all this, 75 per cent of Israelis are satisfied with their lives in
comparison to 64 per cent of people in Canada and the United States.4 This statistic should be
considered when tales of Israeli demoralization are told – political tensions and economic ills fill
media reports emanating from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ofakim in the Negev. A sense of proportion is
required in focusing requisite attention on the positive sides and successes in contemporary Israeli
society.
Israel's triumph is essentially if not mysteriously that of the spirit, that is, the special inner code of
a people with particular virtues in multiple domains. ‘Talent goes where it is needed’, commented the
late Gershom Scholem regarding the appearance of brave Jewish soldiers and warriors in modern
times. The explanation for that truism lies deep in the mental and emotional wellsprings of the Jewish
people. Central biblical encounters at Shechem and Sinai have physically sustained the Jews – and
virtually assured their spiritual survival – until today. 5 Israel is beyond its secular, socialist,
Westernized, liberal aspects, no less so and much more so a Jewish venture buoyed by an arcane
current of continuity animating its collective life.
ISRAEL IN THE EAST
From near and far the Muslim world demonstrates its manifest rejection of Israel's existence. On 9
December 1997, President Mohammed Khatami of the Islamic Republic of Iran addressed the Islamic
Summit Conference in Tehran on the ‘shining civilization of the Muslims’ in history. He delineated
the high moral purposes of Islam that were initially evoked and applied by Muhammad, the prophet of
Islam, in Medina in the seventh century. Islam, said President Khatami, advocates the rights of
peoples and tolerance for all, except for the ‘hegemonic, racist, aggressive, and violent Zionist
regime’.
Khatami's programme for the realization of the rights of the Palestinian people, including selfdetermination, statehood and the return of refugees, will guarantee that the ‘Zionist regime’ be
eliminated. No less a personage than an Arab Member of Israel's Knesset, Abdul Wahab Darwashe,
declared in August 1997, before a cheering crowd of 20,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria, that the
‘right to return to Palestine is a holy right of the Palestinian people’.6 This code-language for Israel's
immolation and elimination remains pivotal in the perennial war of Islam against Israel, toward the
demographic transformation of the Jewish state into Arab Palestine.
The tradition of Islam records that Muhammad exalted jihad as the gateway to paradise and the
pathway to martyrdom, in a way in which religion is virtually coterminous with war. He said, ‘the
head of the whole affair is Islam; its central pillar is prayer and the tip of its hump is jihad’7 Although
this desert imagery conjuring up the tent and the camel is no longer common in Arab rhetoric, Jews
continue to be defamed, as in the period of classical Islam, as ‘sons of monkeys and dogs’. Their
unchangeable and hideous nature legitimizes the eternal struggle against Israel and its demonization
as the embodiment, no less, of ‘Nazi Zionism’.8
Portraying Yitzhak Shamir and Binyamin Netanyahu, and even the late and lionized Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, as Hitler was not beyond the malicious creativity of Arab caricaturists. The
introversion of the truth is a standard vituperative discourse in the scandalous onslaught on Israel's
moral right to exist. For the Arabs, the Middle East is equivalent to the Arab world, with no room for
non-Arab sovereignty, let alone that of a Jewish state. It is in this fashion that the advocacy of
Palestinian national rights implies the denial of any Jewish claim to national rights in the Hebrew
homeland.
Strategic conceptions underpinning the Arab and Muslim positions point to de-Zionizing and
‘orientalizing’ or ‘Arabizing’ Israel as cultural processes to deny her Jewish identity and Zionist
purpose. These notions are buttressed by the absolutist, and thus rejectionist, core at the level of Islam
as a religion and Arab nationalism as an ideology. The Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hizballah
are, for their part, only two of the better-known practitioners of jihad warfare against any, and all,
Jewish targets, civilian and military, toward the fulfilment of Khatami's ‘shining civilization’ of Islam
in this era of history.
Israel's existential predicament is, then, rooted in a dogged pursuit of life and liberty in the
predatory environs of contemporary Arab-Muslim civilization. The melodious music of the ‘peace
process’ and the ‘new Middle East’ reverberate in the councils of international diplomacy and on the
airwaves of political utopianism. But doubts linger as to how many of these sloganeering hopes are
politically feasible or whether they are not, perhaps, delusory.
The election of Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel in May 1996 represented the victory of two
prominent ideas. The first was the reassertion of Jewish national and religious identity in the face of
global and regional realities. The second was the recovery of both political realism and political savvy
in manoeuvring through the narrow corridors of Israeli diplomatic dealings with Americans and
Arabs. Netanyahu signalled that Israel was Jewish, and indeed the galvanizing last minute election
campaign slogan declared, ‘Netanyahu: this is good for the Jews’. Peres, by implication, was good for
someone else.
The mix of peace and war has been an ambiguous political reality in the unchanging Muslim
Middle East. Diplomatic efforts, launched on the European continent, no less, with the 1991 Madrid
Conference and the 1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), have not eliminated or superseded the military build-ups, strategic threats and
border and terrorist warfare across the tense Middle East region. Egypt's acquisition of weaponry and
its military up-grading are formidable developments, though markedly ignored in the public press and
beyond.9
Non-conventional weaponry of a biological and chemical variety has also swelled the arsenals of a
number of Arab states, Syria and Iraq included. Missile capabilities assure that available delivery
systems can transport the weaponry in the direction of civilian Israeli targets. Meanwhile, five of the
seven states supporting terrorism posted on the US list of ignominy and sanctions are Muslim: Syria,
Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan. Narco-terrorism, as practised by Syria, Iran and Lebanon, and the direct
terrorism of a Palestinian and Shiite variety, constitute effective weaponry in a continuous war against
Israel and the West.
The Arabs' territorial ambitions and aggressive activities vis-à-vis Israel can be summarized as
follows: Syria demands the Golan Heights and part of eastern Galilee; the Lebanese Shiites seek to
penetrate northern Galilee (‘on the road to Jerusalem’, they declare); Jordan desires more of the Arava
down to Eilat; Egypt covets the southern Negev desert; while the Palestinians demand all of JudeaSamaria, Gaza and east Jerusalem as a first instalment in readiness further to acquire western Galilee
and the 1947 UN Partition Plan borders, on the path toward the ‘complete liberation of Palestine’.
The strategic incompatibility between Israel and the Arab-Muslim world in the Middle East is an
aspect of a broader cultural contradiction and religious conflict that divide these historical
protagonists. This nexus juxtaposes Israel's democratic vibrancy, if not extravagances, with the
Muslims' authoritarian politics; it pits Israel's civilian culture with the Arabs' military culture, without
ignoring contemporary efforts, yet in their infancy, in forging a civilian polity in Egypt, Jordan and
elsewhere. The Jewish value placed on individual human life seems incongruent when compared with
the Islamic imperative of martyrdom in Holy War.
It is the art, and rather artful manner, of doing politics that also conveys the chasm differentiating
the Israelis from the Arabs. It is true that a vast terrain of mutual mistrust and suspicion characterizes
relations between the two sides. But it is also true that the Arabs incessantly call for peace with Israel
– radically different from the pre-1967 period when they incessantly called for war against Israel. It is,
however, critical to understand that for Islam peace is a code-term for victory, if not conquest,
certainly equivalent with the acquisition of land presently in the hands of Israel.
Thus peace is a strategy, not a value in itself: a way of proceeding toward a goal – perhaps that of
Israel's ultimate demise – no different conceptually from war as a vehicle to the same end. For Israel,
peace represents a mode of transforming the quality of a conflict into accommodation, whereby
respectful co-existence and normalization are to replace and eliminate tension and warfare. Peace for
Israel is a cultural substance and therefore a political objective; for the Arabs, it is a cultural ruse
serving a more substantive political gain at the expense of Israel. It is noteworthy that the Arab
understanding of peace is linked to the demand for justice: this was Anwar Sadat's clear message in
1977 and remains that of his successor Hosni Mubarak and all other Arab leaders ever since. ‘Justice’
carries the substantive corollary that Israel's policies, if not her very existence, represent manifest
injustice in history.
Pertinent to this inquiry into peace is the diplomatic process of negotiations toward its realization.
The bartering method of peace-making is designed to arrive at a reasonable trade-off between Israel
and the Arabs: give-and-take is the essence of the negotiation exercise, in addition to shaping human
and political expectations for confidence-building between the parties. But the record of diplomacy's
efficacy is not an encouraging one in the Arab-Israeli experience. The Camp David Accords of 1978–
79 formally established peace between Israel and Egypt, but the reality is that Israel's gain following a
complete withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula is hardly more than a precarious ceasefire, not a warm
and solid relationship of peace.
Israel can only with great difficulty identify any clear-cut strategic, political or economic
achievement since the final Sinai pullback in 1982. Likewise, withdrawal from parts of Judea and
Samaria since 1993 has not lowered the Arab war profile, since the Palestinian Authority maintains
40,000 fighters geared psychologically and practically for a confrontation with Israel's defence forces.
The political climate characterizing the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, no less the ideological and
Islamic climate within the Palestinian community itself, is even more strident and violent than before
the dramatic signing ceremony on the White House lawn between Rabin and Yasser Arafat. The nature
of political negotiations is such that Israel gives concrete resources – land – but gets no concrete gain
in return. Here is the political nub of the clash of cultures at the heart of a bitter national struggle in
one small land.
ISRAEL AND THE WEST
Francis Fukuyama's ‘The End of History?’ and ‘The Triumph of the West’, along with VS. Naipaul's
‘Our Universal Civilization’ and the American affirmation of the right to ‘the pursuit of happiness’,
represent the apogee of the American Century and beyond. 10 Graced with civility and civil rights,
democracy and the rule of law, a multi-party system and free elections, the West conveyed a superior
form of civilization to the totalitarian, militaristic or authoritarian forms in most other parts of the
world. To be considered a Western state, in substance and image, was therefore for Israel a
membership card into an exclusive, though universally inclined, elite political club. But acceptance by
the Western nations was not automatic or simple. The United States rejected Israel's request to join
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance in the early 1950s, although the European
Common Market, predecessor to the European Union, did begin to open its economic doors to Israel in
the 1960s. Israelis should not easily forget that, when Jewish statehood was proclaimed in May 1948
in accordance with UN authorization, no Western country – including the US – offered any assistance
when five Arab armies invaded their country with the intent of massacre and destruction.
It is no less important to point out that Israel has received extraordinary benefits from its
relationships with the West, and with America in particular. Diplomatic backing and economic aid,
certainly arms sales and strategic co-operation, have been an essential part of these relationships in
supporting Israel's national interests. A balanced judgement is required and Israeli gratitude should be
voiced, but nothing bordering servility and fawning at the foot of the ‘American ally’.
The political philosophy of Western civilization rests upon values and ideals that Israel can agree
with in theory, but may consider destabilizing or threatening in practice. The principle of equality is
sacrosanct in the West, but in Israel it challenges the priority of Jews over Arabs in the Jewish state.
The moral pathos of minority rights is in its Diaspora context of great communal significance in
modern Jewish history, yet it is an ideological weapon against the integrity of Israel when wielded by
a radicalized and Islamicized Arab minority within the pre-1967 borders.
No one can easily or publicly reject the validity of self-determination as a political right for small
peoples, though its application in the name of Palestinian independence bodes ill for Israel's territorial
and national viability. Thus, Israel cannot conduct itself with intellectual sloppiness and political
blindness, nor agree with all ideas of Western political vintage, because the circumstances of its
existence demand extraordinary prudence regarding their relevance in the Israeli context. To see Israel
through an American prism alone is to deprecate its own historic identity and national existence.
American policy in the Middle East has been characterized by – some would say dominated by – the
Arabist diplomatic school of thought. With sympathy for the Arabs and a familiarity with their history
and language, the Arabist diplomats promoted American-Arab relations and cooperation at Israel's
expense.11 Examples on the Arabist ledger include the ARAMCO-Bechtel-CIA-Saudi connection, 12
the 1955 Baghdad Pact, Kennedy's outreach to Nasser in 1962, Carter's marked preference for Sadat
over Menachem Begin at Camp David in 1978, co-operation with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, and
contacts with the PLO and American recognition of the terrorist organization in 1988.
Certainly the political proximity of the George Bush-Arab connection was obvious to all, and the
Clinton-Peres linkage was merely the other side of the coin in the name of the same political outlook.
The conceptual rigidity of Arabism, regardless of diplomatic success or failure, demotes the role of
Israel in American considerations, though without erasing her value from certain moral and strategic
perspectives. Indeed, the recognition of Israel as a strategic partner of the US became a component of
Washington's policy in the Middle East during the Reagan presidency.13
This said, the US has been Israel's ‘best friend’, in the oft-repeated phraseology of Israeli
politicians and ministers, but not in a way that has disinclined Washington to exercise pressure on,
compel behaviour in and threaten sanctions against Israel, or collaborate with her Arab adversaries. In
1953, Washington constrained Israel's Jordan Water Diversion Project. In 1956, she browbeat Israel
into withdrawing from captured Gaza and Sinai. In 1967, she disclaimed a written pledge of support.
During 1973, she ignored pleas for weaponry in the early days of the Yom Kippur War and thereafter
denied Israel victory on the battlefield – she then pressured Israel to withdraw in favour of Egyptian
and Syrian demands. During the 1980s, she condemned Israel's attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and
distanced herself from Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the war against the PLO. In 1991, the US
prevailed on Israel to refrain from responding to Iraqi missile attacks on metropolitan Tel Aviv. Being
pressured and punished by one's ‘best friend’ is not the political substance of an authentic alliance or
true friendship. Certainly, Washington's steady acceptance of the Arab demand for Israeli withdrawal
back to the pre-1967 borders, along with its non-recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, is
tantamount to a lethal strategic and ideological abandonment of Israel.
In a tone of moral certitude and censure, the renowned Albert Einstein stated, ‘the world is too
dangerous to live in, not because of people who do evil, but because of people who sit and let it
happen’. The Armenian genocide and the Biafran massacre, the tragedies of Cambodia, Sudan,
Lebanon, Rwanda and East Timor, and more, testify that Israel's present predicament of abandonment
is a danger – which others have already encountered as destruction. The lesson, post-Holocaust no
less, is: to recognize realism and strength as the bedrock essential imperatives of Israeli survival.
MORALITY AND VICTORY
While the West prevaricates with Israel's well-being, and America assists but also admonishes, the
forces of Islam persevere in their quest for global hegemonic domination. This is pursued through
international and UN agencies and diplomatic influence, oil wealth and capital purchasing power,
media penetration and religious activism, terrorism and demographic expansion. The temptation for
the West lies in seeking to mollify the Muslims and Arabs in the currency of Israel's miniscule
territory: buy Arab co-operation, that of Egypt and Syria, for example, by pressuring Israel to
surrender land to the PLO, thereby solidifying the Arabist inclination and bias in US policy-making in
the Middle East. It is less understood that, if Jerusalem falls to Islam and Judaism is thereby
emasculated, Christianity would be dead as a moral and civilizational force in history.
In his book Cultures in Conflict, Professor Bernard Lewis, the eminent scholar of Islam and Arab
history, has stated with clarity and courage the mood of the times, the drift of history, and the dangers
facing the West and the world. ‘It may be that Western culture will indeed disappear: the lack of
conviction of many of those who should be its defenders and the passionate intensity of its accusers
may well join to complete its destruction’.14
But it is the Western stance toward Israel that constitutes the most elemental test of its
civilizational integrity and moral posture. The diplomatic bludgeoning of Israel proceeds apace:
consecutive Israeli prime ministers of whatever political party are blamed for impeding peace in the
Middle East, while Palestinian violations of agreements are ignored. These violations include
harbouring murderers and accumulating weaponry, ignoring anti-Semitic and warlike declarations,
turning a blind eye to the dictatorial and corrupt character of Arafat's Palestinian Authority regime,
and most recently open warfare on the streets. Should we not consider America's political leanings as
nothing less than a disclosure of moral bankruptcy in high places? The only pertinent change in the
region since the Labour Party came to power in 1992, has not been in Arab intentions or American
policies, but in Israel's willingness virtually to give something for nothing while enduring jihad in
Jerusalem.
The politics of the Middle East cannot be separated from the prophecies of the Middle East, just as
political issues cannot be divorced from more comprehensive cultural questions. Jewish rabbinic
sages from two millennia ago understood that biblical tales are symbolic narratives for penetrating
truths. The struggle of the people of Israel is guided by a destiny determined from above. This might
mean in human or secular terms that Israel's deficiency in geography and demography is compensated
by an abundance of spirituality and mental power.
But on the path blocking Israel's national restoration stand the formidable foes of the past: Ishmael
representing the Muslims, and Esau representing the Christians. Bound by a common antipathy, Israel
is their nemesis and prey. They will collaborate in the war against the Jews. But as the prophets of the
Bible predicted and the flow of modern history confirms, Israel's restoration – in these end of days of
the final redemption – will withstand the dangers and thwart the enemies. This ‘Return to Zion’,
despite faltering Jews and antagonistic gentiles – and in the teeth of a clash of cultures – constitutes a
breakthrough that will not be reversed.
NOTES
1. The Hebrew writings of Moshe Ben-Yosef include From the World of the Epigones , Tel Aviv, 1977 and Cultural Coercion ,
Jerusalem, 1979.
2. See Israel Yearbook and Almanac 1997, Vol.51, Jerusalem, 1997, pp.281–2.
3. See Central Bureau of Statistics, Data from Statistical Abstract of Israel 1997, No.48, Jerusalem, 1997.
4. Israel Yearbook and Almanac 1997, p.288.
5. The events implied are: the promise given to Abraham, the first Hebrew, at Shechem (Nablus) that Eretz-Canaan would be the
eternal possession of his seed; and the revelation of the tablets and the Law to Moses and the children of Israel at Sinai.
6. Ma'ariv, 11 August 1997.
7. See Ibn Taimiyya, Public and Private Law in Islam, trans. Omar A. Farrukh, Beirut, 1966, p.138.
8. An array of recent Arab anti-Semitic caricatures and statements appeared in Nativ (Israel), No.6 (1997), pp.46–56, while a
complete volume on the topic was prepared by Aryeh Stav, The Peace – Arab Caricature: A Study in Anti-Semitic Image, Tel
Aviv, 1996 (in Hebrew). A shorter English version of the material appeared in Aryeh Stav, Arab Anti-Semitism in Cartoons –
After ‘Peace’, Tel Aviv, 1996.
9. Shawn Pine, ‘The Egyptian Threat and the Prospects for War in the Middle East’, Ariel Centre for Policy Research, No.4 (1997).
See also Christopher Barder, ‘Syria and Egypt: Preparations for War?’, B'tzedek (Fall/Winter 1997–98), pp.63–8.
10. Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest, No. 16 (Summer 1989), pp.3–18; and VS. Naipaul, ‘Our
Universal Civilization’, The New York Review, 31 January 1991, pp.22–5. For a yet more recent argument in favour of the
normative and universal validity of Westernization, no less addressed to the Muslim Middle East, see Martin Kramer, ‘The
Middle East, Old and New’, Daedalus, No.2 (Spring 1997), pp.89–112.
11. Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite, New York, 1993.
12. John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People , New
York, 1994. See especially chs.3, 7, 10, 11 and 15. ARAMCO is an acronym for the Arabian-American Oil Company.
13. Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance: Israel in United States Foreign Policy, New York, 1994, pp. 144–94.
14. Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery, New York, Oxford, 1995, p.79.
__________
Mordechai Nisan teaches Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Rothberg International School. An earlier
version of this essay was presented as a paper at the International Conference on World Affairs: A Clash of Cultures, Florida Atlantic
University, Boca Raton, 14 January 1998.
The Fracturing of the Jewish Self-Image: The
End of ‘We Are One’?
JUDITH ELIZUR
The core of the Jewish self-image in the past, whether in the Diaspora or in Israel, was vulnerability,
either physical or psychological or both. The peripheral attributes of the image varied from one
community to the next, but Jews all over the world shared the basic trait. Despite Salo Baron's
objections to what he termed the ‘lachrymosal view’ of Jewish history -that is, that it is a succession
of disasters and not much else, whereas he wished to emphasize the positive achievements in the longrunning story of the Jewish people – the prevailing feeling among Jews worldwide prior to 1967,
especially in the wake of the Holocaust, was to see themselves as the eternal victim in history.
The victim self-image was based on the reality of twenty centuries marked by recurring expulsions,
forced conversions, pogroms, persecution and flight. Minority status in the Diaspora created the need
to maintain a constant state of vigilance, a kind of functional paranoia that served as an early warning
system of dangers looming ahead. Rejecting this nervous, haunted image, the Zionist founders of the
pre-State Yishuv were trying to create a new Jew, free of what they termed the ‘Galut mentality’,
which included a large dose of self-pity over Jewish victimhood in history. The figure of the sabra,
the native-born Israeli who is tough on the outside but sensitive and caring on the inside, was an
invention calculated to combat the poor self-image of the Diaspora Jew.
It was hoped that the creation of a Jewish state would strengthen the Jewish psyche in the Diaspora.
It would not only enable Jews everywhere to stand taller; it would elicit admiration from non-Jews
and insure respect for Jewish rights everywhere. (Theodor Herzl never anticipated that Israel could
become a stick with which to beat the local Jewish community, that its support for Israel could give
rise to charges of dual loyalty or of conniving in the oppression of another people. Yet parties on both
the right and left in many places have done exactly that.)
What effect did the Six Day War have on the Jewish self-image, which had not changed appreciably
over the centuries? First of all, it demonstrated the symbiotic relationship between Diaspora selfimage and events in Israel – which affect Israeli self-image as well – and therefore we must examine
what occurred at both ends of the equation. Secondly, and perhaps even more significantly, it presaged
the fracturing of the universal core of the Jewish self-image, which we see so clearly today.
THE ISRAELI SELF-IMAGE BEFORE 1967
At the outset, Israelis in 1948 were unsure of their own strength. The War of Independence was won at
great cost in lives and suffering, particularly in besieged Jerusalem. The hardships of the early years,
especially the austerity period at the time of the great immigration from the camps of Europe and the
mullahs of North Africa, did not inculcate any element of strength into the self-image. When aliya
slowed down to a trickle after the first years of explosive growth – indeed the economic situation
immediately prior to 1967 was one of negative growth – the resulting phenomenon of yerida, or
emigration, gave rise to the classic joke, ‘Will the last person to leave Lydda Airport please turn off
the lights’.
Against this background of self-doubt as to economic viability and grave concern as to Israel's
military might against combined Arab armies, the victory in June 1967 was indeed, as Haim Bar-Lev
termed it, swift, decisive and elegant. The immense relief at the war's outcome was in direct
proportion to the fears that had become more and more pervasive in the three-week waiting period
prior to the war's outbreak. (David Ben-Gurion himself reputedly warned Yitzhak Rabin, then chief of
staff, that he was risking the destruction of the Third Commonwealth by going it alone without the
support of any of the Great Powers. Ben-Gurion had not believed in Israeli invincibility to that extent
in 1956.)
THE EFFECT OF THE 1967 WAR ON ISRAEL'S SELF-IMAGE
There were three aspects to the euphoria that swept over Israel after the Six Day War. First, the
demographic: any doubts of the old-timers as to the fighting ability of the post-statehood immigrants
were set to rest. As a result, Israelis could trust their own strength. Secondly, the geographic: the
conquest of the West Bank put an end to the claustrophobia caused by the narrow pre-1967
boundaries, especially with regard to Jerusalem, which for 19 years had been isolated and hemmed in
on three sides by Arab territory. The retaking of the Old City was an incredible emotional high, not
only for Israelis but also for Jews all over the world. And finally, the economic aspect underpinning
the first two: a great leap forward took place after the war. The overnight availability of a new, large
pool of cheap labour (the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza) made possible the expansion of labourintensive agriculture and industry.
The result was an air of optimism arising from the general prosperity and renewed confidence in the
nation's ability to survive. This rise in self-esteem was nowhere demonstrated as strikingly as in the
first Independence Day parade after the Six Day War. With the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the
spotlight, the celebration was held in Jerusalem as the entire nation rejoiced. Did this mean that for
the Israelis the victim image had been expunged once and for all – and had been replaced by the
fulfilment of the Zionist dream? Here we must turn to examine the Diaspora's reaction to the victory,
whence came reinforcement to Israel's euphoria, with an unforeseen impact on the national selfimage.
THE EFFECTS OF THE 1967 VICTORY ON THE DIASPORA SELFIMAGE
If one may be permitted a gross generalization, Diaspora Jewry before 1967 was not certain of the
permanence of Israel. Indeed, at the outset not all Diaspora Jews were united in support of political
Zionism and the attainment of political sovereignty for the Jews in Palestine. As Alfred Moses, then
head of the American Jewish Committee, recalled in a 1989 interview:
Many American Jews sat on their hands during the War of Independence. There was criticism, both
from the left – at least from the extreme left, the Bundists and so on – and from the right – not just
the religious right, but those who felt Israel was a socialist state or Communist state, the
distinctions weren't always made. There was a lot of sitting on the sidelines by people who weren't
embarrassed about their being Jewish but who just didn't identify with Israel. And there were
American Jews who no doubt felt threatened by a Jewish state.1
True, Leon Uris's Exodus had managed to mythologize Israel's early pioneering days and struggle for
independence, and in becoming a bestseller gave the Diaspora a new cast of Jewish heroes. Yet the
reality presented world Jewry with a different Israel, a frail body in need of much support. It must be
said that the organized community, especially in the United States, responded without hesitation to the
appeals of the Israeli leadership to help the state absorb the mass immigration of the first years.
Arnold Forster, general counsel emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), recalls the feeling of
the American Jewish leadership in the first years of statehood as follows: ‘we regarded it as a happy
privilege to be able to help – it was a matter of building affirmatively, constructively and happily … it
was a period in which Israel could do no wrong’.2 while Bernice Tannenbaum, a former national
president of Hadassah, describes the emotions of those early years as follows:
There was such great pride. I remember in the beginning when I would go out to speak, it was just a
question of bringing news of Israel. And … we cried. There was tzena, they didn't have enough
food, there were problems, ma'abarot and all, but it was not in any way negatively oriented. It was
very positive, what can we do to help.3
At the same time as the Diaspora – primarily American Jewry – mobilized to aid Israel in the task of
immigrant absorption, it was becoming more and more sensitized to the consequences of the
Holocaust, which had not yet been fully grasped at the time of the War of Independence. Thus, when
war broke out in June 1967, there was near panic in world Jewry. The three weeks preceding its
outbreak – the waiting period during which Israel mobilized, the United Nations evacuated Gaza and
Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran – led to fears of a replay of the Holocaust. Among the factors that
explain this reaction is one that is generally overlooked: the role of the media.
The Impact of Television
Whereas the War of Independence had been reported only in the press, now there was a new medium
that intensified the impact of the news. 1967 was Israel's first televised war. True, the War of
Independence had been reported by giants of the foreign press corps such as American correspondents
Homer Bigart and Dana Adams Schmidt. But the printed word and the few black and white pictures
that appeared did not pack anything like the emotional punch of the Six Day War television pictures of
Jerusalem burning. They traumatized Jews all over the world – except in Israel, which did not yet have
television.
If Christiane Amanpour of CNN had been in besieged Jerusalem in 1948, reporting the shells falling
on lines of people waiting for water – as she did in Sarajevo – or if a television camera had
accompanied one of the food convoys running the gauntlet through Sha'ar Ha-gai to the beleaguered
city, the perils of that earlier struggle would have been brought home much more powerfully to the
Diaspora.
The Role of the Jewish Press
The 1967 combination of television plus reports in the world press galvanized the Diaspora, which
reacted with an unprecedented mobilization of funds and manpower. In the US a supplementary
information channel came into play: the Jewish press in the English language played a role in arousing
the public to the dangerous situation, for outside of New York and perhaps Washington, the general
media gave little space in the early stages of the crisis to events so far away. 4 The Boston Jewish
Advocate was already warning of Middle Eastern war clouds in its editorial of 18 May, calling for
action at the UN in view of Nasser's threats. On 2 June, the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent editorial,
entitled ‘Be Strong and of Good Courage’, reflected deep concern: ‘Israel is confident in the future:
we wish more Americans had as much faith in the people of Israel as Israel has’. Also on 2 June, the
Detroit Jewish News tried to be reassuring, calling Arab war talk a bluff that was harming tourism to
Israel. Nevertheless its first page – like those in Jewish papers all over the country – was full of news
stories from Israel and the UN about the imminent outbreak of hostilities, and the need to mobilize the
local community in response to Israel's appeal for help. Even though the war was concluded within a
week, the emotions aroused were profound. Volunteers flew in from every continent – a response that
was never repeated in any subsequent war. The day after the Old City of Jerusalem was retaken,
Diaspora leaders already stood at the Western Wall, shoulder to shoulder with Ben-Gurion, Teddy
Kollek and other Israeli politicians and generals, all with tears in their eyes.
In the United States, the Jewish press gave vent to the general relief at the war's outcome. The
Philadelphia Jewish Exponent had two editorials on 9 June. The first, entitled ‘The Cease Fire’,
reflected traditional (if well-deserved) Jewish paranoia: ‘Suddenly all the powers want peace – why
should there not be two and a half million more Holocaust victims?’, but the second editorial, entitled
‘The Israel Army’ was a vindication of the Zionist thesis:
Is there one Jew in the world who today does not stand a little taller, a little prouder?… all have
something in common today – a bursting pride in what the Israel Army has accomplished with so
little material and so much courage … ‘Say Chaim, did you hear about our boys at El Arish?’.
In the Jewish Advocate of 15 June, the New England chairman of the Bonds organization wrote an
open letter to his ‘Dear brethren in Israel’ on the response of Boston Jewry:
It was a week of worry, hope and then heartfelt relief. It was a week of unbounded admiration for
the fighting qualities of Israeli men and women in the defence forces. It was a week of prayer and
action half a world away from the battlefronts. There is no yardstick to anguish and anguish was
what was felt by all of us with the news of the outbreak of hostilities.
On 9 June, Detroit's Jewish News topped its page one masthead with the traditional phrase (in Hebrew)
‘Netzah Yisrael lo yishaker’ (The Eternal One of Israel will not disappoint), and at the bottom of the
page it added (again in Hebrew), ‘Shomer Yisrael lo yanum ve-lo yishan’ (The Guardian of Israel
neither slumbers nor sleeps). Its editorial stated as follows:
Israelis are holding their heads high. Having straightened their backs, which had been bent under
the persecution of millennia, they refuse to permit a return to humiliation and human bondage.
Their kinsmen everywhere have gained a new dignity by Israel's emergence. That dignity, that sense
of accomplishment of ending servility, must be protected to the fullest. That's our duty … with
these aims our self-respect will be protected, our dignity will be retained.
These are but a few illustrations from the American Jewish press that demonstrate, first of all, the
interdependence between Jewish self-image in the Diaspora and events in Israel. Secondly, they
express the close identification of American Jewry in 1967 with Israeli Jews on a family basis: ‘Dear
brethren’, ‘our brothers and sisters’, ‘our boys’. Thirdly, the beneficial effect of the Israeli example on
self-image is clear: no more humiliation, a restoration of dignity and pride.
ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSE IN THE UNITED STATES
Excerpts from internal discussions in two of the leading American Jewish organizations make the
same points. Events in Israel caused the programme division of the Anti-Defamation League to go
way over its regular budget: at the October meeting of the National Executive in Houston, it was
reported that 75 per cent of the director's time had been devoted to the crisis situation, as the agency
poured out material to fill the information gap concerning Israel.5 Benjamin Epstein, the national
director of the ADL, reported at his National Commission meeting in May 1968 that the Christian
community had ‘failed to understand the familial relationship between American Jews and the State of
Israel’.6 Dore Schary, a major figure in the movie industry and lay chairman of the ADL National
Commission, expressed the pride of American Jews in the victory in telling the following anecdote at
the same meeting:
Just recently I heard of an Israeli tank brigade commander whose first order when Jordan attacked
Israel last June was to advance and capture the city of Ramallah. In a swift and slashing attack he
completed his mission, took a deep breath and sent a short report: ‘Have taken Ramallah; shall I
proceed to Jericho?’ The answer was just as economical. It read: ‘Proceed to Jericho. P.S. Take
plenty of trumpets.’ He did and Jericho fell. This time however the trumpets were in the will and
the minds of the Israelis. We have our Jerichos ahead of us – walls of bigotry, ignorance, hate and
political schemes rise before us. The trumpets which will tumble these walls must be carried by us
in our will and our determination.7
Here again we have Israel as family, Israel as a source of pride, Israel as role model for the Diaspora.
But there still were hesitancies: participants were at pains to emphasize that the ADL's activity on
Israel's behalf was the legitimate right of its constituents, and not a matter of following Israel's
position blindly, as one speaker feared.
The internal discussion at the American Jewish Committee's (AJC) Board of Governors meeting in
June after the war included what might be termed a ‘last gasp’ of those elements which had not
identified with Israel before 1967. One participant in the meeting, Alan Stroock, voicing the stance of
such people,
urged that AJC proceed with extreme caution … [He] expressed concern about the extent to which
AJC has committed itself, its constituents and the American Jewish community to a position which
identifies us, perhaps too strongly, with Israel. The world is calling Israel a ‘conqueror’ … and the
fate of five million Jews in the United States is being related to the fate of two million Jews in
Israel.8
Several others who defended the Committee's activity on Israel's behalf challenged this speaker. Dr
John Slawson reminded the gathering that ‘we have a great stake in Israel; we were very important in
its creation and recognition and we must now be concerned about its preservation’.9 The viewpoint of
the ‘quaking Jews’ was clearly in the minority, as became evident in the report of Philip Hoffman,
chairman of the Board of Governors, to the Executive Board at its 2 December 1967 meeting. He
stated, ‘The Arab-Israeli war has altered our program emphasis. For our own sake as well as for the
sake of Israel … we must counteract Arab propaganda, help build a favorable image of Israel and
increase understanding between the United States and Israel’.10
At that same December meeting, Philip Bernstein, executive director of the Council of Jewish
Federations and Welfare Funds, characterized the response of American Jews to the crisis as:
By far the most spectacular in the history of American Jewry … Thousands of Jews volunteered to
go to Israel to help in any way possible; many more private individuals and organizations
volunteered their services to help with the solicitation and collection of funds; and thousands of
pro-Israel telegrams poured into the White House. In sum, American Jews showed themselves more
united in support of Israel than ever before. Whatever the personal individual motivations, almost
to a man there was evidence of a depth of identification and commitment never known before.11
BALM TO THE DIASPORA PSYCHE
Thus the immense relief in the Diaspora at the outcome of the fighting. Great as the euphoria in Israel
was, it apparently was equally great in the Diaspora. All the world loves a winner: non-Jews telling
their Jewish neighbours ‘Your boys did it!’ brought many closet Jews into the open. It was gentile
praise that caused a sea change in the self-image of many conflicted individuals, who until then had
viewed their Jewishness negatively through the eyes of non-Jews. Now, sharing vicariously in the
success of Israel enabled them to identify publicly as Jews for the first time in their lives.
One telling piece of evidence of this effect appeared in a column by Robert Spero, a syndicated
freelance writer, published in the Jewish Advocate on 6 July. Entitled ‘Will Moshe Dayan Make Me a
Better Jew?’, Spero relates how he was glued to the radio during the war, despite the fact that he had
left his family home in the Mid West in order to escape his Jewishness. In a confessional mode
reflecting childhood traumas, he wrote:
The Jews don't knuckle under any more … After all these years we held our ground, we will not be
pushed any further … (when six million died) nobody stood up. Now we're standing. Who's calling
me a kike? I like being a Jew. It suddenly makes me proud … Every Israeli shot seems to be a shot
in the arm for me. My self-consciousness is draining away. I am absolutely glad to be a Jew. I have
eyes, hands, organs, I am like everybody else at the very least. Who calls me a kike?12
The image of the fighting Jew had great resonance for the Diaspora, constituting as it did
compensation for psychological, if not physical, vulnerability. Professor Arthur Hertzberg noted in an
article in the August 1967 issue of Commentary that what underlay the response of Jewry everywhere
was a revulsion against the passivity of the Jewish victims of the Nazis, as well as against the failure
of the Jews in the United States and England during World War II to ‘engage in a vehement
confrontation (with Roosevelt and Churchill) over the parochial destiny of the Jewish people’. As
such, ‘now, confronted by a threat to Israel's existence, Jews almost universally felt that precisely
because of the horrifying prospect that Israel might go down, let it go down fighting … The response
to the Middle East crisis was a way of saying that, come what might, Jews would not repeat such
conduct’.13
Even the Jewish community of France was emboldened to remonstrate with its government
concerning de Gaulle's overnight abandonment of support for Israel in a demarche that would have
been most unlikely before the victory. (In response, de Gaulle raised the spectre of dual loyalty in
accusing Jews of being ‘un peuple d'elite, sur de lui-meme et dominateur’.)
Somewhat more muted was the response in South America, according to the director of the foreign
affairs department of the American Jewish Committee, who reported on 9 October 1967 that the ‘Jews
of Brazil reacted to the conflict in a manner which paralleled that of most Jews throughout the free
world. In Argentina there was less of an apparent ability to identify openly with Israel's struggle’.14
The Jews in the Soviet Union could not express their support for Israel, but their government could
not shield them from the news of the war's outcome, which gave many renewed hope of redemption.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE ‘SUPERJEW’
Every community on every continent demanded to see the heroes who had brought about the ‘greatest
Jewish victory since the time of the Maccabees’. When Israel responded by sending IDF officers to
appear at UJA (United Jewish Appeal) and Israel Bonds fund-raisers, their reception was ecstatic. In
short order they were being hailed as supermen, representatives of a new breed of Jew, stalwart,
fearless, invincible. This was what the Zionist enterprise had set out to create. This switch from the
old victim-in-history self image to that of powerful victor was so ego-inflating for Israelis that, when
IDF speakers told of their reception abroad, Israelis as well as Diaspora Jews were beguiled into
believing in the image of a ‘SuperJew’. There was a kind of mutual admiration society between the
Diaspora and Israel, a joyful release from feelings of insecurity and impotence. The symbiosis was
immediate and total. As Howard Squadron, former head of the American Jewish Congress and a past
president of the Presidents’ Conference, explained it, ‘after 1967 for a while there was the general
view that Israel was this enormously successful David who had licked Goliath and it was all sweetness
and light’.15
The afterglow was so strong that, according to Professor Hertzberg, ‘In 1969–70, as America was
bogged down in Viet Nam, [there were] American Jews walking around popping their buttons and
saying, our army is not like yours. What America needs is a one-eyed general who will get you out of
this mess’.16
What could have been more convincing than such adulation? It would have been asking too much of
the Israelis, who had felt so close to annihilation not to have been affected by the contagion of
invincibility. But while psychologists tell us of the importance of a positive self-image for the
functioning of the individual, in this case it also had other effects for the group – not always
beneficial.
DANGERS OF THE ‘SUPERJEW’ IMAGE
For many Israelis, the role of occupying power in regard to the Palestinian population was a source of
ego-gratification. Some religious Israelis interpreted rule over the Arabs as a divinely sanctioned
triumph over Amalek, the traditional Biblical enemy; other Israelis, particularly those of low socioeconomic status, enjoyed lording it over Palestinians. The self-image switch from victim to conqueror
was inebriating, if not corrupting, in such cases. As Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz predicted, the
occupation was to become a cancer in the Israeli body politic.
Enjoying the ‘fruits of victory’ went hand in hand with a denigration of the enemy, to the point
where it may have been at the root of the fatal conceptzia (as Israelis termed their mind-set at the
time) that brought on the Yom Kippur War. Even the war of attrition along the Suez Canal (1969–70)
did not shake the public's complacency. The notion of Israeli invincibility had its share in blinding the
IDF to the significance of what was going on under its nose: the training of Egypt's army to cross the
Canal, thus contributing to the ‘surprise’ of the 6 October 1973 attack by Egypt and Syria.
Yet however striking the eclipse of the victim self-image appeared to be on the surface before 1973,
one could question how deep it went, at least among the older generation. Even after the Six Day War,
Israeli leaders held on to the victim image at the same time as they rejoiced in the revelation of
Israel's strength. When Foreign Minister Abba Eban was asked at a press conference in Jerusalem at
the end of the war what it felt like to be no longer the underdog, he replied, ‘Underdog, overdog, it's
still a dog's life’. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, wary of the dissonance that the ‘SuperJew’ image
might arouse among non-Jews, suggested that Israel present itself in its public relations as Shimshon
der nebbachdikker – a powerless Samson.
In 1972, Prime Minister Golda Meir went even further, in arguing with Richard Crossman over
what he saw as Israel's refusal to respond to Anwar Sadat's peace overtures. Invoking the victim selfimage, she explained, ‘But we are a traumatized people’. Crossman's response reputedly was, ‘You