ISRAEL AT 32 A SPECIAL SECTION

ISRAEL AT 32 A SPECIAL SECTION No one grand theme, no single image, captures Israel at 32. Like so much of the world these days, Israel appears in bits and pieces, a collection of fragments that...

...together, these letters spell "lev," which means heart...
...In times gone by, there were years to be remembered for the absorption of immigrants, or for the reclaiming of deserts, or for economic expansion, or for Jerusalem's reunification...
...Like so much of the world these days, Israel appears in bits and pieces, a collection of fragments that do not lend themselves to simple addition and summary...
...It was not, on the whole, a year with much good news...
...This was the year Dayan resigned, and Weizmann did not, the year in which the autonomy talks staggered slowly forward, the year in which 20,000 farmers demonstrated vehemently, and nearly violently, at the gates of the Knesset...
...Life is less riveting than news, but almost always more significant...
...In Afghanistan, or in England, or in the Soviet Union, or in Iran, or in the United States...
...a writer tells about fathering and about loss, and a mother writes about mothering and about pride...
...near year's end, violating good sense instead of law, it conceded the Gush the right to settle in Hebron...
...Non-additive, these bits and pieces, fragments of a reality too complex to capture...
...Under somewhat different circumstances, the year now passing might have been heralded as the year that Israel and Egypt moved to formal peace, exchanged ambassadors...
...Where has the news been good...
...the poet's verse, the writer's pain, the mother's pride will last...
...Another year in the life of a nation reborn in blood and preserved in danger, a 32nd year to add to 31, is in and of itself more important than the headlines of the day...
...When 20,000 farmers demonstrate, that's news...
...Take heart: the scholar's analysis will be obsolete next year, perhaps sooner...
...a scholar analyzes the autonomy plan...
...Indeed, if all goes well, that is just how this year may end up being noted in the history books...
...So, in celebration of Israel's 32nd, some bits and pieces: a jogger, a biker and a poet describe the landscape and cityscape, the sounds and the smells and the soul of the place...
...In Hebrew, thirty-two is written "lamed-bet...
...But the exchange, for all its potential significance, seems somehow to have been swallowed up by other events, none more consequential, none larger, but in total, overwhelming...
...Political incompetence, ineptitude, seems to be a global epidemic...
...when a hundred thousand diligently sow and reap, that's life...
...Theirs, far from the headlines, is the enduring reality...
...This has been a year of economic chaos, capped by the seriousness of triple-digit inflation and by the silliness of changing from the pound to the shekel as the basic currency...
...Not much, that is, that translates into news...
...Near this year's beginning, the government conceded to the fanatics of Gush Emunim the right to settle at Elon Moreh, an act the Supreme Court later termed illegal...
...A year of bits and pieces of life, of the non-news of life, is always a cause for celebration...
...Save for Rhodesia—and the good news there is still most fragile—there's not much anywhere that warrants celebration...

Vol. 5 • April 1980 • No. 4


 
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