ISRAEL: A VISITOR'S NOTEBOOK

...Jerusalem W hat a tourist can learn in a few weeks about the political situation of a country is notoriously questionable...

...The Oriental Jews come from premodern societies...

...In the name of strengthening national defense, which consumes some 40 percent of Israel's budget, and in order to provide jobs and economic opportunity for the incoming Oriental Jews, the Labor government enabled a major expansion of the private sector of the economy— and with it, naturally, a new bourgeoisie...

...To what extent was this an uncomfortable necessity created by Israel's defense needs, and to what extent did it reflect an erosion of socialist values within the Labor party...

...that she should have had the account at all, tells us a good deal about the moral transformation occurring among portions of the Israeli elite...

...For the Oriental Jews, caught by the rhythm of upward economic mobility, supported in the main, not the Rabin government that had helped them, but the Likud that promised a still greater bourgeoisification unflecked by the remnants of Labor ideology...

...It is contemptuous, more and more openly, of the egalitarian and stoical values of the country's founders...

...In construction the Oriental Jews grow more powerful, while much of the heavy labor they once performed is now being done by Arabs, either by Israeli Arabs or those brought in from the West Bank and Gaza...

...They have encountered Labor Zionism through East and Central European-born officials of the Histadruth, the massive labor organization, or through government officials whom they often think arrogant, condescending, and unfair...

...Others hold a view, assertively "realistic," that nothing much will change here anyway because the options available to any Israeli government are very limited...

...The new bourgeoisie is not, of course, predominantly composed of Oriental Jews...

...upon arrival, they are still in the grip of traditionalist, patriarchal, petty-trading styles of life...

...but the task of the analyst is to relate the two kinds of causes, so that we lapse neither into a passive determinism nor transient superficialities...

...4) AT THE VERY CENTER of these developments, both as cause and effect, is the steady weakening of Labor Zionism as a political and moral force...

...3) FOR THE PAST DECADE, but especially between 1967 and 1972, there has been a considerable boom in the Israeli economy—a boom that coexists with severe imbalances of trade, heavy deficit spending, and high inflation...

...True enough...

...It is hard for an outsider to say, but I am impressed by the judgment of Haim Barkai, a highly qualified, moderate, and non-Marxist economist, who told me that while the economic development was necessary, it could have been controlled in nonauthoritarian ways so as to stay a little closer to the original values of the country...

...Labor Zionism simply was not designed or equipped to deal with a mass of premodern people from African and Asian countries who knew neither Hebrew nor Yiddish, the languages in which it was nurtured, and to whom its traditions and ideas were largely a matter of indifference...

...All I propose to do here is to supplement Menahem Brinker's report with a few observations and speculations gleaned from talking to some good political minds in Israel...

...But the West Bank Arabs would not, of course, choose Israeli citizenship if the West Bank were annexed to Israel—they would remain a disfranchised subject people, with all the tragic consequences that brings to both ruled and rulers...

...That a reporter discovered Mrs...

...To some extent, the process has been unavoidable...

...If Begin persists in his stand on the West Bank, as one suspects he will, then there can be no full-scale peace in the Middle East, though it is just barely possible that there may be a temporary deal with Egypt and perhaps Syria for partial withdrawals— which would leave Jordan and the Palestinians each holding part of the bag...

...still less so, those of the socialist wing of Zionism...

...a conjunctural cause, the scandals about corruption that beset the Labor regime during its final days...

...And his political opponents owe him at least this: that they take him at his word even if their word sometimes requires discounting...

...and a large-scale conflict over religious and cultural issues between the country's secular majority and its aggressive religious minority...

...And the religious parties are, in their own way, serious: they expect such bargains to be kept...

...Most of the conjunctural causes, it turns out, can be related to the structural ones...

...Yet once major allowance is made for unfavorable and indeed appalling historical circumstances, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Labor Zionism has for some years now been going through a severe disintegration, both as movement and idea...

...The scandals that rocked the Rabin government, and that officials of the party tend to minimize as the narishkeit (foolishness) of a few individuals, seems symptomatic of a general moral decline...

...Will the Arab countries agree to such a deal...

...But I think it just as well that we recognize the reality for what it is...

...Yet precisely such a balance of response is what now seems required...

...Yet Avineri believes that it may take eight or ten years before Labor manages to regroup politically and intellectually...

...many are poorly educated (though there are small elites of educated Iraqui and Egyptian Jews...

...Some of his party workers kept attacking the kibbutzim as "rich," the special prerogative of "them," that is, the East and Central European Jews...

...Few care to live in the kibbutzim...

...Any expectation that Begin will soon fall is probably unrealistic...

...Nor are the conditions of siege under which the country has lived ever since its founding likely to stimulate moods of openness and experiment such as socialist or even social democratic policies require...

...Major new social and economic energies, such as we know in advanced capitalist countries, have been set in motion—and one must wonder how long before the socialist idea can again become a vibrant one for large portions of the Israeli population...

...Ony two things could bring that about: a major rupture between Israel and the U.S...

...And it rationalizes its hunger for accumulation in the name of national security...

...Between the Israel of Ben Gurion and the Israel of today there is an enormous difference, and the values of labor pioneering require a new application if they are not to fade into mere rhetoric for May Day speeches...

...It is often ostentatious in display...

...Perhaps the most troubling change in official Israeli declarations since Begin took office is the kind of justification offered for keeping the West Bank...

...In a sense, Labor created a social Frankenstein that helped defeat it...

...2) BECAUSE OF THE arrival of hundreds of thousands of Asian-African ("Oriental") Jews in the last few decades, the country's social map has changed sharply...

...This narrow-spirited patriotism serves to give psychic content to the lives of people who have been uprooted from their old cultures but have yet to find a secure place in the new...

...Now, in the utterly unlikely event that the West Bank Arabs would be clever or spiteful enough to choose Israeli citizenship, this would yield two consequences distasteful to almost all Israelis: first, a greatly enlarged Arab minority that, with its high birth rate, would in time challenge Jewish hegemony, and second, a large increase in the power of Rakah, the pro-Arab Communist party, which already has five seats in the Knesset based mostly on the votes of Israeli Arabs...

...THE NEWS FROM ISRAEL, then, is not encouraging for people of socialist, or liberal, or dovish persuasion...

...Though not the immediate cause of the Labor defeat, suggests Avineri, this is a major condition making for a decline in the hold of its ideology among both Labor supporters and the population at large...

...In some areas of social policy—e.g., abortion laws—the new government has already begun a significant retreat...

...Since, however, some 800,000 Arabs constitute the population of the West Bank, and since they surely do not want to live under Israeli rule even if it provides them with better social services than an Arab government would, Begin's argument takes on an imperialist cast...

...The government announced a scheme to "equalize social services" for Arabs in the occupied territories...

...Had the Labor government taken steps to end such practices, Begin now could not use his seemingly humane proposals in behalf of his long-range reactionary purposes...

...It will be a long time before this is put into practice, since there is no funding specified in the government's budget for this purpose...

...The new bourgeoisie displays the characteristics typical of arrivistes everywhere: It is energetic, grasping...

...and they have to take, at first, the worst jobs...

...Intellectual critics of the Begin government tend to be pessimistic...

...No one knows for certain, but meanwhile there is the strong possibility of a major split between Begin and Carter regarding terms of a possible agreement...

...there are many more Ashkenazim who have grown affluent—and in the judgment of some observers, these form the social base of the Yadin movement, middle-class and middle-of-the road...

...It gives a rapid, synthetic identity far more emotionally stirring than can be given by the universalist subtleties of the Israeli left or the pragmatic bureaucratism of Labor Zionist governments...

...Nor do • Moshe Dayan's proposals for Arab "autonomy" in such circumstances provide much reassurance—talk about "autonomy" usually accompanies schemes for domination...

...Right now the movement is in a state of shock, and some of its recent political responses under the guidance of Shimon Peres have been designed to compete in "toughness" with Begin...

...Admiring Begin as a "strong man" who will not compromise with the hated Arabs and as a leader who will clean out Labor officials whom they often found unsympathetic, the Oriental Jews provided heavy margins for the right-wing coalition...

...Thus, the Jerusalem Post of August 17 reports that "the most urgent of the new measures is the regulation of labor practices in Gaza and northern Sinai, where moshav [cooperative farm] owners are known to have exploited the local inhabitants for years, paying substandard wages and employing underage children...

...was an accident...

...Under the leadership of the late Pinhas Sapir, when he was minister of finance, the Labor government undertook a policy of attracting large amounts of foreign capital, which it supplemented with generous "directed credits" to domestic private enterprise...

...Is it to this that the vision of Zionism will come...

...Avineri suspects that the demagogic appeals of Begin will begin to wear out fairly soon (there are already signs that his "triumph" in the U.S., so uncritically celebrated by the American Jewish establishment, is being seen for the mere public-relations concoction it actually was...

...As a result, the social base of Labor Zionism, with its social democratic ideology and code of moral solidarity and self-sacrifice, is gradually becoming eroded...

...He is not a mere opportunist...

...Still, there is a clear argument to be made that some of the proposals advanced by Begin are intrinsically desirable...

...The defenders of the Labor establishment stress inescapable historical conditions...

...But this country, because of its traditions and circumstances, needs belief—its "A fascinating example of how Labor failures or inadequacies played into the hands of Begin occurred very oxygen of survival...

...A structural cause would be the demographic changes that have gradually been taking place in Israel over the past 25 years...

...It does not like to pay taxes...

...As it is, adds Barkai, Israel has moved from a society committed to equality to a society in the grip of enterprise...

...But however it was decided, there can be no question that the result will have serious repercussions in foreign policy...

...I HAVE SAID NOTHING So far about foreign policy, in part because things are so volatile in this respect that not much can be said weeks before these lines are read, and in part because there is general agreement here that the election was decided not on foreign but on domestic issues...

...To gain the support of the religious parties, especially the ultra-Orthodox Agudah, Begin has had to make promises regarding relations between state and synagogue that, if even partly redeemed, will cause severe conflicts...

...Later there may be conflict within his Oriental constituency between their charged-up nationalism and an awareness that such a politics here in mid-August...

...The children of Ashkenazi (East and Central European) Labor Zionist pioneers go to universities just like the children of Jewish immigrant socialists in the U.S.—and, whatever their values and ideas, they are no longer proletarians...

...Rabin's secret bank account in the U.S...

...Now, instead of speaking about an overriding security need, Begin speaks about a transcendent (Biblical) right for Israel to rule permanently over "Judea and Samaria" (the West Bank...

...It implies that Israel has a Biblically derived mission to dominate whoever is living in the West Bank...

...Those of us who will try in the coming period to maintain a properly critical response to recent developments in Israel while at the same time reaffirming our support for its survival and security are not going to have an easy time of it...

...yields economic hardship—but not, one suspects, soon...

...The symbols, ideas, and values of Zionism mean little to them...

...The economic situation is not likely to get any better or, barring major American pressures, much worse...

...He answered that the Arabs could freely choose between Israeli and Jordanian citizenship...

...It seems unlikely, right now, that the political-social turn created by the policy of "directed capitalism" can soon be reversed...

...It was probably both...

...Somehow the country struggles along on a standard of living higher than its resources allow—as Barkai remarks, the state of the economy is terrible, but living conditions for most people are not bad...

...The Israeli sociologist Dan Horowitz, writing in Emda, a monthly rather similar to Dissent, distinguishes between structural and conjunctural causes for the electoral shift from the Labor Alignment to Begin's Likud...

...Begin insists on keeping the West Bank, and despite the desperate or fatuous whisperings of some American Jewish leaders that this is just a bargaining tactic, there is every reason to believe in his sincerity...

...and their left critics claim that the process of expansion could have been controlled more stringently in behalf of egalitarian values...

...From election to election its support has steadily declined, though never before as sharply as now...

...So let us turn to the "deeper" causes, generally agreed-upon or speculative, for this shift in Israeli politics: (1) According to Shlomo Avineri, the respected Israeli political scientist, there has occurred in Israel a major change in class composition, equivalent to the one that has been taking place among Jewish populations throughout the world...

...In the past, official Israeli arguments generally were put forward in the name of security—how dangerous it would be if a hostile force, Palestinian and perhaps with Soviet "advisers," were established once more along the West Bank...

...After a brief historical interval during which many Jews fell (or rose) to proletarian status, they have become a bourgeois people—concentrated in certain branches of commerce and industry, and especially in the professions...

...Begin offers drama, circus, chauvinist rhetoric, and for a time this will work...

...And it is commonly assumed that the real purpose of this announcement is to pave the way toward a take-over of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip...

...In public debate Begin has been asked what he would propose regarding Arab citizenship if the West Bank were to become part of Israel...

...This has also been happening in Israel despite the Labor Zionist ideology of "productive labor," and the recent election records, in part, a catching-up of the country's political arrangements with its socioeconomic structure...

...Now, one of the brighter parts of the Labor record under Rabin was its policy of helping the Oriental Jews to rise economically through social credits, benefits, etc...

...A significant and growing portion of the Oriental Jews has entered this new bourgeoisie, mostly at the level of small trade but sometimes, as in the construction industry, as big entrepreneurs...

...There really is a great cultural gap between these two kinds of Jews—which Begin, a skillful politician and demagogue, has exploited...

...Hence, as the Labor Zionist ideal comes to seem worn-out or com promised or sullied, there occurs a growth—its extent cannot yet be measured—of a nationalist clerical outlook in which the symbols of religion matter both in their own right and as political tokens to be manipulated by Begin and his allies...

...they gravitate naturally to big cities...

...Many Oriental Jews are ripe for Begin's chauvinist appeals—they bring with them an understandable hatred of the Arabs, under whose rule they have long suffered, and often they can cope with the complexities of Mid-Eastern politics only through the nationalist slogans of the Likud...

...Still, the notion that nothing much will change because nothing much can is a rather superficial one...

...In any case, there appears to be a considerable disillusionment— a weariness, a boredom—with socialist values, and even if Labor were soon to return to office it would probably be less as a result of a socialist renewal than out of a fear, shared by considerable parts of the population, that Begin will precipitate a new war...

...Right or wrong, this argument was pragmatic, conditional, short-range, and to be taken seriously...

...This is what a social democratic government ought to do, but unfortunately it brought little immediate political reward to Labor...

...Is this a prospect Israel and its friends can tolerate...

...economic aid...

...They become doctors, professors, social workers, government officials...

...This course seems unlikely to bring Labor either social-moral renewal or practical success.* The gradual erosion of the Labor Zionist ideal, the distaste that many educated young people feel for the party and the skepticism with which they respond to its leadership tend to create a vacuum of belief in the country...

...All this is made possible by U.S...

...he is a convinced fanatic...