Profile of a People

...Born in Prague, she survived the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, coming to Israel in 1949...

...She chose to give us the people, flesh-and-blood Israelis?with their shortcomings and peccadillos as well as their strengths, their culture, songs and food...

...To be sure-but much, much more, as Ruth Bondy reports in her beautifully conceived, biting, irreverent, and affectionate profile of Israel's contemporary men and women...

...As long as the Almighty Himself was the Chief Censor, there was little sense in picking an argument with Him, especially in view of the fact that He can be hard of hearing, far out in firmament space...

...A stiff-necked people...

...Not long ago, I visited some of these kibbutzim on the first line of defense...

...But never mind...

...the Israeli male forgoes some of his demands and suffers, nebich, in silence...

...Finally, an index would have greatly aided the book...

...The following are some favorites...

...On the Germans: "Once we go into an analysis of the behavior of the people of the earth toward us, in the small matter of the annihilation of the Jews, the whole world becomes eligible to be hated (the Danes and the Bulgarians are the exception...

...Those who shaped modern Israel and helped it to survive?Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, to mention a few?never come to life...

...Actually, the name changing reflects the desire to erase memories of the Diaspora and to bolster the dream and ambitions of modern Israel...

...Yet a people is known largely through its leaders, and though Miss Bondy indulges in considerable name-dropping, no clear-cut portrait of the illustrious really unfolds...

...The Israelis, she reports, have learned to live with this problem "as one lives with rheumatism: it's unpleasant, but not fatal...

...She worked on various newspapers, wrote her own humor column called Yih'ye Tov ("It'll All Work Out") and, in 1967, won the Sokolow Prize in Journalism, the Israeli equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize...

...Slowly, sooner or later, all of us come to the conclusion that an Israeli is a Jew-only more so...

...Since the Six Day War, infants born on these settlements have never known what it is like to sleep above ground at night...

...Thus, she spices her story about the Rumanian immigrant group with taunts ("Rumanian Jews did not become Rumanians until their arrival in Israel...

...With her facile pen and insight, she clearly could have turned engagingly to any aspect of the state, whether political, military, biblical, or historical...

...On women: "In his heart, the Israeli male carries around the character of the region: He is the proprietor of a Mediterranean harem, who likes to keep his women on the go between sink and bed, ready to fulfill every whim and command...

...Starting with those "glorious forerunners," the labor Mayflowerites of the earliest aliyot (immigrations), and the newer arrivals, she goes on to life in the towns and settlements, the cloak-and-dagger heroes, the pursuits of work and leisure, and the darker hues of anti-Semitism, which persists even where there are no longer any Jews...

...Like Suez, the kibbutzim in the Beit Shean Valley, whose common border with Jordan had been the most peaceful area in the whole of Israel, now have no days of peace...

...And no one expects a different attitude today, as the Arab nations and the guerrilla bands they provoke openly prepare for another round against Israel...

...The Soviet Union could put an end overnight to this situation...

...Similarly, the character and contributions of the kibbutzim, so vital to any understanding of Israel, get scant space...

...Reviewed by GERTRUDE SAMUELS Staff writer, the New York "Times Magazine' At this moment, the Israelis are undergoing what is probably their severest test since the Jewish state was recreated just over 20 years ago...

...Yes, the dead must even fight for their right to die without an accusing finger being pointed at them: Why didn't you fight back...

...as long as they were in Rumania, they were regarded as Jews, period") but nevertheless baits the native-bom sabras who feel superior to the newcomers...

...the kibbutzim have also experienced a few murders-all on account of love...

...So too in 1967, no aid was forthcoming during the lightning Six Day War...

...Miss Bondy transmits her love for her people even-perhaps especially-when she is berating them...

...Describing immigrants-in-reverse-the so-called yordim who leave Israel because they expected too much of its inhabitants?she says they "are like hasheesh smokers: they're just trying it out, to see whether it's good...

...Miss Bondy's gift of discerning the droll side of life so pervades her book that my copy of it is full of underlined epigrams...

...The book's several sections, ably translated, cover a wide range...

...People find "it's pleasant to fall back on the beloved jargon...

...Hilarious comments on fashions among the great ("Ben-Gurion antedated his generation and wore the polo neckwear long before Tony Armstrong-Jones or Richard Burton ever heard about the Left-wing Zionist party") are mixed with observations on fashions in crime...

...However, inasmuch as 'he who finds a wife finds goodness...

...Why did you go along with it...

...Of the Hebrew language, once thought to be dead, Miss Bondy observes that it has unified the speakers of some 70 different tongues, but adds that Yiddish, too, has nicely survived...

...The vignettes emerge like snapshots from a family album that includes Miss Bondy herself...

...yet, she humorously notes, names recognized as expressly Jewish, like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and others of the ancients, are "not in vogue at the moment-we are currently deep in the botanical period...

...On the future: "At times you get the feeling that you, too, have been clothed in the black vestments of the Eternal Jew, and the fact that you are no longer the Wandering Jew stems from the fact that you are clinging to this land tooth and nail...

...After such a banquet, it would be ungrateful to dwell too long on imperfections...

...The book offers bittersweet thoughts on the Six Million (dead) and the Two Million (in Israel), though here the author may be considered too flippant by some survivors...

...The "snapshots" are often tart, sparing no one...

...Integration extends to the personal name level...

...Included, too, are fascinating "snapshots" of archaeologists and, not unexpectedly, a discussion of Israeli news-seeking habits-the newspaper and newscasts are virtually religious obligations...

...Their members, trained to defend the spot of land they till, are disciplined not to go out with the herds or to the fishponds until Army regulars, in jeeps and tanks, first search for mines, then accompany the field hands to their isolated work...

...Should the Germans insist on being democratic and being more or less friendly toward Israel, then we shall be faced with the problem of how to continue hating the Nazis without offending the Germans...

...Following the war we quickly realized that Gentiles would never bear the same love toward us, as victors, which they did when we were on the brink of annihilation...

...On (fie war: "Ever since the Six Day War there hasn't been a moment of peace...

...but of course will not because it is in accord with Moscow's desire to keep the Middle East in turmoil...

...And The Israelis is a book to enjoy, to ponder and to quote...

...But now that mortals have deigned to take over His domain, we are within our rights to question their actions...

...On censorship: "Somebody, up there, knows what should be known to us, better than we know it ourselves...

...In 1948, the none too stout hearts who voted them United Nations membership did not lift a finger to help when five Arab armies invaded the vulnerable new country...

...Enemy infiltration under cover of darkness has forced the settlers to build subterranean gas- and bomb-proof dormitories, where every evening parents take all the children for safety...