Israel's Changing Society

...Thanks to the enormous customs duties, the price of a small European model runs to roughly 20-22 thousand Israeli pounds...

...Low-mortgage immigrant housing has been constructed in expensive locations, and middle-class apartment buildings have gone up adjacent to slums...

...With the overall improved standard of living certain things have come to be considered practically "necessities" for an Israel-A...

...When the catchall classification "people with academic education" is broken down into subcategories, the picture changes somewhat...

...While the majority of Asian and African Jews has advanced up the social and economic ladder, sociologists estimate that the lot of a hardcore 15-20 per cent has not improved appreciably...

...An American car costs twice or even three times as much...

...For a long time, the furnishings of an apartment have been a major measurement of Israeli status, and in the last two or three years home furnishing has acquired still greater social importance...

...Interestingly, though reading books or visiting museums carries no prestige, attending a concert definitely does...

...A decade or two ago, being a professor practically assured one of membership in Israel-A...

...Now, the relationship between the academic community and the decision makers is basically a one-way street: The bureaucracy funds research and utilizes its findings, but the academic community as such has relatively little influence on government policy...

...Sapir likewise eschews an overly rigid stand, conceding that certain groups have been unaffected by the overall improvement, and that the government must do more to help them...

...Of the former, some 35 per cent were native-born, or sabras, 55 per cent originated in Europe and America, and less than 10 per cent came from Asia or Africa...

...On the other hand, the "negative status" neighborhood has not disappeared...

...There is, moreover, a sense of community among Israel-As that stems from their common historical experience...

...Since a majority of the new immigrants from Asia and Africa came with fewer financial and educational resources than their brethren from Europe and America, their primary effort so far has been to narrow the cultural and especially the material divide...

...On the average, a family will move once every five years...

...today it probably has a few hundred...

...Excluding the uppermost ranks, the retirement age in the Israeli Army is around 45, and shedding the uniform marks the beginning of a second career...

...Keeping a car in Israel is a rather expensive proposition...

...Many of the more enterprising artisans, notably metal-workers, have enlarged their shops into small or medium-sized factories that turn out products for the hungry civilian market or for the exacting but very helpful defense establishment...

...A recent study shows that 80 per cent of the people interviewed felt each change of address was a step up in life...

...As usual, it all depends on whom you talk to...

...Yet quantitative methods cannot adequately describe social changes in a country where socioeconomic stratification is closely linked with the ethnic makeup of the population...

...On the positive side, this has eliminated a seldom admitted but nevertheless real irritant by erasing much of the difference between those who emerged as the "heroes" of the Six Day War-That is, who captured most of the headlines-and the less publicized, yet not necessarily less deserving, majority of generals...

...With their associates who are still in service, they frequently act as a "mutual aid society"-Especially in the field of job-placement...

...at present, having one's car maintenance paid for indicates high status only if the car is American or has been purchased outright by the employer...

...Their position rose temporarily after the 1956 Sinai War, but fell once more in the '60s...

...After the Six Day War, the chief of staff was elevated to four-star rank, those under him were made lieutenant generals, personnel at the next level became major generals, and so forth...

...A true Israel-A attributes it to objective conditions or chance that his brother is a deputy minister while he is an anonymous bureaucrat, or "merely" a kibbutznik...

...America, South Africa, etc...

...If this is of little relevance to the Orientals, because few of them have to date gone beyond the BA, it is also small comfort to the Ashkena-zim, because as status symbols all academic degrees have suffered devaluation...

...a fairly large, well-furnished home where one can entertain...

...Expansion of the military establishment has likewise led to the inclusion of an occasional bad apple, so that for the first time in the country's history reports of courts-martial for theft or embezzlement have begun appearing in the press...

...Another reason for socially mixed neighborhoods is the high mobility rate of the Israelis...

...Sometimes the ex-military men aid a member of their own peer group in finding employment...

...And in 1967, when the carpenter whose father came from Morocco fought side by side with the lawyer whose father came from Poland or Germany, a new sense of equality emerged, which was nurtured by the conviction that the Ashkenazi could not stand up to the Arabs without the full partnership of the Orientals...

...and of those who did not go to school at all by 72 per cent...

...Nor does being a millionaire automatically guarantee entrance to the ranks of the social elite...

...Where the highest positions are concerned, however, the increased availability of retired officers has brought about a noticeable change in the attitude of the nation's industrial and business leaders...

...These communities have been moving from the lower-paid jobs, usually involving physical labor, into middle-class positions...

...3. The employment of large groups of Arab workers from the areas taken during the Six Day War...

...The "tastemakers" for society at large are not the millionaires, however, but the tens of thousands who have joined the ranks of the upper-middle class...

...Perhaps the most apparent transformation in recent years has been the steep increase in the number of people enjoying the fruits of Israel's prosperity...

...Over the same five-year period, the average income of persons with 13 or more years of schooling rose by 22 per cent...

...Indeed, the swing in the military's fortunes is perhaps best reflected in that of its officers...

...Sapir believes in the profit motive and wants to put a brake on automatic wage hikes...

...The people in Israel-A might best be described as those who are themselves decision makers or are close to decision-making circles yet do not feel discriminated against if they, personally, are not leaders...

...Ben Aharon, in his less polemical moments, admits that the standard of living of most Israelis has risen significantly in recent years, but insists that the conditions of a considerable minority have actually deteriorated-and not simply in relative terms...

...Further complicating the officers' situation is the problem of "living on two standards," a source of family tension they share with upper-echelon government officials...

...By the end of the '50s, Jews made up close to 90 per cent of the population, with the percentage of European- and American-born dropping to 35, and of Asian-and African-born rising to 28...

...It is not officers on active duty who ask their former comrades in high civilian positions to find a suitable job for somebody...

...A significant consequence PLS SCAN ALL SPACING ERRORS of the Six Day War, and the 1969-70 War of Attrition, has been the change in the position and prestige of the military in the life of Israel...

...Even in urban areas a large proportion of the land is state-controlled, and officials have seen to it that neighborhoods do not tip in one direction...

...Unlike a few years ago, the rank of colonel or major general is no longer sufficient to guarantee a managerial post...

...For an Israel-A, status is not derived from the fact of ownership or being able to travel...

...Even when they do seek a place in the local power structure, it is generally as a means of acquiring tangible benefits...

...Most Israel-As, while "comfortably off," are not wealthy...

...And along with renewed fighting skills, these people have been returning home with stories about waste in materiel and manpower...

...Although it remains high, since the end of the War of Attrition in 1970 it has been slipping...

...he also favors reductions in the tax rates for the middle brackets, now probably the highest in the world...

...Due to the higher birth rate of the Oriental communities, this pattern continued throughout the '60s...

...But the rest of the society-and especially the Ashkenazi leaders-has finally begun to realize that this group requires special assistance lest an unfortunate situation turn into an explosive one...

...Or is it a country where a majority of the population will belong to the upper-middle class within 15-20 years...

...But Ben Aharon is a champion of higher wages for workers and increased taxes at the upper-income levels (and has set out to prove that Histadrut is no longer a mere handmaiden to the Labor party...

...During their conscript service, they over-whelrringly volunteer for the most dangerous commando units...

...As for the Arabs, one can legitimately speculate that if massive employment of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip inhabitants goes on for many more years, the issues that preoccupied the Oriental Jews in the late '60s and early '70s will be taken up by them in the late '70s and early '80s...

...Shifts in status symbols, or the weights assigned to different ones, are of course an indication of a society's progress and of the direction it is taking...

...The huge demand has pushed up the cost of imported oriental carpets by 200 per cent in three years...

...The steady inflation, plus the rising consumption patterns of the middle and upper-middle classes, have also taken a toll on the officers, many of whom are having trouble making ends meet on their Army salaries...

...In other words, belonging to the high-status category is still synonymous with being Ashkenazi...

...Meanwhile, a peculiar paradox has developed: The long-standing government policy of upgrading the economic and social standing of children from Oriental communities by raising their educational level has begun to run counter to those communities' attempts to augment their incomes...

...today, few Israelis would recognize most of their generals if they saw them out of uniform...

...Places like Savion (near Tel Aviv) and Herzlia-Pituah (north of Tel Aviv) have very expensive villas that are inhabited by a larger-than-average percentage of the nation's leaders...

...The 1967 war brought about three demographic changes...

...Due to the current shortage of skilled labor, it is the ex-ofn;er turned executive who petitions his friend in uniform for the name of someone just getting out of the Army who could be offered this or that position...

...In the past six years, tens of thousands of young men and women from the Oriental communities have reached maturity with a fresh self-image, never having known the persecutions their parents suffered before emigrating from the Arab countries...

...Thus, in civilian occupations there is a steadily growing stratum of ex-officers...

...A comparison of the figures for 1967 and 1972 shows that in the lowest income group the proportion of individuals with four years or less of education has dropped by 25 per cent, and the proportion of those with an academic education has increased by 33 per cent...

...The debate, therefore, is essentially quantitative, and each side supports its contentions with a battery of experts and mounds of statistics...

...Only within this ethnic framework can the social changes in Israel over the past five or six years be fully understood...

...2. An increased awareness of ethnic tensions by the Ashkenazi population...

...Because many status symbols are obtained as fringe job benefits or through a tacit system of tax evasion, the husband tends to live more luxuriously than his wife: He has a fancy new automobile and a personal driver at his disposal-but he cannot afford to buy a small second-hand car for his spouse...

...Paying one's own money for a big American car or frequent visits abroad is, to be sure, a sign of having reached the upper economic rungs for an Israel-B...

...They include a private car for travel at night or on the Sabbath, when public transportation is hard to come by...

...Later, when the major general was promoted to the equivalent of a lieutenant general, the colonels became major generals...

...Third, the influx of Russian immigrants, beginning in 1970, again made the Ashkenazim the majority of the country's foreign-born...

...What the more educated Jewish worker sees as the lower rung gladly left behind is for the less educated and less skilled Arab worker an improvement both in pay and in social standing...

...Attention is focusing, too, on less tangible objects that are difficult to obtain-like first-night seats at the Habimah National Theater or Tel Aviv Chamber Theater...

...It is in the nature of status symbols that they are continually replaced or refined as the old determinants of wealth and position become more widely accessible...

...The most immediate and obvious of these was the sudden expansion of the Arab sector (see "Playing Percentages," NL, June 25...

...It should be stressed, though, that much of what has occurred since 1967 began earlier, and was merely accelerated by the Six Day War...

...once they have their duty behind them, they opt for civilian life...

...he goes abroad on official missions?yet on the rare occasion that he decides to take his wife along she may travel now but he must pay later, often for several years...

...Another adverse result of expansion has been the adoption of civilian values by officers, reducing their ability to transmit to the society at large the special and highly cherished ideals of the Israeli Defense Forces...

...For the nouveau riche, in fact, interior decoration may by now have become the essential form of "self-expression...

...Following the Six Day War, it skyrocketed...

...of those with 1-4 years by 47 per cent...

...The role of the automobile in Israeli society demonstrates how the treadmill operates...

...The differences between the two men reflect the current debate over the course of the social experiment begun here 25 years ago, especially its direction since the Six Day War...

...At the same time, the steep rise in real estate prices has produced an unanticipated stratification of the top: In the early '50s, when the Army was trying hard to keep good men in uniform, middle- and junior-level officers were given housing on extremely advantageous terms, particularly in such special military-initiated suburbs as Zahala or Neve Magen...

...Strangely, this "old school tie" system works differently than might be expected...

...The exceptions are the sons of Air Force officers, who do stay in uniform?probably because of their desire to keep on flying...

...Oriental farmers from immigrant settlements are switching to business and skilled blue-collar employment in the cities...

...Most critical of all in the Israeli prestige scheme, though, is who foots the bill...

...Ten years ago, anyone who achieved the level of colonel was a nationally known figure...

...Mention Tikva Quarter to an inhabitant of Tel Aviv and he will immediately think of "slum," or "rowdiness"-Tgnoring the fact that skyrocketing land prices over the past half decade have made rich people out of the owners (who are often identical with the occupants) of many ramshackle buildings there...

...In the first year after the establishment of the State in 1948, Jews constituted 82 per cent and Arabs 18 per cent of the population...

...It should be noted that many Israelis are not entirely happy about this, since the necessary preretirement negotiations between Army officers and their prospective political or politically controlled employers raise obvious ethical questions...

...more often, they assist retiring subordinates...

...This suggests an additional reason for the disproportionate number of Orientals in Israel-B...

...in the winter he can easily catch a ride on a military plane to Sharm el-Sheikh, on the shores of the Red Sea, for a swim and a sunbath-but paying membership dues for his family in the neighborhood swimming pool makes quite a dent in his monthly budget...

...Under these circumstances, nobody living on a salary can afford to keep a private car without his employer's participation, and the fixed mileage allowance has become a common fringe benefit in virtually every upper-echelon job...

...tend to be wealthier and better educated than members of the "Oriental communities" (the immigrants from Asia and Africa...

...The figures reveal that whereas the income spread between the uneducated and holders of BAs has narrowed, the gap between the uneducated and MAs and PhDs has actually widened...

...Nonetheless, public office is the main avenue of achievement for them, and money has none of the "totem-istic status" attributed to it by Karl Marx...

...For, following the practice of most social research in the Western world today, Israeli economists and sociologists have been spewing forth contradictory reports on a variety of topics, including income, the spending habits of the underprivileged, housing density, and levels of education...

...Not that private business and industry are the last, or even the first, refuge for the very senior former Army officers...

...Yitzhak Ben Aharon, the veteran Marxist crusader and Secretary General of His-tadrut, the General Federation of Labor, takes the critical view...

...Maintaining a car is also expensive, with annual taxes, license fees and insurance adding up to approximately one month's take-home pay...

...At present, most Asian and African Jews continue to focus directly or indirectly on material gains and higher prestige...

...Because Jews from the Oriental communities made up only 10 per cent of the population in those days, they are now greatly underrepresented in Israel-A...

...The massive immigration during the initial years of statehood changed the ratios considerably...

...Of the two chiefs of staff and one deputy chief of staff who left the service after the Six Day War, two moved directly into Cabinet posts, and one received an ambassadorship...

...The retiring officer still brings with him such valued skills and attributes as training in systematic thinking, knowledge of modern methods of organization, and an ability to make clearcut decisions?without which he could not have risen to the top in the Israeli Army -but a prospective employer now wants to know as well what the candidate's civilian qualifications are, where he studied, and the degrees he obtained...

...There was, next, a notable spurt in immigration in general, slowing down the trend toward a sabra majority...

...A"good address" is much less of a status symbol in Israel than in most other modern countries because there are few genuinely "exclusive" districts here...

...The fluctuations in social standing and the growth of financial difficulties are among the major reasons why sons of high-ranking officers seldom choose military careers...

...and travel abroad, which provides not only subjects for discussion but a feeling of belonging to the milieu of the decision makers, who are always just leaving for New York or Hong Kong, or returning from London or Nairobi...

...Only the slums are homogeneous, but their population is diminishing...

...And that is the case in Israel: The Ashkenazim (the immigrants from Europe...

...One cannot conclude any review of Israel's changing society without at least briefly discussing the changes taking place in the occupational composition and social standing of the Asian and African Jews...

...In fact, the considerable accumulation of individual wealth here of late has underscored the existence of two distinct social strata, identifiable, for lack of a better description, as "Israel-A" and "Israel-B...

...For being more educated has become less worthwhile in Israel...

...Today they own very spacious-and very valuable-property, while their colleagues who signed up a few years later and "missed the boat" can afford only average middle-class apartments...

...The large-scale employment of unskilled and semi-skilled Arabs from the Administered Territories has alleviated the shortage of workers in Israel, and filled the gap created by the upwardly mobile Oriental Jews...

...A larger percentage of them enters the public sector: Histadrut's industrial enterprises, the diplomatic service, educational institutions, political parties...

...A preoccupation with riches, therefore, has not replaced older values at Israel's highest levels...

...Pin-has Sapir, the pragmatic Socialist Minister of Finance, insists upon the accuracy of the more sanguine position...

...Increased frequency and length of reserve duty have brought the Army into closer contact with hundreds of thousands of citizens...

...Yet Herzlia also has apartment houses, and the border between Savion and Kiron, with its middle-income high-rises, has been disappearing the last few years...

...The times are past, for instance, when even Cabinet members from Tel Aviv and Haifa stayed with relatives or lived in sublet rooms in Jerusalem on the days the Knesset was in session...

...These successful lawyers, prosperous importers and exporters, and industrialists set the standards of consumption in housing, car-ownership and entertainment for the rest of the middle class...

...the price of antiques (real or faked) has risen by 150 per cent in less than a single year...

...For a high-ranking government official, this is the equivalent of about a year-and-a-half's net salary...

...Consequently, the prestige of this particular perquisite has declined...

...The argument cuts across political lines: Both leaders, for example, are members of Israel's ruling Labor party...

...Not long ago, the country had only a few score millionaires...

...This suggests that one is sufficiently important to be furnished with the "necessities...

...it comes from having these accouterments made available by the company or public agency one works for...

...In terms of quality, Israel's furniture is rated with the best in the world, but importers are currently doing a land-office business...

...This upgrading has added to the total number of senior officers, thereby weakening the prestige of the highest ranks (with the possible exception of the four-star general occupying the chief-of-staff post...

...There is little doubt, though, that in the not-too-distant future their targets of achievement will be social and political...

...Membership in the high-status Israel-A category is determined not by fortune or family ties (although the latter helps) but by access to inside information through social contacts...

...Israel-Bs, for whom affluence is the key to social advancement, are not eager to become involved in politics or to take top posts in the government...

...Throughout the '50s, there was a slow but steady deterioration in the prestige of Army officers...

...Three major factors have contributed to this trend: 1. A new self-image...

...With very few exceptions, these people all played some role in the events surrounding the establishment of the State of Israel, whether as members of the underground, commanders during the War of Independence, conspirators in illegal immigration activities, or participants in the absorption of the first waves of immigrants following Israel's official recognition...

...The members of this new generation compare themselves not with their fathers and grandfathers, but with their Ashkenazi contemporaries, inevitably increasing their expectations...

...Oriental representation has increased, too, in the teaching professions, in lower- and middle-level administrative posts, in the middle ranks of the police and the Army, in the labor-union and political bureaucracies...

...In the '50s the Armed Forces had only one general on active duty?a major general who was the chief of staff-and a few full colonels...

...The lack of geographic class distinctions is primarily the result of deliberate government policy...

...One reason for this is the logjam in the upper-ranks, brought on by the enlargement of the Army...