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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUS'r 3, 1984
PAGE 9
The 1984 election was Likud's acid test.
Begin, its revered
leader, had retired into seclusion, broken, dispirited and reluc
tant to give his successor, Shamir, more than tepid election en
dorsement. The economy was out of control with 400 percent an
nual inflation. Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon had be
come a debacle. The Middle East peace process was frozen. The
stage seemed set for
a
convincing Labor victory....
To Sephardic voters who feel discriminated against by the Labor
Party's Ashkenazim elite from European countries, Likud is more
than
a
party. It is a home and a political identity. It offers
them a sense of belonging. The rising tide of nationalism was
another factor, based on decades of Arab hostility that have
created a "Fortress Israel" attitude and stamped out the old con
sensus that sooner or later, in some way, 9eace would come. Many
Likud supporters today have no such belief in peace moves. To
them, it's Israel against a world that put this people in gas
chambers and would do so again, given a chance. Beside such ex
istential issues, practical matters like Likud's handling of the
economy pale.
Moderate Israelis brought up on the doctrines of the country's
socialist founders are especially alarmed at the rise of the
militant right in this election. No fewer than eight of the new
Parliament's 120 members are in what political scientist Dan
Horowitz calls "the tribal stream"--the mystic Israel-firsters
who find justification for their every deed in the Bible.
"Every election makes the previous election's extremists look
moderate," said Avi Ravitzky, a member of a dovish religious
group, on Israel television. The Likud used to look extreme un
til the West Bank settler movement brought the Tehiya Party to
prominence. Then came a Jewish vigilante underground waging ven
geance attacks on West Bank Arabs, Ravitzky said.
"Now comes
Kahane and the underground disavows him.
And within his own
movement Kahane is a moderate compared with some of his col
leagues," he said.
In the August 6 issue of NEWSWEEK, Shlomo Avineri, professor of political
science at Hebrew University, analyzed the shifting outlook of today's
Israeli people, as reflected in the elections. The upshot of it all: Mena
chem Begin was no fluke.
In the past, many foreign observers tried to explain Likud's as
cendancy in terms of the powerful personal appeal of Menachem
Begin. But this never went to the heart of the issue. Be 9 in did
�create � constituency--he articulated it. It is this c � n
stituency which Likud has been able to keep almost intact despite
its recent vicissitudes•...
The Six Day War of 1967 was a major watershed. It changed not
only the strategic balance in the Middle East: it also trans
formed the political agenda in Israel. Before 1967, political
debate in Israel was almost exclusively focused on internal is
sues: problems of nation building, massive immigration and its
absorption, the extension of a nascent welfare state, the in-