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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 3, 1984
gathering of the exiles, the opening up of new frontiers--like
the Negev--for settlement and development. For these issues, the
political ideas--and the powerful mach ine--of the Labor Party
appeared to be relevant. The right-wing Herut Party--later to
become the main component of Likud--seemed out of touch with the
realities of life in Israel.
When it talked about historical
Jewish rights to Judea and Samaria, it did not get much response
from people who had just escaped the Nazi Holocaust or persecu
tion in Arab countries.
But after 1967, with Israel in control of the ancestral lands on
the West Bank and Gaz�, the political debate shifted to issues of
nationalism and confrontation with Palestinian nationalism.
Likud, with its simple message--"This is our land"--had a clear
advantage over Labor, which tried to square its commitment to
Israel's security with its liberal, humanistic ideas.
The second change has been the transformation of Israeli society
itself. When the state was established in 1948, 85 percent of
Israel's Jewish population was made up of immigrants from Europe
and their descendants (Ashkenazim) and 15 percent hailed from
Miadle Eastern countries (Sephardim). Today, the ratio is 50-50
with the Sephardim on the increase.
It would be wrong to suggest that all Sephardic voters prefer
Likud; in the 1981 elections around 35 percent of the Labor
voters were Sephardim. But £!:! balance, many Sephardim tend to
feel more at home with the more tradition-oriented and ethnocen
tric outloek of Li�than with the universalist ideas of Labor,
wiiTch �, after all, an outgrowth of the European Enlightenment.
Since many of the Middle Eastern immigrants brought with them
memories of persecution and hatred at the hands of Arab Muslims,
it is not surprising if they are more hawkish than Israelis of
European origin, who are not burdened with such memories•••.
Will Israel then become ungovernable? Not necessarily••.• Yet it
is a different Israel that emerges out of all this--perhaps not
at peace with itself or with its neighbors. Paradoxically, it is
�much� Middle Eastern, less European country. Many obser
vers have hoped that Israel would one day shed its European char
acteristics and become more like the countries surrounding it.
It may be a cruel irony of history that Likud's staying in power
is an expression of this integration of Israel into the Middle
East--into the real, not always pleasant Middle East, not into
some sort of utopian, nonexistent Middle East which appears only
in the dreams of European romantics.
But this is the real
Israel, and for better or worse, the friends of Israel--and Jews
all over the world--will have to learn to come to terms with it.
Thomas L. Friedman, writing in the July 26 NEW YORK TIMES, put it simply:
The country seems split in half between Labor and Likud sup
porters and then split again among the rainbow of small reli
gious, leftist and rightist ideological parties. Each party not
only has its own social and economic programs now, but also its