What happened to the post-Yom kippur War Israeli protest movement? Has it died? Where are all those young Israelis who concluded after the traumatic experience of the last war, that “something is rotten in (their) Denmark” and vowed to change it?
According to Hanoch Bartov, a well-known Israeli writer and columnist for Maariv, Israel’s largest evening paper, the protest movement in Israel did not die. It only disappeared temporarily, and as Israel gets closer to a national election “we will witness the emergence of a new conscience,” a phenomenon that has its roots in the spontaneous protests that engulfed Israel after the October war.
Bartov, who participated in a panel discussion on “new directions in Israeli society” at the America-Israel Friendship House, sponsored by the American Zionist Federation, noted that the protest movement succeeded in changing the Israeli leadership. Golda Meir’s government was toppled, he said, but, yet, the new government of Yitzhak Rabin does not constitute a major change. Why, Bartov is asked, has the protest movement faded?
“The protest movement,” Bartov explained “was not a revolutionary movement. It was a reform movement. When Rabin became Prime Minister, people said: ‘We must give him a chance.’ Rabin also had a clean record and an image that the protest movement supported.”
“More important,” Bartov continued, “the protest movement disappeared out of a sense of responsibility. The protestors felt that they could not press the issues while Israel was facing grave political and military problems and the country was about to face painful (political) developments.”
MOVEMENT CREATED NEW ATMOSPHERE
Bartov, who has been in the United States for the last three weeks as Scholar-in-Residence at the universities of Texas and Arizona, maintained that as soon as the threat of war in the Mideast is removed–hopefully after a new accord is signed with Egypt–the demands for changes and reforms in Israel will be a burning issue once again.
The Israeli writer, who was at one time closely affiliated with Achdut Ha’avoda (now part of the Labor Party), observed that the protest movement, although presently dormant, has created a new atmosphere: there is a new spirit of devotion in the army; volunteerism is once again in; young people do care and have developed a new sense of responsibility in the face of the serious situation.
According to Bartov, Israelis hardened their attitudes after the war, at least in terms of dealing with the Arabs; not that they became more “hawkish,” he said, but more hard or suspicious about what Israel is going to get in return for territorial concessions.
NEW DIRECTIONS IN ISRAELI SOCIETY
Two other panelists who participated in the discussion, Reuven Surkis, director of the Historical Society of Israel, and Michael Rosenak, a lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also pointed out new directions in the Israeli society as a result of the Yom Kippur War. According to Surkis, who served as a Scholar-in-Residence in Washington, the last war created a new feeling of belonging to the Jewish people on the part of the Israelis. The Israelis realized that they were an integral part of Jewish destiny, thinking and future…” and began to take Zionism out of quotation marks.” Rosenak, who served as Scholar-in-Residence in Cincinnati, Ohio, said that “today there is a need for theology in Israel,” although “there are difficulties in relating the cultural past to the cultural present.” He added that the answer to Jewish identity should be found through education.
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