Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
This system, as well as the approach to religion generally, is embodied in the existence
of fi ve school systems: state (secular) schools, state-religious (
Datim,
or Modern Orthodox)
schools,
Haredi
(traditional Orthodox) schools, Arabic-language schools (for Arabic speak-
ers), and Shas (schools for that political party's supporters, predominantly poor Mizrahi Jews).
Israel emerged from its pre- and post-independence years of challenge with a politics,
worldview, economy, and culture fused from many different elements. Among the main early
infl uences were traditional Jewish society along with the Yishuv innovations and borrowings
from Eastern European, Western European, and Middle Eastern cultures. Added over time
were more Middle Eastern, North American, Mediterranean, and modern Russian cultural
elements, as well as an autonomous Arab cultural milieu. Mixed together with all the ethnic,
linguistic, religious, and cultural elements were a wide range of political ideologies and degrees
of social status.
POLITICS, POLITICAL CULTURE, AND EXTERNAL CONFLICT
Like many nations, Israel went through a heroic phase before arriving at an institutionalized
order. Unlike other nations, however, its battle for survival has continued throughout its exis-
tence, and any book on Israel inevitably fi nds itself spending a considerable amount of space
on the constant confl ict with its neighbors and the impact of that confl ict. Still, this issue is
only one aspect of Israel's statehood, and it is less infl uential and important than outside ob-
servers might think.
To comprehend Israel, however, it is necessary to understand that the perception of exis-
tential threat continues to loom large because of events within living memory
—
namely, the
murder of the overwhelming majority of European Jews in the Holocaust and the displace-
ment of almost all Jews living in Muslim-majority countries, in both cases with the loss of
all of their property and savings. Israel's victory in its war against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in
1967 should not be remembered without equally recalling how grim Israel's situation appeared
to be before the war and what would have happened to Israel and Israelis if Israel had been
defeated.
From the 1930s until 1977, through the pre-state and independence periods, Israel was gov-
erned by the Labor Party. Its vision and institutions
—
including the Histadrut
—
had tremen-
dous power because the party had spearheaded the transformation of the Land of Israel to the
State of Israel, had masterminded the economic development of the independent state, and
had taken a determining role in shaping the nature of its society. Nominally the twenty-nine-
year reign of the Labor Party came to an end because of its handling of the run-up to the Yom
Kippur War of 1973, although Israel eventually defeated its Egyptian and Syrian attackers. Yet
the change in leadership was also due to the Mizrahi majority's support for the conservative
Likud Party and its growing frustration with an establishment seen as entrenched and corrupt.
The hero they made prime minister was a man very much shaped by his Eastern European
background, Menahem Begin.
For the Labor elite, which included the majority of the cultural, political, and military es-
tablishment, the electoral defeat was nothing less than seismic. The transition was accepted
