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respect for the military and a readiness to fi ght in defense of one's country; an important role
for religion, its practices, and values; and a strong sense of nationalism, the affi rmation of Jews'
and Israelis' identity as a distinct people, and belief in the importance of country and patrio-
tism. In any case, the real Israel does not correspond with the frequently voiced impressions of
it by foreign observers, whether negative or sympathetic.
Within Israel, the Jewish-Arab gap shows signs of narrowing socially and economically,
though not politically. Still, the Israeli Arabs do not see — nor have they rallied around — any
particular alternative, especially when they compare their situation with that of Arabs in the
West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and elsewhere in the region. Israeli Arabs are dissatisfi ed with many
aspects of the status quo, even deeply resentful, but the majority doubt that things are going to
change and are quite divided over what they want, not to mention very aware of the unpleasant
alternatives. The gap between themselves and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
is growing wider as well. And Islamist ideology, the very factor that makes some increasingly
radical, makes others wary of supporting a movement that would put them under a dictator-
ship or an Islamist state.
As for the Jewish majority, two points inhibit their understanding of the Israeli Arabs' situa-
tion. One is their attempt to draw parallels between Israeli Arabs' experience and others' expe-
riences elsewhere, Jewish or not. The second is a tendency of all Israelis to refl ect the views of
Israel's traditional elite, who see the country's fi rst years as a heroic time and any change since
then as unwelcome and who also see any decline in their own power as inherently negative.
Jonathan Spyer has summed up the overall trends and changes in his book
The Transform-
ing Fire
:
The Israeli-Jewish society that has emerged . . . is a real, breathing, living country that
gets up in the morning and works and argues and reconciles and makes its loyalties in
its own language and in its own interests. . . . The Zionist project has been achieved and
transcended. The European nationalist outlook that formed modern Zionism is fading.
But beneath and around it is growing something else that is being formed through the
fusion of Jewish sovereignty, Jewish tradition, and Middle Eastern reality.
In other words, a new synthesis of “Israeliness” is emerging. The old secular Ashkenazic,
socialist-oriented elite that has built so much is itself being rebuilt. The infusion of ideas,
attitudes, and customs from Mizrahi Jews, Datim, and immigrants from the former Soviet
Union is having a revitalizing effect, adding in different proportions the strengthening infl u-
ences of energy, faith, confi dence, strength, and thirst for knowledge. However multicultural
these factors, they are not divisive precisely because they are feeding into a collective con-
sciousness. The emerging Israeli identity is more inclusive than the old one. It is still a Jewish
consciousness, but it is quite different from what existed in the past or now prevails in Dias-
pora Jewish communities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aridi, Naim. “The Druze in Israel,” December 23, 2002. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
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