Fundamental Surprises Zvi Lanir Decision Research 1201 Oak ...

intellectuals, the justification of the Zionist endeavor was now in doubt because of its
affect on another people’s rights.
The coherent self-concept of Israel as a besieged state was no longer relevant in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. Instead, the intellectuals saw a self-concept full of
unsolvable social contradictions and dilemmas: how to ameliorate the conflict between
religious and secular Jewish society, and the tension between the orthodoxy and the
state itself; how to bridge the western and oriental Jewish communities, each with
different communal and cultural rules; how to maintain social values and social welfare
achievements while meeting economic crises apparently requiring capitalistic
conceptions. In addition to exacerbating old dilemmas, there were new ones: how to
keep a state “Jewish” while still retaining Judea and Sumaria, but without creating a
binational state or, alternatively, how to keep the state democratic while still controlling
other people by force and not granting them full rights.
In 1970 in the midst of the War of Attrition, a satirical play, “The Bathtub
Queen”, became Israel’s first public assault at the national consensus on defense and
war issues. With this background, it took Israel intellectuals only a few days after the
Yom Kippur War to begin calling for national self-examination.
A focal point in this process was intense questioning of national myths. Wellrooted
notions on national heroes and historical events became subject to re-evaluation,
including studies on Judah and Maccabee and the Hasmonean revolt, 23 Bar Kochba and
his revolt, 24 the saga of Tel Hai, 25 the Biluim, 26 and figures such as Berl Katznelson,
one of the “fathers” of the Zionist social movement. Some of these revisionist
biographies became best sellers, 27 indicating public participation in this national selfexamination.
In parallel with the breakdown of old myths and metaphor, new ones emerged
after the Yom Kippur War, reflecting the sociological crisis. The most prestigious
literary award in Israel was given in 1980 to two writers who describe their novels the
decline of the “Israel Sabra myth”. Amos Oz’s hero in “Perfect Peace” 28 rises against
his father, leaves his kibbutz to escape the desert. He leaves his parents’ spiritual legacy
as well as his wife to a young man, a survivor of the concentration camps who has
immigrated to Israel and come to live in the kibbutz. The antithesis of the Sabra, this