1968_4_arabisraelwar

212 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1968
here. We are working with schools, youth groups, kibbutzim, and hospitals to
fill the jobs that the men who are sent out from the reserves left vacant. I want
to stay and do whatever I can so that the country can continue to function
while others may have to fight. I feel it is my duty to my religion, my people,
and my country, to stay here and do whatever I can. 14
A UCLA student who had been in Israel during the war wrote:
I've always felt proud to be a Jew. Now I've got Jewish problems. I went to
Israel because I owed it to some girl of 22 who might have been in Israel if she
hadn't been killed by the Nazis or kept unwillingly in Russia. I am not a Zionist.
But now that I'm safely home again, I wonder what I'm doing here. It's so easy
to be Jewish in the United States. Jews can live without Israel; but Israel cannot
survive without Jews. 15
At the Bronx High School of Science, an elite public high school in New
York City whose student body of 3,000 is about 85 per cent Jewish, a teacher
reported that during the crisis the "students listened to news on their transistors,
argued, prophesied, shouted protest, approval, regret, and joy. Israel
seemed very present, their imminent exams worlds away." 16 Some of these
students were asked to write brief candid statements about their feelings on
the Israeli situation and their own emotional involvement. A girl, now at
Brandeis University:
. . I felt terrified. All of a sudden my Jewish background and the existence of
Israel became important and I was afraid that Israel would be defeated; I didn't
believe that she could win. I kept thinking of the many hardships that the Jewish
people have had to endure and the tragedy that they have had to fight for
a country of their own. I refused even to consider the Arabs' point of view;
now, a month later, I can look at things objectively again. When Israel "won"
so quickly, I had a strong feeling of pride. Unjustifiably, I felt the superiority
of Jews over people of every other religion. I felt strong ties with Israel for the
first time.
A serious young man:
Being against the war in Viet Nam (I have taken part in all the protest
marches) for reasons of pacifism, I was very disturbed when Israel went to war.
How could I be against war in one place and excuse it in another? Still the two
wars were not alike. The United States is a big and powerful country which is
attacking a small, weak one. The Arabs said over and over that they would
destroy Israel. If Israel was not willing to fight, it would have been wiped out.
Still I do not see right only on one side. Arabs who have been living in the
country for centuries have been driven from their homes. And I was very upset
when it was reported that Israel was using napalm. (I hope it isn't true.) I was
confused and I still am.
A student now at City College:
The Israeli-Arab war has had a schizoid effect on my emotions. On the one
14 Read by Carl Reiner at the Hollywood Bowl rally, June 11. 1967.
15 Campus: A Hillel Newsletter, Winter 1967.
16 Jack Luria, "As the Young Saw It," Jewish Frontier, October 1967, pp. 22-25.