Israel After the War: A Sociologist Views His Country

HEBREW University in Jerusalem is just like Harvard except that there are slightly fewer Americans, it rains less, the students work harder, there are no parietals, and there is grass all year round with Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt often lying on it.

The students of the famous sociologist--many of them lounging with him on the grass--say that he writes in Hebrew like Talcott Parsons writes in English. The American students remark that he even writes in English Parsonesquely. He is not universally loved: "When I came to Hebrew University I was looking for an excuse to get out of sociology, and professor Eisenstadt gave it to me," an Israeli philosophy student remarked. But for most of his students and for nearly all the academic world, Eisenstadt's work is exciting, brilliant, and extraordinarily relevant.

This semester Eisenstadt is at Harvard teaching Soc Rel 296, "Tradition, Change, and Modernity." In the course, as in most of his books, he applies sociological tools and concepts to the analysis of historical societies. In particular, he describes the process of modernization, applying his theories to developing countries in Africa and Asia.

But many of his years of research and several of his published works have been on the huge problems of his own country, Israel, and he talks about his land like a sociologist, with greater objectivity and less overt passion than most Israelis, but also with a dash of warmth and a sense of wistfulness for the solutions to the problems he is describing.

The first thing anyone usually asks an Israeli is about the Six Day War and the "occupied" or "liberated" (depending upon your political bias) territories.

Eisenstadt offers no pat political or economic solutions on what to do with these lands, but he does acknowledge that it would be impossible and undesirable to completely amalgamate the Arab population of the territories with Israel. "No one--neither Israeli nor Arab -- wants complete integration. We want good, friendly relations, but it would be unjust to them to force assimilation." He hopes for a settlement in which there is a "good political, economical, and social relationship" between the Israelis and the Arabs now under their control in "whatever political expression is most appropriate--whether as an independent nation, as part of Jordan, or in any other appropriate status."

Although everyone hears about Israel's problems with her Arab neighbors and the newly-conquered Palestinians, few realize the impact of these international problems on Israel's own internal troubles, especially for the nearly 300,000 Arabs within Israel before the war in 1967.

"The Israeli Arabs are part of the larger Arab-Israeli problem," said Eisenstadt, especially since the war when communication opened between Israeli, West Bank (i.e., the occupied territory), and Jordanian Arabs. "Israeli Arabs are no longer sealed off from the Arab world, and the Israeli government is encouraging this communication. If there is a good settlement with the Arab nations," Eisenstadt continued, "it will alleviate the problems of the Israeli Arabs."

THE CURRENT problems of the Israeli Arabs are both economic and social, for in neither respect are they well-integrated into the rest of the population. According to Eisenstadt, they are divided into three sectors: the farmers and landowners, who, "if they started out with land, have done well," the "agricultural proletariat" of the villages, who have no trouble finding jobs in their own communities but are not well-to-do and are "not in a good situation," and the professionals. Members of the last group who find positions within Arab communities do very well, but sometimes the Arab intelligentsia can't find work in their segregated communities and "have trouble being accepted in the Jewish sector."

These Arabs are Israeli citizens and have all the rights and duties of citizenship except military service. "It would be testing loyalties a bit too much to force them to fight their own families," Eisenstadt said. Arabic is an officia! language of Israel.

And on the whole, said Eisenstadt, the standard of living of the Israeli Arabs has risen, and "is probably the highest in the Arab world in per capita income." But "it is hard for them to adjust to the egalitarian society--or the approximation to it--in Israel," he said, and he tells a story he heard after the war to illustrate: "Many Arab notables from the occupied territory visited Jerusalem after the war. The Mayor of Jerusalem showed a visiting notable around the city, and when they returned to the car there was a ticket on it. The Arab asked about the paper on the front of the car, and the Mayor replied that he had probably parked wrong. The Arab asked if the person who gave the ticket knew that the car belonged to the Mayor, and the Mayor replied that it was possible, but that it didn't matter. The Arab, becoming increasingly more horrified, finally asked the Mayor what he was going to do with the ticket. 'Pay it, of course' the Mayor replied. 'It was the worst thing the Arab could imagine," Eisenstadt concludes.

ISRAEL also has problems within its Jewish population. Originally the country was settled primarily by Jewish immigrants from Europe, but recent immigration has come increasingly from Morocco and Oriental countries with social, cultural, economic, and educational backgrounds substantially different from the highly-developed and professionalized Jewish communities of Europe. According to Eisenstadt, these Moroccan and Oriental Jews constitute 50 per cent of the Jewish population of Israel (depending on how the children are counted).

Before arriving in Israel, most of the immigrants were artisans, shopkeepers, and unskilled laborers. Some of them were peasants. "The current problem," said Eisenstadt, "is to train them to become skilled laborers."

The two institutions playing the greatest role in integration are the school systems and the army. The schools serve as training grounds, but since the Orientals and Moroccans are usually segregated either in development towns for new immigrants or in their own areas within cities, the army, in which integration occurs on a national basis, is the most important solution to the problem.

"The integrative function of the army lies in its teaching Hebrew and technical and mechanical skills and in making the immigrants feel Israeli," Eisenstadt said. "This has been so successful within the army that when immigrants complain of discrimination, they usually complain of everything but the army," he continued, even though, if they take a close look at the officers and the higher echelons of the Israeli armed forces they "would probably find that they are less proportionately represented than in most other places."

IN EISENSTADT'S opinion the situation is improving. "There have been fewer ethnic tensions in the last two years," he said. This was particularly apparent during the Six Day War, before which officials were worried that there would be problems calling up army reservists from among the immigrants. "It was the end of a recession," Eisenstadt recalls, and there was much unemployment in the development towns. "There was apprehension on how the morale would hold up" when the working man of the family would be called away, and no one knew how people would react to the tension of the war and "the preceding two weeks, which were really more tense than the war itself," he said. But, he continued, there was no problem, and "morale held up fine."

The hope for complete integration lies with the descendants of the immigrants. "The second generation is less segregated, and hopefully the third will be even less," Eisenstadt said, and there has been a slow but continuous increase in the rate of intermarriage between the two groups. Higher education is also a problem; Eisenstadt believes that not more than 10 per cent of university students are Oriental or Moroccan, but the army has instituted a new program where, after their period of service, immigrants who are qualified but "not quite prepared" for a university are given a pre-university training course. "This is the second or third year of the program, and it has been very successful," Eisenstadt said. "This doesn't mean there won't be more tension," he added, "but tension accompanies progress."

ANOTHER source of difficulty within Israel is the growing resentment for religious social law. The religious groups gained their prestige because the religious party was an easy coalition power in the formation of the state. "The most salient concerns" arising from this situation, according to Eisenstadt, are lack of provision fir civil marriages and the laws governing Shabbat (the sabbath, which in Israel is on Saturday).

The religious groups claim that civil marriages would break the unity of the nation, for it would be impossible to make certain of the Jewish background of potential wives and husbands. Because of this concern, remarriages after civil divorces which are not performed by the rabbis may result in "bastard" children, who, according to the religious groups, are out of the pale of Jewish life.

Eisenstadt does not accept the view that civil marriage would break up national unity, and he believes that the present situation creates unreasonably great difficulties for those involved in such divorces and for people married or converted by Converservative and Reform rabbis, who are not recognized by the religious institution in Israel.

Pressure is not great enough now to institute civil marriage, but a crisis and possible change will come with increased immigration of Conservative and Reform Jews and, also, if there is ever any large-scale immigration from Russia. "How many Jews since 1917 have been married by a rabbi?" Eisenstadt asked.

The second major problem is the laws governing the Sabbath. All stores and most restaurants and places of entertainment are closed, and, except in Haifa, public transportation is completely shut down.

"Ironically," Eisenstadt points out, "most of these laws discriminate against the poor, who have no cars to overcome the inconvenience of no public transportation and, in the case of marriage problems, can't afford to go abroad."

ISRAEL began as, and in many ways still is a country of pioneers, and as a country of immigrants driven by the pioneering spirit it parallels America in its youth. Eisenstadt recognizes this parallel and still finds a little of the pioneering spirit in contemporary American life: "There is still a strong missionary element in America, sometimes extremely shallow, but sometimes not. It is part of the ethos."

"I don't know how we'll feel at our 175th birthday," but right now "it is easier to feel the spirit in Israel, in large part because the country is smaller," Eisenstadt maintains. He also realizes the similarity between the immigrant nature of the original populations of the U.S. and Israel, but "hopefully, Israel will amalgamate more quickly, at less human cost." In terms of physical hardship, "there is less in Israel" than in the days of mass urban immigration into this country, and the fact that Israel is smaller and also largely of a "single identity" makes things easier.

But Eisenstadt can already sense a change in the pioneering spiirt of Israel just in the 20 years of the nation's existence: "There has been some decline in spirit, but there has also been a shift in the foci of the spirit. Previously, the spirit was centered on the kibbutz. Some old-timers still feel that the only way to contribute is to be in kibbutzim, but other want to find other meaningful pioneering goals."

This change, continued Eisenstadt, is especially evident in the new generation of sabras (native-born Israelis). "The new generation thinks the oldsters are great masters of talking but they don't want to talk about pioneering and the pioneering spirit. This doesn't mean that they are no longer committed; they just don't verbalize and idealize.