SCR 7532
Soapbubbles by Asako Futemma
seemg through 1srae1i state Efforts to mstrumenta1ize oeath
&
Heroism
Thesis bY: Ere11a G rassiam
umversitY of Amsterdam 2001
Table of contents
Summery in English Summery in DutchIntroduction
Chapter 1: Theoretical orientations
Ruling elites and consensus building. Public dissent.Chapter 2: A fighting hero in a militarized society
Historical roots.The status of contemporary fighting heroes: militarization
1 2 4
11
11 1721
21 of Israeli society. 32Chapter 3: Yom Hazikaron: the sacred side of death
40Rituals and symbols: a discourse of commemoration. 43
The role of the military in Israeli commemoration and grief. 52
Chapter four: Other voices: daring to burst that bubble.
57General conclusion
73
Summery (English)
The active production of hegemony by the Israeli state achieves the existence of a public that will fight the state's battles. In this work I show how through ritual and myth making that glorify death and the fighter image, the Israeli public is drawn into a way of thinking that is uncritical of the state. With this hegemony, the state creates the possibility to naturalize unnatural military-related deaths of many young soldiers.
By making these (combat) soldiers heroes and by glorifying their battlefield-death, the message is sent out that dying for one's country is a good thing. It is the greatest donation any citizen can give to its nation. Through education and ritual this ideal is made natural in the minds of the Israeli citizens.
Especially Yam Hazikaron, the national Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers in
Israel, has a great influence on the public. Formal ceremonies bring out the message that the fallen that are commemorated there did not die in vain. Their death, so it is said at this occasion, is the reason the state of Israel still exists. These "boys" died for the nation, and therefore the nation should look at them in awe and see them as an example to follow.
This discourse that I called the "heroic discourse" of the Israeli state thrives at these ceremonies, but also in more individual commemorating material for example of the bereaved families. This shows the strength of the hegemony; the public uses it without questioning.
There is a part of the public, however, that chooses not to comply with this
militaristic and nationalistic hegemony. This resistance movement that consists mostly of women, refuses to go along with the state's efforts to form the public's mental map in an indoctrinating way. Organizations like "New Profile" and "Women and Mothers for Peace" go out to "slaughter" some of the state's "sacred cows". These activists refuse to sacrifice their or their family members' lives for the sake of the state's policies that are many times seen as illegitimate. Furthermore the militaristic character of the Israeli state is questioned. Although this movement is small and seen as very "radical" by the Israeli public, it has an important function in bringing awareness and in making a start for real change.
Summery (Dutch)
Het actief produceren van een hegemonie door the Israelische staat brengt het bestaan van een publiek voort dat bereid is in de oorlogen van deze staat te vechten. In dit werk laat ik zien hoe door ritueel and mythe vorming, die de dood en de gevechtssoldaat verheerlijken, het Israelische publiek een bepaalde denkwijze wordt opgedrongen. Deze denkwijze bekritiseert de staat en haar acties niet. Door deze hegemonie, creeert de staat de mogelijkheid om onnatuurlijke militaire overlijdensgevallen van jonge soldaten te naturaliseren.
Door van deze gevechtssoldaten helden te maken en door hun dood te
verheerlijken, wordt de boodschap gegeven dat het goed is om voor je land te sterven. Het is de grootste donatie die een burger zijn staat kan geven. Door educatie en rituelen wordt dit ideaal beeld aan het publiek overgedragen en genaturaliseerd.
Vooral Yom Hazikaron, de nationale herdenkingsdag van de gevallen soldaten in Israel, oefent een grote invloed uit op het publiek. Formele ceremonies brengen de boodschap over dat de gevallen soldaten niet voor niets zijn gestorven. Hun dood, zo wordt op deze dag gezegd, is de reden dat de staat van Israel nog steeds bestaat. Deze "jongens" stierven voor de natie en hierdoor moet de natie tegen hen op kijken en hun voorbeeld volgen.
Dit vertoog dat ik het "hero'ische vertoog" heb genoemd, heeft een duidelijke opleving op deze dag, maar niet alleen aan de officiele staats kant. Ook in individuelere uitingen van de herdenking van de doden komen dezelfde thema's ter sprake. Dit laat de kracht van het vertoog zien; het publiek maakt er gebruik van zonder vragen te stellen.
Er is echter een deel van het publiek dat de militaristische en nationalistische hegemonic van de staat niet klakkeloos accepteert. Deze protestbeweging, die grotendeels uit vrouwen bestaat, weigert mee te gaan met de pogingen van de staat om de publieke opinie te vormen. Organisaties als "New Profile" en "Women and Mothers for Peace" maken er werk van om de "heilige koeien" van de staat te "slachten". Deze activisten weigeren hun eigen leven ofhet leven van hun familie leden op te offeren voor het beleid van de staat, dat vaak als niet legitiem wordt gezien. Ook het militaristische karakter van de Israelische staat wordt bekritiseerd. Al is deze protestbeweging klein en wordt zij als erg radicaal beschouwd door het publiek, zij heeft een belangrijke functie om bewustzijn
te creeren en om een begin te maken voor echte verandering binnen de Israelische maatschappij.
Introduction
"Today, we can be proud of our achievements. But we must remember the heavy price that has been paid by the lives of so many thousands. With their lives they defended the country; the ground soaked up their blood. Without them, without their lives, without the sacrifice of their deaths, without your sacrifice, your losses, and your pain, dear family members, we would not have reached the point where we can dream that the country will be quiet and peace will prevail within its borders. " (Memorial Day speech 1994 by
president Ezer W eizman.)
" ... and so I reached a decision, that you sir [Prime Minister Ehud Barak], decided that my sons life will be the additional price that our family has to pay. This price has to be paid according to standards that in my beliefs reduce the value of human lives and
according to a policy that goes against my democratic values. This policy states that our soldiers are expected to conduct actions that have a chance of being defined as war crimes. I won't allow that my son will sacrifice his life for these goals". (Atalia Boimel,
in Maariv 30-8-1998, the author's translation.)
These two quotations, one from the president and one from a soldier's mother, show ~wo completely different discourses on sacrifice of human lives in the face of the nation. The second quote is disputing themes that show up in the first one, like self-sacrifice for the good of the collective and the defense of the country. These themes are part of a highly militarized, nationalist and heroic discourse that is used by the Israeli State. First I will discuss this formal, hegemonic discourse with its climax the National Memorial Day
(f
pm Hazikaron) and look at its; effect oµ sooi~ty. Seconqly, I will qjscuss resistant voices that chose to go against these highly consensual ideas. The second quote illustratps this focus.Development of the research plans
When I searched for the ways nationalism is manifested in Israel, I quickly came across
"Yam Hazikaran le hallale tsahal" (National Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers). This day is loaded with emotions and rituals, with ceremonies, songs and most of all sorrow. It
furthermore seems to have a big impact on the Jewish Israeli population.
Once an Israeli girl, that lived in Holland told me that the holiday she missed most was Yam Hazikaran. An Israeli friend I spoke to after I already began my research, told me how she loved the music played on this day and how she had videotapes with stories of the helicopter disaster (1997, where 73 soldiers died at once) that she loved to watch. From these conversations I understood these girls were attracted to the atmosphere of communal grief, the nostalgic feeling of belonging to the Israeli community in the difficult situation it faces today.
This was not totally strange for me. For me as an Israeli, Yam Hazikaran was a very emotional but quite natural event. I accepted the ceremonies and speeches as they were and felt sad with the rest of the nation when this was expected from me. So when I read about an Israeli mother that refused to participate in the sphere of this day and that wasn't prepared to sacrifice her son in the military service, I got intrigued. I began to see
Yam Hazikaran from a different angle, the angle that sees another disguised function of this day in the nationalist quest of legitimizing certain unnatural "realities" in Israel.
Leading argument
I decided to focus on Yam Hazikaron in this research, because here one can see a clear climax of the nationalist, heroic discourse I will discuss. Furthermore, because this day deals with death, it contains one of the heaviest taboos of the national discourse. It is very difficult to break through its myths and look at it from a different angle. It is important to note that I will not only discuss Yam Hazikaron and the language that is used during its ceremonies. This nationalist discourse of sacrifice for the nation is much wider and can also be heard at separate memorial services for soldiers, in schools or even during
different holidays. I will address the way the myth of heroic sacrifice was built and how it is used in Israeli society. This will show the power of the discourse: you can find it almost everywhere.
While at first seeing Yorn Hazikaron solely as a means of holding together a very diverse society, I thus realized later on there is more at stake. In this work I will try to show that through the use of a militarized, nationalist discourse that glorifies death and the fighter image and has its peak in ceremonies on Yorn Hazikaron in Israel, the government is actively producing a hegemony in its quest for the continuation of generations that will be ready to fight and sacrifice for its objectives. To make things clearer I will use the term "heroic discourse" when speaking about this nationalist
discourse. I will look at the heroism and self-sacrifice that is attributed to the fighting hero and at the glorification of his death. These ideas were, and still are, used in ways that make sure young people will be ready to serve the nation at any given time.
When using the word hegemony, it would seem that there is no resistance whatsoever from the public's side and that it accepts anything that it is told. This is, however, not what I would want to argue. Especially in recent years a lot has changed in Israel and some people are not as patriotic as they used to be. The public doesn't silently accept anything the state tells it and the famous motto "it's good to die for our country"1 for example, is not taught uncritically anymore in schools. What I want to claim is that in spite of change and critical thought on the part of the Israeli citizens, a delicate state action is taking place that is forming the public's mental map. In stead of saying out loud that one has to die for his or her country, this ideal is made familiar and natural through a specific socialization that uses myth and ceremony. A young, secular boy won't declare today very easily that he is willing to die for his country when he joins the army, but he will look in awe at the soldier with an emblem of a prestigious combat unit on his arm. This fighter soldier role-model is directly linked to sacrifice for the nation.
In spite of the state's efforts, there exists a movement of real resistance. In this study I will give voice to some of the people (especially women) that see through the state's production of this hegemony and choose to "burst the bubble" of the heroic myth of the dead soldier. This resistance, which is quite varied in its forms, is mostly directed against the repression of the public, the lies of education and the endangering of
1
The story goes that the army commander Tnunpcldor muttered these words just before he died. Later on I will elaborate on this famous tale.
young lives in the wars the government conducts. The activists I will speak of resist the existing consensus in the form of activity in grassroots organizations.
I chose to show both sides of the story, the domination of the consensus and the resistance against it, because I think it is important to give voice to the small but
courageous group that :fights for changes in a society that is extremely afraid of such ideas.
Methods of research
The methods ofresearch that I used to answer the questions I had relating to Yorn
Hazikaron and grass-roots organizations were many. In line with this fact, I decided to
divide the research into two parts. The :first was an analytical study of the nationalist discourse of Yorn Hazikaron, the second was a search for protests movements against this discourse.
In the analytical part of my research, my methods consisted :first of all out of studying records in the "Archives of the Ministry of Defense". There I looked at hundreds of historical :files, mostly from the Office of the Chief of Staff of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), that were coded by terms like "fallen soldiers", "memorial", "commemoration" and more. While going over all the material I looked for the
nationalist discourse I will discuss in this work, from the official side of the IDF, but also from the civilian side that wrote many letters to the IDF on the subject of fallen sons and their commemoration.
Next I analyzed :films and documentaries. This material consisted mostly out of films I collected on earlier trips to Israel during Yorn Hazikaron itself and out of films I videotaped during other times in Israel and in the Netherlands. Most of the works I used, were the live-reports of ceremonies during Yorn Hazikaron and films about individual soldiers that died, usually made by their families. Furthermore I looked at reports of huge memorial events like the Memorial ofYizhak Rabin in Tel Aviv and "Songs on the Square", a musical show that is taking place every year on Rabin Square in Tel Aviv during Yorn Hazikaron.
I also looked at newspapers and material on the Internet. Through these sources I had access to official press releases by the Ministry of Defense on Yorn Hazikaron and on
the influence the media coverage of certain events had on distributing the "heroic discourse".
Finally I analyzed songs, letters and poems written by bereaved parents and published in the magazine "Siach Shakulim" or " Bereaved discourse" of Yad Labanim,
an organization that supports Bereaved Families in Israel that lost their children in wars or while serving the IDF. Looking at this material gave me a clear view of the "heroic discourse" that is heard from the civilian side, the bereaved families in this case.
The methods of the second part of my research where very different, I had to do with people. This time my goals were to locate different voices, to find out what kind of motivations people had to go into action. The first method I thus used was interviewing. I went to meet my informants in their homes or we would meet in a coffee house. I would tell each of them what my research was about and ask them quite generally how they came to be active and what their and their organization's ideas and goals where. Because I was dealing with women that were highly aware of the issues I touched upon, they all began telling me right away about their active lives and ideas. While leading them softly according a list of questions I always had with me, I gained all the information I needed.
As I received a lot of written material from my informants, analyzing this material became an important part of my research. This material about their ideas, the organization and their activities, was written by themselves or by their colleagues. A lot of material that they published could also be found on several web sites.
Another method I used was sending out questionnaires to people connected to the organizations. I send most of the questionnaires with open-ended questions by email. I used questionnaires, because it gave me the chance of getting several more voices on the subject then I would have if I only used personal interviews.
In this part of my research I chose also to use the method of participant observer, in joining protests, a conference and vigils, either organized or supported by the women I interviewed.
Research population at large
The Jewish Israelis, who form the biggest and most dominant group in Israel, constitute my research population. The Israeli population consists of Jews, a Palestinian/ Arab2 minority including a Druze community and there is a Bedouin community. These minorities are almost always excluded from national ceremonies, as they emphasize the Jewish character oflsrael. Yorn Hazikaron is an obvious example of this exclusion. Israeli Palestinians are excluded from the obligatory army service in Israel and are thus also from memorial rituals for fallen soldiers. Druze and Bedouin men have the opportunity to serve in the IDF and play a part in the ceremonies but merely as soldiers that fought bravely next "to us" (the Jewish majority). The general tone is that of the Jewish, national struggle for independence and freedom, without seeing or even mentioning the Israeli minorities as a real part of the Israeli state.
This exclusion in it self gives a good insight to the nationalist discourse of the Memorial Day, as exclusion sometimes explains more then inclusion in collective action. In this case, though, I had to focus on the population that created, used and experienced the discourse of Yorn Hazikaron in order to find its role in forming people's view on the social reality of the Israeli state. The scope of this research was also not big enough to make a comparison between Jewish and Arab nationalist discourses that use heroism and martyrdom.
Arrangement of this work
I will start with a theoretical orientation that will give my argument a frame of thought and bring understanding into the subjects I will be dealing with. I will single out the most important issues and discuss some theories on them. Then I will explain how my work fits into this frame.
The second chapter will be searching for the roots of the "heroic discourse" and will furthermore look at ways it is found through the militarization of Israeli society today. I will look at ways the fighting hero's myth is glorified and used in persuading young men to become fighters themselves.
2
The use oflsraeli Palestinian or Israeli Arab or even other terms is mostly a question of how people chose to identify themselves or how they are defined. See Rouhana 1997 for interesting thoughts on this subject.
The third chapter will make the connection of this discourse to Yom Hazikaron
and commemoration of the fallen in general. Here I will explain the holiday, look at its rituals and discuss the heroic discourse used.
The fourth and last chapter will be dealing with resistance against the
manipulation of people into a certain consensus. I will look at the roots of this kind of protest in Israeli society and will discuss the movement of resistance I studied.
Chapter 1
Theoretical orientations
For every researcher it is important to look at related material that has been published at an earlier point of time in order to make sense of his/her work. Here I will do just that, I will give my argument a frame of thought. By discussing other works that either support my ideas or deviate from them, I will hopefully give a clear insight. This theoretical orientation will be one of bringing understanding to the central subjects of my work and will follow the line of my argument from ruling elites, through rituals to consensus and from there to the phenomenon of dissent.
This chapter will be divided in two parts. The first part will address the connections between ruling elites and mechanisms of consensus building, focussing especially on rituals. The second part will discuss theories on protest or public dissent within a sociopolitical context.
Ruling elites and consensus building
Elites
When one talks about influences that certain groups in society have on each other, one has to look first more closely at what these groups represent. In my work I'll do so by looking at the social group that wants support for the consensus of the "heroic discourse" with its fighter ideal that reaches its height on Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron) and this group I will call the ruling elite. Elite is a word usually used for parts of society that either have most of the economic or the political power in their hands. I will look at the latter: the part of society that is politically in control, in a democracy usually called the government or more generally the State.
In her work, The Rite of Rulers, on the rituals in the Soviet Union, Lane also looks at the state as the ruling elite: the Soviet rulers controlled the economic, political and social sides of society. She lets us understand how symbols and rituals were being used in the formation of people's frames of thought. Lane calls this elite that goes out to create a new culture through ceremony and symbolism, "ritual specialists". This elite
deliberately creates rituals and uses symbols to enhance solidarity and other national ideologies. The actions of these specialists she calls "Cultural Management" as opposed to "Cultural Revolution". Cultural management is much more silent and subtle. It focuses on creating a new type of society through ritual and cult (1981 :2).
These ritual specialists as said before, control most if not all parts of society. They are elected by the people, but as Kertzer shows in the case of the Soviet Union this
"ritual" does not effect who the rulers are and what they do (1988:49). In Israel the situation would seem different as this country at times is even called the only democracy in the Middle East. A lot of discussion has been taking place over the question whether Israel is a democracy or not and if it is, what kind of democracy. For now I will assume it is, as the point here is that Israel has a democratically elected Prime Minister that, with the Israeli Parlement, represents the Israeli people. This does not mean that this
government is solely working towards achieving the public's goals. Again I look at Kertzer that calls free elections a "ritual oflegitimation". American elections, he claims, "foster the illusion that American government is the result of the free, informed choice of the entire citizenry and that all are equal in deciding questions of public policy" (Ibid).
I think that in the case oflsrael this is also true. The government and especially the Prime Ministers, are almost all taken out of the social and ethnical elite, no matter what their political affiliations are. The ruling elite from the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish settlement in Palestine) years on, always consisted of the Ashkenazi, secular and leftist part of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Many enter politics after an extensive career in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and thus arrive with a particular frame of thought. This group brought ideals and myths with it and was very active in building the myth of the "New Hebrew" that would have extensive influence on the fighter hero. These ideologies and myths they brought with them still are part of everyone's education and upbringing, they are the stories that formed the nation. Questioning them was and is still seen as a betrayal of the state and its people. They then stayed put, like power does, democratic elections or not.
The ruling elite I will speak of is then the body of people and institutions that is in charge of law and decision making. It controls the nation's resources, education and more. This group is certainly not homogeneous, as different political parties and ideas
come together in the government and usually disagree with each other on all fronts. But as said before, power doesn't change it's ways easy and certain issues in society are sacred. One of the most sacred of all is the commemoration of the fallen of Israel's wars.
Rituals as mechanisms
In Geertz' view rituals or cultural patterns can be seen as either "models for" or as "models of' reality (1973). In this case the rituals I will be looking at represent the first: they are "models for" a desired social reality. The Israeli society is highly complex and differentiated. It can be assumed that rulers would want to use rituals to install or
strengthen values they view as vital for solidarity or for legitimizing a situation that could be viewed as questionable. It has to be said that this can either be done consciously or unconsciously under influence of deep-rooted ideologies that are "taken for granted".
For Kerzter "ritual is important in all political systems" (1988:2). He claims that although ritual is used by power elites to hold on to the status quo, it is also used in efforts to break this power. One of the most important aspects of ritual in politics is symbolism. This is especially true because of the ability of symbolism to create political realities. The complicated world around us, especially its political side, becomes clearer and more orderly by using symbols. A famous example that Kerzter also uses is the national flag that in stead of a piece of cloth becomes "the nation". Furthermore there is the national anthem that in many countries can stimulate strong national emotions when hearing its sounds. "Creating a symbol or ... identifying oneself with a popular symbol can be a potent means of gaining and keeping power, for the hallmark of power is the
construction ofreality" (1988:5).
Many works on ritual like the famous work of Emile Durkheim, speak of the creation and maintenance of solidarity as a ritual's main goal. This is of course a very important point, as solidarity fosters legitimization for actions of the ruling elite that uses the ritual. Here, however, I will see ritual not only as a means of keeping people together or of giving society a sense of collectivity. I will regard it mostly as a mechanism that can form people's ideas or their mental map. By using the symbolic power of ritual, the state can make people see phenomena in a way they wouldn't have looked at it otherwise. The
state creates a situation that supports its own position and its actions in society, a hegemony.
Before I go on, it is important to point out precisely how I intend to fill in the term "ritual". I want to suggest a very wide use for it. Lane uses it as "a stylized, repetitive social activity which, through the use of symbolism, expresses and defines social
relations" (1981 :11). I would like to widen the definition by taking out the "stylized" part of it and replace "social activity" with "social and individual activity inside a certain national frame". It will then become a repetitive social and individual activity inside a certain national .frame which, through the use of symbolism, expresses and defines social relations. The phrase "stylized" would seem to exclude material written, sung or
manually created that is part of a massive discourse, like that of commemoration of the death in Israel. The ruling elite or state does not produce this material necessarily itself: but it is rather made by citizens while looking "through a symbolic filter" of the state's ideology (Kerzer 1988:6). The elite, in its tum, makes use of this material to continue its consensus- building work. This is also the reason why I would like to include individual activity in the definition of ritual, as I see a lot of this activity as representing the
language of the ruling elite.
A very important feature of ritual is its use of drama and emotions. I will again use Kertzer who points out that "participation in ritual involves physiological stimuli, the arousal of emotions; ritual works through the senses to structure our sense of reality" (1988:10). Some rituals will sweep us of our feet, make us cry for no real reason and make us feel connected to the people around us. Music, candles, flags and words are all part of this emotional effect ofritual. Emotion, then, is a powerful tool in forming a person's opinion and his/her ideas.
Ritual is thus of great importance in the politics of power. It gives citizens understanding of the world through the use of symbolism. Symbols in tum give life but also death its meaning. This will become especially true when looking at Memorial Day in Israel, a young state that uses historical myths and symbols to make its citizens into fighting heroes and to make sense of their unnatural death.
The ritual of commemorating the dead
The actions of the state, individuals and social groups in commemorating the people they have lost in Israel's wars or in other military related events, can be seen as rituals. There have probably been rituals of commemoration for as long as man has been losing his fellow man. These rituals have a function of letting out grief, of giving the deceased a better place in the afterlife or for any other cultural objective. Commemoration can, however, also be very political. Politics comes into the picture once we speak about national related death and state organized commemoration.
Connerton points out in his work How Societies Remember that what happens to us in the present, relies in great extend on what we know from our past. To understand what happens today, we use a context that we have obtained in the years that passed (1989). This idea is important because it shows us the importance of old myths and wars in the commemoration by the present society. The state uses its historical roots in making sense of its present situation. These roots are often "adjusted" to fit the objectives of today. These efforts influence, for example, the public on how it sees the theme of self-sacrifice for the national cause.
In the rites of commemoration of Israel, the public is made to feel continuity between ourselves and the dead who, it is claimed, "gave their lives so that the state of Israel could live" (Internet site of "Y om Hazikaron"). The state uses these emotions of cohesion in the face of the fallen, for purposes of its own. As I will make clear in this work, by stressing this connection between the dead soldiers and the living, the state makes sure it will be able to use its citizens for any political or military cause it thinks necessary in the future.
Handelman and Shamgar-Handelman speak, in their work "The Presence of Absence" on the spatial relation between sacrificial death and the creation of collective memories, about the use of death by the public. They claim that by making use of death, different publics give it meaning and speak in its name (1997). In my work their ideas will be very useful, although I chose to specify the users of the theme of death. I will focus here on the role of the state in the usage of death for consensus-forming actions where unnatural self-sacrificial death is legitimized and propagated as an example to follow.
I do not want to underestimate the painfulness of loss and I want to clarify here that I don't criticize any expressions of grief or the need to commemorate the dead in any way. In my work I hope to make clear that in the Israeli case of very high numbers of unnatural, military related deaths, the state has a role in trying to legitimize this phenomenon. Through rituals of its own, through making use of the past, it persuades people in wanting to become fighters and thus risk their lives. The state furthermore influences people in the way they grief their deceased loved ones. It tries to neutralize any questions about the unnaturalness of this kind of death. In short, I am not criticizing any action of bereavement or commemoration. I'm only pointing out and criticizing the role of the state in these rituals and showing how great and how accepted this influence is, so that its ideology becomes the public consensus. In Connerton's words" .. .images of the past commonly legitimate a present social order" (1989:3).
Consensus
After having spoken about the ruling elite and its use of ritual, it makes sense to look into public consensus, as in this case this is what the elite tries to retain. In his book Wars,
Internal Conflicts, and Political Order, Barzilai gives a definition of consensus that I
would like to use here. "Consensus", he writes, "is a condition in which the public does not reject a certain sociopolitical situation" (1996:14). Barzilai addresses in this book the wars Israel has been involved in and the reasons there were for public consensus and dissent. He gives as most important reasons for the existence of a consensus during war the following reasons: fear for Israel's survival and public's anxiety responses. Collective fear, he shows is a very strong means for solidarity among citizens and this is used by the government to legitimize its actions. In stead of seeing consensus as something positive, Barzilai sees danger in too much "thinking alike".
I share his view and in this work I will show how, through the use of a particular discourse and through certain rituals, a consensus about the ruling elite's decisions in military actions is maintained. The focus will be on the high casualty toll that is
legitimized by idealizing the heroic fighter and by commemorating his death as sacred on Yam Hazikaron. This consensus is dangerous in my view as it has the capability of
preparing generation after generation with a willingness to fight the government's battles that are often illegitimate.
However, the consensus I will be discussing is not so much formed by direct danger in times of war as is the consensus Barzilai talks about. It is mostly formed by a continuing use by the state institutions of national symbols and heroic myths to remind people of their place on the national map. This is the reason the term "hegemony" fits in here, as it stands for a process not only an institution: "As the system of domination and inequality becomes so lodged in cultural belief it comes to appear natural an inviolate" (Ben-Ari and Lomsky-Feder 1999:11). The rituals that are used by the Israeli state aim especially to make the public forget anything that might de-legitimize the consensus. Lane supports this idea as she writes that within a conflictual social context, which means a complex, differentiated society, ritual has a consensus-building role. Values that are felt to be important by the ruling elite are being accentuated through the use of ritual.
Public dissent
Resistance can be "everything from foot dragging to walking, from sit-ins to outings, from chaining oneself up in treetops to dancing the night away, from parody to passing, from bombs to hoaxes, from graffiti tags on New York trains to stealing pens from the
employers, from not voting to releasing laboratory animals, from mugging yuppies to buying shares, from cheating to dropping out, form tattoos to body piercing, from pink hair to pink triangles, from loud music to loud T-shirts, from memories to dreams" (Pile
1997:14).
Resistance, dissent
As is made clear by the quotation above, resistance can be found anywhere. It can be defined as defying a certain social or political situation in any kind of way. Dissent is a disagreement with a certain situation and should therefore be seen as a form of resistance or as the situation that precedes it.
Pile shows a fairly new way of looking at resistance and dominance. In his work
Geographies of Resistance, he and other authors see resistance as "a mode through which
the symptoms of different power relations are diagnosed and ways are sought to get round them, or live through them, or to change them" (1997:3). This means that, as I have
argued earlier, resistance can be anything; also actions that use the very power relations that seem to repress them in order to benefit from them. What Pile stresses, is that you don't necessarily have to look at dominance if you're studying resistance, because resistance is a mode of its own, it creates its own space (1997).
Hanagan, Page Moch and te Brake on the other hand don't agree with only looking at dominance and the actions of rulers or only at the actions and aspirations of resisting subjects. "To focus on just one or the other ... is to risk missing the essential drama of the political interaction" (1998:ix). While I agree with Pile that it is not always necessary to include the dominant mode while looking at certain kinds of resistance, for this work I tend more toward the second approach. My aspiration is to show just this "political interaction" between the state that attempt to produce hegemony and voices that resist. I think it is important at what case one looks and in my case, that is on a
political/national level, the dynamics between the two different modes is important. De Certeau as used by Pile, claims that "the central strategy of authority is to force people to play its game, to make sure that the game is played by its rules, then people find innumerable ways round this ... they continually seek to find their own places: they rat run through the labyrinths of powers" (1997:15). This would mean that by resistance, people try to find their way within certain power structures also by just thinking in a certain way.
More traditional ways of looking at resistance are the studies of peasant resistance like the work of Scott that speaks about everyday resistance in rural Malaysia (1985). Works like these focus on resistance that is almost unconscious and doesn't publicly challenge the dominating party. Resistance is to be found, according to these studies, in every day actions like "foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so on" (Scott 1985:16).
Resistance as used in this work
Dissent with the sociopolitical order can be divided according to Barzilai into three categories: 1. Peripheral dissent with the ruling party 2. Fringes and secondary centers dissent with the ruling party 3. Peripheral, secondary centers and center dissent with the ruling party (1996:215). I would like to use the first category to explain the kind of
dissent I will be dealing with. By the periphery I mean organizations or parties that are ideologically far away from the party that is ruling. The organizations I will address conform to this definition. They are seen by the majority of the public as radicals and are sometimes even unknown because of their small size.
In most studies of resistance, also in urban surroundings, the focus of the research in the "underdog", a group that because of its lack of political, economical and/or social power is being repressed and dominated. This social group that "revolts" does so because it wants, in one way or another, to overthrow or just "get back" at the elite that represses it. It is poor, powerless, repressed and it is presented as being seen by others or by itself as inferior.
The members of the resistance group in my research certainly don't conform to this stereotype. They come from a social environment that has power and that is part of the Israeli social elite. The women that are the focus of the second part of this study, however, feel that although they have economical, social and political power, they are still being repressed. This repression is not physical but mental and emotional. It is a repression that uses national symbols and history distortions in educating people to think in certain ways and to avoid thinking for themselves on certain issues like political decisions, war and death.
Furthermore their acts of resistance are pointed not only against their own personal repression, but also against the repression of their children and the rest of society. It is an ideological resistance that I will address in this study, that acts against certain policies and actions that are initiated by the government.
Another important point is, to return to de Certeau, that this resistance is one that doesn't want to stay inside the "labyrinths of power" and that isn't looking for a way around it. It stands up and looks for manners to actively change the ways of the labyrinth and thus the ways of repression and dominance. This resistance is easier to file with student resistance, feminist protests and other social movements that confront the authorities straightforward.
But besides being manifested in loud protest, the most important feature of the resistance I will discuss is the mental "click", the coming to awareness, as some of the women I spoke to described it. This means to see the oppression, the dominance, the
certain manipulation that goes on, in stead of submitting oneself. "Resistance, then, cannot simply address itself to changing external physical space, but must also engage the colonized spaces of people's inner worlds" (Pile 1997:17). In discussing the resistance of the activists I talked to I will come back to this important point.
Now that we have looked at the phenomenon of resistance, it's important to look more closely at the form this "social group" can have. I see resistance not only as a social, collective movement, but as stated before, it can also be a personal development or individual action. So when an activist writes his/her thoughts down and maybe publicizes it, this is also resistance but not within a group. The social movement I will discuss, consists of different sub-groups and individuals that share most values and resist the same ideas, although are not necessarily identical in their action or focus.
An important feature of this movement, is its grassroots nature. This means that the social groups that are addressed here, have been initiated by citizens that when they saw things they didn't like, decided to stand up and take action. Again, this "action" can vary from writing and standing in vigils, to certain ways of raising one's children.
Chapter 2
A fighting hero in a militarized society
... This was no adventurer merely looking for new outlets for his boundless energy. A long
dormant sentiment for his people was awakened in his heart with the outbreak of war on the Jude an hills .... Endowed with imagination, he could secretly cherish in his heart a dream of a people yearning for independence and freedom. Then he suddenly realised that he had something to contribute to his people 's regenation3 in the historic fatherland. His imagination was enkindled with the past. He felt proud that he would be following in the footsteps of Joshua, the son of Nun, Samson, David and Bar Chochba ( 1949, a speech in memory of the death of col. Marcus by the Chief of Staff of the IDF).
In this chapter I will search for the roots of the "fighter hero" ideal. I will begin my search in late 19th century Europe and follow the making of the hero through different stages. I will explore this theme thoroughly, as I feel that the understanding of the place and ideology that gave birth to this myth is of crucial importance for understanding the "hero's discourse". In the second part of this chapter, I will look at contemporary use and effect of the hero's myth. I will relate this to the militarization oflsraeli society and the position of the Israeli Defense Forces in Israeli society.
Historical roots
Zionism's ideal man
Zionism is usually defined as the quest for a homeland and the creation of a sovereign state for the Jewish people. At first Palestine wasn't the only homeland that was
suggested. For example, there was also talk about Uganda and Argentina. But after some time, Palestine got a more and more prominent place in the Zionist discourse, as it was seen and also actively propagandized as the historical homeland of the Jews.
Zionism originated in Austria. Jewish intellectuals started to look seriously at the "Jewish Problem" that appeared there. At this time, Europe was in the midst of the
3
formation of nation-states that came with the great influence of the Enlightenment in Europe. Nation-states as we know them today were becoming something "real" and their inhabitants became national citizens. Anderson shows that with this movement that was greatly helped by the lexicographical revolution, groups got the right to an autonomous place within the brotherhood of equals (1991). The Jews formed a problem in this case, as they were never really seen as part of any collective. In many places Jews were forced to either drop their "backward" traditions and become national citizens or to be excluded from the state. Jews were expected to become less out of the ordinary and to adjust themselves to the life around them. This resulted in many West European Jews becoming full citizens and leaving their traditional Jewish lives behind them. These Jews were called assimilationists. As a reaction to this, a movement came up that was very critical of this assimilation and that wanted to restore a Jewish national independence after the example of the ideals of the Enlightenment movement. These were the first voices of Zionism (Wistrich 1995).
Khazzoum has a very interesting look on this period and shows in her work that while assimilating to Western European life, there was a certain development in the way these Jews looked at other, unassimilated Jews, especially those in Eastern Europe. These Eastern Jews were seen as unenlightened and backwards, unhealthy, living in filthy dark ghetto's. In short they were regarded as living in the past. Khazzoum calls this a case of orientalization and traces this current through Northern Africa to modern Israel were respectively North-African Jews and Arabs are orientalized (1998).
In this work the orientalization of especially the Eastern-Europe Jews is
important, because I see here the very beginning of the formation of a "New Jew". This was an ideal man that personalized Zionist ideals. Even though the Zionist rejected full assimilation, they used the negative image of the ghetto in creating this new ideal man that was the total opposite of the "ghetto-Jew". He was to be strong, tall and healthy. He was emancipated, independent, worked the land and later on he would become a heroic fighter.
Herzl played an important role in this creation of the "New Jew". As the founding father of modern Zionism he was disgusted with ghetto-life. Although what he called the ghetto was the assimilated, materialistic, anti-social, bourgeois Jewish life in the West
and not so much the Eastern Europe ghetto. He believed, however, that these
emancipated Western Jews still had ghetto-characteristics and therefore "remained a foreign body among the nations" (Wistrich 1995:13). The ghetto thus continued to bring forth negative images of certain groups of Jews.
Herzl' s ideal was "to create a new type of Jew, free from any taint of egoistic materialism" (Wistrich 1995:15). Wistrich shows that under the influence ofNietzsche, Herzl' s Zionism meant "the forging of "a noble ideal of a new Jew, a man living by the myth of chivalry", who will be the anti-thesis of the old ghetto culture" (Ibid.).
Nietzsche's philosophy was very important in modern Jewish nationalism, especially because of his "superman" ideology. This idea was transformed to the "New Jew" or "New Hebrew". Ohana quotes Reuben Brainin's comment in this respect: "The future generation shall not be small and weak, beaten and sickly as is this dwarfish generation, rather shall a strong and mighty generation arise, a generation of giants, a generation which shall inculcate new physical strengths and new mental capacities which we never imagined, a generation of the 'Superman"' (1995:39).
A very important point here is of course the fact that there is only talk of the "New Jew" as a man. All the characteristics that go with this ideal person like strength and big posture are masculine. This also becomes clear when one looks at the adversative of this image: the ghetto or later the Diaspora Jew. The characteristics of this stereotype where feminine, he was soft and his posture was small. These were the same
characteristics anti-Semites had given to Jews over the years and in Zionism there is a clear effort to do away with this stereotype. In Ella Shohat's words "the mythological Sabra [the New Hebrew], posited in genderized language as the masculine rescuer of the passive Diaspora Jew, simultaneously signified the destruction of Diaspora Jewish entity" (1990). Boyarin notes that "Zionism was considered by many to be as much a cure for the disease of Jewish gendering as a solution to economic and political problems of the Jewish people" (1997:277). This masculine ideal was not developed in a vacuum or solely as a response to the negative stereotype of the Jews. It used the European "Aryan" as example. The blond and muscular ideal was in its turn taken from the classic Greek male images.
The first "New Jews": pioneers and Sabras
The first Zionist pioneers came to Palestine in the eighties of the 19th century. They came with the ideology of a new land with a new people. This people was to be independent and was going to create its own reality instead of leaving it in the hands of God or another nation. They were European born Jews with great believe in their quest for a Jewish homeland. Of course there were already people living in Palestine in spite of the Zionist slogan "A land without people for a people without land". Most inhabitants were Arabs including the Druze community and there was also a minority of Jews that lived in cities like Hebron and Jerusalem. This was mostly a religious and bourgeois society.
The pioneers' story is important as their generation gave form to the nation; they where the central makers of Israel's history and its myths. I am speaking mainly of the pioneers of the second Alyia (immigration gulf), as they were the ones that came with the revolutionary, secular ideology that created the national independence of the Jewish settlers. This Alyia "was also the source of Zionist national leadership" (Gorny 1987: 13) and it brought forth big names like David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett and Levi Eshkol. The pioneers settled themselves mostly in kibbutzim, which were agricultural
settlements. The agricultural aspect of the pioneer's life was very important; they came to work the land with their own hands and this emphasized their closeness to nature. It brings us back to the image of the strong, healthy and tanned "New Jew" of Zionist thought that in Palestine was going to make "the desert bloom".
Henry Near points out in his comparison between North American and Zionist pioneers, that this connection to the land was influenced by the European Enlightenment with its concept of the nobility of the unspoiled peasant. He stresses three points that accentuated the Zionist case: the influence of Russian social thought, the myth of working the rough land next to the reality of uncultivated land in Palestine and the fact that Jews in Europe were forbidden to own land (1987:7-8).
As Near shows in his first point, the Zionist movement was strongly influenced by socialistic thoughts. In socialist ideology, peasantry is idealized and seen as superior. The socialist influences are especially seen in the kibbutz movements that set up communal, agricultural settlements after Russian example. Furthermore this movement was anti-religious which also influenced the secular character of Zionist thought.
If the pioneer was the founder of the myth of the "New Jew", the Sabra was the incarnation of this myth. This was the native born child of the European born pioneers. Sabras, seen as the ultimate "New Hebrews", were idealized by the older generation as well as by newer immigrants. They where seen as the "hope for Jewish salvation and universal values" and begot the "status of a kind of moral aristocracy" (Shohat
1990:253). The name "Sabra" stems from the prickly cactus fruit that can be found all over Israel/Palestine. It is said that these Israeli born youths were like the fruit prickly from the outside and sweet from within. They were seen as the children of the future.
The Jewish/Arab conflict
At this point it is important to look at the relationship the Zionist Jews had with the Arab population of Palestine, because it will give us the background for the development of the "fighting soldier hero". With more and more Jews immigrating to Palestine, tensions between the Arab population and the newcomers became more and more fierce. The fact that most manual labor was done by the Palestinian Arabs was problematic for the Zionist labor ideal of the second Aliya. Furthermore the Zionist aspiration to gain sovereignty over Palestine provoked resistance.
Tensions ran extremely high after WWI, when Arab nationalism began to blossom. In 1920-21 riots broke out in Palestine and 1929 is the year of the Hebron massacre when the Arab population of this city attacked the Jewish part of the
community. Gorny describes two phases of this nationalism; the first phase is a "natural confrontation" between a settler people and the indigenous inhabitants of the land. The second phase is ideological. Arab nationalism is then seen as a struggle against the "hidden effort of the Jews to restore on a very large scale the ancient kingdom oflsrael" (Azouri as cited by Gorny 1987 :22). These ideological differences became the core of the Jewish/ Arab conflict.
The Zionists gave attention to the fact that there were other people living on the land of Palestine, but in they were convinced that their ideals would have no negative effect and would only benefit the indigenous people. There was a group that supported the assimilation plan; this plan would let the Arab population live amongst them in the Jewish State. The second group supported the "Iron Wall" ideology that believed that
only if one would cut off the Arab population from the Jewish settlement, there could be a creation of the Jewish State. In general there was an orientalist view towards the Arab population by the European Zionists. Their goal was to create a Jewish state after the example of the Western states and the "oriental" way of life that existed in Palestine didn't fit in. The leftist side was opposed to a policy of colonization and refused to "use" Arab labor, it wanted to do the work itself. This meant, however, the exclusion of the Arab population from the building of the new state.
This is not the place to get any further into this complicated issue, but the main point is that with the immigration of Jews to Palestine who settled the land, Palestinian Arabs were more and more excluded and their nationalism became stronger and
resistance more frequent. In the Zionist movement opinions differed. There was a group supporting more dialogue with the Arabs but also a group that wanted a total isolation from the Arab population. This latter group got more and more support as clashes flared up.
The fighting hero
In the light of mounting tension between the Arab population and the Jewish settlers, the latter decided to build a defense force. This is also greatly related to the Zionist ideal of the strong New Jew and the ideals of fighting for your existence as contrasted against the passive martyrdom of the European Jewry. Goldstein shows it was especially the
socialist-Marxist part of the Zionist movement that brought this element of armed defense into Zionist thought (Goldstein 1999).
The first "fighting heroes" were the men of the Bar-Giora movement. A few years later another group was created which was called "Hashomer" (the guardsman). The settlers of the second Alyia created both these movements. The "Hashomer" pioneers "saw as their main task the defense of Jewish settlement, and to this end made up ... teams of guards who contracted with the farmers in a particular village to defend it against theft and violence" (Near 1987:12). The Bar-Giora group had as its goal "to protect the
national enterprise in Eretz Israel" (Goldstein 1999: 174). They both wanted to show that Jews could and would defend themselves. In 1920 the "Haganah", the Jewish Defense
Forces, was created. This would be the fore bearer of the Israeli Defense Forces, as we know them today.
The deeds of these men in the defense of the Jewish settlements were seen as extremely heroic. When I discuss the legend of Tel Hai with its hero Joseph Trumpeldor, this will become clearer. At this point the "New Jew" that would be strong and healthy, that would work the land with his own hands and that would create his own national independence, became a fighter. Next to the agricultural tools, he also began to hold a gun in his hands.
The most important group of people that was central in the creation of the fighting hero's myth, were the fighters of the Palmach, or Palmachniks. This elite-unit was
created in 1941 and most of its members were Israeli born Sabras. The rest of the Jewish community in Palestine idealized these young people and a lot is written about them. A few themes always show up: the dancing forelock (blorit) in the wind, the suntanned
face, the tall and strong posture and the straightforwardness that was a very specific trade of the young Sabras. Furthermore the love of the country, its nature and the land was very important in the idealization of the Sabra-Palmachnik.
Almog shows in his study of written material by this generation that motivation was very high and that the sacrifice for the land was an important ideal. Palmachniks would write their girlfriends and families that even when they had to be far away from their loved ones, they were doing the only good thing that was possible: defending the homeland and fighting for independence (Almog 2000).
Hero's myths
The pioneers and Sabras had a big influence on the way the Israeli state created a certain kind of citizen that would take pride in being Israeli and that would want to fight for the motherland and would even give his life for this purpose. This was strongly related to the fact that the ruling elite of the new state drew its members from these generations of the second Alyia and the Palmach units. This shows the importance of their ideals for the nationalist discourse that is heard today in state ceremonies.
I will discuss three myths that were very crucial in the making of the fighting, tough and rough Israeli (or New Jew). These myths are very famous and were part of
every school's curriculum in Israel for a long time. Although this has changed over the years, today you can still hear the names of the hero's that play leading roles in these mythologies in different contexts. I will use the phrase "myth" here as a historical episode that is not necessarily untrue but is ascribed great heroic momentum and used in other contexts by "ritual specialists" with the purpose of making an exemplary ideal.
The first myth I'll discuss is the Warsaw ghetto revolt of 1943. This may seem contradictory as I showed how ghetto live was despised by the Zionists, but it isn't. What happened in this revolt during the German siege of Poland, was that Jewish men and women, who were living within the ghetto, revolted against the overwhelming Nazi army. This aspect of self-defense and the "few against many'; theme that will also be found in the other myths, made these European Jews heroic instead of "going as sheep to the slaughter". For a long time this was the Palestinian/Israeli Jews' way oflooking at the Jewish holocaust victims and survivors. They were seen as weak, not self-defensive and as passive martyrs. The opposite happened in the Warsaw ghetto, here the Jews did take their fate in their own hands, even though their battle was already decided before it begun. They would rather die in battle then be taken by the Germans without resisting. That is a central point in this myth, the heroic choice of self-sacrifice.
This anti-Diaspora/holocaust theme was taken from the first Zionist and was used extensively in the Yishuv years, but also after the state formation. Almog shows in his book The Sabra: Creation of a New Jew how this is also reflected in the way people
spoke about death. To die in European concentration or destruction camps was to perish
which has a very passive ring to it. Dying in Palestine though, in battle against the Arab enemies was to fall in battle, which sounds much more heroic (2000:84).
The happenings of the Warsaw revolt were connected to the struggle of the Jews in Palestine in a successful attempt to use one heroic episode as an inspiration for the next. A booklet on the memorial statue in Y ad Mordechai for the men that fell at the Egyptian border, connect this "fighting spirit of hope, characteristic of the homeland" to the "last stand of the Warsaw Ghetto". One contributor of the booklet writes: "Before his death [Mordechai, commander of the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion], he sent forth, beyond the Ghetto walls, the clarion call of faith in the salvation of his people through enrootment on
the soil of their homeland". This extention of the heroism in Warsaw to the heroism in Palestine/Israel, indicates the influence myth had on the Jewish pioneers.
The next myth I'll discuss is the Tel Hai story of the Yishuv period (1920). It is very central in the "heroic discourse" of self-sacrifice and death for the motherland. In this story, a few pioneers in the north of Israel engaged in a defensive battle against an Arab attack on their settlement Tel Hai. Here the "few against many" theme shows up again, as the pioneers were few and the Arabs were many. The leader of the pioneers was Joseph Trumpeldor, a figure that through this battle gained an immortal status in Israeli culture. It is said that Trumpeldor, an heroic commander of the Russian army, in the last moments before his death said: "it's good to die for our country". This last sentence was picked up by "ritual specialists" and used extensively to promote the self-sacrifice theme. He, like the ghetto fighters in Poland, refused to flee during the battle and stayed till his final breath. He was seen as the ultimate "New Hebrew", strong, heroic and willing to fight.
After this event many people understood the impact it could have and started writing about these heroic deeds. Zerubavel, who has written a great deal about this legendary story, shows that the use of the words "legend" and "legendary" were used by the pioneers to make of this man, Trumpeldor, a figure that was larger-then-life
(Zerubavel, year of publication unknown). He was connected to the ancient Hebrew heroes like the ones of the Masada-myth that I will explore later on. This, as Zerubavel shows, "indicated the appeal of the ancient Hebrews as direct inspiration for the Zionist national revival in the first half of the twentieth century" (Ibid). This sense of continuity in time of Hebrew heroism gives a legitimization of the Zionist cause and gives present happenings meaning.
Zerubavel shows in her work on myth making through collective memory how the legend of Tel Hai became more and more contested in the seventies by a generation that refused to swallow such a story. She also points at the changes that occured in Israel in the fifties, when oriental Jews immigrated. These people didn't identify with the "New Hebrew" ideal of the European Zionists and so its image weakened (Ibid). The peak that this legend experienced was in the pre-state period of the Yishuv, when the people that needed to be influenced came from the same background as the "ritual specialists".
Furthermore Zerubavel speaks about the questioning of the famous phrase "it's good to die for our country". As the national consensus on the way to handle the Jewish-Arab conflict was shaken especially during the Lebanon War, many people began to see that to die for one's country wasn't necessarily a good thing to do. I see this crack in the national consensus as the beginning of the public resistance against certain national ideals, although I will show that through the use of heroic commemoration the state today upholds a strong consensus on this su~ject.
The third story I will discuss is the Masada-myth. This tale tells the heroic last stand 2000 years ago of a group of Jews, Zealots, on the Masada hilltop near the Dead Sea. These Jews, so the stor<J goes, stood against the Roman army that took over Palestine, again as "few against many". When they realized that they didn't have a chance of holding on to their position, they committed a communal suicide on the hilltop. They rather took their own lives then living as slaves under the Romans.
As is shown by several scholars in the last few years, this story was for a great deal constructed by fabrication of facts and erasing them from history. Especially
Nachman Ben-Y ehuda is a fervent opposer of the way this myth was created by Shmaria Guttman, a leader in a Zionist youth movement and Yigal Y adin, a chief of staff in the IDF turned archeologist. Ben-Y ehuda (1995) shows through comparison with the only historical record on this episode, the writings of Josephus Flavus how its Zionist version distorts the historical facts. The heroic Zealots turned out to be thieves and thugs that raided the near by settlement of Ein Gedi and murdered its inhabitants. These elements of the story are not mentioned by Guttman and Y adin who together managed to create a mythological tale that would be central in the education of the Jewish youth during and after the Yishuv period.
Again heroism is very central in this story but what is most interesting here, is the way Masada and its surroundings together with the heroic story of the Zealots were used for "cultural management". Thousands of youths were to be formed into brave, strong soldiers that would be ready to do the same as the Zealots did two thousand years ago, as the Warsaw fighters did during WWII and as Trumpeldor did in 1920: fight until the end. Difficult hikes to Masada through the dessert were organized by individuals but also by youth organizations. These hikes together with the diflicult climb to the top of the rock,
stood for endurance, the deep connection to the land and again the new and strong Hebrew.
The individual versus the collective: a discussion of Ben-Gurion 's thoughts
At this point it is desirable to look in greater detail at the notion of placing the collective above the individual. This ideal is yet another aspect the "New Jew" had to make his own. He or she was to put his/her self behind the screen of collectivity. This is clearly seen in the way the pioneers and the next generations were willing to sacrifice for the good of the collective. The "heroic discourse" then is very dependent on this aspect of Zionist thought. This thought is influenced by the socialist ideology that was taken over by the Zionist Labor movement, where the community is very important. The effect can be seen in the kibbutzim where private owning of any object was taboo for many years.
In Ben-Gurion' s ideology this surfaces in his concept of citizenship. As Yanai shows, in this line of thought civil rights were connected to civil obligation. He describes Ben-Gurion's thoughts as saying "every effort should be made to avoid causing injury to individuals in the course of the nation's struggle for its future; however, the overriding consideration was to do justice to the Jewish people as a deprived nation-in sum, the supremacy of the collective interest" (Yanai 1996: 130). The ideal of self-sacrifice for the collective goals of the nation is obvious here.
Furthermore Ben-Gurion used the "pioneering" ideal for describing the ideal citizen. This pioneer he says "does not bear any special rights, but voluntarily undertakes special obligations" (Yanai 1996:137). The citizen's duty is thus to strive to be a person that will sacrifice and that readily will follow any obligation put on him by the
The status of contemporary fighting heroes: militarization of Israeli
society
4Every year around Hanuka, the Jewish holiday of light and heroism, Israeli
schoolchildren are busy preparing packages with sweets, drawings and letters. These packages are brought to "dangerous places" were soldiers of the IDF receive them. This small gesture of the pupils hides a strong current in Israeli society: the connection that is constantly made between citizens on one hand, children in this case, and combat-soldiers on the other. It is "the first seed for the relation between our Israeli child and a soldier, and it's the start of his education to also become an Israeli soldier when he grows up" (From a letter by New Profile activists to the teachers of their children, the author's translation).
One of my informants remembered her own youth and drew this cynical picture:
"Every girl "adopted" a soldier in the Six Days war. I made a package; wow what a package did I make for one of the soldiers that were fighting. I wanted to give and give.
Was this soldier hungry, didn't he have anything to eat? He did, but it was for identifYing with him. He was there for us, to protect us. For me as a little girl this was a way to say
"thank you". Of course, later this continues. A 17-year-old girl that has a soldier
boyfriend.
If
he is a fighter, it's even more beautiful. She donates her weekends (when he comes home from the army) to the nation; this is the best! Yes he can be a terribleperson, but that doesn't matter ... Everything is good (even if your life is hell) and later on you become the wife that takes care of her husband who is a reservist. You iron his uniform and after that you become the mother who brings up her son to be a soldier"
(my emphasis).
The point so beautifully made here is that from the moment an Israeli child is born, the image of the fighting hero is forced into its mind. The child is taught that this soldier fights for him/her. If it is a boy, it should strive to be like him, and if it is a girl she should take care of him. This message is brought to the child through education and continues in everyday life, with its climax on Yam Hazikaron. Next I will look at the status of the "fighter" in Israeli society and at the ways the state persuades young men to
4 For this part of the chapter, I used many insights given to me by Michal and Vered ofNew Profile. I hereby want to thank them.
