ROBERT S. WISTRICH
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estinian population created a new set of problems and dilemmas. The fu–
ture of the occupied territories, questions of borders and ultimate national
goals, the globalizing of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and a changed relation
with the Diaspora became contentious and central issues in Israeli politics.
New forms of integral nationalism and religious fundamentalism re–
lated to the sanctity of the Land of Israel began to change the contours of
Israeli identity. The balance between its constituent elements was further
affected by the erosion of the dominant Zionist-socialist pioneering ethos
in the early 1970s; by the crisis of confidence in the Labor leadership and
in the military elites after the Yom Kippur War; by the gradual rise in the
influence of Israel's underprivileged Sephardim, which helped bring
Likud to power in 1977; by growing settlement across the green line and
violent confrontation with Palestinians in the territories; and by the
sharpening divisions between the religious and secular segments of Israeli
society. The decline of the internal national consensus and the increas–
ingly harsh criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies abroad were
two of the most obvious symptoms of malaise in the 1970s and 1980s. In–
evitably, they too began to change the contours of Israeli identity, the
focus of its collective consciousness and memory, and the perception of
Israel's role in the world. This was the context in which Zionist ideology
itself came to be questioned from within and in which the older nation–
building myths, which had already lost much of their mobilizing power,
were challenged.
Israel's international isolation and the successive traumas of the Leba–
non War, the Intifada, and the unaccustomed Israeli passivity during the
GulfWar provided important external stimuli for this fundamental debate
about the means and ends, the goals and purpose of the Zionist project.
Alongside these stresses and strains, Israeli society was becoming increas–
ingly Westernized in the 1980s - more materialistic, individualist, and
consumer-oriented. In this de-ideologized environment, there was far
greater scope for a plurality of identities, for recognizing the validity of
the private realm and the needs of the individual. A flourishing indige–
nous Hebrew-language culture and literary experimentation encouraged a
new freedom in addressing time-honored ideals and deflating established
myths. The era of grand ideological syntheses appeared to be over, and
increasingly, calls for "normalization" that reflected a palpable war–
weariness and a longing for peace could be heard. The Palestinian ques–
tion could no longer be swept under the carpet in the 1980s and more
and more impinged on the Israeli collective psyche as a problem that
di–
rectly affected the identity of the Israeli people and its state.
At the same time the belated awareness of the Holocaust - a process
that had begun in the early 1960s - attained new heights and emerged as
