1. Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 146, 260. Elon’s book is the classic study of the generation gap.

2. As Baruch Kimmerling points out, the choice of 1967 or 1977 as the decisive turning point reflects a decision on what was critical in the change: the basic definition of the geographic unit (in 1967) or the change of elites (in 1977). There are of course others who see neither change as basic. Here both changes are regarded as important facets of a fundamental transformation that took place over an extended period and that cannot easily be represented by a single year. However, I agree with Kimmerling that the 1967 war unleashed basic forces for change and that no analysis of the post-1967 system that omits the occupied territories can be considered complete (the territories are dealt with here in chapter 10). See Kimmerling, “Sociology, Ideology and Nation Building: The Palestinians and Their Meaning in Israeli Sociology,” American Sociological Review 57 (August 1992): 446–60.

3. Eva Etzioni-Halevy with Rina Shapira, Political Culture in Israel (Praeger, 1977), 30–31; see also Virginia R. Dominguez, “The Language of Left and Right in Israeli Politics,” in Cross-Currents in Israeli Culture and Politics, ed. Myron J. Aronoff (Transaction Books, 1984), 92–93.

4. Asher Arian, Ideological Change in Israel (Case Western Reserve University Press, 1968), 36, 43, 52–53.

5. Yehuda Ben-Meir and Peri Kedem, “An Index of Religiosity for the Jewish Population in Israel” (in Hebrew), Megamot 24 (February 1979): 353–62; Baruch Kimmerling, “Between the Primordial and Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity: Eretz Yisrael or the State of Israel?” in Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honor of Shmuel Eisenstadt, ed. M. Lissak, E. Cohen, and U. Almagor (Westview Press, 1984), 269.

6. Abraham Diskin, “The 1977 Interparty Distances: A Three-Level Analysis,” in The Elections in Israel 1977, ed. Asher Arian (Academic Press, 1980), 213–29; Michael Wolffsohn, Israel: Polity, Society and Economy 1882–1986 (Humanities Press International, 1987), 42.

7. Avner Yaniv and Fabian Pascal, “Doves, Hawks and Other Birds of a Feather: The Distribution of Israeli Parliamentary Opinion on the Future of the Occupied Territories 1967–1977,” British Journal of Political Science 10 (April 1980): 260–67.

8. Mina Zemach, Positions of the Jewish Majority in Israel toward the Arab Minority (Van Leer Institute, 1980); Nadav Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Harvard University Press, 1978), 89–94; Dan Horowitz, “More than a Change in Government,” Jerusalem Quarterly 5 (Fall 1977): 9–13; Asher Arian, “Elections 1981: Competitiveness and Polarization,” Jerusalem Quarterly 21 (Fall 1981): 16–27; Daniel Elazar, “Israel’s New Majority,” Commentary 75 (March 1983): 33–39.

9. Wolffsohn, Israel, 150; see also Arnold Lewis, “Ethnic Politics and the Foreign Policy Debate in Israel,” in Cross-Currents in Israeli Culture and Politics, ed. Myron J. Aronoff (Transaction Books, 1984), 30; for an explanation of Likud’s attraction to religious voters, see Kenneth Wald and Samuel Shye, “Religious Influence in Electoral Behavior: The Role of Institutional and Social Forces in Israel,” paper presented at annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 1993.

10. Elon, The Israelis, 303–4. See also Shmuel Eisenstadt, The Transformation of Israeli Society (Westview, 1985), 405–6; Yaacov Hasdai, Truth in the Shadow of War, trans. Moshe Kohn (Zmora, Bitan, Modan, 1979), 171–72; Myron J. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural Change and Political Conflict (Transaction Publishers, 1989), 5–6. The classic portrait of the Labor Zionist Establishment is Yuval Elizur and Eliahu Salpeter, Who Rules Israel? (Harper and Row, 1973).

11. The thesis of Mapai’s self-destruction in the early 1960s is developed by Avram Schweitzer, Israel: The Changing National Agenda (Croom Helm, 1986); on the Lavon affair, see Nathan Yanai, “The Political Affair: A Framework for Comparative Discussion,” Comparative Politics (January 1990): 185–98.

12. Yonathan Shapiro, The Successor Generation (in Hebrew) (Sifriat Po’alim, 1984); see critique by Kimmerling, “Discontinuities of Elite Recruitment in Israeli Society,” in Books on Israel, ed. Ian S. Lustick (State University of New York Press, 1988), 31–36; see also Elon, The Israelis.

13. This is one of the principal theses in Mitchell Cohen, Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel (Basil Blackwell, 1987).

14. For a contemporary portrait of this process see Shmuel Eisenstadt, Israeli Society (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), esp. 211 ff.

15. A fuller explanation for the lack of class consciousness in the development of Israeli society is given in Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel (State University of New York Press, 1989), 86–92.

16. Jay Y. Gonen, A Psychohistory of Zionism (Mason/Charter, 1975), 117–18.

17. Vered Krauss, “The Social Ranking of Professions in Israel” (Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University, 1976), cited in Wolffsohn, Israel, 34.

18. Horowitz and Lissak, Trouble in Utopia, 83–86.

19. Medding, The Founding of Israeli Democracy, 1948–1967 (Oxford University Press, 1990), 44–47, 64–67.

20. Avner Yaniv, “Israel National Security in the 1980s: The Crisis of Overload,” in Israel after Begin, ed. Gregory S. Mahler (State University of New York Press, 1990), 105.

21. Aronoff, Israeli Visions, 26; Schweitzer, Israel, 147–48; Itzhak Galnoor, “Israeli Society and Politics,” in The Impact of the Six-Day War, ed. Stephen J. Roth (Macmillan, 1988), 193–94; Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The SocioTerritorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics, Research Series No. 51 (Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1983), 234–35.

22. For similar discussions see Gershon Shafir, “Ideological Politics or the Politics of Demography: The Aftermath of the Six-Day War,” in Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Politics, and Culture, ed. Ian S. Lustick and Barry Rubin (State University of New York Press, 1991), 48–53; Gregory S. Mahler, Israel: Government and Politics in a Maturing State (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990), 238; Gonen, Psychohistory, 143–44.

23. Schweitzer, Israel, esp. 76.

24. Polling data from the Continuing Survey of the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research, as reported in Russell A. Stone, Social Change in Israel: Attitudes and Events, 1967–1979 (Praeger, 1982), 149–55. See also Etzioni-Halevy with Shapira, Political Culture, 193.

25. Stone, Social Change, 265, 268–71.

26. A search of academic literature for this period uncovered only one clear prediction of the 1977 upheaval: David Nahmias, in 1976, pointed out that the right and the religious parties together were only nine seats short of a majority and that “such a coalition would end the political dominance of Labour”; Nahmias, “The Right Wing Opposition in Israel,” Political Studies 24 (September 1976): 268–80. Don Peretz, in “The War Election and Israel’s Eighth Knesset,” Middle East Journal 28 (Spring 1974): 111–25, and Asher Arian, in “Were the 1973 Elections in Israel Critical?” Comparative Politics 8 (October, 1975): 152–65, also suggested this possibility.

27. Eisenstadt, Transformation, 505; for a critique of Eisenstadt that calls for a more pluralistic paradigm of Israeli society, see Ian S. Lustick, “The Voice of a Sociologist; the Task of an Historian; the Limits of a Paradigm,” in Books on Israel, ed. Ian S. Lustick (State University of New York Press, 1988), 10. A contemporary study that focuses largely on the breakdown of consensus is Peter Grose, A Changing Israel (Vintage Books, 1985).

28. See the comparison in John L. Sullivan, Michal Shamir, Patrick Walsh, and Nigel S. Roberts, Political Tolerance in Context: Support for Unpopular Minorities in Israel, New Zealand, and the United States (Westview Press, 1985), 137–38; see also Itzhak Galnoor, “Israeli Democracy in Transition,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 5 (1989): 142–43.

29. Emanuel Gutmann, “Parliamentary Elites: Israel,” in Electoral Politics in the Middle East: Issues, Voters and Elites, ed. Jacob M. Landau, Ergun Ozbudun, and Frank Tachau (Croom Helm, 1980), 294. See also Yaniv and Pascal, “Doves, Hawks,” 260–67.

30. Asher Arian, “The Passing of Dominance,” Jerusalem Quarterly 5 (Fall 1977): 26–27.

31. In a Modi’in Ezrachi poll in January 1990, 75.7 percent of the respondents said they were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the National Unity Government (data supplied to author).

32. Ofra Seliktar, New Zionism and the Foreign Policy System of Israel (Southern Illinois University Press, 1986); Ilan Peleg, Begin’s Foreign Policy, 1977–1983: Israel’s Move to the Right (Greenwood Press, 1987); for a fuller picture of Begin’s thinking, see his own account: Begin, The Revolt (Henry Schuman, 1951); and also Sasson Sofer, Begin: An Anatomy of Leadership (Basil Blackwell, 1988).

33. Charles Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State (University of California Press, 1983); Aronoff, “Political Polarization: Contradictory Interpretations of Israeli Reality,” in Cross-Currents in Israeli Culture and Politics, ed. Myron J. Aronoff (Transaction Books, 1984), 8, and idem, Israeli Visions, 62.

34. Amnon Rubinstein, The Zionist Dream Revisited (Schocken Books, 1984), 88.

35. Kimmerling, “Between the Primordial and Civil Definitions,” 266–69, 272, 276; Charles S. Liebman, “Conceptions of ‘State of Israel’ in Israeli Society” (in Hebrew), Medina, Mimshal, V’yahasim Benle’umiim [State, Government, and International Relations], no. 30 (Winter 1989): 51–60; Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Jewish Civilization: The Jewish Historical Experience in a Comparative Perspective (State University of New York Press, 1992), 200–201, 214, 223.

36. Aronoff, Israeli Visions, 70, 73, 85–86; Shafir, “Ideological Politics,” 55–56. See also chapter 10.

37. Kimmerling, “Between the Primordial and Civil Definitions,” 271.

38. Similar evaluations can be found in Arnold Lewis, “Ethnic Politics,” 32, 33, 35; Aronoff, Israeli Visions, 30, 108; and Wolffsohn, Israel, 155.

39. Medding, Founding of Israeli Democracy, 229; see also Galnoor, “Israeli Democracy,” 144–45; and Nathan Yanai, “Ben-Gurion’s Concept of Mamlachtiut and the Forming Reality of the State of Israel,” Jewish Political Studies Review 1 (Spring 1989): 160.

40. Yosef Goell, “Likud Incompetents Are Taking Us Back to the Shtetl,” Jerusalem Post International Edition, 11 January 1992. Goell recalls the 1950s comment of a visiting professor that the best way to understand Israeli politics “was to first get a good understanding of how a typical synagogue was run in the ‘the Old Country’ of Eastern Europe or in the large Jewish immigrant centers in the U.S.”

41. Yair Zalmanovitch, “The Struggle over the Determination of Israeli Health Policy” (in Hebrew), paper presented at the annual meeting of the Israel Political Science Association, May 1988.

42. Itzhak Galnoor, Steering the Polity: Communication and Politics in Israel (Sage, 1982), 375; on “hyper-participation” see Sam Lehman-Wilzig, “Demoskraty in the Mega-Polis: Hyper-Participation in the Post-Industrial Age,” in The Future of Politics: Governance, Movements, and World Order, ed. William Page (St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 221–29.

43. Sam Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People, Bottle-Necked System: The Evolution and Roots of Israeli Public Protest, 1949–1986 (Indiana University Press, 1990), 27–45.

44. Sam Lehman-Wilzig, “Conflict as Communication—Public Protest in Israel, 1950–1982,” in, Conflict and Consensus in Jewish Political Life, ed. Stuart A. Cohen and Eliezer Don-Yehiya (Bar-Ilan University Press, 1986), 128–29.

45. Wolfsfeld, The Politics of Provocation: Participation and Protest in Israel (State University of New York Press, 1988), 25. The Israeli data is from a survey conducted in 1984, while data on other countries is from S. M. Barnes and M. Kaase, eds., Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (Sage, 1979).

46. Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People, 78 (emphasis in the original).

47. First figure from Emanuel Gutmann, “Citizen Participation in Political Life: Israel,” International Social Science Journal 12 (1960): 55, cited in Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People, 97; other figures from Asher Arian, Politics in Israel: The Second Generation, rev. ed. (Chatham House, 1989), 118.

48. Wolfsfeld, Politics of Provocation, 14, 16.

49. Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People, 108–10; Wolfsfeld, Politics of Provocation, 13–16.

50. Ibid., 164.

51. Daniel Elazar, Israel: Building a New Society (Indiana University Press, 1986), 4, 85–86, 91, 100–101, 238–39; Ira Sharkansky, What Makes Israel Tick: How Domestic Policy-Makers Cope with Constraints (Nelson-Hall, 1985), 29.

52. The above events were reported in Ma’ariv and Yediot Ahronot (Israel’s popular Hebrew-language daily newspapers) during the week of 29 May 4 June 1989.

53. For an account of private networks in various areas, see Sam Lehman-Wilzig, Wildfire: Grassroots Protest in Israel in the Post-Socialist Era (State University of New York Press, 1992), esp. 163; on the size of Israel’s estimated “black economy,” judged to be substantially larger than that of other developed states, see Ben-Zion Zilberfarb, “Estimates of the Black Economy in Israel and Overseas” (in Hebrew), Riv’on Le’Kalkala, no. 122 (October 1984): 320–22; on the size of private security forces see Nachman Ben-Yehuda, “The Social Meaning of Alternative Systems: Some Exploratory Notes,” in The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers, ed. Baruch Kimmerling (State University of New York Press, 1989), 157–58; on a haredi patrol in Kiryat Sanz, Jerusalem, see Richard Primus, “On Your Walls” (in Hebrew), Ma’ariv, 6 August 1991.

54. Ehud Sprinzak, Every Man Whatsoever Is Right in His Own Eyes—Illegalism in Israeli Society (in Hebrew)(Sifriat Po’alim, 1986), 148.

55. Ibid., 14, 58–69, 93–119.

56. Menachem Hofnung, Israel—Security Needs vs. the Rule of Law (in Hebrew) (Nevo, 1991), 198.

57. Sullivan et al., Political Tolerance, 19.

58. Amos Oz, In the Land of Israel (The Hogarth Press, 1983), 151.

59. Aronof, Israeli Visions, 64; see also 13, 43, 124–25; Lilly Weissbrod, “Protest and Dissidence in Israel,” in Cross-Currents in Israeli Culture and Politics, ed. Myron J. Aronoff (Transaction Books, 1984), 53–54, 66–67.

60. Avraham Diskin, Elections and Voters in Israel (Praeger, 1991), 145–46.

61. Aronof, “Political Polarization,” 11; Alan S. Zuckerman, Hannah Herzog, and Michal Shamir, “The Party’s Just Begun: Herut Activists in Power and after Begin,” in Israel after Begin, ed. Gregory S. Mahler (State University of New York Press, 1990), 235–55. Zuckerman, Herzog, and Shamir document the transition in Herut, with illuminating quotations from party veterans on the loss of ideological commitment.

62. For discussion of this point, see Daniel Elazar, Israel: Building a New Society (Indiana University Press, 1986), 185–206.

63. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Israeli Society (Basic Books, 1967), 211–14.

64. Yoram Ben-Porath, “Introduction,” in The Israeli Economy: Maturing through Crises, ed. Yoram Ben-Porath (Harvard University Press, 1986), 1; Eitan Berglas, “Defense and the Economy: The Israeli Experience,” Discussion Paper No. 83.01 (The Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel, 1983), 41–43; idem, “Defense and the Economy,” in Israeli Economy: Maturing through Crises, ed. Yoram BenPorath (Harvard University Press, 1986), 186–87; Wolffsohn, Israel, 248–55.

65. Berglas, Defense and the Economy, 176; Merrill Lynch, The Israeli Economy (Merrill Lynch & Co., Global Securities Research and Economics Group, International Economics Department, 1994), 18.

66. Gur Ofer, “Public Spending on Civilian Services,” in Israeli Economy: Maturing through Crises, ed. Yoram Ben-Porath (Harvard University Press, 1986), 192–93, 199; Charles Lewis Taylor and David A. Jodice, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (Yale University Press, 1983), 28–30.

67. Horowitz and Lissak, Trouble in Utopia, 250–257.

68. Schweizer, Israel, 111; Ofer, “Public Spending,” 208.

69. Ben-Porat, “Introduction,” 18.

70. Ofer, “Public Spending,” 194.

71. Statistical Abstract of Israel for years covered, reported in Merrill Lynch, Israeli Economy, 5.

72. United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 1979–1980, reported in Sharkansky, What Makes Israel Tick, 19.

73. See the discussion in Lehman-Wilzig, Wildfire, 69–70.

74. Bank of Israel, Annual Report (Israel Information Service, 1992; INTERNET).

75. Ibid. On developments during the 1980s see also Asaf Razin and Efraim Sadka, The Economy of Israel: Malaise and Promise (University of Chicago Press, 1994).

76. Israel Ministry of Finance (Israel Information Service; INTERNET).

77. Shmuel Eisenstadt, Tradition, Change, and Modernity (John Wiley and Sons, 1973), 3–21; see also Karl Deutsch, “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review 55 (September 1961): 17–24; Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (The Free Press, 1958).

78. Eisenstadt, Tradition, Change, 23–25.

79. Ibid., 24.

80. Diskin, Elections and Voters, 142; Wolffsohn, Israel, 26.

81. Shulamit Har Even, “Israeli Democracy: The Current Picture” (in Hebrew), Yediot Ahronot, 12 October 1986; Alex Radian, “The Policy Formation—Electoral Economic Cycle 1955–1981,” in The Roots of Begin’s Success, ed. Abraham Diskin, Dan Caspi, and Emanuel Gutmann (Croom Helm and St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 239.

82. Steven A. Hoffman, “Candidate Selection in Israel’s Parliament: The Realities of Change,” Middle East Journal 34 (1980): 157; Diskin, Elections and Voters, 164–65; Myron J. Aronoff, “Better Late than Never: Democratization in the Labor Party,” in Israel after Begin, ed. Gregory S. Mahler (State University of New York Press, 1990), 257–71.

83. Wolffsohn, Israel, 185–86, 213–15.

84. David Makovsky, “Poisonous Politics Are Becoming Passé,” Jerusalem Post International Edition, 11 January 1992; Aronoff, Israeli Visions, xxi, 102.

85. Sprinzak, Every Man Whatsoever, 148–53, 159–74; Hofnung, Israel—Security Needs, 219, 223–24.

86. Martin Edelman, Courts, Politics, and Culture in Israel (University Press of Virginia, 1994), 6, 133; Albert Blaustein and Gisbert Flanz, eds., Constitutions of the Countries of the World, rev. ed. (Oceana Publications, 1992). The four nondemocratic countries are Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

87. For a good discussion of Israel’s Basic Laws see Susan Hattis Rolef, ed., Political Dictionary of the State of Israel (Jerusalem Publishing House, 1993), 54–56, 356.

88. Elazar, Israel: Building a New Society, 189–90; see also Edelman, Courts, Politics, and Culture, whose central thesis is that the Israeli court system must be understood in relation to the underlying political culture.

89. Elazar, Israel: Building a New Society, esp. 5, 119.

90. Ibid., 32, 42, 46; Edelman, “The Judicialization of Politics,” International Political Science Review 15 (April 1994): 177–86.

91. Elazar, Israel: Building a New Society, 9 ff.; Samuel Sager, The Parliamentary System of Israel (Syracuse University Press, 1985), 41.

92. Daniel Friedmann, The Effect of Foreign Law on the Law of Israel (Israel Law Review Association, 1975), 119–20; Sager, Parliamentary System, 222–25.

93. Itzhak Galnoor, “Secrecy,” in Government Secrecy in Democracies, ed. Itzhak Galnoor (Harper and Row, 1977), 195; Daniel Shimshoni, Israeli Democracy: The Middle of the Journey (The Free Press, 1982), 91–93.

94. Amnon Rubinstein, The Constitutional Law of the State of Israel (in Hebrew) (Schocken, 1980), 220; see analysis of law, 220–23. Also, Simon Shetreet, “A Contemporary Model of Emergency Detention Law: An Assessment of the Israeli Law,” Israel Yearbook on Human Rights 14 (1984), esp. 186; and Hans Klinghoffer, “Preventive Detention for Reasons of Security” (in Hebrew), Mishpatim 11 (1981): 286–89.

95. Shetreet, “A Contemporary Model,” 218–19.

96. Niall MacDermot, “Draft Intervention on Administrative Detention to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights,” ICJ Newsletter, no. 24 (January/March 1985): 53.

97. Mordechai Mironi, Return-to-Work Orders: Government Intervention in Labor Disputes through Emergency Regulations and Work Injunctions (in Hebrew)(The Institute for Social and Labor Research, University of Tel Aviv, 1983), 17–18; also, Kovetz Hatakanot for the years involved.

98. The emergency regulations were published in the Israel press on 8 July 1985; see, for example, Ma’ariv and Yediot Ahronot of that date. The interview with the former justice minister, Haim Tsadok, is in Davar, 8 July 1985.

99. Rubinstein, Constitutional Law, 219.

100. Aronoff, Israeli Visions, xix; see also xxi, 37–38, 155.

101. Ibid., 133.

102. Ibid., 133–35.

103. Kimmerling, “Between the Primordial and Civil Definitions,” 273, 277.

104. Yoav Peled, “Retreat from Modernity: The Ascendance of Jewish Nationalism in the Jewish State,” paper presented at the annual meeting, American Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 30–September 2, 1990; Wolffsohn, Israel, 176; Ilan Peleg, “The Peace Process and Israel’s Political Culture: A Kulturkampf in the Making,” paper presented at annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 1–4, 1995; Joseph Agassi, Religion and Nationality: Towards an Israeli National Identity (in Hebrew)(Papyrus, Tel Aviv University, 1984); Boas Evron, Jewish State or Israeli Nation? (Indiana University Press, 1995).

105. Aronoff, Israeli Visions, 109–11, 114.