Rock & Order Israel today

In the beginning, important parts of Israeli society developed a patriotic love for Russia.

Small and dry Israel - so!

While Russia is huge and embraces all.

Not only the Volga but also the Dnieper steppe, across Ukraine, were considered part of the Russian Communist package.

Ukrainian soil, Budyoni cavalry.

Then, in a fairly quick process, little Srulik sought a hug from the American cowboy.

There is debate as to who is the president who emotionally transferred Israeli culture to American coupling.

Ron Meyberg claimed in an email he sent from the house he had just sold in Maine that it was under President Jimmy Carter.

Once he raised the point, I realized that there is justice in leaders giving impetus to the process, even one that is not political or strategic.

This happened largely with the rise of John F. Kennedy to the presidency, having won a dramatic election in November 1960.

Yigal Ravid remembers his father as a child, "Walt Menach", the man of the world, takes to the streets, returns with an issue of Time magazine, and places it on the table in their Tel Aviv apartment.

"He started crying. It was the first time, maybe the only one, that I saw him with tears. He was not a man who externalizes emotions, and here I saw tears coming down his face," he said in a phone call from his home in Los Angeles.

This was immediately after the Kennedy assassination.

Disappointment film

The Israeli connection to America is far beyond political, security or technological relations.

It has a lot of illusion and addiction.

One can philosophize about the origins of the cultural dynamics that created this relationship.

But following her, after her development, is fascinating and surprising.

It was a relationship of attraction-rejection rather than love.

Not a few years ago, I heard from Hillel Triester, a film researcher who himself went through a deep personal identity crisis, how an Eretz Israel film, produced before the establishment of the state and called "The Tear of Great Comfort", was received among fans of the Jewish community in Los Angeles.

The film was shot at a school in Mishmar HaEmek and depicted a Holocaust survivor girl being accepted by a group on a kibbutz.

Anyone who thought that the film would sell the Zionist cause, the kibbutz, and the country on the way to Jewish and non-Jewish friends in America was disappointed.

These reacted reluctantly to the film and saw it, perhaps from the reflections of their hearts, as communist propaganda.

Meyberg, in the days of "News" // Photo: Moshe Shai,

Norman Podhorz, when he visited Israel as a young man in the early 1950s, did not like what he saw here.

Needless to say, over the years, Podhorz, one of the most influential intellectuals in America for decades, has become an ardent supporter of Israel.

When asked at a Jerusalem party what to do about "conservatism in Israel," Norman did not hesitate for a moment.

"Speak Zionism, speak Zionism!"

He said in Hebrew with a Jewish-American accent.

Usually think of "Exodus."

The tremendous film production that hit screens in 1960 and created a wave of propaganda momentum in favor of Zionism.

This momentum lasted only about a decade.

"Exodus," directed by the legendary Otto Preminger, was an extraction of a cultural-political process that began with the establishment of the state.

Ron Meyberg: "I grew up in the Francophile era in Israeli culture, but I did not connect with his land, Nino Ferrer or whatever they were called. Yossi Banai, chansons and accordion were the center - and we wanted guitars"

This Zionist bomb was actually prepared by progressive liberal artists.

Mostly Dalton Trumbo, a communist who wrote the ultimate Zionist epic.

The film, by the way, is not as simplistic as they made it out to be;

It has a critique that seems completely overt today: it is the character of the liberal American Kitty Fremont (Yves Marie Saint) who wants to volunteer for the good of the world and chooses to adopt a Jewish refugee girl who looks as Aryan as possible, with blond hair and blue eyes.

She finds her in a camp in Cyprus and tries to convince the Danish Jewish blonde, named Karen Hansen, to come with her to America.

The blue-eyed Paul Newman, who was already politically identified as a member of the left wing of the Democratic Party, played the character of the Sabra hero, whose name only today can make a dent: Ari Ben Canaan.

The Exodus is ultimately the result of a forgotten development: at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel, an election campaign was held in the United States, and the left-wing party, led by Henry Wallace, was also the most pro-Zionist and pro-Israel. From the Kremlin.The pro-Zionist progressive momentum lasted until "Exodus" until 1967.

The process began with a very interesting film, "Making the Flames" starring Kirk Douglas, from 1953. In a study on Hollywood relations with Israel ("Making the Flames in the Galilee"), Giora Goodman from Kinneret College and Tony Show write that "The Making of the Flames" represents a special period in my relationship "Hollywood with Israel, a time when a group of progressive political artists set themselves the goal of using cinema as a means of making Americans accessible to Zionism. It was a left-wing Zionism rooted in kibbutz life."

Paul Newman, from "Exodus" (1960),

Today's viewer does not find much sympathy for Israel, which receives refugees and survivors in the 1950s.

Holocaust survivors are perceived as a complicated creature, mentally ill, threatening and persecuted at the same time.

The immigrant camp where Hans, the master of clowns, magic and juggling, was absorbed, is for some reason reminiscent of a concentration camp;

Healing and healing for the soul of the wandering Jew, persecuted and fleeing his homeland, is finally found only in the kibbutz.

The heroic "Exodus" also developed the motif of rural settlement in the Galilee, preferably as close as possible to the border, as a virtue for the redemption of the soul of the Jew.

Exodus, Government Notes

This approach is in stark contrast to the statement of the late Amos Keinan, that Gary Cooper influenced the warriors of 1947 more than Herzl and all the ancestors of the Yishuv and Zionism. 1960. In early '61, Newman wrote to Teddy Kollek who became his friend: "It (the film) will be like the book - not necessarily accurate but excellent propaganda."

The production of "Exodus" became a major cultural-political event, which later took on the dimensions of a political-diplomatic-security crisis.

In another of his articles, "Operation Exodus," Giora Goodman details the emergency recruitment in the Information Department, how to direct the writing of the book and then the script by the writer Leon Yuris.

The draft of the book reached Israeli sources in Los Angeles, and the "information" man Moshe Leshem reported that "Yuris received a significant number of 'corrections' in the paragraphs in which Yuris sought to glorify the role of the retiring organization in the war against the British and at the same time - image erosion The defense.

"He was willing to accept my demands whenever known actions of the Jewish authorities were presented in a rather negative light," Leshem reported.

When the filming was organized, the cooperation of the British, who still own it in Cyprus, was required.

The issue reached as far as Lord Mountbatten, the Secretary of Defense in the British Government.

The British pressured to improve their image no less than the Israelis.

In Israel, all senior government ministers, including Golda, Pinchas Sapir, the chief of staff, and Ben-Gurion himself, dealt with the handling and attempts at editing and censorship.

Producer and director Otto Preminger turned "Exodus" into a historic event in Hollywood history when he recruited two screenwriters who were symbols of the "blacklist" of McCarthyism.

He removed Leon Yuris from the task of adapting his book into a screenplay, and in his place brought in Albert Meltz, one of the leaders of the Communists in the Screenwriters' Union, best known as one of the "Teen of Hollywood."

Meltz wrote an impossible script and was replaced this time by Dalton Tramabo, who was convinced of the necessity of the project because of the antisemitic wave in the world.

But the most surprising thing is that Israeli Arabs initially welcomed the production with open arms, of course while ensuring employment and appropriate payments, but later revolted against their presentation in the script.

It turns out that no military administration and Zionist repression there have prevented prominent leaders, such as Yosef Khamis and Saif a-Din Zoabi, from suing the omission of passages in which the Arabs were portrayed negatively.

The production cars in the Nazareth and Kfar Kana area were stoned.

Things heated up.

The violent Arab lobby was as usual much more effective than all the meetings in which the elders of Zion sat and plotted how to censor the Irgun's part in the struggle and present the Arabs as enemies of advanced humanity.

There were nights in Queens

In the dusty 1950s, which included locust attacks and Nahal holdings, the duo Elka and Aviva stood out as part of the pioneering landscape. There was nothing more Canaanite, more rooted, more deserted, rhythmic and rough than this duo. Accompanied by a drumming on Aviva's bitter drum in a masquerade dress, and passages in which Elka marveled at playing his legendary wooden flute.

Precisely this duo, whose wind and wadding caressed the baritone's mighty mustache and his wife's scattered hair, began his career in New York.

It sounds almost like one of the genre films of Forbidden Love in Escape from the Cartoonist and menacing town.

Eelka, Hillel Raveh, was 12 years older than Aviva.

They met when she was 17, you can do the math.

And these are the 1940s, on the eve of the War of Independence.

She runs away from her parents, they get married and travel to America.

Even then, America was seen as "the land of unlimited possibilities."

An article in "This World" reported that they performed in New York at a club called "Habibi".

They returned in 1951 and were described as a pair of famous Israeli artists.

"They simply sang Israeli songs," and recorded records in the United States.

They were not alone.

Shoshana Damari, Geula Gil, Ran and Naama did a similar route.

The stellar phenomena and glamorous projection of the Hollywood film industry created the profound effects on the company, beyond the government offices that were hungry for the US dollar that came along with the production and photography equipment.

This equipment, which came with the production of Exodus, remained in Israel.

It formed the basis for the development of the modern Israeli film industry in the 1960s.

Radio and television personality Yigal Ravid's description of President Kennedy tells the story of experiential depth.

Unlike his predecessors, Truman and Eisenhower, who were distant figures of a world superpower, Kennedy connected with the stellar effect of Hollywood cinema.

The treatment of him was not rational and cold.

The charisma of the handsome president has won regardless of his positions and actual actions.

Every child in Israel knew that in the Gog and Magog war, Kennedy had defeated his hated, anti-television rival, Richard Nixon.

It was permissible to shed a tear over Kennedy's assassination.

Kennedy carries his daughter, Caroline, during one of the breaks from the presidential campaign (1960),

The assassination dug into Ravid's consciousness.

More than his expertise in assassination, his very addiction to the subject is interesting.

"My sister, who is a doctor of education, says there is a mental interest here," says Ravid.

Some past senior journalists have studied the profession at American universities.

Ravid belongs to a generation of journalists who have already been dealt with by American bodies, including the State Department, and of course such and such funds.

During his studies in the United States in 1988, he wrote a research paper on the assassination of Kennedy. The Americans learned from the Israelis of the 1950s: then screenwriters, actors and directors in Hollywood were nurtured by Israeli diplomats and government officials;

Today, there are three magnificent Israeli divas sitting in Los Angeles, who have long since left their careers behind.

These are Aliza Kashi, Geula Gil and Hedva Amrani.

Yigal Ravid dreams of gathering them together and photographing them the glorious campy trash of all time.

Srulik, an adopted child

The American wave, which became a cultural-political tsunami, began after an incubation period in which the Francophile wave ruled, in the late 1950s and 1960s.

They were all suddenly chansonniers, or the sons of Marcel Marceau and the disciples of Godard and Robert Berson;

Jean-Paul Sartre, Simon and Albert Camus delayed Philip Roth and Saul Blue.

The falcons of the Mirages may have ousted the Stalinist Migs;

But Charles de Gaulle had no competition for Kennedy.

The sharp chateau, Yoash Sidon, knew how to formulate the secret of the Frenchness that the Israelis only vaguely grasped: a French head on Muslim shoulders.

"I grew up in the Francophile era in Israeli culture. But I did not connect with his land, Nino Ferrer or whatever they were called," Ron Meyberg wrote to me, surrounded by packaging towers before leaving the house he sold.

"Yossi Banai, chansons and accordion were the center, and we wanted guitars. Sometime Israel discovered America - it's worth remembering that the first hamburger in Israel was British and not American - and then 'reputation' arose with the Likud's rise and there was a certain turn back."

So what is the Russian wave, the Francophile wave, the American wave?

Now one can even talk about the ripples of German waves.

It's a big dad's relationship with an adopted child who's already grown up, but rumor has it he's mohel water in the fuel he sells.

The adopted child is us.

We deny the rumors.

We adopt the ironic approach of an intellectual who was once the head of the information department: "What is the English information department? Department of Explanation ?!"

So we are constantly explaining to American parents the efforts.

We are not whites in the south.

We are not Belgians in the Congo.

We are not the Nazis in Buchwald.

This is when we are not justified.

Or apologize.

Or apologize.

Or warn against anti-Semitism.

"The American did not break into my life, she snuck in," Meyberg explains.

"At the most simplistic level, as a teenager I was fascinated by Woodstock's idea, the virtuosity of Jimmy Hendrix whose wonderful 'Electric Ladyland' I heard when he came out a little late. Dylan was always in the background."

This is the end of the 60's, the beginning of the 70's.

Twenty years later, we participated in a project of a special supplement on the subject of America-Israel, in the newspaper "News".

He wrote the leading article I called "The Catcher in the Sea of ​​Oats," in which he interviewed an American journalist named Al Allenberg who was in Israel.

His insights reflect the time that has passed since April 1991, but the essence remains in force: "The longer I have been here, the more I am convinced that Israel is not a Western country but a Middle Eastern one.

The impact is superficial and external, "said Allenberg." Meyberg commented that "you can call a McDavid eatery, a Broadway or Time cigarette, and a Dallas club - but the hamburger, cigarette and music will always be a pale replica of the original." "We are packaged in American clothes, but we do not touch the essence," he wrote at the time.

He recalls, perhaps nostalgically, the moments of his personal upheaval: "Jimmy Hendrix sings and plays Dylan was a game changer for me. It should be remembered that many of the American cultural products did not arrive in Israel, or arrived significantly late or were destroyed in Israeli prints. My grandfather, who was The man of the world and traveled frequently, received from me a detailed shopping list of albums and books.How did I know what I wanted? Gate of the Rollingstone Gallery of Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison and Other Losses of the Soul The feeling was that rock 'n' roll would die before I could attend.

"I have no explanatory explanations, but at the age of 16 I stopped reading books in Hebrew and read English. I realized that if I studied in America then, probably cinema, and I wanted to prepare. Reading opened up a broader understanding of the American way of life and ethos, And an unselective adoption of style but not life. "

Meyberg, who lives in the United States and is tired of Israel, has been in demand recently.

An Israeli journalist with senior ranks on his shoulder visited him shortly before I contacted him.

He is participating in some big media project whose essence we do not know.

"There is no doubt that music played a major part, but there was music that dragged you to the center of the discussion," he wrote to me.

"Dylan, the band, Southern Rock, Haddad, Otis Reading, Artha and others - Elvis did not take us there. "America that interested us ... mostly we did not know the lyrics. I remember volunteers commenting on the kibbutz I invent and I wanted to die ashamed."

Leonard Cohen's outing to the Yom Kippur War, a night in a girls' residence in Sharm el-Sheikh at the Air Force base and patrols at the front headquarters, to this day carry a trail of mentions, memoirs, articles and books;

More than armored battalions destroyed along with most of their fighters in the same sectors.

Oh yes.

"The Department of Explanation".

The uncles and natives

As Adam Baruch's deputy, Meyberg stood at the forefront of the Americanization that "reputation" led.

"It was two years after it was also difficult in Israel to deny the absorption of the California Hotel 1976, and to a certain extent 'Reputation' must apologize for not being able to put important American issues at the center of the discussion but being dragged in favor of soft margins."

Meyberg insists that "the great exposure to America was during the tenure of Jimmy Carter, a president whom Israel detested vigorously even without which there would be no peace with Egypt."

In the same '91 'issue of April '91, the late Meron Benvenisti wrote the much more understandable political diagnoses today: "Our truth (much more important) is the New York Times' op-ed readers and not Haaretz readers;

Our significant audience gathers at the Temple of Peace House in Baltimore and Ninth-Second-Way.

What is a feedback and challenge class versus breakfast at Brookings Institute?

Even when our sabbatical year was over and we were back here, we eagerly awaited the visit of Howard from the Wexler Foundation, Bob from the Ford Foundation, and Jacob from Friends-of-Peace-Now.

"It is very important what they think of our new project, and that they will be convinced that our position is more correct than the nonsense of Rahamim and Itzik."

At the time of writing, no one knew what the Wexner Foundation was, so the reporter and proofreader could be forgiven.

Even "our new project" is no longer exactly peace but a total takeover, including the legal world.

"American Jews are completely devoid of any critical attitude towards Israel," Uri Avnery told a Jewish-American journalist who came to collect material about the natives.

"American Jews are tolerant of living conditions in Israel that if they were encountered at home in America, they would be sent to the barricades."

By what right?

"American Jews paid for Israel. They built it."

This was said in 1972.

Three major journalists, Ruth Bondi, her husband Rafael Bashan and Tommy Lapid, warned the American journalist that Uri Avnery is a dangerous man.

This is how Prof. Shimon Shamir explained: "He is trying to dilute the Jewish religion."

50 years later, Tommy Lapid's son, who is secretary of state and may even be prime minister, is in a worse position than Avnery.

But there was something Elenberg asked, when American Jews were not yet drunk on their moral superiority over the natives: "Israel is a country with culture but not civilized ... You know how wonderful and wonderful it is in a country where so many young people roam the streets with no automatic weapons. "Do not fortify yourself on the roof of a house and shoot passers-by for unrequited love? Do you understand that if children in America were armed with a submachine gun, no one would survive?" 

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