Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons (and Daughters)

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bMarx to the contrary, is not created by the rural numb and bdumb. This is true in even advanced countries, and it is a hun- bdred times truer in societies in which backward, conservative, bfeudal members of rural areas are suddenly thrown into the bopen, liberal, modern world of the city. When the Arab was bexclusively an agricultural worker, he remained in his village. bMornings he awoke in his village; during the day he worked in bhis village; and as the sun set, he slept in his village. His world bwas circumscribed by it, his thoughts and actions molded by it band its hamulla heads. No agitator showed his head there for fear bof losing it, and the ignorant Israeli Arab of 1948 had his wife b(or wives), his children, his sheep, his field, his religion. Those, bfor him, were all that he needed, and he fully expected that his bson would follow his life-style exactly, just as he had followed his bfather’s, who had followed his father’s.

bBut Israeli society could not be kept away. The growth of burban industry called for hands, laborers. The pay offered was bfar better than what might have been earned in the village, and bgradually—and then not so gradually—the Arab began to leave beach morning to work in Tel Aviv or Hadera or Haifa or bNetanya. Today, well over 50 percent of Israel’s Arabs work in btowns—Jewish towns and cities. They see a different life-style, bone that is quicker, more exciting. They see the stores and the bclothing and the appliances. They see the women in short skirts band skimpy halters. The conflict between conservative and re- bligious values and modern ones begins. The traditional value bgivers, the hamulla heads, are undermined. Moreover, as the op- bportunity for employment outside the villages grows, the power band authority of the father diminishes. This is true even when bthe son is not an intellectual but merely makes more money than bhis father, thanks to a job in the Jewish city. How much more so bfor the high school graduate, for the university student, whose dis- bmay at his father’s backwardness is reinforced by contempt for bthe corruption of the hamulla heads and deep shame at the read- biness of the old generation to sell the national heritage for the bpottage of Israeli lentils.

bToday, under the impact of Israeli-induced modernization, bthere is a steady trend from the villages to the towns and cities. bProbably some 40 percent of Israel’s Arabs are now urban bdwellers. Of course, in the cities the radicalization is even more b