Israeli Orientation Shifting Westward

The vision of Israel’s Zionist founders was a return by Jews from around the world, particularly from Europe, to the land that had been their home centuries before.

For years Israelis argued that they were an inseparable part of the Middle East with an unchallengeable right to be here, because their claim went back more than five millennia.

To fit into the region, many Israelis learned Arabic, studied the politics, economies and societies of their neighbors and insisted on an Israeli seat in the Middle East group in almost every international body.

“I was raised to think of myself as a Jew, an Israeli and a Zionist, first of all, but also a man of the region, of the Middle East,” said Dov Segev, 39, an agronomist. “To my parents, who came from Poland, it made no sense to return to Israel but then live as if we were still in Pinsk.”

Quietly, however, the Israeli national consciousness has shifted, and most Israelis now seem to see themselves not as Middle Easterners but as Westerners and their country in many ways as an extension of Europe.

Israeli diplomats are seeking admission to the West European group at the United Nations, newspapers carry far more news from Europe than the Middle East and businessmen are pressing for greater trade with the European Community rather than access to Arab markets.

“Ten years ago, the big vacation thing was Egypt--our largest neighbor was finally open to us,” said Dorit Shapiro, a Tel Aviv travel agent. “Today, people want Europe or America--a quarter of the country goes there each year.”

“Our generation had a look around the region,” Segev said, and “we found that we do not have that much in common with our neighbors besides geography and, unfortunately, a claim to the same land.

“Israel is a modern industrial democracy, where theirs have yet to emerge from dictatorships and autocracy. Our economy is deep into high tech, theirs are struggling to get into basic manufacturing. Socially, we live like Europeans . . . and our literature, music and theater reflect European culture.”

Russian immigrants, arriving at the rate of 8,000 a month, are rapidly reinforcing the European orientation--just as the heavy influx of Jews from across the Middle East and North Africa strengthened those ties in the 1960s and ‘70s.

“I didn’t leave Leningrad to live in Damascus,” said Mikhail Milshtein, a computer designer. “To my mind, Israel is a European country that happens to be in the Middle East.”

Yochanan Bein, a deputy director general at the Foreign Ministry, acknowledged that his country should belong, along with most of its Arab neighbors, to the Asian regional groupings at the United Nations and in other world bodies, but noted that hostility has often kept it out.

“We are a country molded to Western democracy,” Bein said, arguing that Israel finds commonality with Western Europe, the United States and countries such as Australia and Canada. “We belong with them.”

Jacob A. Frenkel, governor of the Bank of Israel, went further as he argued Israel’s case for membership in the European Community. “The structure of our economy, our income level, the type of industries we have are European,” he told journalists. “Israel, in fact, is part of Europe.”

This is exactly the charge, however, that many Arabs level at Israel, describing it as a European implant, another “Crusader kingdom” that will disappear in time.

“Had the Arabs accepted us, things probably would have been different,” Segev said. “But the relentless pressures against us have shifted our orientation.”