Becoming Israeli: National Ideals and Everyday Life in the 1950s

1 | Introducing Israel in White

Introducing Israel in White 1In February 1950, an Israeli daily newspaper published a cartoon titled “Israel—The Land of Wonders.” It showed three local symbols—a camel, a cactus, and a palm tree—all draped in snow.1 The wondrous juxtaposition depicted in the cartoon referred to the days during the previous week when Israel, characterized by a subtropical Mediterranean climate, was covered in snow. Normally January, the coldest month of the year, witnessed an average temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit in Tel Aviv, located in the country’s coastal plain, and 47 degrees in Jerusalem, located in the eastern mountain region.2 Snow fell occasionally, during particularly cold winters, in the latter region, as well as in the northern mountain region of the upper Galilee, but the snow of 1950 was exceptional: it fell for a number of days and not only in the higher, cooler areas, but all over the country, even, albeit lightly, in parts of the southern Negev desert. During three days in February, temperatures all over Israel broke the known record after eightyfive years of meteorological measurements (at one point as low as −8.6 degrees ),3 a record that has not been broken since. Unsurprisingly, the weather—ordinarily a marginal topic in Israeli newspapers —filled front pages, as reporters and journalists described excitedly the effects of snow in the towns and the countryside.4 Yet beyond the rarity of the specific event, its portrayal in the local media discloses much about the general political, demographic, economic, social, and cultural conditions in 1950s Israel. Located geographically in the Middle East, Israel was politically and economically isolated from its Arab neighbors. During 1949 Israel signed ceasefire agreements with the Arab states, but the war’s end did not bring about peace, and security remained a central and costly national concern. Israelis were terrified by constant infiltrations and by the armament of the neighboring Arab states; they were concerned over the unsupportive policy of the superpowers and the United Nations, and uncertain about the state’s ability to 2 ■ b e c o m i n g i s r a e l i survive for long. Not until after the Sinai campaign would Israelis acquire a new sense of security, resistance, confidence, and power.5 Thus, the snow of February 1950 fell all over the conflicted Middle East. Israeli newspapers reported about the cold spell’s effect not only on Israel but also on Egypt and key cities, cut off by the snow, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan.6 Nor were the Palestinian war refugees ignored by the Israeli media, with several newspapers mentioning their plight. They quoted Arab sources regarding sixty-two people, mostly children, who died in the refugee camps, and related the suffering of other refugees in the Arab states, unprotected from the harsh cold in their provisional tents and shacks.7 Whereas the Palestinian refugees, some of whom fled and others of whom were deported during the war, were confident of their eventual repatriation following the hostilities, Israel deemed the Arab League responsible for the refugees’ fate and expected the Arab governments to resettle them in their countries.8 Hence, an Israeli newspaper reporting about the distress of the An extraordinary sight in Israel’s coastal plain: orange groves in the snow. National Photo Collection (Government Press Office), d235‑084. Photo by David Eldan. Introducing Israel in White ■ 3 refugees in Jordan, and about the Arab states’ plea through the Red Cross for international help, added, “Various propagandists and politicians try to exploit the disaster for inciting against Israel, and repeatedly raise the problem of the Arab refugees in order to gain political capital.”9 Under international pressure Israel consented to some “family unifications,” and around thirty thousand Palestinian refugees were allowed to gradually cross the border and join their families in Israel.10 In February 1950, however, a scheduled border crossing was delayed and postponed because some of the hundred appointed returnees were stuck on the snow-blocked roads and did not reach the crossing point in East Jerusalem.11 The Arab community of Palestine, numbering about 1.3 million in 1947 (800,000 of them in the area that would become Israel), was dispersed, dwindled, and devastated by the 1948 war. About 160,000 non-Jews (mainly Muslim Arabs, alongside Druze and various Christian minorities), 15 percent of them internal refugees, remained in the State of Israel...