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The recession coincided with a national yearning by the Israelis to settle down and enjoy some of the fruits of their labors. They wanted cars, television sets and automatic washers. For several years, they had been moving out of the spartan kibbutzim and into the cities; now, from down on the farms came a collective female chorus demanding that beauty salons, staffed by trained beauticians, become a permanent part of kibbutzim equipment. Some kibbutzim posted signs to advise passing tourists that their restaurants honored Diners' Club credit cards. As was bound to happen, some of the bloom was beginning to fade from the Jewish revolution. The Israelis wanted to live a little.
Terrorist Raids. The combination of fading zeal and falling economy—although neither has yet reached alarming proportions—was bound to produce discontent. It also produced the beginnings of disillusionment. Last year, 11,000 Jews pulled up stakes and moved away from Israel—almost as many as came into the country. Some of them were dispirited by the steadily increasing level of terrorist raids across Israel's borders. A disturbingly high proportion of the departing emigrants was the professional men, managers and technicians who had engineered the Israeli economic miracle. In some cases, they returned to the countries of their birth. In others, they struck out for new lands of opportunity, most notably Canada and the U.S.
By the end of last year, the exodus had become something of a national scandal. Said Premier Eshkol: "We have been able to build and maintain the State of Israel by virtue of the quality of its citizens. But this qualitative superiority is today in danger. The pioneer of our day, the builder of the land, devoted, knowledgeable, diligent—where is he to come from?"
In the 53 years since he climbed off a tramp steamer at Jaffa (wearing his brass-buttoned school uniform and carrying a change of clothes in a sack), Levi Eshkol has been active in almost every part of the development of the Jewish state. He helped found a kibbutz (Degania B) in a malaria swamp on the Sea of Galilee and was a delegate to the founding conference of Histadrut, Israel's powerful labor organization, which now controls some 47% of the economy. A congenial man who speaks six languages (Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Russian, English and French), he was a frequent shaliah (emissary) on fund-raising tours of Europe. When Hitler came to power, he spent three years in Berlin on a double mission: getting Jews out of Germany and smuggling arms to the underground Jewish army back home.