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Announcement of the arrests created a furor in Israel. Angry neighbors scrawled "Spy" on Vered's front door and threatened to burn down Kupfer's house. Conservative Knesset Member Shmuel Tamir turned the incident against members of the coalition government who have been urging that Israel return some of the occupied territories in exchange for peace with the Arabs. Said Tamir: "Israeli youth hears daily from persons in high office that Jewish settlement [of occupied territories] is oppressive colonialism. Such preaching finally pushed young people into opposing the 'oppressors.' " Left-wing spokesmen retorted that Israeli youth had become disenchanted with a hard-line policy that leaves the Middle East suspended indefinitely between all-out war and real peace.
Israel has long had a radical movement, if a tiny one; probably no more than a thousand people belong at the present time. The biggest group, SIAH (a Hebrew acronym for New Israeli Left), is in favor of both Arab and Jewish states in what once was Palestine and is now Israel and the occupied territories. Matzpen, which has never had more than a hundred members, also believes in restoring Arab rights to at least part of Palestine. The spy arrests dramatized the existence of an element on the left that is opposed to the very existence of Israel. Editor Uri Avneri, who sits in the Knesset as leader of the radical reformist New Force Party, worries that more young Israelis might be drawn to this extreme view. "We are entering a dangerous period," he says, "partly because we have a Prime Minister who does not even recognize that there is a problem. She has lost all contact with young people."
Avneri's cut was unfair as well as unkind. The problem is larger than one aging (74) grandmother's inability to identify with youth. Without even realizing the fact, Israel in the course of 25 years has evolved from a pioneer state into an established society, and like establishments everywhere, it is subject to increasingly bold attacks by the disconnected and the disenchanted.