Shattered ideals
http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/341236979/kibbutz
Found via a link on the NY Review of Books Tumblr blog
Tony Judt tells his story of the Sixties, dominated by the idealism of a left-wing kibbutz he joined and shattered eventually by a growing feeling of separateness. Deep, and beautifully written. … with the army on the Golan Heights after the Six-Day War … I discovered that most Israelis were not transplanted latter-day agrarian socialists but young, prejudiced urban Jews who differed from their European or American counterparts chiefly in their macho, swaggering self-confidence, and access to armed weapons. Their attitude toward the recently defeated Arabs shocked me (testament to the delusions of my kibbutz years) and the insouciance with which they anticipated their future occupation and domination of Arab lands terrified me even then. When I returned to the kibbutz on which I was then living — Hakuk in the Galilee — “I felt a stranger. Within a few weeks I had packed my bags and headed home. Two years later, in 1969, I returned with my then girlfriend to see what remained. Visiting kibbutz Machanayim I encountered Uri, a fellow orange picker of earlier days. Without bothering to acknowledge me, much less trouble himself with the usual greetings, Uri passed in front of us, pausing only to demand: “What are you doing here?”) What indeed?