In Blowing Up Egged Bus, Bomber Targeted Powerful Symbol of Israel at its Best

by Gil Troy

The Montreal Gazette, June 30, 2002

"This is a blood feud between cousins," a Palestinian acquaintance recently observed. "And because we know each other so intimately, we know how to hurt each other so deeply." Last week’s suicide bombings in Jerusalem tragically confirmed this insight.

In blowing up a bus, the bomber killed 19 and devastated numerous families. But in targeting an Egged bus the murderer also struck at a powerful symbol of Israel at its best, of what Israelis call "Eretz Yisrael HaYaffa," the beautiful Israel.

The Egged bus represents the down-to-earth, communitarian, egalitarian, and democratic nature of traditional Zionist ideals. Founded as a cooperative, the Egged bus company is famous for its gruff, independent, cheeky but soft-hearted drivers and its indomitable and colorful commuters. The Egged bus evokes the Israel of yesteryear; the Israel of the kibbutz, collective farm, and the immigrant.

Thanks to the high-tech revolution, Israel in the 1990s modernized and Americanized. The Israeli middle class broadened and a high-profile, big-spending upper class emerged. The prosperity brought stability and a crisis in values, a shift from the all-for-one-and-one-for-all collective ideal to the me-me-me, mine-mine-mine individualistic ethos, from the romance of state-building to the comforts of consuming, from the hardness and humility of mass privation and constraints to the softness and extravagance of mass leisure and indulgence. In fact, some analysts believe that this American-style decadence may have misled the Palestinians into underestimating Israeli resolve and helped precipitate the current jihad against Israel.

As Israel modernized, for better and for worse, the Egged bus functioned as both time warp and spur, a throwback to harsher but simpler times, as well as a challenge not to lose some traditional ideals. As more Israelis crowded their narrow streets with bigger and fancier cars, Egged buses did what mass transportation should do everywhere, serving everyone in a cheap, safe, efficient manner. A ride on an Egged bus remained a striking tableau of a society still evolving, a diverse and dynamic and occasionally dyspeptic society, a society of a people united yet distinguished by their many different languages, customs, habits, and looks.

In truth, as the prosperity grew, Egged became the lifeline of those who were left behind, and those who were not yet ready to leap ahead: the immigrant and the student, the very old and the very young. It is, alas, that very accessibility that has made the Egged bus such an easy and tempting terrorist target.

Last Tuesday’s doomed Egged Bus No. 32A ride was typical. It was filled with commuters, moving mostly from the mass apartment blocks typical of the old Israel to various sites in Jerusalem, the Jews’ ancient and modern capital. Among the doomed passengers were leftists -- including a prominent peace activist -- and rightists, religious Jews and more modern Jews, a Christian eleven-year-old, Jews as young as 15 and as old as 71, and a 25-five-year-old Israeli Arab student, Iman Kabha.

Many of those who died that day were immigrants from Russia, France, Romania and Ethiopia. At least two were Holocaust survivors, Moshe Gottlieb, a chiropractor, and Mendel Bereson, a shoemaker. Among the many libels launched at Israel these days are the claims that immigrants do not belong in Israel and that immigrants are feeling particularly unwelcome. The opposite is true. The heavy toll borne by the immigrant communities over the last two years, especially among arrivals from the former Soviet Union, has reinforced their place in Israel.

The immediate tragedy of the terrorist war Yasir Arafat unleashed in 2000 is the immense personal suffering, on both sides, the irreplaceable Israeli and Palestinian lives lost. But the bombing of Egged bus 32A demonstrates the communal tragedy afflicting both sides as well.

U.S. President George W. Bush has made it clear that Palestinian society needs to evolve beyond an addiction to terror and a culture of hatred. To be fair, such progress is difficult under the best of circumstances, nearly impossible during wartime. Similarly, in the wake of the wild, go-getting 1990s, Israeli society needed some rethinking and tinkering too, traditional Zionist ideals needed to be reconciled somehow with modern American mores. Sadly, this war of survival, this war to protect commuters and cafe-goers, has postponed this debate. More reasons, it is clear, for us all to hope for and work toward a speedy, just and peaceful resolution to this tragic conflict.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today.