The unchosen people

IT IS not always easy for a man to speak truthfully about his early childhood. For a nation it can be harder still. Next year Israel turns 50, an age that finds some men complacent but others still at war with their inner demons. Israel in middle age shows both tendencies. Many Israelis have come to sense that their state's survival is at last assured, a feeling that has brought ease to some but caused others to examine what might be called Israel's original sin.