service for both sexes. The term was used by the Zionist movement, to celebrate the "New Jew" that emerged in the Holy Land. Unlike the bourgeois "Old Jew" born in the diaspora, the "New Jew" was a kibbutz member or a farmer. The "Old Jew" often spoke broken Hebrew with a heavy accent, while the sabra spoke the language as a mother tongue. Unlike the "Old Jew" who did not fight for his self-defense, the Sabra fought in the Jewish resistance movements, in the Palmach and, after the establishment of Israel, in the Israel Defense Forces. The prestige of the Sabra increased during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Israeli public, and especially the older generation, tended to attribute the achievements of the war to the country's "sabras", while minimizing the part of the new immigrants and other groups. Even descriptions of the achievements of Operation Kadesh (1956) emphasized the image of the Sabra. The large immigration to Israel of Jews from Muslim countries during the 1950s, the penetration of Western culture and primarily American culture, as well as the social and political changes which were created following the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War, resulted in a decline of the use of the term after the 1970s. Those who were born in the country after independence in 1948 became known as the "Dor haMedina" (), or "Statehood Generation", and have been largely described by cultural commentators as being motivated less by the strident nationalism and/or socialism of the pre-independence generations and more by a general cultural pragmatism and sensitivity to the mass-cultural output of Western powers. With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, large-scale Jewish immigration ensued from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, greatly increasing the Jewish population. As a result, the amount of native-born Jews as a percentage of the population went down from 35% in 1948 to 25% in 1951. However, as the immigration wave tapered off, the percentage of the native-born Jewish population gradually increased as more children were born, many to immigrants who arrived after independence. The percentage of the Jewish population that was native-born reached 33% in 1956, 38% in 1961, and 40% in 1965. In culture The Sabra received an artistic and symbolic representation in the form of the illustrated character "Srulik" (which wears shorts, sandals and a Tembel hat), created by cartoonist Dosh. Another such character is