A History of Zionism (62 page)

Both the night squads initiated by Wingate and the
Palmach
, which was set up during the Second World War, had their bases in the kibbutzim. Since there was no money to finance the nucleus of a standing army, however small, such as the Palmach was intended to be, to cover expenses its members divided their time more or less equally between military training and agricultural work, no doubt a unique experiment in the history of modern warfare. The morale of these groups, too, was
sui generis
, differing from that of any other known fighting force. They exemplified the spirit of the pioneer youth movements. There were no uniforms and no insignia of rank. Indoctrination was left-wing Socialist in character, with members of the Kibbutz Meuhad in prominent positions of command (Israel Galili served as chief-of-staff of the Hagana, Yigal Allon as commander of the Palmach), and a veteran of the Russian civil war (Yitzhak Sade) acted as the father figure of the young generation of commanders. Ben Gurion was not far from the truth when in 1948 he called the Palmach a private army of the Kibbutz Meuhad. It was an elite corps, and had to be dissolved when a regular army was organised, but its traditions continued to have a powerful impact, while many of its junior commanders rose to the highest army positions in later years.

The members of the kibbutz movement were reluctant warriors. They came to take a leading part in defence organisations because their settlements were attacked in 1929 and again in 1936-9. The Arab rebellion of 1936 did not stop further Jewish settlement. New kibbutzim were founded during this period, which entered Palestinian history under the name of ‘Wall and Watchtower’ (
Homa vemigdal
), among them Hanita and Ein Gev, Sha’ar Hagolan and Revivim. Their establishment had to be planned like military operations, with clockwork precision, usually by night or in the early hours of the morning. A convoy would descend on land which belonged to Jews but which for security reasons had not been cultivated. Within a few hours a number of block houses and a watch-tower would have been up, with defence posts and barbed wire to protect the settlement against attack. It was a far cry from the peaceful colonisation envisaged by the fathers of labour Zionism, more reminiscent of how the American west had been settled, or central Asia and the Caucasus. The doctrine of proletarian internationalism clashed with the cruel facts of life as the young generation became aware of the vital importance of defence for which ideologically they had been quite unprepared.

This list of the extracurricular activities of the Palestinian labour parties, the kibbutzim and the trade unions, is by no means complete. Mention, however brief, ought to be made of their initiatives in the cultural field. The Histadrut had its own network of schools - nine hundred of them in 1953, when Israeli education was ‘nationalised’. There were teachers’ seminars, libraries and cultural clubs all over the country. The workers’ councils in the cities and the kibbutzim ran impressive cultural programmes, sponsored sports clubs (
Hapoel
), and eventually established flourishing publishing houses. Under the auspices of the
Am Oved
and
Sifriat Poalim
publishing houses, set up by the Histadrut and Hashomer Hatzair respectively, more than two thousand books were brought out. In addition to
Davar
, the Histadrut newspaper, the main Socialist parties also published daily newspapers of their own (
Al Hamishmar
, the Hashomer Hatzair paper, first appeared during the Second World War.
Lamerhav
was sponsored by Ahdut Ha’avoda on the eve of the split in Mapam). These were no common achievements: bigger and more powerful Socialist parties, such as those in Britain and France, had failed to maintain their daily newspapers. It was another illustration of the determination and resourcefulness of the Jewish labour movement, which, moreover, provided a specific way of life for its members and sympathisers.

The kibbutz, a closed society, obviously constituted a unique way of life, but in the towns, too, a trade union member had no need to move far outside the compass of the Histadrut sector, even if he did not work in one of its enterprises. He could do his shopping in a cooperative store, deposit his money in a workers’ bank, send his children to Histadrut-sponsored kindergartens and schools, and consult a doctor at the
Kupat Holim
(Histadrut Sick Fund), which was ultimately to provide medical services for 65 per cent of the total population, a semi-official national health service in fact. But for the fact that the Histadrut did not own cemeteries, it would have been true to say that the Histadrut provided the great majority with all amenities from the cradle to the grave. Critics were concerned about the danger of total domination, but there were in fact natural limits to Histadrut expansion; some of the functions it fulfilled under the mandate were no longer needed once the Jewish state came into being.

These achievements were all the more remarkable since Jewish labour was by no means united. Mention has been made of the division between various factions before and after the First World War. The two largest of them, Ahdut Ha’avoda and Hapoel Hatzair, merged in January 1930 to form Mapai. It was a turning point, but not the end of the splits. For many years to come Mapai was to be plagued by internal strife.

Towards labour unity

The Palestinian Labour Party was formed under the impact of the riots of 1929, when the Jewish community in Palestine and the Zionist cause were under attack. The need for unity had been realised well before. Since the abortive attempt in 1919 to unite the two main groups in Jewish Labour, many leading figures in both camps had continued to advocate a merger. As the movement came under attack from the right after 1925, Ahdut Ha’avoda and Hapoel Hatzair drew closer together. The continued division seemed an anachronism, for ideological differences had almost disappeared. A small left-wing Marxist minority in Ahdut Ha’avoda feared that its Socialist values and aims would be further compromised and watered down in the case of a merger with people who in principle opposed the class struggle, whose orientation was not towards the working class but towards the whole people, and especially the young generation. Equally, inside Hapoel Hatzair there was still a body of opinion which was concerned, as A.A. Aordon had been ten years earlier, lest the specific humanistic values of their movement should be submerged as the result of union with a group exclusively interested in party politics, even if the common ideological platform was so vaguely phrased as not to present a deterrent. But the majority in Hapoel Hatzair, headed by Arlosoroff, carried the day. They had cooperated with Ben Gurion, Berl Katznelson, and the other leaders of Ahdut Ha’avoda for years in the trade unions and the Zionist movement, and knew from experience how little in fact divided them. They all subscribed now to constructivism or ‘reformism’, as their Marxist critics defined it.
*
Eventually, 85 per cent of the members of Hapoel Hatzair and 82 per cent of Ahdut Ha’avoda voted for the merger, which was consummated on 5 January 1930, when the representatives of 5,650 members of the two groups assembled in Tel Aviv to found Mapai. Two years later, at a conference in Danzig, the supporters of the two factions outside Palestine, the world Poale Zion and the Hitachdut, also joined forces in a body to be called
Ihud Olami
(World Union).

It was an important step towards unity but it did not cover the whole labour community, for two smaller groups, Hashomer Hatzair and the left-wing Poale Zion, refused to join. Mapai membership doubled within the first five years of its existence. It dominated the trade unions and was the strongest party by far both in the world Zionist movement and in the elected bodies of Palestinian Jewry. But its leaders did not speak with one voice. The internal opposition, led by Kibbutz Meuhad, complained that on the road to power and respectability the new party was losing its radical impetus and that the pioneering spirit was fading away. Tabenkin, the leader of
Sia Bet
(the ‘second faction’), found allies among urban members of Mapai, especially in the Tel Aviv branch. In the elections to the party executive of December 1938 the opposition attracted about one-third of the total vote. Among the issues involved in the growing conflict there were ideological questions such as the attitude towards the Soviet Union and world Communism. There was also an increasing feeling among members of the kibbutzim that their erstwhile comrades of Sejera and the Labour Legion, having transferred their activities to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, no longer regarded the collective settlements with the same enthusiasm. There was some truth in this, for as Ben Gurion began to think and plan more and more in terms of a Jewish state, his concept of statehood (
mamlachtiut
), with all its theoretical and practical implications, conflicted on occasions with the specific interests of the working-class, and the kibbutz no longer enjoyed the same absolute priority. These considerations apart, there were also personal factors involved, rivalries and antagonisms dating back to the days of the second and third aliyas.

For several years it appeared as if the conflict could be contained within Mapai as the two chief factions were represented in all the main policy-making bodies according to their numerical strength. The outbreak of the Second World War and the dangers facing the Jewish community also inhibited for a while a deepening of the split. But the Mapai majority reached the conclusion that the state of internal division could not be permitted to continue, for it paralysed the party. Its members, and above all its elected representatives, had to be subject to party discipline. The Mapai conference of Kfar Vitkin in 1942 thus decided that it could no longer recognise the existence of factions. This in turn led to the exodus of Sia Bet, which in May 1944 established itself as an independent party under the name Ahdut Ha’avoda. In April 1946 it merged with the left-wing Poale Zion, which had rejoined the Zionist congress in 1937 after boycotting it for several decades. In January 1948, on the eve of the establishment of the state of Israel, a further step was taken towards unity on the Left, when Ahdut Ha’avoda and Hashomer Hatzair decided to set up Mapam (
Mifleget Poalim Meuhedet
- United Workers Party). The traditional differences between the advocates of a bi-national state (Hashomer Hatzair) and those who had stood for militant action against the mandatory power and favoured the establishment of a Jewish state over the whole of Palestine (Ahdut Ha’avoda) lost their meaning as the new state found itself fighting for its existence. Representatives of Mapam entered the government of Israel in which the two Socialist parties constituted the majority.

But Mapam seems not to have been born under a lucky star, and once the immediate external danger had passed, the party quickly fell apart. As Soviet policy became more and more anti-Israeli (and anti-Jewish) in Stalin’s last days, as purge followed purge, Ahdut Ha’avoda found it increasingly difficult to accept the enthusiasm of Hashomer Hatzair for what some of its leaders called their ‘second homeland’. As a result of the 1952 Prague trial, in which one of Hashomer Hatzair’s leading figures, Mordehai Oren, was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment on the most preposterous charges, and several similar shocks, the party was plunged into a deep internal crisis, which after much wrangling led in 1954 to a final split. Ahdut Ha’avoda had never really embraced the specific brand of Marxism-Leninism which for Hashomer Hatzair had become an essential part of its doctrine. Such ideological issues had seemed of little importance in 1948 but assumed much greater significance five years later.

These events, however, took place after the establishment of the state of Israel, and thus lead us beyond the scope of the present survey. The same applies to the splits which took place within Mapai when Ben Gurion quarrelled with Lavon and later on with Eshkol, as a result of which
Rafi
was established in 1965. Paradoxically, all these splits led eventually to greater unity: Ahdut Ha’avoda merged with Mapai in 1965; in 1968 most members of Rafi rejoined Mapai; and in 1969 Hashomer Hatzair, after years of heart-searching, and not without some opposition from within its own ranks, also became part of the labour ‘alignment’
(ma’arakh).
More ambitious than a mere coalition, less than a full merger, it was a milestone in the development of the Jewish labour movement. After more than sixty years the great aim had been achieved, when for the first time in its history the movement in its overwhelming majority was gathered under one roof, united on most essential political issues facing it.

Seen in wider perspective, the history of Labour Zionism shows parallels with Socialist movements in other parts of the world. Like other parties it was always divided into a left and right wing, or to be more precise, into a ‘radical’ and a ‘reformist’ branch. But objective conditions limited the scope for revolutionary action from the very beginning. A Jewish proletariat in Palestine did not exist but had to be created. The ‘Left’ no less than the ‘reformists’ adopted a policy of ‘constructivism’ even though this entailed basic changes in its ideological concepts. The main concentration of the Left was in the kibbutzim. It did not gain a strong foothold in the cities, and this, as well as its doctrinaire approach, limited its effectiveness as a political force. ‘Reformism’ was essentially pragmatic in its attitude. It wanted a reasonably just society in which political hegemony was exercised by labour Zionism. To this extent it was successful. The Jewish community in Palestine was highly egalitarian, so that when the state was established the income differential among wage earners was a mere 1:2.5. There was a great deal of upward mobility and steady deproletarianisation. Only a small proportion of the pioneers who had arrived with the second, third, or fourth aliya were still engaged in manual work twenty or thirty years later. The majority had moved on to form an establishment that held the leading positions in politics as well as in the economy and in social life. It was a natural process, and the lamentations about the disappearance of the pioneering spirit were out of place as the country outgrew the pioneering phase. For several decades the high priority given to agricultural settlements was a political and economic necessity, but as agricultural technology made rapid progress, and, as in other advanced countries, a relatively small farming population sufficed to provide the necessary produce, the relative importance of the kibbutz began to decline. 2.5 per cent of the Jewish population in Palestine lived in kibbutzim in 1930. By 1947 the figure had risen to 7.3, but twenty years later it had fallen to 3.9. The importance of the youth movements also declined. The Hehalutz ceased to exist and there were not many new candidates for life in the kibbutz. Agriculture would in any case not have been able to absorb the big immigration of the early 1950s.