A History of Zionism (61 page)

The Chever Kvutzot, unlike its competitors, had neglected its links with the young generation of Socialist pioneers preparing themselves in Europe for life in the kibbutz. The Hashomer Hatzair youth movement spread from Poland to many other countries and had thousands of members. The Kibbutz Meuhad could count on members of half a dozen Jewish youth movements in Europe and on the Palestinian ‘Working Youth’ (
Noar Oved
). In 1930 Naan, the first kibbutz of Palestinian youth, was founded. But Degania and Kineret had no reserve army. Facing internal crises and economic stagnation, there was a distinct danger that they would disintegrate. Salvation came from unexpected quarters: the youth movement
Gordonia
had developed in Poland in the 1920s without the assistance of the Chever Hakvutzot and almost without its knowledge. Its members shared the ideals of the founders of Degania, and after their arrival in Palestine in the 1930s they joined the settlements belonging to this movement, providing a much needed stimulus. Existing settlements absorbed these new immigrants and new ones were founded. By the middle 1930s Degania had 130 working members, while by 1939 the Chever counted twenty-one settlements and a dozen groups located in temporary quarters while waiting for the allocation of land. It remained the smallest of the three movements, but the crisis which had threatened its existence was surmounted.

The trade unions

The General Federation of Trade Unions, the Histadrut, developed in conditions totally different from trade union movements elsewhere. The normal function of a trade union is to defend the interests of its members against the employers, and on occasion to provide certain social services not offered by the state. The problems facing Jewish workers in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s were of a different character. Since industry was as yet hardly developed, and private enterprise showed little enthusiasm for pioneering work, the Histadrut had to take the initiative in creating work for its members and for those yet to come. The logic of events drove it into becoming the biggest employer in the country in addition to defending the interests of the employees. It was an anomalous situation to be sure. No one had planned it that way, and a great many problems grew from this duality. What, for instance, if the workers clashed with the management in a Histadrut enterprise?

The Histadrut came to act as an entrepreneur in agriculture (
Tnuva
, marketing the agricultural produce of all collective and cooperative settlements) and in the building industry (
Solel Boneh
built roads, houses and factories, and acquired stone quarries and brick-works). The Histadrut was the first to promote high-seas fishing, shipping, and even civil aviation in Palestine. It set up cooperative retail stores, urban housing offices, a workers’ bank, a big insurance company (
Hasneh
), and countless medium-sized enterprises in industry, transport and agriculture. Solel Boneh expanded rapidly after the depression of 1926-7. From modest beginnings it grew into a major concern even by international standards, eventually building up to fifty thousand houses a year.
Koor
, its industrial branch, controlled steel rolling mills, chemical plants, cement and glass factories, and held subtantial interests in the timber and food-processing industries. Forty years after the foundation of the Histadrut, these enterprises accounted for no less than 35 per cent of the total gross national product (53 per cent in agriculture, 44 per cent in building, 39 per cent in transport, and 25 per cent in industry).

The share of the Socialist sector of the economy was most impressive, but to what extent was it still subject to democratic control? In theory, every member of the Histadrut was automatically a member of the Cooperative Association of Labour (
Chevrat Ovdim
), which functioned as the central organisation of all Histadrut enterprises and also as their owner. In theory, every member had a say in the management of Histadrut-owned enterprises. But in practice, as membership increased and economic activities multiplied, this right to share in decision-making became a dead letter. According to the original constitution there was to be no hired outside labour in the cooperatives and no outsiders were to be employed. But this golden rule, too, was disregarded almost from the outset, in producer and transport cooperatives alike, and later on also in many moshavim and even kibbutzim, for these enterprises were subject to marked seasonal fluctuation, needing additional working hands at certain times and only minimal labour at others. The dilemma was insoluble. Resolutions were passed from time to time to give workers and clerical staff seats on administrative committees and a share in management as well as in financial surpluses. But these demands, as in other countries, encountered opposition on the part of the management, which jealously guarded its prerogatives. Nor was there any particular desire among the workers to take on these responsibilities. In this respect, too, a wide divergence developed between Socialist theory and practice, with considerations of efficiency and profitability prevailing over time-honoured doctrine.

As Labour Zionism became the dominant factor in the Zionist movement, its history and that of the Jewish community in Palestine merge and are no longer clearly distinguishable. In the early 1930s the leaders of Mapai emerged as the central figures in Zionist policy, and an account of their ideas and actions can no longer be presented in isolation from the much wider issues of the period, such as relations with the Arabs and the mandatory power and the development of the yishuv in general. Yet it was precisely in this period that the labour movement enjoyed a phase of rapid growth. Many new initiatives were sponsored, and existing enterprises expanded beyond recognition. It is to some of these activities outside the traditional scope of party politics and trade unionism that we shall next turn.

The Pioneers

The history of Labour Zionism cannot be written without reference to the
Hehalutz
, the organisation of young Jewish pioneers which prepared a whole generation in the diaspora for a life of manual work in Palestine. The original idea had been Trumpeldor’s, first formulated around 1908. His experiences in Palestine during the days of the second aliya had strengthened his belief that prospective immigrants should receive intensive training in their country of origin to prepare them for the new life in Palestine. They were to live together on a farm or, in rare cases, in an urban commune, to gain experience in agriculture as well as in other essential professions. In a conversation with Jabotinsky during the First World War, Trumpeldor described the Hehalutz as he envisaged it, as an army of anonymous servants of Zion, having neither private interests nor inclinations, nameless workers entirely devoted to the supreme challenge of building up Jewish Palestine, willing to do any work demanded of them. Similar ideas were developed by Ben Gurion and Ben Zvi during their stay in America in 1917-18.

The Hehalutz came into being towards the end of the First World War, its main strength being then in Russia. With the emigration to Palestine of many of its members, and its subsequent suppression by the Soviet régime,
*
the centre of the movement shifted to the west. Most Jewish youth movements in the diaspora decided to educate their members for a halutzic life in Palestine. The picture of the halutz in his blue shirt and khaki trousers working in an orange grove with spade or hoe appeared in thousands of Jewish homes, competing with photographs of Herzl and the panorama of Jerusalem, projecting the vision of a new society in the national home. All labour Zionist parties supported the Hehalutz and competed for the allegiance of its members, just as they had tried to win over the immigrants of the third aliya. Ben Gurion and a few others, however, had doubts about the efficacy of
hachshara
(preparation) outside Palestine. They thought the aim praiseworthy, but conditions in Europe were so dissimilar from those they would meet in Palestine that a useful apprenticeship there seemed well-nigh impossible.

The Hehalutz head office was located in Berlin in the early 1920s and later transferred to Warsaw. Its first world conference took place in Karlsbad in 1921. Membership rose from 5,400 in 1923 to 33,000 in 1925, but fell again to 8,000 in 1928, accurately reflecting the ups and downs in the fortunes of the Zionist movement as a whole. It was only during the 1930s that the Hehalutz became a real mass movement, membership rising to 83,000 in 1933. About one-quarter of them worked on farms in Poland and Germany. The movement spread to places as far afield as Cuba, Iraq and South Africa. Many a farmer in Europe and America was nonplussed by the spectacle of city-bred Jewish boys and girls trying desperately hard, if not always successfully, to milk cows, to shovel dung, and to cope with other strenuous and uncongenial jobs for which, all too obviously, they were not prepared. Altogether, some 34,000 halutzim arrived in Palestine during the 1930s, almost half of the total who came on workers entry permits. (Within the yearly immigration schedule the mandatory authorities made provision for various categories such as ‘capitalists’, workers, students, etc.)

In 1935, when immigration was drastically cut, the Hehalutz began again to decline. Its members were now forced to remain in training centres not just for a year or two, as had been the case previously. Among the eight thousand still in training centres on the eve of the Second World War, some had been waiting four years or longer for their turn to go to Palestine. Life in these centres was deliberately Spartan and primitive. There was a veritable cult of harshness and self-denial, and everything was subordinated to mastering heavy manual work, a severe challenge to young people who neither by background nor education had been prepared for it. This was done at the expense of ignoring other and seemingly insignificant aspects of life. Even the more common amenities were often lacking, and cleanliness and cultural activities were neglected. Such excess of zeal occasionally shocked even the emissaries from Palestine, themselves hardened veterans of the second and third aliyas.
*

Defence

Some of the halutzim still stranded in Europe in 1938-9 eventually succeeded in reaching the shores of Palestine. They came as illegal immigrants, owing their lives to the systematic efforts undertaken to save as many as possible in contravention of the stringent immigration laws imposed by the mandatory authorities following the outbreak of the Arab riots. An earlier attempt, the voyage of the
Velos
in 1934, organised by a member of Degania, ended in failure. But after 1937, with tens of thousands of prospective immigrants impatiently waiting for their entry permits, with the clouds of war gathering on the European horizon, and with no change in sight in the attitude of the mandatory government, illegal immigration was resumed on a massive scale. Small, ancient, unseaworthy ships, hardly bigger than motor launches and designed to carry a few dozen passengers only, arrived with many hundreds on board, in conditions the like of which had not been seen anywhere in modern times. Some of them successfully ran the blockade, others were detected and apprehended. About 11,000 illegal immigrants came in 1939, and even after the outbreak of war some ships continued to arrive; 3,900 men, women and children in 1940, and 2,135 in 1941. After that date immigration, both legal and illegal, dwindled to a mere trickle. Many of the organisers of this illegal traffic were labour Zionists, usually members of kibbutzim. Most of those who came in these ships were members of the Hehalutz and left-wing youth movements. The whole enterprise is another example of the unorthodox activities of the heirs of Borokhov and Syrkin, well outside the confines of the political and industrial struggle. But illegal immigration was merely one aspect of the activities of the Jewish defence organisation, the Hagana, which was dominated by men and women belonging to the labour movement, even though considerable efforts were made to induce non-Socialist groups to participate at every level of Hagana activities.

The beginnings of defence organisation date back to Hashomer, the Jewish watchmen’s association founded before the First World War. After 1918, following the Arab attacks in Galilee and Jaffa, Hagana came into being. Illegal arms stores were established, as well as rudimentary training centres for young Jews of both sexes all over the country. These efforts were on a small scale and usually quite amateurish. Only with the outbreak of the Arab revolt of 1936 did Hagana perforce become a tightly organised and reasonably effective defence force, composed of thousands of part-time soldiers. While it was an unwritten rule that every young member of the community should do the job assigned to him by Hagana, both the command and the great majority of those serving in it belonged to the labour movement. It was to all intents and purposes a working-class militia, with all the advantages and drawbacks of an organisation of this kind. There was no militarist spirit in its ranks since it was composed entirely of volunteers. Discipline, on the other hand, was sometimes deficient, and as a fighting force it had its limitations. Its left-wing character was so pronounced that those opposed to labour Zionism opted for the
IZL
(
Irgun Zvai Leumi
-National Military Organisation) which, following Jabotinsky’s lead, had split away from the Hagana in the early 1930s. The right-wing parties were apprehensive about the emergence of a working-class army, and their fears, while exaggerated, were not altogether without foundation. For a militia was bound to be dominated by the Left because it alone had a sufficiently broad mass basis, through its youth organisations and the kibbutzim, to undertake an illegal enterprise of this magnitude. The kibbutzim played a particularly significant part in Hagana, both as strategic strongpoints in times of crisis and as bases for military training and storing arms beyond the reach of the mandatory police.