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Israel: A Society in Transition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to show some political consequences of the impact of industrialism on Israeli society, and the influence of some of the original trends of agrarian Zionism on Israel, a state increasingly relying on industrial power and institutions.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1969

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References

1 The very special conceptions of Zionist sovereignty have been forcefully analysed by Halpern, Ben in The Idea of the Jewish State (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 2043Google Scholar.

2 The most important Zionist reaction at the time was L. S. Pinsker's pamphlet, Autoemancipation, published in Odessa in September 1882 under the nom de plume “A Russian Jew”; reprinted in Hertzberg, Arthur, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (New York 1959), 182Google Scholar.

3 Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, was born in Budapest in 1860 and died in Austria in 1904. For a detailed biography see Bein's, Alex definitive Theodor Herzl: A Biography, Samuel, M., trans. (London 1956)Google Scholar. For a concise and penetrating assessment of his ideas see Hertzberg, 45–51.

4 The “Lovers of Zion” movement originated in Rumania as a reaction to the anti-Semitic policy followed by the Rumanian government especially after 1867. The movement quickly spread to the Jewish communities of Russia. For a critical discussion of the movement's aim and methods, see Ha-Am, Ahad (Ginsberg, A.), Al Parashat Derakim [At the Parting of the Ways], (4 vols., Berlin 1921) 11, 247 and 267Google Scholar. Ahad Ha-Am was the leader of “spiritual Zionism,” a movement that, contrary to Herzl's “political Zionism,” held that Palestine could and should become a center not only of Jewish political revival but also of a Jewish spiritual revival. For a concise critical assessment of the views of Herzl and Ahad Ha-Am, see Hertzberg, 45–80, and also Simon, Leo, Ahad Ha-Am: A Biography (London 1960)Google Scholar.

5 See Margalith, Israël, Le Baron Edmond de Rothschild et la colonisation Juive en Palestine, 1882–1899 (Paris 1957)Google Scholar

6 The implications of the application by Herzl of an old solution of the Jewish problem to its modern situation have been discussed by Agassi, Joseph in “The Novelty of Popper's Philosophy of Science,” International Philosophical Quarterly, VIII (September 1968), 446–49Google Scholar; see also Hertzberg, 202–03.

7 Buber, Martin, Paths in Utopia (London 1949) especially 143–49Google Scholar, and Ben Halpern, 58–94; for the relations between Zionist socialism and other Jewish Socialist parties, especially the Bund, see Johnpoll, Bernard K., The Politics of Futility: The General Jewish Workers' Bund of Poland, 1917–1943 (New York 1967), 18Google Scholar.

8 The views of Ber Borochov (1881–1917) are discussed in Hertzberg, 365–66. For more detail, see Bein, Alex, The Return to the Soil (Jerusalem 1952)Google Scholar, and Preuss, W., Die Jüdische Arbeiterbewegung in Palästina (2 vols.; Berlin 19321933)Google Scholar. However, most of the statements and opinions of the Jewish socialist leaders are scattered in periodical literature such as Hapoel Ha Zair, Hebrew weekly labor organ which appeared from 1908 to 1914 in Jerusalem; Davar, Tel Aviv, since 1937, Hebrew daily organ of the General Federation of Jewish Labor; and Kuntress, Hebrew weekly labor organ, which appeared in Tel Aviv from 1919 to 1929. See also Halperin, Samuel, The Political World of American Zionism (Detroit 1961), 157–75Google Scholar for a concise description of Zionist Socialism and American labor.

9 There is a large literature on the Zionist collective and cooperative movement, the most exhaustive work being Harry Viteles, History of the Cooperative Movement in Israel: A Source Book in 7 Volumes. The first 4 volumes are published thus far in London. They are The Evolution of the Cooperative Movement in Israel (1966), The Evolution of the Kibbutz in Israel (1967), An Analysis of the Sectors of the Kibbutz Movement (1968), and Cooperative Smallholders Settlements (The Moshav Movement) (1968). See also Eisenstadt, S. N., Israeli Society (London 1967)Google Scholar.

10 Emil Marmorstein, an orthodox Jewish scholar, has prepared an interesting study of the conflict between Zionism and Jewish orthodox nationalism, mainly from religious sources, to be published shortly in London. A typical and interesting anti-Zionist statement by the Rabbi of Zichover, in 1900, is to be found in Kedourie, E., Nationalism (London 1962), 7576Google Scholar. See also B. Halpern, 16–18, 81–88, who also gives the text of press release issued by the “Protest Rabbis”—all of them from Germany—against the first Zionist congress in July 1892, 144.

11 Armytage, W.H.G., The Rise of the Technocrats (London 1965)Google Scholar. See also David Patterson's penetrating analysis of the sociological and psychological evolution of the kibbutz in “The First Fifty Years of Collective Settlement in Israel,” Jewish Journal of Sociology, 11 (1960), 4255Google Scholar, where the social image of the kibbutz in Israel is discussed with rare insight.

12 The best known prophet of the “religion of the land and work” was A. D. Gordon (1856–1912), a Russian-born Jew strongly influenced by Tolstoian ideas, who emigrated to Palestine in 1903. His philosophy is reflected in a short essay, “People and Labour,” 1911, reprinted in Hertzberg, 372–74.

13 At the turn of the century, in the 12 villages established with the help of Baron de Rothschild, the number of Jewish laborers was only 673. See Gurion, David Ben, First Ones: Israel Year Book 1962–1963 (Jerusalem 1963)Google Scholar.

14 See Darin, Haim, The Other Society (New York 1962), 7882Google Scholar, for the early industrialization of the kibbutz, and 115 ff. for the impact of the 1935–39 German immigration on the mechanization of collective agriculture. According to a recent report, Haaretz, 25 October 1968, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the beginning of the German Jewish immigration in Palestine, more than 13 million pounds were transferred from Germany into Palestine from 1933 to 1939 and 5 million invested in industry.

15 In 1948 the ratio, in market value, between agricultural and industrial production in Israel was 1:3. It was reduced to 1:2 in 1959 because of the big agriculture expansion due to Israel's acquisition of Palestine government land and Arab-abandoned properties after the war of Independence. It jumped to 1:4 in 1965 and has continued to increase. See Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel: 1966, 373–423.

16 Maruyama, Masao, Thoughts on Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (London 1963). 1113 and 134–53Google Scholar.

17 Hourani, Cecil, “The Moment of Truth: Towards a Middle East Dialogue,” Encounter, XXIX (November 1967), 314Google Scholar.

18 The idea of an Arab-Jewish community in Palestine is as old as the idea of the Jewish state. Jewish-Arab coexistence and cooperation was one of the topics in Herzl's futurist Zionist novel, Altneuland. For more recent Israeli opinions on the subject, see Aaron Amir, “Levant des Patries: Le Dépassement du Sionisme et du Pan-Arabisme” (mimeographed 1967). Avnery, And Uri, Israel Without Zionism, a Plea for Peace in the Middle East (London 1968)Google Scholar, as well as Avnery, Uri, “Une Guerre Fratricide entre Semites,” Le confiit Israélo-Arabe, special issue of Les Temps Modernes, XXII, rev. 253 bis (July 1967), 702–31Google Scholar.

19 According to The Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1963, published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (Jerusalem), 1518Google Scholar, the Jewish population of Israel was composed in 1948 of 54.5 percent European-born Jews, 8.8 percent Middle-East-born Jews, and 354 percent locally born Jews. In 1962 the percentages were respectively 33.5; 28; and 38.5. The last figure includes a vast majority of locally born Israelis of Oriental parent-age the birthrate of the Middle Eastern Jews outnumbering that of the Western Jews by three to one. According to Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Information Division, Facts about Israel 1967 (Jerusalem), out of a total of 168,126 immigrants who entered Israel between 1961 and 1963, only 56,386 were of Western origin. However, out of a total of 1,336,678 immigrants who entered the state between 1948 and 1965, 498,677 were of European origin and 618,763 of Asian and African (Arabized) origin.

20 Some of these typical views are aired by Arab authors writing for Le conflit Pan-Israélo-Arabe, such as: Sami Hadawi, “Les revendications 'bibliques' et 'historiques' des sionistes sur la Palestine,” 91–105; Mounthir Anabtawi, “Le sionisme: un mouvcment solonialiste, chauvin et militariste,” 106–26; Loffallah Soliman, “Un transfer de culpabilityé,” 266–80; and Tahar Benziane “Le probleme palestinien et la question juive,” 317–44.

21 See in particular Friedman, Georges, Fin du Peuple Juif? (Paris 1966), ch. 8Google Scholar; Shuval, Judith T., Immigrants on the Threshold (New York 1943)Google Scholar, and “Emerging Patterns of Ethnic Strain in Israel,” Social Forces, XL (May 1962, 323–30Google Scholar; Weingrod, Alex, “The Two Israels,” Commentary, XXXIII (April 1962), 313–19Google Scholar; Patai, Raphael, Israel Between East and West: A Study in Human Relations (Philadelphia 1953)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., The Absorption of Immigrants (London 1954)Google Scholar and Israeli Society (New York 1967), especially ch. 7Google Scholar.

22 Such as the one of Selzer, Michael, The Organization of the Jewish State: A Polemic (New York 1967)Google Scholar.

23 An interesting summary of Arab broadcasts against Israel during the June crisis can be found in “The Arab Call to War,” Wiener Library Bulletin, XXI (Summer 1967), 29Google Scholar.

24 The treaty for German Reparations to Israel was signed by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the Israel Foreign Minister Moshe Sharet in September, 1952.

25 According to Laqueur, Walter, “Bonn, Cairo, Jerusalem: The Triple Crisis,” Commentary, XXXIX (May 1965), 2938Google Scholar, the total amount of restitution money paid to individual Jews all over the world is $4.5 billions. The real amount paid to Israeli Jews is not available because the statistics concerning restitution funds transferred to Israel cover only a part of the amount, the rest being spent or kept in Europe. It was certainly not less than 1.3 billion dollars by 1969.

26 According to a detailed document published by Georges Friedmann and Marie. Thérèse Basse, “Problèmes d'Israël en statistiques,” Revue Française de Sociologie, VI (Juillet-Septembre 1965), 349–77Google Scholar, the majority of the 225,000 Jews who entered Israel in 1961–64 were East European. See Tableau VIII, “Les differentes vagues d'immigration juive en Palestine (1882–1948) et en Israel (1948–1964),” 358.

27 See Israel's Oriental Problem, A Monthly Bulletin of News and Comments Distributed to Opinion Leaders by the Council of the Sephardi Community (Jerusalem), November 1966 and March-April 1966.Google Scholar

88 For the “Lavon affair” see Michel Bar Zohar, 249–58, 365–68, and 373 ff; Avnery, Uri, Israel Without Zionism (New York 1968), chap. 7Google Scholar; “1954: A Spy Story”; S. N. Eisenstadt, Israeli Society, 329–32.

29 An analysis of the hostile atmosphere that surrounded Ben Gurion at the time of his resignation and of the psychological change brought about by his successor, Levi Eshkol, can be found in Katz, Ze'ev, “Eshkol's Winds of Change,” New Outlook., VII (July-August 1964), 1619Google Scholar.

30 The initials for the Hebrew words meaning “List of Israeli Workers.”

31 Like the “Bengurionist” party RAFI—which seceded in 1965 from Mapai (the majority workers' party of Israel)—its bitter opponent Achdut Avodah had also seceded from Mapai twenty-five years earlier. Both splinter parties returned to their “parent” organization in January, 1968, when the new Israel Labor Party was officially launched after more than a year of bitter negotiations for unity. By the end of 1968 also Mapam, the leftist section of the labor movement in Israel, rejoined Mapai, from which it originally split in 1944.

32 See Pinhas Lavon, “A Chosen People and a Normal Society,” New Outlook (Tel Aviv) v (February 1962), 3–8 (italics added). It is interesting to compare Lavon's view of the Israeli “chosen” labor society with some of those currently expressed by Maoist partisans in favor of a perfect society in which people should be “encouraged not to consider work as a way of earning one's life, but as the prime necessity of life”; see Jiang, W. U., “UN Partisan de la théorie de la révolution permanente doit nécessairement être un materialiste dialectique conséquent,” in Zhexue Yanjiu 8, 1958, 2329Google Scholar, quoted by Schram, R. S., La révolution permanente en Chine (Paris 1963), 1931Google Scholar.

33 Shimon Peres is considered the creator of the Israeli Defense Establishment and the architect of the military alliance between Israel and France in 1956. He was Director General of the Ministry of Defense when the Lavon Affair first broke out in 1954. He is known to have clashed often later with Lavon, then Secretary General of the Histadrut, over the role and organization of the military industry, and especially over the establishment of Bedek, the Israeli center for the repair and maintenance of the military and civil aircraft that became one of the important technological factors of the Israeli air superiority over the Arabs.

34 See “Making a Modern Israel: A ‘Young Mapai’ View of Planning,” The Jerusalem Post (12 February 1965)Google Scholar, and “What Ben Gurion Group Stands For,” The Jerusalem Post (14 July 1965)Google Scholar. Significantly, in 1967 Shimon Peres originated the idea of a detailed study of Israeli society by the end of the century, and wanted to include among the tasks of the RAFI party the preparation of plans for Israeli “postindustrial” society.

35 No detailed study has so far been made of the effect on the civilian economic sector of the transfer of young, early-pensioned Israeli military leaders. The Israeli economy is already run today, both in die Socialist-controlled sector and in the private one—to say nothing of the government agencies—by an increasing number of administrators recruited from among retired army officers. For example, the Dead Sea mineral complex has been run for the last 13 years by a former Chief of Staff, and another heads the Israeli port authority. A former Chief of Intelligence runs one of the largest mechanical concerns of the Histadrut, while the tourist-amenities center of Eilat is run by a former Navy Commodore. See Perlmutter, Amos, “The Israeli Army in Politics: The Persistence of the Civilian Over the Military,” World Politics, XX (July 1968)Google Scholar.

36 The shock of the Nazareth riots was great, especially among the Jewish labor organizations. It was best expressed by a poem by Nathan Alterman, a leading poet and political figure, published by the Histadrut paper Davar, translated into English by New Outlook, 1 (July-August 1958), 4849Google Scholar, under the title “After the Riots in Nazareth.”

37 The Wadi Salib (a very poor quarter of Haifa) where riots broke out in July, 1959, shortly before general election; they spread to Beersheba in the south and to Migdal Emek in the east.

38 One of the most outspoken supporters of the economic and social integration of the Arab minority into the Jewish majority is Rustum Bastuni, an Arab engineer and former member of the Israeli Parliament. See Bastuni, Rustum, “Arab Society in Israel,” Hamizrach He'Hadash (Jerusalem), XV (1965), 12Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that the riots in Ramleh in August, 1965, and in Nathanial in March, 1966, between Arabs and Jews were caused not by political tension, but by rivalry between young workers of the two communities over the favors of the same Jewish girls. See also “Integrating Israel's Arabs,” The Jerusalem Post, 25 September 1964Google Scholar.

89 See Eilon, Amos, “Letter from Jerusalem,” Encounter, XXIX (February 1967)Google Scholar.

40 See Nasser, Gama Abdel, The Philosophy of the Revolution (Cairo 1952)Google Scholar.

41 For the struggle of the Palestinians to maintain their own autonomous institutions against Jordanian and Egyptian control, see Colombe, Marcel, “Le problème de l'Entité Palestinienne dans les relations arabes,” Orient, XXIX (1964), 5787Google Scholar; and Schecterman, Joseph B., The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The Rise and Fall of Haj Amin el Hussein (London 1965), 200280Google Scholar. Also Gabay, Rony E., A Political Study of the Arab-Jewish Conflict: The Arab Refugee Problem (Geneva 1959), 202–71Google Scholar; and Alami, Musa, Ibrat Palestin [The Lesson of Palestine] (Beirut 1949)Google Scholar, condensed in “The Lesson of the Palestine,“ Middle East Journal, III (October 1949), 373405Google Scholar.