Summary
The post-First World War Palestinian successor party of Po’alei Tziyon’s right wing, co-founder with Hapoel Hatzair of the Histadrut in 1920, whose policy on Joint Organization of Arab and Jewish workers — outlined by David Ben-Gurion in 1921 — the Histadrut ultimately adopted (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 798, 842-846, 880-908).
Details
-
Founded in 1919, with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi among its founders, as the affiliate in Palestine of world Po’alei Tziyon’s right wing, which rejected membership in the Communist International and favoured continued cooperation with the bourgeois Zionists who controlled the Zionist Organization (lines 798, 846).
-
At the Histadrut’s founding congress in Haifa in December 1920 it was the strongest single force, lacking a majority on its own but largely dominating the proceedings by cooperating with Hapo’el Hatza’ir; the two parties envisioned the Histadrut not as a European-model trade union federation but as the instrument for settling Palestine by Jewish workers and building a Jewish commonwealth, which required it to be exclusively Jewish (lines 838-846).
-
Its supporters saw Yiddish as the language of the rejected Diaspora and sought to suppress its public use in favour of Hebrew only, a hard line that in the very early 1920s hampered its efforts to win over new Jewish immigrants and gave Socialist Workers’ Party militants organising opportunities (lines 852-854).
-
Under Ben-Gurion’s guidance from his election as Histadrut secretary at the end of 1921, it adopted the policy of organising Arab workers in mixed trades into trade unions linked to, but separate from, the Jewish unions, while insisting Arab workers not be allowed to join the Histadrut, so that the Histadrut and its unions would remain free to carry out their Zionist tasks including the struggle for Hebrew Labour (lines 880-904).
-
In 1930 it merged with Hapo’el Hatza’ir to form Mapai (line 798).
-
In Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 2 (part 3 range): its third congress at Ein Harod in May 1924 overwhelmingly endorsed David Ben-Gurion over Shlomo Kaplansky on a legislative council and the Arab worker path (lines 912-926); it defended its joint-organisation record in Kuntres against Po’alei Tziyon Smol, blaming failures on Arab workers’ backwardness (lines 946-948); by its fifth congress in October 1926 its leaders were moving toward Hapoel Hatzair’s marginalisation of the Arab question — the “historic mission” dropped, Histadrut responsibility reduced to allying with an Arab working class once it had organised itself — in the ideological convergence that produced Mapai (lines 1042-1052). Ahdut Ha’avoda had won only 41 and 47 percent at the first and second Histadrut congresses yet secured effective control, losing its Haifa and Jerusalem workers’ council majorities in September 1924 (Chapter 2 note 28).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Po’alei Tziyon, Histadrut, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Hapoel Hatzair, Mapai, Joint Organization