Summary
The Zionist youth movement, originating in Hapsburg-ruled and then Polish Galicia, whose members’ kibbutzim federated in 1927 as Hakibbutz Ha’artzi and which by the early 1930s had emerged as the strongest force to Mapai’s left within the Histadrut (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1974-1978).
Details
- Its ideology became a blend of “pioneering Zionism” and revolutionary socialism, situating it between MAPAI and Po’alei Tziyon Smol; unlike Smol it participated fully in the Zionist Organization and served as a loyal opposition within the Histadrut, giving primary emphasis to workers’ immigration and kibbutz settlement rather than class struggle, while criticising MAPAI’s cooperation with bourgeois Zionists, its bureaucratised Histadrut and its lack of interest in Arab-Jewish joint organisation (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1976-1980).
- On Hebrew Labour it staked out ground halfway between MAPAI and Po’alei Tziyon Smol: rejecting MAPAI’s “100 percent Hebrew labor” and Smol’s opposition to the campaign, it proposed Palestinian Arab workers permanently employed by Jews be allowed to keep their jobs; it would later propose Arabs and Jews share the land as equals, rejecting exclusive sovereignty for either and partition alike (line 1980; Chapter 4 note 58).
- In 1936 it created the Socialist League as a political framework for supporters who were not current or potential kibbutz members, and its members in poorly paid urban jobs such as the railways and ports — among them Efrayyim Krisher at the Haifa workshops — became a vigorous left opposition advocating Jewish-Arab solidarity (lines 1982-1992).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Mapai, Histadrut, Socialist League, Efrayyim Krisher, Po’alei Tziyon Smol, Kibbutz