Moments of Resistance

Summary

Lev Luis Grinberg compares seven resistance mo(ve)ments in Israel/Palestine from 1931 to 2013 — an Arab-Jewish anti-colonial revolt, Mizrahi ethnic riots and the Black Panthers, working-class strike waves in 1960-1965 and 1980, the First Intifada, and the 2011 J14 movement — to expand his concept of Political Space: the dynamic opening and closure of symbolic representation for subordinated social forces by political actors mediating between the state and civil society (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.13, 21-22, 38-40). Part 1 gives the Prologue, a personal account of the progressive research programs behind the book, and Chapter 1, the theoretical Introduction: politics against violence, Imagined Democracy in settler societies, Symbolic Violence against Movements of Resistance, and the counter-mo(ve)ment by which dominant actors re-accommodate the political arena after a movement erupts. Part 2 gives Chapter 2 in full — Constructive Socialism, the Histadrut as quasi-welfare state, and the 1931 joint Arab-Jewish Drivers’ Strike of 1931 against British motor-transport taxation, its success and its erasure by the ZLM segregationist counter-mo(ve)ment culminating in the 1936 Arab Revolt — and Chapter 3’s background (PDF p.91-111): the post-1948 ethnic hierarchy, the Labor Institutional Complex and Anti-Democratic Catch, Mizrahi absorption in development towns and the unionization of powerful workers, up to the eve of the Wadi Salib Riots. Part 3 completes Chapter 3 (the riots, their suppression, Mapai’s 1959 landslide and the closure of political space to Mizrahi representation through Tribal Channeling), gives Chapter 4 in full — full employment, the Lavon Affair as a Vicious Institutional Triangle struggle, the Action Committees revolt, and Mapai’s triple counter-mo(ve)ment (the 1965 Alignment as Condensation, the deliberate 1966-67 recession, and the post-1967 Dual Regime integrating a Palestinian captive market and non-citizen workers under the Security Myth) — and opens Chapter 5 (PDF p.152-162): the segmented labour market’s four ethno-classes, the perpetuation of control over non-citizen Palestinians, and security as the dual economy’s organizing principle, up to the October 1967 Sapir-Dayan budget conflict. Part 4 completes Chapter 5 — the Security-Treasury split and indexing-insurance subsidies, the first Package Deal, the Black Panthers (Israel) mo(ve)ment itself (Musrara, the Meir meeting, the Katz Commission, the 1973 electoral failure) and its counter-mo(ve)ment, Likud’s Tribal Channeling of Mizrahi rage into dichotomous left-right polarization and the road to Shas — and gives Chapter 6 through PDF p.212: the 1977 turnabout, hyperinflation’s political economy, the Forum/13 resistance of the 13 powerful committees, Horowitz’s 1980 revocation of the WS Financial Plan, the 1984 national unity government, and the 1985 Emergency Economic Stabilization Plan as counter-mo(ve)ment, whose corporate collapses continue into the next part.

What the file is

Book, published by Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2014, in the series Israel: Society, Culture and History (series editor Yaacov Yadgar) (PDF p.3-5). 349 PDF pages, about 133,179 words; printed pagination runs 1-348 with front matter, printed page = PDF page minus 1 in the part read. Copyright © 2014 Academic Studies Press; effective February 13, 2018 the book is subject to a CC-BY-NC license (PDF p.5). ISBN 978-1-936235-41-4 (hardback), 978-1-618110-69-5 (electronic), 978-1-618117-90-8 (open access) (PDF p.5). Chapters 2-7 were translated from Hebrew and the Prologue and Chapters 1, 8 and 9 edited in English by Amy Asher (PDF p.9). Text copy is clean with === PDF p.N === markers; PDF p.1 and p.7 are blank in the text copy apart from a running header, and the header “Hebrew Terms” is repeated garbled across the front matter. Dedicated to Yael (PDF p.6).

Section by section

Front matter, Contents, Acknowledgments, Abbreviations and Hebrew Terms (PDF p.1-12 / printed p.1-11)

The Contents lists the Prologue and nine chapters by their case years — 1931, 1959, 1960-1965, 1971, 1980, 1987-1993, 2011 — plus List of Sources, Bibliography and Index (PDF p.8). The Acknowledgments record the Israel Science Foundation grant (409/09), the Diller Fellowship at UC Berkeley, and support from Ben Gurion University (PDF p.9). The Abbreviations and Hebrew Terms define the book’s institutional vocabulary — LIC (Labor Institutional Complex), WS (Workers’ Society), ZLM (Zionist Labor Movement), and the party glossary from Ahdut Haavoda to Yisrael Beiteinu (PDF p.10-12).

Prologue — A Personal Account: Reflections on the Design of a Progressive Research Program (PDF p.13-37 / printed p.12-36)

Grinberg rejects paradigmatic meta-narratives and teleology, and surveys Israeli sociology’s failed paradigms: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt’s structural-functionalist triumph of Labor Zionism (1967), Horowitz and Lissak’s center-periphery correction (1978), and Yonatan Shapiro’s elitist critique that Labor institutions used ideology manipulatively to maintain elite power with only formal democracy (1977) — all published as Labor lost hegemony in 1977 (PDF p.13-15). The post-1977 critical generation applied internal colonialism to Mizrahi Jews and to the Palestinians who remained after 1948, Baruch Kimmerling reframed the society as Jewish/Arab within state borders, and settler-society, neo-corporatist and militarism analyses followed; the post-Rabin-assassination meta-narratives of Kimmerling (2001), Shafir and Peled (2002) and Uri Ram (2008) are judged “Labor-yearning” teleologies that keep politics out and absolve Labor for the 1990s (PDF p.16-18). Grinberg’s own puzzles — the ignored 1931 joint Jewish-Arab anti-colonial strike, the 1967 border expansion against Labor Zionism’s separation goal, the 1980 workers’ revolt ending in 1985 neo-liberal policies, and the 1988 Palestinian revolt ending in re-accommodated military rule with PLO cooperation — are compared as unpredictable, path-dependent sequences (Sewell 1996, 2005), under Michael Burawoy’s Lakatosian model of a progressive research program designed to learn how people’s struggle can succeed (PDF p.18-21).

The sequence of his programs is then given in full. The 1931 transport strike study concluded that class matters but is shaped by ethnic identity, that politics is not a direct reflection of class interests, that method is abduction, and that Labor Zionist elites’ strategy of economic separation and geographic segregation defeated Palestinian elites’ failure to unite peasants and urban dwellers (PDF p.22-24). The 1980 study produced Split Corporatism: the 13 powerful worker committees’ revolt secretly cooperated with the Histadrut and maintained the dual labor market dividing workers by ethnic and national identity and citizenship; to Skocpol’s three conditions for state autonomy — crisis, professional bureaucracy and independent financial resources — Grinberg adds a crucial fourth element, political facilitation by the party system and ruling coalition (Grinberg 1991), the research revealing the differential capacities of competing political parties to mediate between state, capital, and labor, the political sphere characterized as a space of mediation, and state autonomy depending on the institutional differentiation between state apparatuses, civil society organizations and political parties and on the ruling parties’ ability to facilitate autonomous state decisions — in the Israeli case, the deep economic crisis of 1984-1985 facilitated collaboration by the two dominant parties, both of which had failed to slow down inflation in the past, thus contributing to the build-up of state autonomy (PDF p.24-27). The next study, investigating the period before 1967 starting in 1957, equipped with the neo-corporatist and dual labor market theories, produced the Vicious Institutional Triangle of Histadrut, state and Mapai: the fact that the ZLM’s ideology had totally rejected the option of one state and a joint economy with the Palestinians before 1947 but institutionalized it after 1967 was “not only puzzling but disturbing”; Mapai (note 9: the Hebrew acronym of the Eretz Israel Worker Party) postponed the Histadrut elections from 1963 to 1965, coopted revolting workers, deliberately caused the deepest recession in Israeli history, and after 1967 institutionalized the integration of occupied Palestinian workers — the key reason for abandoning separation was the refusal to democratize the Histadrut’s quasi-state structure (PDF p.27-29). His 1993-1997 Histadrut reform advisory work for Yossi Beilin, Haim Ramon and Amir Peretz failed against party apparatchiks (PDF p.30). The Israeli-Palestinian program followed: triple democratization across the internal Israeli, internal Palestinian and Israeli-Palestinian arenas (Grinberg 1994); Imagined Democracy and Imagined Peace, under which the Intifada’s border demarcation and the PLO’s 1988 state resolution made peace imaginable while occupation continued and decolonization was prevented (PDF p.31-33); and politics versus violence after 2000, when the pre-constructed Camp David “moment of truth” and Barak’s “generous offer” narrative, public and media support for violence, and military escalation — including the targeted killing of Raed Karmi after Arafat’s December 2001 ceasefire — closed political space, read through Hannah Arendt’s opposition of power and violence (PDF p.34-37).

1. Introduction: Political Spaces and Mo(ve)ments of Resistance (PDF p.38-60 / printed p.37-59)

Politics is defined as the decision-making process between decision makers and those affected, deliberated and interactive or unilateral and imposed, at every scale; the framework goes beyond the democracy/autocracy dichotomy to dominated groups’ capacity to resist and formal democracies’ capacity to ignore citizens (PDF p.38-39). Section II, On Politics and Violence, develops Arendt: political power rests on dialogue and consent, violence is unilateral imposition that can destroy political power but not build it; the military demarcates the borders defining potentially equal citizens and, by using or refusing internal violence, closes or opens political space (PDF p.41-43). Section III, Political Space, defines the concept as a non-physical symbolic field of representation between state and civil society, framed and determined by both, whose opening incumbents resist because new actors threaten their power (PDF p.43-45). Section IV sets the concept against Bourdieu’s autonomous political field and Linz and Stepan’s political society: political space lacks autonomy, civil society can remove the actors who claim to represent it, and actors may consciously demobilize civil society to keep power; Collier and Collier’s Latin American arena is closest, but Grinberg’s includes colonial and settler conflicts (PDF p.45-48). Section V, Imagined Communities, Imagined Democracy, and Settler Societies: the boundaries of “the people” are themselves a democratic struggle; democracies can be more brutal than non-democracies toward groups excluded from the nation (Mann 2005); settler societies are the clearest imaginary democracies, simultaneously nationalizing the migrants and de-nationalizing the original inhabitants (paraphrasing Brubaker 1996), drawing a sharp line between “the people” and the “non-people” (PDF p.48-51). Section VI: democratic institutions encourage opening, yet actors close space under democratic rules to secure their positions by institutional and discursive means — O’Donnell’s critique of consolidated Latin American democracies in different terms (PDF p.52-53). Section VII, Resistance Mo(ve)ments: resistance is defined as the attempt to open political space through physical presentation of power by subordinated forces seeking recognition and representation; the moment runs from the initial intrusion into the public sphere to legitimate representation or successful marginalization; each chapter then analyzes background, intrusion, duration, dissolution and the counter-mo(ve)ment (PDF p.54-56). Section VIII distinguishes mo(ve)ments from cycles of protest and political opportunities structure: they erupt at almost complete closure of legitimate representation, including symbolic repression of identities and narratives, as a volcanic eruption rather than a culmination of organizing, with effects that may be unintended or opposite (PDF p.56-58). Section IX restates each chapter’s puzzle and the conclusion that Israel is an imaginary or illusionary democracy, effective precisely owing to its success in legitimizing itself as a democracy locally and internationally (PDF p.58-60).

2. 1931 — An Arab-Jewish Civil Society Struggle against the British Colonial Government (PDF p.61-90 / printed p.60-89)

The chapter distinguishes nation-building from state-building and explains British rule’s end in ethnic war through the exceptional 1931 case (PDF p.61-62). Section II: Jewish land purchase increased Arab labor supply; Second Aliyah youngsters — “workers” for lack of property, not class origin — founded Hapoel Hatzair and Poaley Zion in 1905; after wage-cutting, ethnic-solidarity appeals and Yemenite importation failed, the joint parties/WZO strategy of Constructive Socialism made Hebrew Labor its highest value and pursued a segregated Jewish economy — political control of land, labor and capital through the Kibbutz/Moshav, the JNF and Keren Hayesod — displacing Arabs and, secondarily, excluding Oriental and religious Jews from the cooperatives; Britain’s rejection of an Arab demand for a proportional parliamentary Council closed Political Space (PDF p.62-66). Section III: the Histadrut, founded 1920, built WS institutional enterprises (Bank Hapoalim on a £50,000 WZO allocation, Solel Boneh, Hamashbir Hamerkazi, Tnuva), an exclusive welfare quasi-state with state-like elections, the Haganah (1920) and Palmach, and employment-exchange bureaus allocating jobs only to members — contested by private employers and Jabotinsky’s Revisionists; it formed political-bureaucratic apparatuses, not representative unions, consistently prioritizing ethno-national over class considerations (PDF p.66-69). Section IV: as nation-builder the Histadrut dominated culture, press, sport and education; ZLM hegemony rested on non-working-class Jews’ interest in Hebrew Labor and on welfare services open to all Jews except private employers. Mapai, unified in 1930, and the Haganah’s relative restraint completed the state-building design; the Fourth Aliyah’s failure, Solel Boneh’s bankruptcy and the 1929 clashes (133 Jews and 116 Arabs killed, as Grinberg gives them) brought the Shaw Commission conclusion that Zionist segregation caused Arab land dispossession and unemployment — and the ZLM’s opposite conclusion, Ben Gurion’s shift “from class to nation” and Katzenelson’s “working nation”: no longer WZO subcontractor, Mapai would fund only capitalists accepting Hebrew Labor (PDF p.69-72).

Section V, the Drivers’ Strike of 1931: Arab bus companies, Histadrut-affiliated Jewish transport cooperatives and unorganized “singles” (with private car owners, 400 of 2,400 vehicles, Census of Palestine 1931) struck against motor taxes driven by the Mandate deficit (£100,000 government; £150,000 for the state train company, larger than the government’s). Hasan Sidqi al-Dajani, hired by Arab owners to negotiate oil taxes, mobilized singles and Jewish cooperatives; after the August 7, 1931 24-hour warning strike the Histadrut, failing to prevent joint organization, obtained a parity central committee (16 Arabs, 16 Jews; Shraga Gorochowsky as el-Dajani’s deputy). The London Treasury’s refusal to compromise, against local advice, brought the ten-day general strike, which paralyzed transport, drew joint demonstrations in mixed cities and solidarity commerce strikes, and forced the government to cave in — with no violence; Chaim Arlosoroff wrote to Ruttenberg that the conjuncture could be a turning point in Arab-Jewish relations (PDF p.73-77). Section VI: el-Dajani’s proposals to expand cooperation — joint unionization, Histadrut welfare services for Arabs, an immigration-assimilation model not harming Arab employment — were negotiated by Shertok and Arlosoroff but rejected by Ben Gurion’s Histadrut; transport cooperation was terminated by the separate Jewish cooperative Egged (1933). Mapai won 44% at the 1933 WZO Congress (68% in Palestine; 48.8% and 69.5% in 1935) and Ben Gurion chaired the Jewish Agency Executive; over 130,000 immigrants in 1933-1936 raised the Jewish population by about 80% (Haifa Jews 16,000 to over 50,000; Tel-Aviv about 45,000 to over 145,000; Jerusalem 54,000 to 74,000 against 39,000 non-Jews). The Arab Higher Committee’s April 1936 general strike demanded suspension of immigration and land sales; the Peel Commission (1937) proposed partition; after 1937 the revolt became decentralized armed struggle, repressed with almost 4,000 revolutionaries killed and almost 15,000 wounded and more than 15,000 arrested, deteriorating into internal killings of suspected collaborators, el-Dajani among them (assassinated 1938) (PDF p.77-81). Sections VII-VIII: the matrix — ZLM transformed Jewish rural workers’ particular interest into the national strategy, against integrationist market forces and urban skilled workers’ interest in joint unionization; both bourgeoisies were de-legitimized, the Arab by failure to protect peasants, so Palestinian national disintegration and Zionist nation-building were two sides of one coin, culminating in the 1948 leadership void and Nakba. The strike is forgotten because it fits neither national narrative; the 1936 strike was its counter-mo(ve)ment. Without forced migration and prevention of return, Palestinians within the 1949 ceasefire borders would have been 60% (900,000 against 600,000 Jews); ethnic segregation and forced migration were preconditions of democratic rules in a Jewish-majority state, and remaining Palestinians, though citizens, lived under military administration until 1966 (PDF p.82-90).

3. 1959 — Wadi Salib Riots: Culminating a Decade of Ethnic Discrimination (PDF p.91-111 / printed p.90-110, in part)

The chapter’s frame: the first decade established an ethnic hierarchy — Jews/Arabs and Ashkenazim/Mizrahim — on Orientalist discourse and veteran Ashkenazi power; the Wadi Salib Riots, sparked in Haifa’s Wadi Salib and spreading nationwide for four weeks at the moment industrialization achieved full employment, shaped the November 1959 elections and a durable pattern of ethnic misrepresentation and tribal channeling (PDF p.91-92). Section I: about 700,000 Palestinian refugees fled (estimates as Grinberg gives them: official Israeli 520,000, Morris about 700,000, Abu-Sitta 935,000; about 25,000 returned by 1953) and little less than 700,000 Jews immigrated within five years, 45% of them Mizrahim; the state appropriated refugee real estate under the Absentee Property Law (1950), the Land Acquisition Law (1953) and the 1959-1960 “Israel lands” category. Pre-state institutions (Jewish Agency, Histadrut, Mapai) absorbed immigrants in total dependence, controlling them through services; Mizrahim were settled in segregated peripheral settlements as a buffer against refugee return, constructed as one ethnic community despite Moroccan, Iraqi, Yemeni and Tunisian differences; German reparations widened the gap, producing two ethno-classes — Mizrahi lower, Ashkenazi middle — while Arab citizens under martial law were constructed as “enemy” and their labor market controlled by military permits with the Histadrut (PDF p.92-95). Section II: wartime union unrest, the Achdut Haavoda split and Mapam’s 1948 strength (19 of 120 Knesset seats, 34% in the Histadrut); Mapai’s “statism” subjected all militias to the IDF while its own apparatus was never disbanded; ethnic segregation — a future state with a minimal number of Arabs — was the one uncontested consensus, requiring readiness “to perpetuate the cleansing”; only some 160,000 Arabs remained; return attempts (mistanenim) and their prevention defined remaining Arabs as second-class citizens dependent on military commanders for permits, excluded by non-conscription and state symbols, their lands expropriated and labor supervised by military and Histadrut exchanges. Mapai promoted officers by party loyalty against Mapam (Recruited Members Committee); in a quid pro quo the IDF gained a free hand beyond the borders, and after martial law’s abolition in 1966 the military pressed for the border expansion achieved in 1967 (PDF p.95-100). Section III: the postcolonial Anti-Democratic Catch — split pre-1948 institutions (British, Jewish Agency, Histadrut) continued after 1948, their continuity the main barrier to opening political space; Mapai delegated state functions (health above all) to the Histadrut and funded it, making Jews dependent on Histadrut membership and Arabs on collaboration with the military ruler — quasi-citizenship. The Vicious Institutional Triangle of state, Histadrut and Mapai, elsewhere the Labor Institutional Complex, was a mutual interdependency no partner could change, broken only in 1995 (PDF p.100-104). Section IV: within four years pre-WWII veterans became a minority; immigrants passed through tents and Maabarot to public housing or empty Arab houses (Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Ramla, Lod); settlement on destroyed villages’ “abandoned” lands served control and food production; old (Ashkenazi, connected) and new (Mizrahi, unconnected) Moshavim diverged; from 1956 North African immigration was directed to development towns whose low-skilled industries and reversed town-village dependency (Mizrahi towns dependent on veteran cooperative settlements for work) entrenched the two ethno-classes. The decade created three segregated groups: dominant Ashkenazi elites, Arab citizens under martial law, and Mizrahim in-between on every level, designated to replace the refugees in space and economic function (PDF p.105-107). Section V: industrialization from 1954 under Pinhas Sapir — low-cost unemployed labor, German capital inflows, state subsidization — averaged 10% annual growth led by construction; Histadrut pension funds were allocated as large-scale credit to WS (Lavon negotiated no less than half the funds’ capital to WS, the WS Financial Plan), mediated by Mapai. High unemployment let the Histadrut control dependent employees without representing them, while groups able to damage the economy by striking liberated themselves from Mapai control — first professionals (engineers, academics, physicians, professors, teachers) and large committees such as the Electric Corporation’s — widening the dual labor market; government education policy tracked most Mizrahim into “occupational” high schools against Ashkenazi academic tracks, and the Histadrut crushed independent unions, the 1951 Seamen’s Revolt among them, leaving Mizrahi immigrants a marginalized, dependent ethno-working class (PDF p.108-111). Section VI, the riots themselves: police shot a local drunk in Wadi Salib (~15,000 North African residents in a former Arab Haifa neighbourhood); demonstrators marched on Hadar, riots spread for a month to Acco, Tel Hanan, Beer Sheba, Kiriat Shmona and Migdal Haemek, Mapai/Histadrut offices were burned, and Mapai mobilized police and the Histadrut’s paramilitary Worker Troops under Haifa Workers Council secretary Joseph Almogi, while Mayor Aba Hushi compared the violence to Kristallnacht. The government recognised the claims but not the claimers, confining the Etziony Committee to Wadi Salib; Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan separated their personal popularity from the party apparatus, Dayan legitimizing anti-apparatus bitterness in the development towns, and suppression plus Ashkenazi middle-class fears gave Mapai its greatest electoral victory ever. The revolt’s North African Immigrants Union leaders were jailed (David Ben Harush, two years); the party won 8,200 votes, 0.8%, below the 1% threshold (PDF p.112-116). Section VII, the counter-mo(ve)ment: North Africans, settled from the mid-1950s with no co-opted spokesman and marked by cultural similarity to the Arab “enemy”, lacked the connections, legitimate language and joint organisation to become a collective actor; opposition parties (Herut most earnestly) voiced their claims but not their leaders, and all pre-1948 Ashkenazi parties cooperated in cooptation, delegitimizing collective claims as a negation of the melting pot and autonomous organisation as “the ethnic demon” — “the complete delegitimization of Mizrahi representation was the most important long-term historical result of the Wadi Salib Riots”. Mapai became the Ashkenazi veterans’ “political protector” through a new repertoire, ethnic misrepresentation by tribal channeling of fear, hostility and vengefulness (PDF p.116-119). Section VIII, Conclusion: the “crisis of statehood” — strong formative institutions against new democratic rules — produced manipulative channeling and cooptation instead of opening; three insights expand Political Space: recognition of identity without recognition of representative actors closes space; internal elite divisions can open space for both recognition (Dayan) and repression (Hushi); and cooptation manipulates a recognised identity whose distinct interests are not legitimized, effective when the group has no economic, symbolic or cultural power base. Only the free market could have supported democratization, and it threatened the ruling institutions too much to be allowed (PDF p.120-122).

4. 1960-1965 — The Action Committees’ Revolt: Full Employment Crisis, Failed Democratization and State Expansion (PDF p.123-151 / printed p.122-150)

The chapter’s puzzle is why the ZLM abandoned its pre-1948 separation strategy after 1967 and imposed colonial domination within Mandate borders; the answer is the preceding crisis of statehood (PDF p.123). Section I: full employment ended Arab workers’ military control (free movement by 1962), equalized wages and homogenized the working class; semi- and unskilled workers unionized autonomously in “wildcat” strikes, real wages rose steadily, and the 1962 devaluation — meant to cut real wages and subsidies — produced the opposite: a 30% average real wage increase, industrialist subsidy demands and a deficit cycle, because the Histadrut could neither represent nor control the workers (PDF p.123-125). Section II, the Lavon Affair: Ben Gurion’s “statist” reforms (a failed Public Health Bill, regional elections) stalled against the non-representative pre-1948 structure; the revived 1954 “Unfortunate Affair” — the Olshan-Dori Committee, suspects Lavon and Military Intelligence Chief Binyamin Jibli (as printed), the belated trial of Avri Elad, the “third man” — was in substance the 1960 struggle over Histadrut power, Lavon demanding a say in taxation and budgeting or disclaiming restraint of wage demands. The Party Central Committee dismissed Lavon, settling neither statism nor movementism: Eshkol consolidated leadership, chose the party over government and Histadrut, and kept the Histadrut a centralist federation forcing wage restraint rather than a union representing workers; the unresolved problem, worker empowerment, required closing political space (PDF p.126-131). Section III: under Secretary General Aaron Becker and Yeruham Meshel the Histadrut tried to crush unapproved strikes, but plant-level councils radicalized regardless of party and leftist activists formed Action Committees — solidarity, protests and general strikes backed by Mapam, Ahdut Haavoda, the Communists and Herut — the direct manifestation of resistance to dependency rather than representation (PDF p.131-134).

Section IV, Counter-Mo(ve)ment I: faced with the action committees, a rising Liberal-represented middle class, a possible Lavon-headed workers’ front and Herut’s first Histadrut election entry, Eshkol aligned Mapai with Ahdut Haavoda — indirect cooptation, the party penetrating the working class through Ahdut Haavoda’s pro-worker image while its kibbutz interests kept it loyal to wage restraint; the Alignment took 50.88% in the Histadrut. Ben Gurion split to form Rafi, judged less dangerous than a workers’ front; the Liberals and Herut answered with the Gahal block. Neither multi-class block represented a pure class interest: their formation closed political space for class agendas — Condensation (Eyal 2003) (PDF p.134-138). Section V, Counter-Mo(ve)ment II: after winning both 1965 elections (Alignment 36.7% Knesset, Gahal 25.1%), the government imposed a deliberate recession — development and subsidy cuts timed after the elections and before German government reparations ended in 1967 — against the employers’ preferred import of non-unionized foreign workers. Unemployment crossed 100,000 (12.5%), strikes ran at 284 in 1965 and 276 in 1966 against a 1960-1964 average of 140, immigration fell (215,000 in 1961-1964; 70,000 in 1964-1967, as printed) and emigration rose; Sapir refused the WS subsidized loans, an assertion of state autonomy possible only in crisis (PDF p.138-141). Section VI, Counter-Mo(ve)ment III: in April 1967 Sapir tipped WS managers to invest in military industries; within ten days of the June war the WS was planning marketing in the “Occupied Areas” to a captive market of 1.5 million Palestinians, and the Histadrut cooperated with the military administration to design the Dual Regime — not, Grinberg stresses, a war fought for economic reasons, but a postwar bureaucratic adjustment, short-term and inadvertent in its long-term effects. Its instruments were the captive market (Jordan/Egypt borders closed, Israeli prices and customs imposed), the Open Bridges Policy exporting Palestinian produce to Jordan while barring it from Israel, and Palestinian employment in Israel under an agreement deducting pension payments and union taxes from non-citizen workers without representation; the least protected were the unskilled Israelis — peripheral Mizrahim and Palestinian citizens — who competed with them. Two quasi-state institutions, Histadrut and IDF, occupied the political sphere; “security” legitimized the regime and has largely meant protecting powerful Israeli groups against Palestinian competition (PDF p.142-148). Section VII, Conclusion: the five-year working-class mo(ve)ment won wages and unionization but its leaders were co-opted through the parties; only the third, structural counter-mo(ve)ment — blurring the borders economically while maintaining them legally, and concealing politics under “security” — saved the LIC’s non-democratic institutions (PDF p.148-151).

5. 1971 — The Black Panthers Movement: Ethnic Tensions and “Left-Right” Tribal Polarization (PDF p.152-162 / printed p.151-161, in part)

Section I: the June 1967 victory and the War of Attrition brought Rafi and Gahal into government, Dayan to the Security Ministry, industrial peace until 1970 and renewed growth (GNP +10% in 1967), and above all labour-market segmentation: Jewish workers advanced to primary public-service and security-industry jobs closed to Palestinians, while non-citizen Palestinians were funneled by “market forces” — and by denial of civil rights and military rule — into the unstable, lower-paying secondary sector. The post-1967 structure comprised four ethno-classes: Ashkenazi Jews controlling economy, state and apparatuses with strong autonomous unions; Mizrahi Jews peripheral, lower-paid, in weak Mapai/Histadrut-controlled unions, advantaged only by ethno-national citizenship; Palestinian citizens, disadvantaged but able to improve, if limitedly, through legitimate politics; and OT Palestinians with no civil rights, including no free association, forced to seek temporary work in Israel. Segmentation, an unintended consequence of the war, reversed the pre-1967 homogenization and solved the Histadrut’s restraint problem; the Mizrahi lower ethno-classes’ protest was voiced by the Black Panthers (Israel) in 1971-1973 and later channeled to the right-wing nationalist party (PDF p.152-156). Section II: the control pattern over non-citizen Palestinians — military control of movement, costly Israeli goods marketed in the OT with cheaper Jordanian/Egyptian imports blocked, Palestinian produce marketed cheaply in Jordan but not in Israel, little capital investment, Palestinian workers’ taxes pocketed by state bureaucracies; manufacturing stayed below 20% of the Palestinian economy (against 30% in Israel) with an average of 4 workers per factory (against 28), even as Palestinian GNP grew 20% annually in the first occupation years and 4.8% annually in 1971-1987. Limited Palestinian resistance reinforced control through the Security Myth — the “maintenance of the status-quo” discourse presenting the military as apolitical and the occupation as temporary. The arrangement broke radically with the labour movement’s separation strategy, using control techniques refined under the 1948-1966 military government of Palestinian citizens; ZLM bought a decade in power by transforming the state into a dual democratic/military regime, and the “left”/“right” national myths legitimizing occupation institutionalized polarized tribal politics (PDF p.156-159). Section III: in 1967-1973 security replaced construction as the leading, most subsidized industry — capital mainly from the US, markets expanded by Palestinian workers and captive consumers; WS invested in security as Sapir had tipped in April 1967 and profited, recruiting high-ranking military veterans as executives, and security exports grew from 5% of exports ($50million,1972)toward18$800 million, 1982, as cited). The Ministry of Security became an autonomous resource allocator against the Treasury, regulating Green Line movement as its second, legitimizing role; in the secret October 1967 meeting Eshkol backed Dayan’s budget increase over Sapir’s plea to continue the recession policy, citing Sinai oil for five years’ increased security spending, and the state’s brief 1966-67 autonomy was lost to the internal rift. Negotiations to reunite Mapai, Ahdut Haavoda and Rafi as the Labor Party, with Mapam joining a new Alignment (Ma’arach) before the elections, deepened the Dayan-Sapir conflict (PDF p.159-162). The movement itself is taken up from PDF p.163.

Ch.5 §§III-IV continued (PDF p.163-169 / printed p.162-168): the statist security establishment and the movementist Histadrut cooperated under the dual regime — Histadrut controlling OT Palestinian workers, WS subsidized by the Security Ministry, security workers on “cost-plus” wages — making Mapai virtually redundant; forced to reorganize as the Labor Party under Golda Meir (1969 compromise over Sapir), Mapai’s only power was the Treasury, which from 1968 answered the Security Ministry’s autonomous allocation with “indexing insurance”: non-indexed loans of half the Histadrut pension funds to WS firms under the WS Financial Plan, government subsidization without public scrutiny, the main source of the swelling 1970s internal debt and fiscal crisis and of the later hyperinflation. Labour split with the regime: powerful public-sector workers in “security enterprises” barred to Palestinians struck independently, business-sector workers were weakened by Palestinian competition, and the Histadrut restrained the latter while backing the former. The first tripartite Package Deal (4% plus 4% in bonds, industry-level bargaining preserved) became a floor; powerful groups broke past it (engineers 35%, Ashdod longshoremen 40%, nurses 42%, doctors 45%), inflation averaged 12%-20% in 1971-1973, and in 1973 Gahal renamed itself Likud and gained almost 50%.

5. 1971 — The Black Panthers Movement (PDF p.170-181 / printed p.169-180, completed)

§V: the Black Panthers (Israel) — young Musrara leaders (Saadia Marciano, Charlie Bitton, Reuven Abargil, Cochabi Shemesh) protesting Mizrahi discrimination in housing, education and jobs against the generous absorption of new, mainly Ashkenazi immigrants — demonstrated from March 3, 1971; the shock expanded state transfer payments into a more universal welfare state, one of the three main inflation factors. The April 13, 1971 meeting with Prime Minister Meir recognised the claims but not the claimers, ending in her “they are not nice guys” (as printed); the violent May 18 demonstration brought the Katz Commission, whose income and education reforms failed to change the reproducing structure. §VI, the counter-mo(ve)ment: the Panthers opened political space for recognition of Mizrahi identity and claims but not for autonomous representation — in Histadrut elections 2.2%, in the December 1973 Knesset elections below the 1% threshold — because Mizrahim, in-between with an Ashkenazi above and a Palestinian below, preferred ethno-national Jewish equality claims; Menachem Begin and Likud spoke the legitimate languages of Jewish superiority and the biblical Greater Israel, co-opting Mizrahi activists locally and channeling rage tribally at national level. §VII Conclusion: inadvertently the Panthers delegitimized Labor and empowered Likud; since 1981 dichotomous “left”/“right” tribal polarization and parties’ “cartel” cooperation (Arian 1998) closed space further, Mizrahi identity remaining “forbidden” until Shas (1984) reconciled it with the legitimate language of Jewish religion — misrepresentation, not representation, under the dual regime; the 1977 Labor defeat was also driven by beneficiaries of its economic policy, such as Dash, seeking a way out.

6. 1980 — Forum/13 Powerful Workers: Hyperinflation and the Challenge to State Autonomy (PDF p.182-212 / printed p.181-211, in part)

§I Introduction: the May 1977 results continued the Mizrahi shift to Likud; Dash (15 seats) failed as power broker, the Alignment saved the Histadrut (523,000 Histadrut votes against 430,000 in the Knesset), and the ZLM’s decline ran through two moments — the 1967 loss of hegemonic ideology to the dual regime it had institutionalized, and the 1977 loss of power to the Likud equipped to legitimize it. Both expectations of Begin’s government failed at once: three-figure inflation instead of liberal economic success, and a peace treaty with Egypt instead of conflict escalation (PDF p.182-184). §II Background: the two condensed multi-class blocks channeled class conflict inside the parties; the 1973 war ended rapid growth (import surplus 1,262 to 4,050 million dollars, 1970-1975, as given), inflation ran 30-40%, crawling devaluation and non-indexed capital subsidies grew, wage restraint fell on weak workers, the COLA was underpaid at 70% of the CPI, “wage crawl” widened strong-weak gaps, and the Alignment’s crisis — corruption affairs, Housing Minister Abraham Offer’s suicide, Rabin’s resignation — produced Dash (PDF p.184-188). §III The Economic Turnabout: Ehrlich’s November 1977 liberalization abolished exchange control; the Histadrut still restrained public-sector wages to protect its WS employer interests, until Ehrlich’s separate March 1979 engineers’ agreement (about 30%) bypassed it; inflation reached 56.1% (March 1979) and 130% (third quarter 1979) and almost 170% (last quarter 1979), the Histadrut and employers jointly bypassed the government through the June 1979 comprehensive pension agreement expanding the Financial Plan, and Ehrlich resigned to Horowitz (PDF p.188-192). Grinberg’s inflation theory is political: neither monetarist nor cost-push, it reflects the state’s lack of autonomy — divided between Security and Treasury under the dual regime, interdependent in the vicious triangle — vis-à-vis capital and strong organized labour (PDF p.192-193).

§IV Powerful Resistance (PDF p.194-200): Horowitz, with Manufacturers’ chairman Abraham Shavit installed at El-Al as the public sector’s “compass”, announced subsidy elimination, credit freeze and no wage increases in November 1979; Jerusalem’s Likud-voting poor protested for “money for the poor neighborhoods and not for the settlements” (as printed), the Histadrut called and then, under government and employer pressure, called off the November 27 general strike — exposing its three weaknesses (alienation from workers, partisan non-representation, WS employer interests) — and the powerful committees founded Forum/13 at the El-Al ultimatum’s expiry. Directly elected, mostly state-firm, security-cleared Jewish committees, secretly backed by Meshel, their January 1980 24-hour export-immobilizing strike won recognition without ever needing another; the largest demonstration in Israel’s history followed on May 1, 1980, and July 1980 Framework Agreements were signed. §V Elections under Hyperinflation (PDF p.200-205): Horowitz revoked the WS Financial Plan in October 1980 — Levinson of Bank Hapoalim, he said, was the real Treasury Minister — a structural transformation that doomed the dependent Histadrut firms long-term and cost him his job short-term; Aridor’s expansive pre-election turn reversed the polls (February 1981: Alignment 34 seats, Likud 13; June: 42-42, as given), the bank-shares crash of October 1983 and Begin’s resignation after Sabra and Shatila followed reelection, inflation reached 466% in 1984, and the deadlocked 1984 elections produced the national unity government Horowitz had demanded — with a ten-month delay until after the May 1985 Histadrut elections before a stabilization plan could be implemented. §VI Counter-Mo(ve)ment (PDF p.205-212, in part): the Emergency Economic Stabilization Plan team (Immanuel Sharon, Michael Bruno, Berglas, Neubach, Frenkel) prepared a 20% devaluation, $750millionbudgetcutandwage/price/exchangefreezewith10$1.5 billion “safety net” gift; $3 billion a year as grant). Inflation fell from 466% (July 1985) to 25% (March 1986); Bruno, Bank of Israel governor from 1986, held the exchange rate against exporters, and the dramatic collapses of the former Financial Plan dependents begin at PDF p.212 and continue in the next part.

Key passages

• “Every book is a collective enterprise, personal signature and responsibility of the author notwithstanding” (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.9 / printed p.8).
• On his rejection of meta-narratives: “history has no necessary logic or direction; it is rather the path-dependent outcome of crucial turning points. Politics matters” (PDF p.13 / printed p.12).
• Arendt, as quoted by Grinberg: “Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy” (Arendt 1969: 56, PDF p.41 / printed p.40).
• Arlosoroff, as quoted by Grinberg: “This is an exceptional conjuncture in the development of Arab affairs … and if we do not allow it to pass by unused, it may be in a certain sense a turning point in the development of Arab-Jewish relations” (Arlosoroff letter to Pinchas Ruttenberg, November 22, 1931, PDF p.76 / printed p.75).
• Offe, as quoted by Grinberg: “The people cannot decide who is the people” (Offe 1998: 116, PDF p.49 / printed p.48).

Evidence the work relies on

In the part read, the evidence is the author’s own prior research and the sociological literature he surveys, as he presents them: Eisenstadt (1967), Horowitz and Lissak (1978), Shapiro (1977), Bernstein (1976), Swirski (1981), Zureik (1979), Lustick (1980), Kimmerling (1983, 1989, 1992, 2001), Shafir (1987), Shafir and Peled (2002), Uri Ram (2008), Shalev (1992) and his own studies (Grinberg 1991, 1993, 2003, 2010); the Histadrut and Mapai archives for 1960-1965 and interviews with working-class and Histadrut leaders, Finance Ministers and corporation heads for 1980; and the theoretical literature — Arendt (1969), Bourdieu (1992), Anderson, Sewell (1996, 2005), Lakatos (1978), Burawoy (1989), Skocpol (1985), Schmitter (1974), Goldthorpe (1984), O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986), Linz and Stepan (1996), Collier and Collier (1991), Tilly, Mann (2005) and Tarrow. Chapter 2’s evidence, as Grinberg presents it, is archival and press-based: National Archives Co 814/27 Executive Council minutes (meetings 426 and 428, July 1931), Zionist Archives files (Arlosoroff to Ruttenberg, ZA S/25-3061; Dov Hoz letters, ZA S/25-2961; National Committee Protocols, ZA J1/7243), Lavon Archives Histadrut minutes (M-17), Davar (August 20, 1931; September 11, 1931; February 2, 1933) and the Palestine Post (November 1931), the Census of Palestine 1931, the Shaw Report (1930), and the secondary literature cited section by section (Shafir 1989; Shapiro 1976; Kimmerling 1983; Lockman 1996; Bernstein 2000; Cohen 2008; Hughes 2009, 2010). Chapter 3’s part read cites the Absentee Property Law sequence and demographic/immigration figures credited in the notes above (Hacohen 2003; Eyal 2005; Morris 1987; Abu-Sitta 2004). Chapter 5’s later evidence, as presented, is Bernstein (1976), Dahan Kalev (1991) and Chetrit (2010) with the author’s own involvement and conversations with Panther leaders, the April 13, 1971 Meir meeting protocol in the Golda Meir archive, Haaretz and Yediot Ahronot of May 19, 1971, and the State Comptroller Reports (1977, 1980) on the indexing-insurance debt. Chapter 6’s evidence, as presented, is the author’s MA thesis (Grinberg 1985) and Split Corporatism in Israel (Grinberg 1991) with interviews (Meshel, Horowitz, Shavit, Eli Ben-Menachem, Michael Bruno with Michael Shalev), Yediot Ahronot and Davar and Haaretz reporting as cited page by page, the Lavon Institute minutes, and the EESP principles in Neubach’s (1986) version. The historical chapters’ remaining evidence is assessed in later parts.

Analysis

The part read is methodological and autobiographical: a progressive research program in Lakatos’s and Burawoy’s sense, in which each case began from a puzzle existing theory could not explain and the resistance movement found in the material expanded the theory — abduction, in Grinberg’s term. Its limits are stated by the author himself: the selection of cases is accidental and path-dependent, not systematic; wars and peace-making turning points are lacking; the researcher was also an actor in some events studied (Histadrut representative, reform advisor, Yesh Gvul speaker), which he treats as a source of insight rather than detachment. Claims about earlier studies in the Prologue are summaries of his published work, credited there, and are tested in the chapters that follow.

People, organizations, places and events

Lev Grinberg, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Yonatan Shapiro, Michael Burawoy, Baruch Kimmerling, Hannah Arendt, Benedict Anderson, Histadrut, Mapai, Mapam, Likud, Yossi Beilin, First Intifada, Second Intifada, Pinhas Sapir, Levi Eshkol, Action Committees, Black Panthers (Israel), Forum/13, Emergency Economic Stabilization Plan, Michael Bruno, Menachem Begin, Golda Meir, Shas, Hasan Sidqi al-Dajani, Chaim Arlosoroff, David Ben-Gurion, Jewish Agency, Haganah, Palmach, Shaw Commission, Peel Commission, Absentee Property Law, Drivers’ Strike of 1931, Wadi Salib Riots

Concepts

Political Space, Imagined Democracy, Imagined Peace, Symbolic Violence, Movements of Resistance, Split Corporatism, Vicious Institutional Triangle, Two-state solution, Constructive Socialism, Hebrew Labour, Mizrahim, Labor Institutional Complex, Anti-Democratic Catch, Mamlachtiut, Dual Regime, Condensation, Tribal Channeling, Security Myth, Washington Consensus

How it relates to other sources

Grinberg is already in the wiki as a cited authority in Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine for the Security Myth and Imagined Peace; this work gives those terms their fuller setting in his own framework of political space and imagined democracy. Its account of the Histadrut and Labor institutions imposed from above continues the institutional history in Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, whose author is among the scholars Grinberg cites on pre-state Jewish-Arab labor cases, and its 1931 chapter (next part) addresses the Mandate-period civil society that Lockman and The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate document from other angles. Its settler-society framing of Israel sits beside Stateless Citizenship (2013)‘s incorporation-regime account of Palestinian citizenship, with Arendt used by both works.

Open questions

• The Contents page numbers in the text copy are printed-page numbers detached from their entries (PDF p.8); they are recorded as printed in the reading notes.

• The Prologue dates the Palestinian anti-colonial revolt to 1988 in one passage (PDF p.19) and to 1987-1992 / 1987-1993 elsewhere (PDF p.55, 58); both as printed.

• “Shil’s (1957) model of center and periphery” (PDF p.14) is recorded as printed; the name is not expanded in the part read.

• The glossary dates Ratz’s establishment by Shulamit Aloni to 1977 (PDF p.12) and Mapai’s founding merger spelling as “Achdut Haavoda” (PDF p.11); both as printed.

• C. W. Mills is cited as “Mills, 1959” for elitist power theory (PDF p.15) and as “C.W. Mills” among scholars Arendt criticized (PDF p.41); recorded as printed in both places.

• Chapter 2 spells the Second Aliyah historian “Eizenstadt” (PDF p.62-63) beside “Eisenstadt” in the Prologue; “Berstein” for Bernstein (PDF p.82) beside Bernstein elsewhere; “prooves” in note 30 (PDF p.82); Davar dated “Septemer 11, 1931” (PDF p.77); and “Achdut Havoda” in Chapter 1’s note 6 (PDF p.69); all as printed.

• The note on Moshe Shertok gives his dates as “(1994-1965)” (PDF p.78); as printed.

• Chapter 3, Section II places the Achdut Haavoda split “towards the Histadrut elections in 1965” in a passage on the Second World War period (PDF p.95); as printed.

• Chapter 2 gives the 1929 clashes as 133 Jews and 116 Arabs killed (PDF p.71), and Chapter 3 gives refugee estimates ranging from 520,000 to 935,000 with Morris at about 700,000 (PDF p.92); recorded as the work presents them, not reconciled.

• Foreign Minister Moshe “Sharet” is spelled so at PDF p.100 beside “Sharett” in the Shertok note (PDF p.78); both as printed.

• Chapter 4 names the Military Intelligence chief “Binyamin Jibli” (PDF p.127) and the third man “Avri Elad” (PDF p.128); “Washington Concensus” (PDF p.141), “Ministry of Treasure” for Treasury (PDF p.156), “its’ ethnic background” (PDF p.112), “Piore and Dorenberg, 1971” (PDF p.153, note 3), “Mendeltzweig and Magor, 1984” (PDF p.140, note 21) and the alternating “Shitrit (2004)” (PDF p.114-116) beside Chetrit are all recorded as printed.

• Immigration figures in note 21 span overlapping ranges as printed — 215,000 in 1961-1964 and 70,000 in 1964-1967 (PDF p.140); recorded as printed, not reconciled.

• Chapter 4’s running head shortens its title to “Employment Crisis” (PDF p.124) against the chapter title’s “Full Employment Crisis” (PDF p.123); both as printed.

• Chapter 5 spells “a an agreement” for the Financial Plan (PDF p.164), “maintanance” for maintenance (PDF p.177), and the Forum/13 chapter lists twelve committee names for the thirteen committees (PDF p.198); Eli Ben-Menachem (PDF p.186) appears as “Ben-Menahem” (PDF p.196); all as printed.

• Chapter 6’s note 9 dates the engineers’ agreement report “Haaretz, March 29, 1977” in a passage on March 1979 (PDF p.189); “Ethan Berglas” (PDF p.206), “Neucbach’s (1986)” beside Neubach (PDF p.208-209), “Solel Bone” beside Solel Boneh (PDF p.212), and “Shimon Peres at Prime Minister” (PDF p.206) are all recorded as printed.

• The National Unity Government note’s block seat counts (PDF p.205-206) sum past the stated 105 KMs when the listed party figures are added; recorded as printed, not reconciled.

Coverage

PDF p.1-212 of 349, read in parts 1-4 of 7. Remaining: part 5 (PDF p.213-262), part 6 (p.263-312), part 7 (p.313-349).