Palestine, South Africa, and Native Labor

Criticism from the left was, however, less politically significant to Ahdut Ha‘avoda than criticism from its rival (and junior partner) on the right, Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir. That party was much more straightforwardly nationalist than Ahdut Ha‘avoda. Because it was not explicitly socialist, much less avowedly Marxist, had never professed allegiance to the principle of proletarian internationalism, and was able to concede the nationalist character of Arab opposition to Zionism, Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir did not need to resort to the tortured dialectics to which Ahdut Ha‘avoda (and Po‘alei Tziyon Smol as well) had recourse when called upon to justify their positions. From Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir's standpoint, the central task of the Histadrut was to realize the Zionist project through the construction in Palestine of a separate Jewish society and economy, and this alone was sufficient justification for such policies as Hebrew labor. As a party Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir was thus at best profoundly skeptical about, and at worst hostile to, what it regarded as utopian pipe dreams like joint organization in mixed workplaces and the organization of Arab workers elsewhere. In fact, it saw such projects as potentially dangerous, in that they diverted scarce resources better devoted to meeting Jewish needs and aroused false hopes. From Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir's standpoint, too much concern for the well-being of the Arabs or guilt and self-doubt over possible violations of their rights were manifestations of an unhealthy “galut mentality” inappropriate to the project of Jewish national reconstruction.

Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir's analysis of the problem was articulated by Hayyim Arlosoroff in a 1927 essay entitled “On the Question of Joint Organization,” published as an intervention in the debates on the question that preceded the Histadrut's third congress. Born in the Ukraine in 1899 and raised in Germany, where he studied economics, Arlosoroff settled in Palestine in 1924 and became a prominent leader of Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir. When MAPAI was founded through the merger of Ahdut Ha‘avoda and Hapo‘el Hatza‘ir in 1930, he became one of the new party's top leaders. A year later he was chosen to direct the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, which had been established in 1929 to bring together Zionist and non-Zionist Jews in the project of developing the Jewish “national home” in Palestine. Though not formally a Zionist institution, the Jewish Agency was soon dominated by Zionists and became the institution through which resources were channeled to the Yishuv from Jewish communities worldwide. The Jewish Agency executive would come to function as the de facto leadership of the Yishuv, and Arlosoroff's appointment to direct its Political Department, like Ben-Gurion's elevation to the executive and then to its chairmanship, signaled the ascendancy of labor Zionism in the Yishuv and the Zionist Organization. Arlosoroff's assassination on Tel Aviv's beachfront in 1933, a crime which most labor Zionists blamed on Jewish extremists linked to Vladimir Jabotinsky's right-wing Revisionist Zionist party, ignited a bitter conflict between the left and right wings of the Zionist movement whose legacy is still discernible in Israeli politics today.

In his essay Arlosoroff claimed to be undertaking a strictly realistic and rational economic analysis, unencumbered by the ideological considerations which, he argued, had distorted the thinking of Ahdut Ha‘avoda leaders like Ben-Gurion. Arlosoroff accused the latter of trying to theorize out of existence the real, everyday, and essentially national conflict between expensive Jewish and inexpensive Arab labor. He rejected the notion that joint organization could significantly raise the general wage level in Palestine and thus facilitate the struggle for Hebrew labor by making Jewish workers more competitive with Arab workers. He was also convinced that Ben-Gurion's portrayal of the nascent Palestinian Arab working class as Zionism's potential ally was nothing but a fantasy. Even in the form envisioned by Ahdut Ha‘avoda, joint organization would lead to disaster for the Zionist project, for it would result in the deterioration of Jewish wages to the Arab level, making it impossible for European Jewish workers to survive in Palestine.

To support his argument Arlosoroff cited the case of South Africa, where as he saw it conditions most closely paralleled those which confronted the Jewish workers in Palestine. The white workers there were unable to compete in a labor market dominated by abundant and cheap African and Indian labor. They had therefore organized and used their political clout to secure the imposition of a “color bar” which excluded nonwhites from supervisory, skilled, and well-paid jobs. Similarly, if Jewish and Arab workers in Palestine competed within the same labor market, the result would be not only the cessation of Jewish immigration—for Jews would not come to or stay in Palestine if they could not find decently paid jobs there—but also substantial Jewish emigration, making realization of a Jewish majority unlikely. Joint organization could never overcome the dynamics of the capitalist labor market. The only way out of this dilemma, Arlosoroff insisted, was for the Zionist labor movement to devote its resources and energies to developing a separate high-wage, high-productivity, and exclusively Jewish economic sector, which would coexist with an unproductive and low-wage Arab sector for decades to come. This was in fact already happening, but Arlosoroff wanted the movement to be much clearer about its goals and methods, and above all to give up on what he saw as the dangerous delusion of joint organization.

In addition to building up a separate Jewish economic enclave, the labor-Zionist movement was also using political means to try to escape the constraints of a local labor market in which, as Arlosoroff had demonstrated, its members found it difficult to compete successfully. For example, during the middle and later 1920s, the Histadrut pressed the Colonial Office and the government of Palestine to set a minimum wage for unskilled labor. This would have the effect of reducing the competition which Arab labor could offer Jewish labor, thereby preserving jobs for Jews and perhaps also opening new ones to them. The British authorities were not receptive to this demand, however, in keeping with their general policy of avoiding direct regulation of the labor market insofar as possible.^[53] The Zionist Organization and the Histadrut also sought to ensure that wage rates for unskilled Jewish workers employed on relief projects by the Public Works Department during the post-1925 economic crisis were higher than those paid to Arab workers. British officials resisted this demand, too, because it favored Jewish labor over Arab labor and because it would increase their labor costs. Nonetheless, in 1928 a government wages commission reported that four wage levels for unskilled labor were in effect: rural Arab labor received 12–15 piastres a day, urban Arab labor 14–17 piastres, unionized Jewish labor (i.e., Histadrut members) 28–30 piastres, and nonunion Jewish labor 15–30 piastres.^[54]

At the same time, as I will discuss later, Histadrut and Zionist officials incessantly lobbied the British authorities in both Jerusalem and London to ensure that Jews received as large a proportion as possible of public works jobs and contracts. For example, the Zionist Organization demanded that Jewish workers be given 50 percent of the unskilled jobs created by the construction of the new deepwater port at Haifa and paid at standard Histadrut rates. Zionist leaders argued that this demand, and many similar demands raised with regard to other spheres of employment, were justified by the fact that the Jewish contributation to the government's tax revenues was proportionally much larger than the Jews' share in Palestine's population. Labor Zionists contributed to this lobbying campaign by utilizing their close connections with Trades Union Congress and Labor Party leaders in Britain to step up the pressure on the Colonial Office. British officials, especially in Palestine, opposed Zionist demands, on the grounds that it constituted favoritism toward Jews and because it would substantially increase the costs of the Haifa harbor project.^[55]