What happened when, as part of an experiment, Arab youth joined Kibbutzim?


When faced with the contradiction between Socialism and Zionism the dilemma was always resolved in favour of the latter

Left Zionism’s contradiction

From Tony Greenstein’s Blog:

When I was young Israel was seen by many on the Left as a socialist oasis in the Middle East. Until 1977, Israel was ruled continuously by Israeli Labour/Mapai coalitions, sometimes in alliance with Mapam, the United Workers Party that was to the left of Mapai. Nearly all land in Israel was nationalised and the trade union Histadrut was the second major employer after the state itself.

The Fabians waxed lyrical about Israeli ‘socialism’. Many were the times when I was told to go to Israel if I wanted to see socialism and join a Kibbutz. However there were also many things that we were not told such as the fact that Israel’s Arabs lived under military rule from 1948 to 1966.

The Kibbutzim were collective settlements where members shared everything in common. Of course the Kibbutzim operated in the context of a market economy so they did not affect the society around them. But what we were not told was that they were Jewish only institutions of which Arabs could not be members, since the land they occupied was ‘national’ i.e. Jewish national land.

What we were also not told was that the Kibbutzim had taken over vast stretches of the land of the Palestinians who had been expelled from Israel or who were ‘internally displaced’ within Israel. These were present-absentees in the Orwellian terminology of the 1950 Absentee Property Law. Even though they had not left Israel in 1948 and even if they were expelled from their homes, they were not allowed to go back to them. They are present yet absent.

But what we were also told was that the Palestinian refugees had voluntarily left in order that the Arab armies could invade. They had been instructed to do so by broadcasts from Arab radio stations. This fable turned out to be a myth cultivated to justify not allowing the refugees to return.

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