PAllLA .RAYMAN of th.e 'Romani Komunah'; the founders or Deganyah, are well sum• marised in Darkad Shel I)egantyah Ale/ (The Way of Degantyah 'A'): «We were four companions in our town Romani, bolllld by a pledge to become agriculturalists in Israel ... on the moming follow• ing (our arrivai in Israel) we proceeded on foot to Petah Tikvah ... four others joined us and we were a kevutzah of eight . . . we were :r'eferred to as the 'Romana Komunah'. · · · «... We saw hundreds of Arab workers who were employed while the Jewish workers retumed ·to their einpty rooms depressed ... A rumour reached Petah Tikvah that the Jewish National Fund was planting a large olive tree nursery in Ben Shemen for the Herzl woods, And the work was being done ·by Arab labour under supervision of the agronomist, Mr. Berman. This created considerable cxcitement in the Jewish labour community and there was a protest meeting that non-Jewish labour was being used on Jewish National Fund l!Uld and in the memory of the nation's leader (Herzl). And there was a declaration of war» (6). The Romani Komunah took to direct action and in the words of member Miriam Barataz, 'uprooted the ·. . . trees planted by the .Arabs; retumed the next de.y and planted nursery trees to replace those which had been eut.' Soon after, the group left for the Kinneret (Jordan Valley) to work on a farm and, in December 1909, joined a strike against the farm manager because he was hiring Arab labour: «At about this time Dr. Arthur Ruppin was the manager of the !Palestine) Office (of the World Zionist Organisation)... While Dr. Ruppin admitted the justification of the workers' demands to discharge Mr. B ... he made a counter-suggestion - the area of the Eastern side of the Jordan will be tumed over to the workers on their sole responsibility without foreman or a supervisor. The proposai was accepted . , . There were six men and one woman. One ôt the seven was a member of our (the Romani) koi;nunah. They accepted the responsibility as an experiment for one year. «It becs.me necessary to replace the . . . group with a settled group. Dr. Ruppin applied to us ... On October 28, 1910, we (ten men and two women) came to Umm Juni (*) and took over the inventory from the occupational group. And we started to establish an independent community on national land - a cooperative group without exploiters and exploited - a komunah.» , (6) Excerpts !rom The Way of Deganyah Alef, Harry Viteles, A His• tory of the Co-operative Movement in I:1rael, Vol. II, Vallentine and Mitchell, London, 1967. AU quotes in text from this book. (•) Many Hebrew names of settlements are adaptations !rom the original name of the Arab village they came to replace. Deganyah was ~sta.blished on .the lands of Umm Junl. After the purchase of theae lands !rom thé Arab feudal landlord by the Jewish National Fund, the Arab peasants were removed and excluslvely J-ewish settlements were established on the evacuated land, Though tilling the land for generations, the peasants were lega!ly serfs, devoid under Ottoman rule of any Jegal rlghts to their land • Eds. 128
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