PAULA RAYMAN pre-State predecessors of the Israeli Defense Forces, the Palmach (9). Moreover, national security interests have directly infiuenced kibbutz intemal economics as well as geographic location through Jewish Agency and Israeli govenunent financial aid policies. A post-1967 War exemple is given by Hanitah's factory manager, Michael: «In 1968 the government did not want to rely on factories abroad so they wanted us in Israel to start factories for security items. They gave us one-half the investment soit was easier to make it» (10). The strong Kibbutznik pre-State advocacy of self-labour was complementary to the nature of the Zionist colonisation policy. Its main goals were to replace Arab labour and to insure work for Jewish immigrants. In the first days of the first Aliyahs many Jewish land owners preferred hiring Arab labourers because they were both more skilled and would work for lower wages. However, pressure by groups such as the Romani Komunah, the formation of a Jewîsh labour union (the Histadrut) and the exclusivist policies of the JNF for leasing land led to compliance with the Jewish labour principle. For the kibbutzim this concept became a 'sacred' kibbutz tenet which prohibited ill forms of wage and salaried labour. Originally affecting the native Palestinian population, the prohibition against wage labour was later to exclude the entry of the large Sephardic Jewish immigrations of the 1950's and 60's !rom Asia and Africa to the meshek (kibbutz economy). The three main Kibbutz Federations, Ha-Kibbutz ha-Heuhad, Ha-Kibbutz ha-Artzi and Ihud ha-Kevutzot ve-ha-Kibbutzim which emerged in the 1920's, had suported the view that the entire Zionist State would eventually be a network of collective communities, thus eliminating the problematics of hired labour. This perspective was a serious misjudgment in itself and was compounded by the un!oreseen (to the early pioneers at least) remplacement of the Ashkenazi-Western population majority by a Sephardic majority of Arab origin. Sephardic Jews for the most part were not only strangers of the ideas and culture of kibbutz life, but were rejected as equals by the veteran elite membership of the Zionist spearhead institution. Over tiine it became clear that the purest conception of self-labour was beginning to harm the national economy, and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion condemned the kibbutzim for obstructing the national interest: «To the credit of the new immigrants, it 5hould be noted that it is they who have built the majority of the settlements founded since the creation of the State, thus refuting the vain words of socalled 'progressives' from Russia and Gennany who believed that (9) Ben Gw-ion's Israel A Personal Hlatocy, Funk and Wagnells, NY, 1971 - conta!ns an especially interesting account of the role of Hakibbutz Hameuchad and the formation of the Palmach. UO) Rayman, «The Middle East Confiict», op. cit. 130
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