KIBBUTZIM the only people capable o! pioneering work are those who read Pushkin and Goethe» (11). Ben Ourton was correct in pointing out that Zionist-Socialists had extended their discriminatory practices towards a large segment o! the Israeli..Jewish population. Kibbutz population declined relatively from a 1948 high o! 7.9 % ot Israeli..Jewish population to a rather consistent 3.6 o/o. (In absolute tenns, however, population figures for kibbutzim went from approximately 54,000 in 1948 to 100,000 in 1974.) The kibbutz did not escape the processes of capitalist industrialisation of the country es a whole, aqd pressure trom national, military and economic requirements prompted a shitt towards industrialisation. Industrialisation was turther' stimulated by lack o! additional !arming !or agricultural development (this, of course, has now changed since Kibbutzim have been colonising the land occupied since the 1967 war), constant problems o! water supplies a.nd the need !or employment for the older generation. Kibbutz membership labour power has become quite strained as a result and today wage workers form 20 0/o of the kibbutz farm work-force and 59 % of the industrial work-force. Thus the issue of hired labour has dramatised the failings of kibbutz socialist ideology, and is a major source of concern and debate within the movement (12). Ha-Kibbutzha-Artzl IN DEMYSTIFYING the phenomenon of the kibbutz and its image as a progressive socialist institution 1t is important to mention the Ha-Kibbutz ha-Artzi Federation, otten thought to be the most socialist revolutionary of au kibbutz federations. It is true as Aharon Cohen relates that the pre-State political platforms adopted by HaKibbutz ha-Artzi envisaged a 'binational socialist society in Palestine and its environs', and stated 'the chief guarantee for Arab-Jewish peace is the creation of a joint common front formed by Arabs and Jewish workers in towns and country' (13). To further good relations with the fellaheen (Arab peasants) the Federation set up an Arab department which, among other projects, conducted training programmes for kibbutzniks in Arab villages. By 1942, in co-operation with its urban ally, the Socialist League, and the League for Arab- (11) Israel A Persona! Hlstory, op. cit. Eisenstadt notes that Sephardic Jews today constitute less than 7 % of klbbutz population; see his Israeli Society, Basic Books, NY, 1967. (12) Dan Leon ln his, The Klbbub: • A new Way of Lite, Pergamon Press, London, 1969, calls the Introduction of hired labour to klbbutz Ilfe «The trojan horse of capltalism., The figures are from this book. (13) Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World, Funk and Wagnella, New York, 19'10. 131
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