The Proletarianization of Palestinians in Israel (ص 114)
غرض
- عنوان
- The Proletarianization of Palestinians in Israel (ص 114)
- المحتوى
-
114
self-labor. In his words:
"...a people that has become accustomed to every mode of life
save the national one -- the life of self-conscious and self-
supporting labour -- such a people will never become a living,
natural, labouring people unless it strains every fiber of its
willpower to attain this goal. Labour is not merely the factor
which establishes man's contact with land and his claim to the
land; it is also the principal force in the building of a na-
tional civilization. We have to make labour...the foundation
on which our whole undertaking is based. Only when we raise
labour as such to the height of an ideal...shall we be healed....
We need fanatics of labour, in the most exalted sense of the
word.'' 87
In these words, Gordon points mainly to the claim of the land as the
motive underlying the ideal of self-labor, which he seems to derive from the
"land to the tiller" rationale. He also emphasizes the link between the notion
of labor and the building of a national civilization. Obviously, Gordon's re-
ference is to the realization of a territorial base.
Similarly, in 1912, evaluating the colonization efforts in the preceding
thirty years, and criticizing "the lovers of Zion" approach to colonization,
based on the use of indigenous Palestinian labor, Achad Ha'am, a leading Zionist
writer, says:
",..the basis of my state is the rural masses -- the workers
and the poor farmers who live by cultivating the fields whether
it is their own small lots or the large tracts of the ‘superior’
class. The rural masses of Eretz Israel are not our own at
present....It is well known that at present the work in the set-
tlements is done mostly by the Arabs of the neighboring villages....
One hope, however, is left for us -- those young workers who came
ready to give their life for the national ideal, to acquire posi-
tions of work and to create in our existing settlements of the
future those Jewish country masses which are not there as yet.
Not for nothing do we find lately that the problem of the work-
ers is practically the central problem of the Jewish community.
All feel that it is not merely a workers' problem, but also a
problem concerned with the aims of Zionism as a whole. If the
workers do not succeed in solving this problem, it will be a
sign that the national ideal is incapable of creating those
inner powers so necessary for our cause....We shall have to make
peace with the idea, then, that our country-population in Eretz
Israel...will forever remain a ‘superior’ cultural minority
whose power will lie in its brain and capital, and with the idea - تاريخ
- ١٩٧٨
- المنشئ
- Najwa Hanna Makhoul
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