There was an interview recently in one of the Israeli newspapers with a striking dockworker. The particular strike itself is not at issue here, nor even the fact that the man belongs to a group of workers whose income is quite high by local standards, surpassing by far that of most individuals in white-collar and intellectual occupations. In the interview, the worker delivered himself of a comment that goes to the heart of much of Israeli thinking and that represents a real and classic problem for the State in the years to come.
When asked whether – in view of the very excellent wages that he made – he wanted his son to benefit from them by continuing in his footsteps, the dockworker shook his head and said: “No, I want my son to be somebody.”
To be “somebody.” The term carries a variety of meanings whose echoes may be heard throughout the world. “Somebody,” above all, means a person who does not get his hands dirty, who is not involved in avoda sh’chora, dirty work. The negative attitude toward hard, physical labor, is in striking contrast to the early Zionist efforts to return the Jew to the soil, to manual labor and away from a “parasitic” existence. Israel has come light-years away from the philosophy of A.D. Gordon who cried out that “we lack the principal ingredient for national life. We lack the habit of labor… what we need is zealots of Labor…zealots in the finest sense of the word.” Forgotten is the Borochovian warning of the Jewish society as an inverted and unnatural pyramid with its base of non-producers and non-workers standing on a thin apex of manual laborers. The almost fanatical zeal of the early pioneers from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe, people who threw off their intellectual and bourgeois backgrounds to come and work the soil, build kibbutzim that demanded of them toil and sweat, is long since rejected.
The results are seen in the decline of the agricultural movement – both communal and private, and above all, in the growth of a proletariat that is increasingly non-Jewish. It is evermore hard to find a Jewish worker among the ‘dirty’ laborers in the construction field, among the sanitation workers and other such ‘unappetizing’ jobs. The almost exclusive preponderance of Arab workers in these areas finds wage scales escalating to a point where many Arabs are getting an unheard of IL50 a day, where on major Moslem holidays, work stops and essential services are cut and where a vital part of the economy is at the increasing mercy of an increasingly sophisticated and political Arab movement.
In addition, there is being created a Jewish-Arab relationship of “boss” and “worker,” where the Jew derives the benefits of his “hewers of wood and drawers of water” (Joshua 9:21).
While many Jews may ask what is so bad about that, the question only reveals their lack of foresight, not only in the volatile future that is being created by a discontented mass of workers who will resent their low status and thus create a fantastic climate for Arab political extremists but, also, the fact that young Jews whose “Jewish” allegiance is weak, at best, will see the “downtrodden” Arab as a victim who cries out for his support. In short, we recreate in Israel the Black maid who worked for the American White household as a domestic – even in the days of high wages – and did not pass down to her child thanks or gratitude for the job, but rather a burning resentment of a White woman who lounged around while her mother was bruising her knees washing the White floor.
The dangers inherent in this kind of a relationship are so obvious that one wonders why Israelis do not rush to change it. The answer, of course, lies in a number of factors. One, there is the natural tendency of people not to see a problem until it appears to them in the form of a knife at their throats. Second, there is the fact that Israelis – like most people – prefer the comforts and leisure that they are offered in the form of OTHER people doing the hard work. This short-term fantasy and illusion is always preferable to the dire predictions of long-range doom.
And finally, there is the greed of the manufacturers, the building contractors and all the employers who want the Arab laborer who is cheaper than the Jewish one. They have succeeded in persuading the government that the lack of Jews in manual labor would produce a catastrophic shortage of manpower, and a shutdown of production, expansion, and building, if steps were taken to end this dependence upon Arabs. This combination of greed and shortsightedness creates a blind refusal to face up to yet another of the menacing problems that endanger the peaceful existence of the Jewish State. It is also one of the arguments raised by the ‘sophisticated’ opponents of any plan for the emigration of Arabs from Israel.
The answer, of course, lies in the difficult task of persuading Jews that the pleasure of the “chayei sha’ah,” the momentary life, the immediate benefits that are gained by cheap and plentiful Arab labor, will be more than offset by the disaster that will come in the years to come. It lies in insisting that Jewish parents and Jewish schools train their children to the importance and to the dignity of labor of all kinds and that the mad preoccupation with the university and the need to be ‘somebody’ (even an unemployed intellectual, degree-carrying ‘somebody’) be discarded immediately, for the sake of the State and for the sake of the poor child who is burdened with a thing that is either beyond his power (is EVERY youngster suited for a university?) or beyond the ability of the State to provide. (Is ANY country able to give jobs to every engineer and history teacher who wants them?)
The answer does not lie in a rejection of Arab emigration on the grounds that this will leave us with a shortage of workers but with the NEED for this emigration. We must back any plan that will see Arabs leave, precisely because this will FORCE US to face up to the challenge of Jewish labor. When there is indeed a shortage of Arabs, we will have to find Jewish workers, and we will have to change our thinking. We will be compelled to look upon the honest laborer as ‘somebody.’ We will have to go back to the concept of the mitzva of literally and physically rebuilding the Land.
The answer to the problem of the economic and eventual political Arab stranglehold on Israel lies in immediately moving to eliminate our dependence on the Arab. There are so many imperative reasons for an Emigration Fund for Arabs. This is but another telling one.
11 Nisan 5733 – April 13, 1973