LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA: THE

HISTADRUT, HEBREW LABOR, AND

THE PALESTINIAN WORKER

STEVEN A. GLAZER

This article examines the terminology used in the Hebrew Labor pick-
eting campaign of the 1920s and 1930s. It considers the framework
within which the Histadrut conceived its effortsusing metaphors of
war, religion, morality, and medicine and illnessand surveys the
terms used to describe the Palestinian worker. Finally, the language
of Hebrew Labor opponentsgrove owners and parties to the left of
the mainstream Labor Zionistsis examined in the context of rebut-
tals to Histadrut claims and charges.

IN THE LATE 1920s and early 1930s, the Zionist Labor Federation Histadrut un-
dertook a sustained campaign to enforce a policy of exclusive Jewish em-
ployment at Jewish-owned workplaces in Palestine, mainly at citrus groves
in rural colonies (moshavot) and construction sites in urban locations. The
campaign was marked by the organization of pickets and, at times, violent
clashes between the picketers on one side and Palestinian workers (and some-
times Mandate government law enforcement officials) on the other. It was
further marked by an intensity of language rarely witnessed in labor disputes,
a language sometimes bordering on the apocalyptic and filled with images not
merely of war but of a fight-to-the-death battle between good and evil. The
campaigns organizers and partisans sought to communicate the belief that
far more was at issue than whether Jews would be employed at a particular
workplace. Instead, the message was conveyed that what was being waged
was a moral struggle on a monumental scale, whose stakes were the survival
of the Jewish settlement in Palestine and, perhaps, the very survival of world
Jewry.
The emotional pitch of the Hebrew Labor campaign is all the more remark-
able when contrasted to the actual situation that gave rise to it. In traditional
labor disputes, the goal of picket lines is to prevent the displacement of work-
ers. Indeed, the slogan Do Not Displace the Jewish Worker was featured
regularly on placards carried at pickets throughout the Hebrew Labor cam-
paign, and Jewish grove owners who hired Palestinians were referred to as

STEVEN A. GLAZER is associate professor of history at Graceland University in Lamoni,

Iowa. The research upon which this article is based was assisted by a grant from the
American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council and
by a grant from the United States Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral
Dissertation Research Abroad Program. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.

Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XXXVI, No. 2 (Winter 2007), pp. 2538 ISSN: 0377-919X; electronic ISSN: 1533-8614.
C 2007 by the Institute for Palestine Studies. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission

to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Presss

Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: jps.2007.XXXVI.2.25.

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
26 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

displacers and alienators. Yet the fact is that in virtually no situation that
led to picketing were Jewish workers actually displaced. Though the first phase
of the campaign, centered on the Petah Tikva groves in the late 1920s, unfolded
during a period of economic stagnation, most Jews were reluctant to work in
the groves. The aim of the 1927 campaign was to force grove owners to hire
Jews that Histadrut brought in from the cities, in effect displacing the Palestini-
ans already employed in the groves. The second phase of the campaign in the
early 1930s, culminating in 1934 at the Kfar Saba groves, coincided with a time
of economic prosperity marked by an acute shortage of Jewish workers in the
colonies. The labor-hungry employers were anxious to retain all their workers,
Jewish and Arab, but the Jewish workers left the groves on orders from the
Histadrut when additional Palestinian workers were brought in; in effect, they
displaced themselves.
It seems clear that the picketing campaigns were more concerned with
politics or ideology than with economics. One of the pillars of the Zionist
movement was the Conquest of Labor (kibush avoda), which stressed the
importance of Jewish labor as the basis for Jewish society in Eretz Israel. Under
this doctrine, land and property acquisition in Palestine was not enough, and
the country would not be made Jewish unless Jews performed their own man-
ual work.1 Thus, when the Zionist Executive in 1934 issued a proclamation
expressing its concern and great alarm at the breach in the wall of Hebrew
labor created by the hiring of Arabs, it emphasized that such employment
practices threatened to demolish one of the first foundations of our national
home.2 The Histadrut, as the powerful labor federation, was quite naturally the
vehicle through which the doctrine could be enforcedhence, the picketing
campaigns. In more concrete terms, the campaign allowed the Histadrut, and
the Labor Zionist movement more generally, to position itself as an aggressive
champion of Zionist goals and ideals. Thus, though the campaign was largely
unsuccessful in its stated goal of enforcing discriminatory hiring,3 its ability to
galvanize public opinion in favor of a Labor Zionist agenda more than compen-
sated for the ostensible failure of its efforts to restrict the employment of Arab
workers by Jewish employers.
This being the case, the campaigns rhetoric, however detached it may
have been from economic realities, may be as important as the campaign
itself. For the historian, the study of the language employed in the His-
tadruts picketing campaign offers a valuable window into Labor Zionisms
view of the Palestinian population and, in particular, those Palestinians in
potential competition with Histadrut members for unskilled agricultural and
construction employment. Although the Histadrut attempted to characterize
its relations with Arab workers as benevolent or even paternalisticin ma-
terial meant for consumption outside the Yishuvthe manner in which the
Hebrew Labor campaign was conceived, as well as the Histadruts concep-
tion of the adversary, suggests a different relationship. A study of this His-
tadrut vocabulary offers important insights into the shaping of an enemy
image.

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA 27

OF DEFENSE, PIETY, MORALITY, AND HEALTH

Of the various categories of metaphors deployed in the posters, handbills,
and placards prepared for the picketing campaign, not to mention press ac-
counts and public speeches, images of war are unquestionably the most com-
mon. Supporters of exclusive Jewish employment were mobilized to go to
the front in order to defend themselves against an invasion of Arab work-
ers. In defending their existence, the Hebrew Labor fighters sought to pre-
serve the fortress of exclusive employment against a breach in the wall.
Grove owners who hired Palestinian labor were traitors, as were the Jew-
ish workers who did not support Hebrew Labor activism and who were thus
willing to surrender by working for the grove owners.
Following the first major strike at the groves in Petah Tikva in 1927, the Petah
Tikva Workers Council, the Histadruts local organization in the colony, issued a
proclamation calling on residents of the colony not to remain silent any more,
but to join in the war for our rights to work. The picketing campaigns at Petah
Tikva frequently involved fistfights and other forms of intimidation against the
Arab workers. Typical of the hyperbolic language employed throughout the
campaign was the councils depiction of a December 1927 incident where
a dozen picketers had been injured when police on horseback charged their
lines: the blood of Jewish workers was spilled in the Mother of the Colonies [a
term of affection for Petah Tikva] in her anniversary year.4 Handbills printed
up in connection with the clashes accused grove owners of treachery for
hiring Palestinians and (ironic in a campaign that sought to oust Palestinian
workers from their jobs) called on residents and workers to fight against
this danger and unite in your war against the displacement of Jewish workers
from the colony.5 The same language was used in public speeches, statements,
and resolutions. Messages of support received by the Petah Tikva Workers
Council following those same December 1927 confrontations referred again
to the spilling of workers blood, the war for the Zionist mission, and the
acts of treason and national treason by the grove owners, and assured the
picketers that your war is our war and that we are with you in your just
war.6 Posters produced for picketing at the Kfar Ganim grove in Petah Tikva
proclaimed that we stand in the midst of the war and that fines and [prison]
sentences will not prevent us from continuing the war, because Hebrew Labor
is the foundation of our life, the foundation of our edifice, and in its fall we
fall!7 A poster issued by the Petah Tikva Workers Council in 1928 denounced
the shoah of unemployment and vowed not to surrender or retreat in
the war for the right of Hebrew Labor, which was described as a war for the
soul of Zionism and the future of the Hebrew nation in the country.8
War metaphors dominated the second phase of the picketing campaign as
well. The Kfar Saba Workers Council issued proclamations in 1934 calling a
general mobilization . . . to save the situation, warned against the covenant
of the traitorous grove owners and the government . . . to break the defensive
front of Hebrew Labor, and pledged that we will stand like a wall. Posters

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
28 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

vowed that the war will continue, that we will erect a picket that no power
will be able to overcome despite the spilling of the workers blood.9 Terms
such as defense, on guard, war without letup, and breach in the wall are
found repeatedly in this literature.
The events at Kfar Saba were exhaustively documented in the press, which
was also rife in metaphors of war. A call for picketers and volunteer grove work-
ers that appeared in a special supplement of the publication HaPoel HaTzair10
entitled To the Zionist War in Kfar Saba provides a particularly good example
of the campaigns exaggerated language.

In the eyes of the Hebrew people, the Yishuv, and Zionism[,]

the war continues, of which no worker in the world knows
such an example. The tragedy of the Hebrew worker in Eretz
Israelhis war for the right to work in this place, the only one
in the world that remains to the refugee people! The life and
the existence of the Hebrew worker depends on it. . . . City
workers! Join and mobilize yourselves for the required and
honored guard to defend Hebrew Labor in the colonies.11

Posters and handbills, press accounts, public speeches, statements, and res-
olutions all fall within the public sphere, where hyperbolic language might be
seen as intended to enhance political support from the rank-and-file. One ob-
serves the same type of language, however, in closed meetings, communiques,
and reports of Labor party and Histadrut leaders. The War for Hebrew Labor in
Kfar Saba, a confidential study written by the Jewish Agency Executive on the
labor struggle in that colony, for example, made frequent reference to the war
as well as to the danger that the Jewish worker faced if Palestinian labor were
to gain a foothold there.12 At the local level, transcripts of Histadrut meetings
reveal references to war, mobilization, and the need to avoid surrender.13
Few spoke about Hebrew Labor with greater urgency or passion than David
Ben-Gurion. In 1930, addressing the Histadrut Executive on the subject of
Petah Tikva, he declared that there must be a war, a war of life and death
for Hebrew Labor.14 A year later, with regard to Kfar Saba, he reaffirmed his
support of exclusive Jewish employment and declared that The matter of
Hebrew Labor will be solved by two paths: peacefully, by the purchase of land
and farms and, if not peacefully, then behold by the path of war.15 In a speech
before the Mapai Council in March 1934, Ben-Gurion stated that there is no
matter more important than saving the front of Hebrew Labor in the colony.16
Though war metaphors overwhelmingly dominated the mobilizational
rhetoric of the Hebrew Labor campaigns, other symbols extracted from Jewish
religious ritual or morality, or evoking images of illness and pestilence, also
appear, though far less frequently. Holy war, as opposed simply to war, was
sometimes evoked by the more religious activists, as when the spokesman for
HaPoel HaMizrahi (religious Zionist labor) in Kfar Saba declared in 1933 that
his party would join with the workers in Kfar Saba to fight this holy war,

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA 29

noting that in fighting the grove owners We are fighting for the sanctity of
religion and the Sabbath.17 A poster issued by the Kfar Saba Workers Council
in April 1934 called on colony residents to come with us to the pickets [and]
join this holy war to save the economy of Hebrew Labor. The poster repeated
the holy war phrase later in the appeal.18
There were also references to ritual. For example, at a stormy meeting be-
tween grove owners and Histadrut officials in Kfar Saba in April 1934 convened
by mediating rabbis representing the Zionist Executive, a local representative
of the religious Zionist party compared Arab workers to food forbidden ac-
cording to Jewish dietary law, saying that just as it is forbidden to buy cheap
non-kosher (traifa) meat, so it is also forbidden to work using cheap labor.19
Similarly, during the same confrontation, Avraham Shvadran, a senior librarian
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Hebrew Labor activist, made an
impassioned speech referring to the work of Palestinians in a colony grove as
an abomination and a desecration of the holiday, the Sabbath, and the holy
land. He closed his speech in a Kfar Saba synagogue with a demand that the
faithful of Kfar Saba . . . stop their prayers and join the pickets, thereby im-
plying that the very act of picketing was a legitimate alternative to traditional
religious ritual and worship.20
Resurrection was a particularly powerful symbol in the context of Hebrew
Labor, given the Zionist concept of Palestine as a dead land needing upbuild-
ing. A 1934 manifesto entitled Hebrew Labor in the Hebrew Yishuv! issued
by the Committee to Strengthen Hebrew Labor in Eretz Israel, an ad hoc group
of middle-class professionals and politicians, declared Hebrew Labor to be one
of the principles of the resurrection of our people in our land, specifying that
not just through money will our salvation and the redemption of our souls
come, but through the principle of Hebrew Labor. According to the commit-
tee, the practice of employing Jews would result in a complete resurrection, a
resurrection based on three principlesHebrew language and spirit, Hebrew
land, and Hebrew working masses.21 The Teachers Federation, represented
on this committee, had earlier expressed similar sentiments in a resolution of
its own, which declared pure Hebrew Labor [emphasis in the original] to be
one of the national foundations of the resurrection of the people of Israel in
its land.22
Allusions to morality reinforced the notion that the picketing campaign was
not a banal dispute over wages but the struggle for a noble cause. A good
example of the elevating moralizing tone can be found in an interview pub-
lished in Davar with four well-known literary and educational figures who had
taken part in the Histadrut pickets. Mixed in with the personal accounts of
the picketing, the writer Yaakov Fichman expressed his fear for the soul of
Zionism and called Hebrew Labor the foundation of existence and the soul
of existence. Fellow writer Asher Barash referred to the sin of foreign labor
and suggested that the Yishuv needed to go down to the roots of the evil and
not be satisfied with clipping its wings. The educator David Levin described
Hebrew Labor as the foundation of foundations, the root of roots. Finally,

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 30 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

Mordechai Ezrahi termed grove owners who employed Palestinians criminals

of Israel and apostates who freeze the foundation of our existence in the
country.23
Far less frequent in the literature were metaphors of medicine and sick-
ness, though some of these are quite strong. Referring to the hiring in the
Kfar Saba groves of some 150 Palestinians in September 1934, for example,
Baruch Minkovsky, a local Histadrut official, deplored the outbreak that could
spread to the entire region.24 Davar, noting the arrival of Petah Tikva pick-
eters to support the campaign in Kfar Saba, wrote that first aid came from
Petah Tikva.25 Haim Nachman Bialik, the Yishuvs national poet, published
an article in HaOlam deploring the sickness of the Yishuv, one of whose
symptoms was foreign labor.26
PALESTINIAN WORKERS THROUGH THE HISTADRUT LENS
Of the various terms used for Palestinian workerscheap, foreign,
alien, temporary, unorganized, primitiveby far the most common was
foreign. In second place was probably cheap, and the two were often used
interchangeably or even paired. Thus, following the Kfar Ganim trial of De-
cember 1934, the Petah Tikva Workers Council warned that cheap and for-
eign labor fly at us from all sides, condemning the Mandate government for
defend[ing] foreign and cheap labor and grove owners for providing the jus-
tification for bringing in foreign and cheap labor to Kfar Ganim.27 The 1934
report of the Jewish Agency Executive on the situation in Kfar Saba referred
to the question of foreign labor, the danger of cheap and foreign labor, and
an increase in cheap workers.28 A call to guard the Hebrew character of
Nes Ziona attacked the introduction of foreign labor. The appearance of for-
eign labor in our colony was condemned by the Kfar Saba Workers Council,
and the Rehovot Workers Council warned that the colonys groves [were] be-
ing opened to cheap labor and denounced the entrance of cheap labor into
the place.29 One of the principal historians of the workers movement, Moshe
Braslovsky, described foreign labor in the private Jewish economy as the
main problem of the hour facing settlers of the Second Aliya.30
Indeed, epithets were not necessary to convey the undesirability of Pales-
tinian labor: Arab itself was sufficient, as in posters and broadsheets attacking
(in oversized letters) the grove owner Oshrov in Re-
Indeed, epithets were not hovot because he employs Arabs in his groves, and
necessary to convey the asking, will Rehovot remain silent on this? . . . is
undesirability of there any greater outrage? An announcement of a
Palestinian labor: Arab general mobilization in Kfar Saba to pick fruit and
itself was sufficient. picket groves employing Arab labor asked readers to
remember all the conquests of the Hebrew worker, as
well as the gates locked before the Hebrew worker and immigrant at a time
when the groves were threatened by the entrance of Arabs into the area.31
It is noteworthy that even when the word foreign (or the counterparts
alien or temporary) was not used, the implication was almost invariably of

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA 31

an invasion from the outside. In his history of Kfar Saba, Shlomo Engle writes
that the Arab grove workers were principally foreign, cheap, unorganized
workers who came from far away.32 Haim Frumkin, a member of the Zion-
ist Executive, referred to the colonies being flooded with Hawran and Arab
labor as never before and deplored the intense Arabization of the suburbs
of our cities, and who knows if it will not reach in due time the center of
our cities . . . ?33 Frumkims language was unusually inflammatory (he spoke
of the danger lurking in the cities, which were surrounded by crowds of
Arabs, bedouin, and Hawranis who look with wild and jealous eyes upon the
new and modern life of the Jewish communities34 ) but the notion of Arabs
flooding from the outside was common. Braslovsky (who describes uncriti-
cally the struggle against the primitive Arab worker in Petah Tikva and the
manner by which cheap Arab labor penetrated Kfar Saba in 1934) quotes
a 1932 speech by Ben-Gurion that expressed the fear that the sea of cheap
labor will flood into the Jewish colony and erase its Jewish image.35 One of the
organizers of the 1934 Kfar Saba pickets, Reuven Shari (formerly Shreibman),
refers to the breakthrough of Arab labor or the invasion of Arab workers
into the colony, as well as to the fact that Hadera was flooded with Arab
labor.36
A twist on the foreigner theme was the ironic use of the words aliya
(immigration) and olim (immigrants)terms normally reserved exclusively
for Jewish immigration and Jewish immigrants to Palestinewhen describ-
ing Arab immigration and immigrants. A Davar editorial condemning the
Jewish Rokeach brothers for hiring Arab labor commented on the inconclu-
sive negotiations between the local Histadrut council and the employers by
noting: meanwhile the grove has absorbed sixty bedouin olim and not one
additional Jewish immigrant.37 Similarly, an election poster for the Petah Tiqva
Workers Council warned readers of the prospect of a market in Eretz Israel by
Hawrani aliya instead of the immigration of thousands of Jewish workers.38
The Jewish Agency Executive, the highest Jewish political body in Palestine
(but representing the entire Jewish people) during the Mandate, stated in its
report on the Hebrew Labor controversy in Kfar Saba that the only question is
which immigration will reach Eretz Israel: mass Hebrew immigration or mass
Arab immigration, adding that land, obtained for use of the motherland and
as a place to absorb thousands of Jews, has been turned to a place absorbing
Arabs of Eretz Israel and Arab emigrants from the neighboring countries.39
In his memoirs, Neta Harpaz, head of the Histadruts Central Agricultural
Office, describes a grove owner who did not follow Hebrew Labor policies:
on his farm were employed daily tens of foreign workers in various tasks. They
were a real ingathering of the exiles. . . . Arab workers from nearby villages,
from Transjordan, bedouin from the southern Negev, and also from the far
Hawran.40 Haim Frumkin, writing of the great disaster of Arab labor in the
pages of Davar, criticized the arrival of new immigrants from Hawran and
Sudan at a time when Jewish immigration was restricted and Hebrew Labor
picketers were being arrested in record numbers.41

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
32 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

In fact, there is no doubt that some seasonal Arab workers from outside
Palestine, including the Hawran (in central Syria), were employed in the groves.
According to Zachary Lockman, During the mandate period, and especially
during the first half of the 1930s, thousands of desperately poor peasants came
to Palestine from the Hawran, seasonally or for longer periods, in search of
work in agriculture, the ports, road and railway construction and maintenance,
and other sectors where low-wage manual labor was required.42 Nonetheless,
there is ample evidence that most Arab workers in the groves came from much
shorter distances, including nearby villages, as Histadrut and other sources
freely admit. Lockman points out that The term hawrani would in fact en-
ter colloquial Palestinian (and later Israeli) Hebrew as a synonym for poor
or ragged. 43 This could explain part of the confusion, but the epithet for-
eigner for Arab workers long predates the arrival of migrant seasonal workers
from the Hawran. Anita Shapira quotes the Zionist settler Y. Munchik, writing in
the periodical HaShiloah in 1918, as referring to Palestinians living in villages
adjoining the Jewish colonies as foreign workers [poalim zarim].44 Davar
referred regularly to Palestinians working in Kfar Saba groves as foreign, yet
one such account notes matter-of-factly that a group of grove workers who
had been forced by picketers to quit the groves left work and walked in the
direction of their village.45 Harpazs memoirs (referenced above) group all
Arab workers together as foreign even while casually noting that some of
the foreign workers were from nearby villages.46 That Palestinians who
lived within walking distance of the groves could still be regarded as for-
eign suggests how thoroughly the term had been integrated as an epithet
for Arab. It is also quite likely that emphasizing a foreign origin of the
workers was intended to devalue them, as well as put the claims of Jew-
ish immigrants, and would-be immigrants, to these jobs ahead of the Arab
workers.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HEBREW LABOR

Sustained opposition to the Hebrew Labor campaign came from two prin-
cipal sources, citrus grove owners and the Palestine Communist Party (PCP).
The citrus growers sought to counter the Histadruts portrayal of them as not
sufficiently dedicated to the Zionist cause. The opposition by the PCP, by con-
trast, stemmed from its view that the Hebrew Labor cause was anti-Arab and
further undermined chances of intercommunal worker solidarity.
The Histadrut had not hesitated to systematically use insulting epithets
against the grove owners,47 but except for extreme cases, the grove own-
ers did not reciprocate.48 Similarly, taken as a whole, the arguments of grove
owners, especially when compared with those of the Histadrut, were more
deliberative than partisan. Instead of being tendentious, for the most part they
sought to counter Histadrut propaganda by stressing economic conditions and
political realities as they saw them. Statements by the citrus growers associa-
tion, theVaad Haklai (Agricultural Committee), with branches in the various

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA 33

colonies, emphasized that Palestinian workers received lower wages yet were
more productive than their Jewish counterparts. Another argument of grove
owners, although less frequently articulated, was that Arab workers were less
likely to protest their working conditions; the Histadrut frequently exercised
its power to declare strikes for higher wages and better working conditions.
After the October 1930 release of the Hope-Simpson report on land settlement,
immigration, and development in Palestine, whose principal conclusion was
that there was no room for more Jewish settlers in the agricultural colonies,49
the grove owners echoed some of the implications of the inquiry, for example
that employment of Palestinians in Jewish-owned enterprises helped facilitate
neighborly relations and that exclusion of Palestinians fostered further hostility
and mistrust.
A good example of the citrus growers argumentation is an editorial by
Moshe Smilansky in Bustanai, a publication of the grove owners Agricultural
Committee, which emphasized that the Jewish boycott of Arab labor risked
provoking an Arab boycott of land sales to Jews, that in this country live two
peoples together and it is necessary for each to become closer to each other
and not to draw away.50 A further argument was that even if the Mandate gov-
ernment allowed increased Jewish immigration, the seasonal nature of grove
work would not attract large numbers of Jewish workers, thus requiring the cit-
rus growers to rely on available Arab labor. The editorial preceded a statement
by the grove owner Edelman, whose workplace was a principal target in the
1934 Kfar Saba pickets, and who complained that his (Jewish) workerswho
walked off on orders from the Histadrutwere ungrateful for his efforts on
their behalf. I was like a father to the workers, he wrote. I built them living
quarters in our grove. I was concerned that their work should be permanent.
I budgeted a high wage. He also complained that the city volunteers sent to
his grove were inexperienced and uncooperative. He concluded: The lesson
I received this time I will not forget all my life.51
On rare occasions, the grove owners struck back with angry declarations.
One of their targets was middle class picketing, where teachers, writers, and
others were brought in from the cities by the Histadrut for pickets during the
second phase of the Hebrew Labor campaign centered on Kafr Saba. Writing
in the newspaper Doar HaYom,52 one angry grove owner, David Skivin, won-
dered why such picketers did not go to Magdiel, which is closer to Tel Aviv than
Kfar Saba and where every day Arab workers labor quietly and undisturbed.53
The picketers were also accused of making an outing of their one-day trip to
Kfar Saba and then returning to the comforts of Tel Aviv, rather than volunteer-
ing to work in the groves. In similar vein, the citrus growers association of Kfar
Saba published a declaration in Doar HaYom accusing the picketers of fol-
lowing the Histadrut blindly and calling the picketers activism a picnic for
a few hours, to stand by the groves of the displacers and the alienators. The
declaration also called the Histadrut a party of lies and libels and its leaders
liars and sensationalists who know the truth and intend by their wickedness
to overturn it.54

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
34 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

The other major critic of the Hebrew Labor campaign was the PCP and
its allied organizations. Unlike the grove owners, the communists maintained a
systematic and fierce campaign against the demand for exclusivist employment
practices as part of a larger campaign against the Histadrut itself, which the
party saw as betraying the true interests of workersArab and Jewishand
fostering intercommunal warfare. The Histadrut and Mapai were frequently
accused of collaborating with British imperialism in opposition to interna-
tional worker solidarity.
Though the PCP was especially active in the urban picketing, given its
stronger constituency base in the cities, it was also extremely vocal in de-
nouncing the Hebrew Labor campaigns in the colonies. In 1929, it issued a
pamphlet denouncing the Zionists and all their agents from the Revisionists
on the right to the Left Poalei Zion inclusively for, among other policies, the
system of driving off the land of the fallahin [and] the slogan of conquest of
land and work.55 The pamphlet also condemned the Histadruts unwilling-
ness to accept Arab members, saying this national separation has been the
curse of the workmens movement. Following the 1932 Nes Ziona clashes,
the party referred to the Histadruts hooligan pickets and congratulated the
Arab workers for fighting back. In Kfar Saba, the communists reacted to the
Hebrew Labor campaign there by denouncing the fascist conquest of labor
and this fascist mobilization.56 Proclamations issued by the Local Committee
of the Communist Party insisted that not a single worker will go to the fas-
cist pickets and asked that residents not give one prutah to the reactionary
mobilization fund.57 The message concluded with calls to oppose in force
the fascist pickets of conquest. In Petah Tikva, an appeal to all the working
and fallahin masses called for action in order to oppose pickets designed
to conquer work from the hand of the Arab worker and to displace the Arab
fallah from his land.58 A pamphlet signed by the Fraktziathose elements
sympathetic to the PCP still in the Histadrut, despite their official expulsion
mocked Histadrut slogans by criticizing the latters use of the terms foreign
and temporary to describe Palestinian workers. Readers were asked to re-
nounce conquest of work of all kinds and support the international front
of the unemployed and the revolutionary international federation of agricul-
tural workers in Palestine.59 As for the Left Poalei Zion party, its position was
ambivalent: it generally chose not to participate in the grove demonstrations,
but, as part of the Histadrut and many local governing coalitions in the colony
workers councils, it could not attack the policy with the vehemence of the
communists.60 The partys demands that the Histadrut work toward achiev-
ing Jewish-Arab labor solidarity nevertheless set it apart from Mapais primary
agenda of Hebrew Labor activism.61
There is no doubt that the main reason that the counter-propaganda failed
was the oppositions political weakness. Even so, the contrast between the
Histadruts dynamic campaign and its opponents sluggish response is striking.
The Histadrut set the agenda and produced for the campaign powerful sym-
bols with deep resonance for the Jewish public. Thus the grove owners, though

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA 35

possessing the cold facts of labor unavailability and relative cost, found such
data entirely ineffective against the Histadruts claims and charges. As for the
communists, their attempts to argue for international worker solidarity were
foiled by the Histadruts invocation of Zionist symbolism, forcing them to re-
sort to name-calling and invective, thereby conceding the basic legitimacy of
Histadrut demands, which appealed to the higher values shared by the Yishuv
body politic.
The declaration of the Palestinian general strike in 1936 removed the im-
mediate cause of the Histadruts Hebrew Labor campaign. The intercommunal
strife that followed lasted over three years and was ended only by massive
British military repression. Although the overwhelming cause for Palestinian
resistance was continuing Zionist immigration and land purchases, the Hebrew
Labor campaign, and its clear hostility to the Palestinian worker, may well have
further exacerbated hostilities. Also open is the question of the extent to which
the advocacy of Hebrew Labor, as opposed to other factors, helped Labor Zion-
ist political parties achieve the unchallenged hegemony they would enjoy from
the 1930s through the 1970s. What can be asserted is that the propaganda cam-
paign associated with efforts to promote exclusive Jewish employment created
symbols and myths that helped to enable Labor Zionism to portray itself as the
most effective agent of Zionist goals. Labor Zionism argued effectively that the
achievement of political and military supremacy in Palestine was best accom-
plished through its program, which combined political influence at the inter-
national level with the practical Zionism of steady demographic, economic,
and territorial expansionism. When open hostilities between the Yishuv and
the Palestinian community were renewed in 1936, the Hebrew Labor campaign
had already furnished the former with powerful symbols of Zionist struggle and
had reinforced images of the Palestinian as enemy.

NOTES
1. See the entry under Kibush Avoda
in Geoffrey Wigodor, ed., New
Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel
(London and Toronto: Herzl Press and
Associated University Presses, 1984), vol.
2, pp. 8078. Originally applied mainly to
agriculture, the principle was later
expanded, as Avoda Ivrit (Hebrew Labor)
to all sectors of the economy in the early
1920s.
2. Quoted in a confidential report of
the Jewish Agency Executive, HaMilhama
laAvoda haIvrit beKfar Saba [The War for
Hebrew Labor in Kfar Saba] (Jerusalem,
July 1934), p. 3, in Lavon Institute, Group
8-IV/File 2/B.
3. On the Hebrew Labor picketing
campaign, see Steven A. Glazer, Picketing
for Hebrew Labor: A Window on Histadrut
Tactics and Strategy in Journal of
Palestine Studies 30, no. 4 (Summer 2001);
and Anita Shapira, HaMaavakim Lemaan
Avoda Ivrit, 19291939 [The Struggles for
Hebrew Labor, 19291939] (Ph.D.
dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 1974).
The dissertation has been published, in a
condensed version, as HaMaavak
HaNikzav: Avoda Ivrit, 19291939 [Futile
Struggle: Hebrew Labor, 19291939] (Tel
Aviv, Israel: HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, 1977).
For context of the picketing campaign and
a critical analysis of Jewish-Arab labor
relations, see Zachary Lockman, Comrades
and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in
Palestine, 19061948 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996);
Michael Shalev, Labour and the Political
Economy in Israel (Oxford: Oxford

This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
36
University Press, 1992); Gershon Shafir,
Land, Labor, and the Origins of the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 18821914
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989); and Stanley B. Greenberg, Race and
State in Capitalist Development:
Comparative Perspectives (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1980).
4. Lavon Institute, Group 250-IV/Petah
Tikva Workers Council/File 134; Group
8-IV/File 2/D [4]. For details of the Petah
Tikva pickets and police intervention, see
Police Report: Petah TikvahUnemploy-
ment Trouble, December 20, 1927 and
Report of High Commissioner to Colonial
Secretary, December 22, 1927 in Public
Record Office (PRO)/Colonial Office (CO)
733/145/4 (57033); Lavon Institute, Oral
Documentation Center, Transcript no. 97,
Interview with Yaakov Bromberg (1976),
pp. 3032; Shapira, HaMaavak HaNikzav,
p. 40; Getzel Kressel, Em haMoshavot:
Petah Tikva, 18781953 [Mother of the
Colonies: Petah Tikva, 18781953] (Petah
Tikva: Petah Tikva Municipality, 1953), pp.
37273; also see Dov Shafrir, BaMaaracha
laAvoda Ivrit [In the Campaign for
Hebrew Labor] (Tel Aviv: Department of
Information of the Histadrut Executive,
1946), p. 20; Moshe Braslovsky, Tnuat
haPoalim haEretz-Yisraelit [The
Eretz-Israeli Workers Movement], 2 vols.
(Tel Aviv: HaKibbutz haMeuhad,
19561957), vol. 2, p. 31.
5. Lavon Institute, Group 250-IV/Petah
Tikva Workers Council/File 134; Group
8-IV/File 2/D [4].
6. Lavon Institute, Group 250-IV/Petah
Tikva Workers Council/File 152. See also
similar messages in support of Petah Tikva
picketers from Rishon LeZion and Rehovot
in Lavon Institute, Bet Neta collection,
Files 28/5/10 and 28/5/12.
7. Lavon Institute, Group 250-IV/Petah
Tikva Workers Council/File 134.
8. See Lavon Institute, Group
250-IV/Petah Tikva Workers Council/File
78. It should be noted that the term shoah
means destruction and catastrophe as well
as holocaust. In another use of the word
shoah, the Kfar Saba Workers Council
issued a proclamation on 25 July 1934
stating the necessity of bringing to the
attention of the Yishuv and its institutions
the matter of the new shoahthat is, the
widespread employment of Palestinian
labor in the colony. See Kfar Saba
Municipal Archives, File 27-4.
This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
9. See Kfar Saba Municipal Archives,
File 27-4. See also Lavon Institute, Group
250-IV/Hadera Workers Council/File 128,
for citations of such language in posters
issued in Hadera.
10. The publication was put out by the
party of the same name and, following that
partys merger with Ahdut HaAvoda in
1931, by Mapai.
11. See BeFratz, supplement to
HaPoel HaTzair, 7 April 1934.
12. See Jewish Agency, HaMilhama,
pp. 1, 8. The report recommended
extensive propaganda on the danger of
[developments in] Kfar Saba for the
question of the general economic and
national foundation (p. 1). See also
references to the danger of Arab labor in
packing in the Sharon in Lavon Institute,
Group 250-IV/Hadera Workers Council/File
156, Central Agricultural Office,
Association of Packing Workers, to Hadera
Workers Council, 9 November 1934.
13. See, for example, Protocol of the
Meeting of the Workers Council, 24 May
1934, in Lavon Institute, Group
250-IV/Petah Tikva Workers Council/File
149, and Divrei Kfar Saba: Haver Remez
Divayach al Pratim shel Masa uMatan im
Lichtenstein [Matters of Kfar Saba:
Comrade Remez Reports on Details of
Negotiations with Lichtenstein], 10 April
1934, in Kfar Saba Municipal Archives, File
27-4. In the Petah Tikva meeting, both
advocates and opponents of an aggressive
picketing posture used similar military
terminology.
14. Protocol of the Histadrut
Executive, 12 May 1930, quoted in Shapira,
HaMaavakim Lemaan Avoda Ivrit, p. 126.
15. Protocol of the Histadrut
Executive, 27 July 1931, quoted in Shapira,
HaMaavakim Lemaan Avoda Ivrit, p. 134.
16. Quoted in Mishmarot: Peraqim
leVayrur Derech Tnuaat haPoalim
beTzionut haMitgashemet [Pickets:
Episodes to Clarify the Path of the
Workers Movement in Actualized Zionism]
(Tel Aviv: Davar, 1935), pp. 159.
17. Quoted in Davar, 22 December
1933.
18. Davar, 22 December 1933; Kfar
Saba Municipal Archives, File 27-4.
19. Quoted from the transcript of
Asayfa shel Mishlahat Vaad HaPoel
haTzioni meYerushalayim [Meeting of the
Zionist Executive Delegation from
Jerusalem], 5 April 1934, in Kfar Saba
LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA
Municipal Archives, File 27-4. The quote is
also found in Shlomo Engle, Kfar Saba:
Shevim Shana leYesod Kfar Saba,
Shmonim Shana leGeulat Adamatah
[Kfar Saba: Seventy Years from the
Founding of Kfar Saba, Eighty Years of the
Redemption of Its Land] (Kfar Saba: Kfar
Saba Municipality, 1973), p. 176.
20. See Davar, 1 April 1934.
21. Lavon Institute, Group 8-IV/ File 1.
22. Proclamation of the Central Office
of the Teachers Federation, 29 May 1934,
in Archives of the Teachers Federation,
School of Education, Tel Aviv University,
9.8/File 4/010; Davar, 30 May 1934.
23. Quoted in Lama Halachnu
Limishmeret [Why We Went Picketing],
Davar, 29 June 1934.
24. Quoted in Davar, 21 September
1934.
25. Davar, 8 April 1934.
26. HaOlam 25 (21 June 1934).
Bialiks statement, which was written
shortly before his death, was reproduced
in Asupot AlephAvoda Ivrit: Parashat
haAvoda haIvrit uMaarahotayha le
Shanot 56905695 [Collection
AHebrew Labor: The Hebrew Labor
Affair and Its Campaigns in the Years
19301935] (Tel Aviv: General Federation
of Hebrew Workers in Eretz Israel, 1935),
pp. 15556, under the title Divrei Bialik
HaAhronim [Bialiks Last Words].
27. Lavon Institute, Group
250-IV/Petah Tikva Workers Council/Files
133 and 134; Bet Neta collection, File
28/5/3.
28. Jewish Agency, HaMilhama, pp.
26; Kfar Saba Municipal Archives, File
27-3, Din veHeshbon shel Merkaz
HeHaklai leVeidat 1938 [Report of the
Central Agricultural Office to the (Fifth)
1938 (Histadrut) Congress] (hereafter
Report of the Central Agricultural
Office), p. 250.
29. Lavon Institute, Group 8-IV/File
2/G [3]; File 2/V [6]; and Group
250-IV/Kfar Saba Workers Council/File
83/A [1].
30. Braslovsky, Tnuat haPoalim, vol.
1, pp. 8485, 1023.
31. See Lavon Institute, Group
8-IV/File 1; Kfar Saba Municipal Archives,
File 27-4; and Davar, Special Supplement,
19 April 1934.
32. Engle, Kfar Saba, p. 167.
33. Frumkins speech to the Zionist Ex-
ecutive was quoted in Davar, 12 April 1935.
This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
37
34. Davar, 12 April 1935.
35. Braslovsky, Tnuat haPoalim,
vol. 2, pp. 16, 182; Ben-Gurion is quoted
on p. 184. Braslovsky frequently refers to
the primitive Arab worker who did not
require wages . . . to provide for rent [or]
to support a cultured person (see vol. 1,
pp. 845, 1023).
36. Lavon Institute, Oral
Documentation Center, Transcript no. 271,
Interview with Reuven Shari [Shreibman]
(1974), pp. 7, 178.
37. Davar, 11 October 1933.
38. Lavon Institute, Group
250-IV/Petah Tikva Workers Council/File
134. See also references to Hawrani aliya
in a 1935 election poster, in Lavon
Institute, Bet Neta collection, File 28/3/54.
39. Jewish Agency, HaMilhama,
pp. 67.
40. Harpaz is quoted in Getzel Kressel,
ed., HaHalom ShehayaAvoda Ivrit:
Kovaitz leZayhero shel Neta Harpaz [The
Dream That WasHebrew Labor:
Collection in Memory of Neta Harpaz]
(Petah Tikva: Neta House, 1980), p. 171.
41. Davar, 3 December 1934.
42. Lockman, Comrades and
Enemies, p. 195.
43. Lockman, Comrades and
Enemies, p. 195.
44. See Shapira, HaMaavakim Lemaan
Avoda Ivrit, p. 8, quoting Munchik,
LeVayrur HaShaela HaAravit [To Clarify
the Arab Question] in HaShiloah 33
(567778) [1918], p. 557.
45. See Davar, 30 May 1934.
46. Kressel, HaHalom Shehaya,
p. 171.
47. The term most widely used by the
Histadrut to describe grove owners who
employed Palestinians was alienator,
which emphasized a breach of Zionist
communal solidarity; the term was even
used to describe a grove, as in a Davar
headline of 7 December 1933 referring to a
New Fortress of Alienated Grove
Ownership. Other epithets included
displacer, referring to the claim that
Jewish workers had been displaced by
Palestinian workers, the Vaad Haklai
gang (Vaad Haklai was the grove
owners forum), and fence breakers.
Numerous illustrations of the use of these
terms abound: see, for example, Lavon
Institute, Group 250-IV/Petah Tikva
Workers Council/File 134; Group
250-IV/Hadera Workers Council/File 128;
38
Report of the Central Agricultural Office,
p. 254; Jewish Agency, HaMilhama, pp.
25; and Davar, 21 May 1934; 30 May
1934.
48. The attack on the home of the
grove owner Rotman in Hadera was
described by Bustanai as a real pogrom
and the perpetrators as belonging to a
gang. The Hebrew Labor demonstrators
in Kfar Saba were accused by Epstein of
practicing Bolshevism and Hitlerism
against the grove owners. See Bustanai,
no. 29 (November 1931); Davar, 13 June
1934.
49. Sir John Hope Simpson, Palestine:
Report on Immigration, Land Settlement,
and Development (London: His Majestys
Stationary Office, 1930).
50. Bustanai 6, no. 8 (6 June 1934).
51. Bustanai 6, no. 8 (6 June 1934).
52. Doar HaYom reflected the
orientation of the right-wing Revisionist
partythe main opposition to the political
dominance of Ben-Gurions Mapai and the
Histadrutwhich formed its own rival
labor organization.
53. Quoted in Lama Halachtem
Limishmeret? [Why Did You Go
Picketing?], Doar HaYom, 8 July
1934.
54. Doar HaYom, 12 June 1934.
55. Quoted in English translation in
PRO/Foreign Office (FO) 371/13756, High
Commissioner for Palestine J. R. Chancellor
to Principal Secretary of State for the
Colonies, Lord Passfield, Secret Despatch
no. 510/29 of November 1, 1929,
This content downloaded from 96.91.243.195 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:09:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
enclosing translation of communist
pamphlet regarding disturbances.
56. PRO/FO 371/13756, Chancellor to
Passfield; Moshe Smilansky, Nes Ziona:
Shevim Shanot Hayeha, 18831953 [Nes
Ziona: Seventy Years of Its Life,
18831953] (Nes Ziona: Nes Ziona
Municipality, 1953), p. 140; Kfar Saba
Municipal Archives, File 27-4.
57. Kfar Saba Municipal Archives, File
27-4.
58. Kfar Saba Municipal Archives, File
27-4; Lavon Institute, Group 250-IV/Petah
Tikva Workers Council/File 79.
59. Lavon Institute, Group 250-IV/
Petah Tikva Workers Council/File 79.
60. For a sharp exchange concerning
Left Poalei Zions unwillingness to join in
the picketing campaign between its party
representatives and those of Mapai on the
Petah Tikva Workers Council, see Protocol
of the Council Meeting, 31 May 1934, in
Lavon Institute, Group 250-IV/Petah Tikva
Workers Council/File 149.
61. For an analysis of the stance on the
Hebrew Labor question by the Left Poalei
Zion party, see Elkana Margalit, Anatomiya
shel Smal: Poalei Zion Smal beEretz
Yisrael, 19191946 [Anatomy of the Left:
Left Poalei Zion in Eretz Israel, 19191946]
(Tel Aviv: Y. L. Peretz, 1976), pp. 20514.
For the position of the Left Poalei Zion
party in opposing the Histadrut plans in
Nes Ziona, see Hagai Megged, Mishpat
Nes Ziona [The Nes Ziona Trial], in
BaDerech 3, no. 5 (April 1970),
pp. 8788.