The Rise of the Individual in 1950s Israel: A Challenge to Collectivism [Hardcover ed.] 1584658924, 9781584658924

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The Rise of the Individual in 1950s Israel

The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies Editors S. Ilan Troen Jehuda Reinharz Sylvia Fuks Fried The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies publishes original scholarship of exceptional significance on the history of Zionism and the State of Israel. It draws on disciplines across the academy, from anthropology, sociology, political science, and international relations to the arts, history, and literature. It seeks to further an understanding of Israel within the context of the modern Middle East and the modern Jewish experience. There is special interest in developing publications that enrich the university curriculum and enlighten the public at large. The series is published under the auspices of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. For a complete list of books in this series, please see www.upne.com Orit Rozin The Rise of the Individual in 1950s Israel: A Challenge to Collectivism Boaz Neumann Land and Desire in Early Zionism Anat Helman Young Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Cities Nili Scharf Gold Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel’s National Poet Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz, editors Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present

⡬ The Rise of the Individual in 1950s Israel A Challenge to Collectivism

Orit Rozin Translated by Haim Watzman

brandeis university press Waltham, Massachusetts

brandeis university press An imprint of University Press of New England www.upne.com © 2011 Brandeis University All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Katherine B. Kimball Typeset in Quadraat and Quadraat Sans by Integrated Publishing Solutions University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rozin, Orit. [Hovat ha-ahavah ha-kashah. English] The rise of the individual in 1950s israel: a challenge to collectivism / Orit Rozin ; translated by Haim Watzman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-58465-892-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-1-61168-081-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn 978-1-61168-082-9 (e-book) 1. Israel — Social life and customs — 20th century. Israel — History — 20th century. 20th century.

2. Individualism — Political aspects —

3. Collectivism — Political aspects — Israel — History —

4. Israel — Social conditions — 20th century.

tions — 20th century.

5. Israel — Economic condi-

6. Israel — Emigration and immigration — Social aspects.

I. Title.

hn660.a8r69513 2011 302.5⬘409569409045 — dc23

2011030606

5 4 3 2 1 This book was published with the generous support of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, the Yoran Sznycer Research Fund at Tel Aviv University, and the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

I do not know what the state can do here. . . . It is, really, more a matter among ourselves rather than between us and the state. . . . I want these things to be heard. . . . From the brain, these words need to penetrate the heart; the most important task of the intellectual now is to initiate a new movement of love within the Jewish people, something unlike anything that has been until now, a love of the Jewish people that brings you and me closer, and he and all of us [closer] to that filthy and ugly Jew. . . . We must bow our heads before that suffering. We must assume the obligation of difficult love. The role of the intellectual is to awaken it and there is nothing else so important now. —The poetess Leah Goldberg at a gathering of writers called by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (BGAM, “Divrey Sofrim,” March 27, 1949, 8, emphasis added)

c ont e nt s

Acknowledgments Introduction: The First Years

ix xiii

I At Home and on the Street 1 Austerity: Desperate Housewives and the Government 2 Austerity and the Rule of Law 3 The Law Enforcement System

3 39 52

II In the City Square 4 5 6 7

Austerity Tested: The Local Elections of 1950 The Municipal Election Results and Their Significance From Poll to Poll: The Elections to the Second Knesset The Outcome of the Elections to the Second Knesset

65 79 93 117

III Somewhere in the Transit Camp 8 Terms of Abhorrence: How Old-Time Israelis Viewed Immigrants from the Islamic World 9 Parents, Parenting, and Children 10 The Construction of a Collective: Relations between Immigrants and Old-Time Israelis Conclusion Notes References Index

139 162 180 191 201 233 245

ac k no w le d g m e n t s

This book tells the story of the old-time Israelis in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At that time my parents lived in a wooden shack with an outhouse, in a neighborhood at the center of Tel Aviv that no longer exists, named “Nordiya.” Today, where that wooden shack once stood, the Dizengoff Center Mall is located. I would like to thank my mother Leah for sharing the stories of her austerity hardships with me. This book is based on a PhD dissertation supervised by Yosef Gorni and Avraham Shapira submitted to Tel Aviv University nine years ago. My teachers both had an important influence on this book; Yosef Gorni challenged me with difficult questions and offered constructive criticism while Avraham Shapira shared his wealth of knowledge. I thank them both deeply. Yaacov Shavit and Aviva Halamish were the first to encourage me to publish the dissertation and commented on the first draft of the text. I am ever so grateful to them for all the help they have given me over the years. Yechiam Weitz, Assaf Likhovski and Tuvia Friling commented on some of the chapters. Avi Bareli, Gilat Gofer, and Michael Feige shared their vast knowledge with me while this book was in the making. Special thanks are due to Mordechai Bar-On whose extensive reader’s report helped me shape this book into what it is today. Yehuda Nini was there for me when I needed to discuss this project and offered his kind and knowledgeable advice. I am thankful to Tel Aviv University and the Yitzhak Rabin Center for the financial support that enabled me to dedicate the years needed to complete this research, as well as to Yad Tabenkin for the research grant. Archival material was collected in various archives—I wish to thank all those who assisted me throughout my research, especially Gilad Livneh, Michal Zaft and Ronit Cohen of the Israel State Archive; Leana Feldman and Hana Pinshau of the Ben-Gurion Archives, and Lili Adar at the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute’s library; Michael Polishchuk and Haya Zeidenberg at the Moshe Sharett

x

Acknowledgments

Israel Labor Party Archives; Batya Leshem and Gita Bar-Tikva at the Central Zionist Archive and Ilan Gal-Pe’er at the Pinhas Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research Archives. I wish to thank Am Oved Press and the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel for publishing the book in Hebrew in 2008. In particular I want to express my deep gratitude to Eli Shealtiel and Herzeliya Efraty who edited the Hebrew version. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Anita Shapira, Head of the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, for supporting this publication in both matter and spirit and for her ongoing encouragement. My many colleagues at the junior researcher’s forum at the Chaim Weizmann Institute offered their advice and friendship. I wish to express my gratitude to Ilan Troen, who encouraged me to submit my book for publication in the Schusterman Series in Israel Studies, as well as to his coeditors Jehuda Reinharz and Sylvia Fuks Fried at Brandeis University. And to Editor in Chief Phyllis Deutsch, Ann Brash, and Katy Grabill at the University Press of New England, as well as to Jeanne Ferris who copyedited the English manuscript, Golan Moskwitz who read the proofs, and Joanne Sprott who prepared the index, thank you all. Riva Starr reworked the endnotes; I thank her for being so attentive and patient. I wish to express my gratitude to Haim Watzman for his meticulous translation from the Hebrew and for his curiosity and concern. During the 2009–2010 academic year, York University’s Center for Jewish Studies hosted me while I was working on the translation. I wish to thank Sara Horowitz for extending the invitation, as well as Erik Lawee, Marty Lockshin, Carl Ehrlich and Laura Weisman for their assistance and friendship. Derek Penslar of the University of Toronto read this manuscript and offered invaluable comments, as well as his and his family’s warm hospitality. I am also thankful to Pnina Lahav, Bernard Wasserstein, Yael Zerubavel, and Ronald Zweig for their long time encouragement. Together with David Tal, Tali Margalit, Yael Darr, Danny Gutwein, Zohar Segev, Meir Chazan, Tali Lev, Uri Cohen, Michal Ben Jacob, Dina Roginsky, and Sylvia and Emanuel Adler they helped me work my way through both the translation and the Canadian winter. Audrey Karlinsky and her family and friends provided a home away from home. The translation of this book was funded by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University, the Littauer Foundation, and the Yoran

Acknowledgments xi

Sznycer Research Fund at Tel Aviv University. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise awarded the book a publication grant. The Association for Israel Studies awarded this book the Shapiro Prize for Best Book in 2009 for which I am ever so grateful. Above all, I am forever grateful to my beloved husband Gideon and our two sons Yuval and Yotam for their love. Along with our four-legged fury family members, they made my long days by the computer all good days. Kfar Maas February 2011

in t r od u c t i o n The First Years

In the autumn of 1950, a writer for Israel’s popular daily newspaper Ma’ariv vented the frustrations of Israel’s average, honest, conscientious, yet exasperated and angry citizens: Ben-Gurion . . . has not even for a single day found it within him to put himself in the place of a simple Jew of Israel, a simple citizen who goes to his government . . . and goes through all the nerve-wracking, humiliating furies and agonies of hell that each of us has experienced. He has not spent a single day in benchless corridors and has never gone, like an ordinary citizen, into the office of an official who doesn’t know how to say “Hello” and who doesn’t bother to keep a chair in his office so that he won’t have to offer anyone who enters a seat, and it doesn’t matter what happens afterward, the endless refusals, and the endless forms, and the arbitrary treatment, and the dilettantish attitude.1

For its ordinary inhabitants, the new state of Israel, whose establishment in 1948 represented the extraordinary consummation of the Zionist enterprise, quickly turned into a troubling, everyday reality. The new state became a home for devoted Zionists from all over the globe but also took in hundreds of thousands of impoverished or persecuted refugees, at least some of whom would have preferred to go elsewhere. The achievement of statehood created a burden that threatened to overwhelm the state’s own apparatus and the civil society that had been constructed in the preceding decades by the country’s established population. This book examines how the very establishment of the state, and the stress resulting from the mass influx of a new and culturally different population, affected and transformed Israeli society. Beginning as a collective that placed national and communal needs first, it gradually became a society in which individuals sought—and expected the state to allow them—individual freedoms, a steadily rising standard of living, and personal fulfillment.

xiv

Introduction

Mass immigration compelled the government to impose a severe austerity program and rationing, a regime that brought with it food shortages, endless lines, and a notoriously intrusive bureaucracy. Although the country’s veteran citizens—the vatikim (Hebrew for old-timers), or those who had grown up in the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community—initially displayed a willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of their newly arrived Jewish brethren, they gradually came to view the impositions as unfair, unnecessary, and too difficult to live with. Israeli society and culture still bear the imprint of these early days. The way Israelis see and interpret the past has changed over time, but its impact has not diminished. During Israel’s early years, the veteran Israelis felt profoundly disappointed with the state and the society that had emerged after independence. Ostensibly, these people should have seen the War of Independence as a turning point; in the wake of their long, bloody, but successful effort to create a Jewish state, one might have expected them to feel relieved. Instead, the mood after the war was one of dejection. As the intimate environment of the Yishuv was overwhelmed by destitute immigrants, members of this established community closed ranks to preserve their close-knit society. The heavy burden imposed by immigration thus also catalyzed a feeling of alienation. Within the space of just five years, from 1948 to 1953, Israelis had to cope with a series of setbacks and crises—war, inflation, the program of rationing and price controls, recession, and unemployment. Construction and settlement activities went into high gear but were unable to avert a severe housing shortage. Illness became more frequent, and death rates rose. Despite the state’s rapid development, old-timers experienced this period as drab and shabby. The country they saw around them was far removed from their dreams and ideals. The immigrants themselves suffered the worst effects of the mass immigration; they struggled simply to subsist. But the shock waves battered old-timers as well,2 and it is this group that stands at the center of the current study.

The Collective and the Individual During Israel’s early years, public debates and conflicts directly or indirectly shaped government policy and the nature of the regime. They left their marks on legislation, jurisprudence, and the way people lived. Whatever the specific issues at stake, the disputes were ultimately about the nature of Israeli identity, the public good, and the responsibilities of citizenship. They had far-reaching

Introduction xv

consequences for the relationship between the individual and the collective. By tracking the public discourse of the time as recorded in archival material, my purpose here is to bring some of these processes to light.3 Since the Yishuv was the nucleus of the Israeli state,4 an understanding of the metamorphoses that occurred in the transition from one to the other will clarify the nature of changes in Israeli society during its initial years. Yishuv society, although pluralistic and stratified, was characterized by voluntary collectivism. Its members enlisted, of their own free will, in the project of constructing a common society and identity. This attitude is evident among social elites, as well as among agents of change like writers, educators, and other intellectuals who placed themselves at the disposal of the collective, living in agricultural settlements, performing manual labor, and serving in the military. Individuals and organizations alike made a supreme effort to develop, learn, and inculcate the use of a common language and fashion a common cultural repertoire. Although collectivism was specifically an ideology of the Left—of the labor movement that was the Yishuv’s leading political force—the Right in its own way accepted collectivistic principles. For the latter, collectivism was manifested in nationalism, culture, the military, and certain political matters. In other words, the Yishuv’s collectivism was not only a matter of the economy and the political and social organization, but rather, and principally, a mental attitude.5 It was adopted as a model of proper conduct and constituted an important foundation of the consciousness, feelings, and behavioral repertoire of the society that established the state. The people of the Yishuv, who became the veteran members of Israeli society, felt a strong sense of belonging to and responsibility for the other members of the Jewish nation. This commitment gave them a sense of power and inner strength.6 Most of them also had a sense of mission, resulting from their belief that individuals had the power to achieve personal redemption and to contribute to the redemption of their compatriots. When the Yishuv became the state of Israel, the nature and manifestations of collectivism changed. Instead of being motivated by a grass-roots ideology, by individuals and groups, it became the chief principle of government, its ethos and logos. I argue that a dialectic process took place in Israel’s early years. Society became more individualistic, as Israelis became less inclined to sacrifice their personal preferences and health—and less willing to volunteer their energies, money, and time—for the good of the collective.7 Yet this took place at a time when most of the country’s top leaders and policymakers subscribed to a collectivist socialist-Zionist ideology and were working to create a

xvi

Introduction

centralized regime.8 They wanted a strong central government so that the state apparatus could be used to fashion society (or at least certain aspects of it) and mold a collective identity that would encourage individuals to exert themselves to achieve common national goals. Unlike voluntary collectivism, which depends on individuals’ motivating themselves, centralized collectivism is powered by politicians, bureaucrats, and other leaders. A nation that has declared its allegiance to an individualist ethos can pursue an efficient centralist collectivist policy for limited periods, such as in times of economic depression, as the United States did in the 1930s. In contrast, a centralized collectivist establishment like Israel’s during the 1950s can engender individualism.9 Centralized collectivism was personified by David Ben-Gurion, the most important Israeli leader of the country’s first decade. His ideology, ethos, and modus operandi were shared by most members of the governing elite and officialdom. However, some aspects of the government’s centralized collectivist policies yielded unforeseen results and contributed to the process of individualization. Centralized collectivism was apparent in the ideology and ethos of the veteran population, if we consider its public discourse, but less so in its consciousness, and even less so in its actions. The disparity between discourse and practice increased over time.10 As individualization intensified, the Israeli public’s sense of common destiny was maintained and fostered by a number of historical and sociological factors. Among these were constant military tension, the fresh scars of the War of Independence, the heritage of the Yishuv and the struggle against the British, Israeli society’s confrontation with the consequences of the Holocaust and its survivors, and the salient presence of the heroes of the War of Independence, as well as of institutions and political movements that had played key roles in the struggle. Although the veteran Israelis came increasingly to place their individual interests before those of the nation, they continued to view themselves as a collective committed to the interests of the Jewish people as a whole—both those who lived in Israel and those who were destined, in the Israelis’ view, to eventually settle in Israel.

The Origins of the Individualist Ethos The dominant voice of state institutions, and the state’s endeavor to take over functions that had previously been performed by voluntary groups and political parties, inevitably led to a reduction in voluntary collectivism. Veteran Is-

Introduction xvii

raeli society found itself caught between the norms that were the product of its ideals and consciousness and the demands of day-to-day life.11 The liberal individualist ethos had already appeared during the Yishuv period, but it became a coherent ideology and praxis only many years after the country’s first decade.12 Nevertheless, advocates for this outlook, among them elected officials and the courts, participated in the public discourse of the 1950s.13 The change derived from the process of institutionalization and from the declining role of voluntarism, which was replaced by the pursuit of personal interests. Another factor in the change was the appearance of a new social elite, the bureaucracy. Most members of this elite were Ashkenazim—Jews of Eastern and Central European origin. Although they belonged to the labor movement on the political level, a large chunk of the elite was making its way out of the working class. They relegated productive manual labor to the new immigrants, in particular those from the Middle East and North Africa, the Mizrahim (sometimes called Sephardi or Oriental Jews).14 The distinction between the elite and the new working class was not solely ethnic—the former group included Mizrahim who had been members of Yishuv society and of the labor movement. But because the Yishuv elite was overwhelmingly Ashkenazi (only 11 percent of the pre-independence Jewish population was Mizrahi), and because it drew its ideology and culture largely from European sources, new Ashkenazi immigrants faced fewer obstacles to integration and moved from manual labor into business and government jobs more quickly. The result was that the working class became more and more Mizrahi. The decline of the principle of frugality, the accelerated transformation of parts of the former Yishuv society into a new bourgeoisie, the appearance of a new and ostentatious capitalist class, and the percolation of this capitalist ethos into other social classes all reinforced social change. Another factor in this transformation was weariness, the spiritual anticlimax experienced by revolutionary societies when they face the task of institutionalizing their achievements. Yet another was the character of the immigrants themselves. Those who came from Europe evinced no inclination to accept the norms of pioneering Yishuv society. They identified far more with Western models of success, aspiring to individual fulfillment and city life. They viewed money, not the frugality of the manual laborer, as the measure of status and success. Furthermore, the adherence to religious, ethnic, and family tradition that characterized the immigrants from the Maghreb and Mashrek ran up against the ethic of enlisting in the service of the collective.15

xviii

Introduction

“Individualism” is a charged term. Its meaning in the hegemonic Israeli discourse of the 1950s differs from its meaning today. When used by the state’s leaders and senior members of the labor movement, the term was derogatory. “Individualism” was a synonym for selfishness and careerism, the reason or principal cause of what was called “the pioneer crisis,” the phenomenon of individuals’ turning their backs on the huge and pressing needs of society and the state.16 The criticism of the pursuit of money and status did not distinguish between these desires and individuals’ need to set boundaries and live their lives according to the dictates of their inner will. The prevailing collectivist discourse looked with suspicion on two aspects of liberalism. The first of these was liberal politics, with its commitment to democracy and the rule of law. The principles of liberal politics limited the state’s power to impinge on inalienable individual rights, even in the name of overwhelming national need. The liberal state aspired to balance the values of equality and freedom, with the latter taking precedence over the pursuit of collective goals. The second aspect was economic liberalism, which rejected state intervention in the economy. The ruling class of Israel in its early days seems to have linked the expansion of European individualism to the growth of capitalism, even if that expansion also had a place in socialist thought.17 In contrast with the prevailing approach in Israel at the time, many Westerners viewed liberal democratic individualism as a positive phenomenon—as the individual’s standing up for his or her uniqueness and originality, and for his or her voice. The demanding nature of the collective in Israel’s young society and the view that it sought no more than to foster the general good stood, in certain ways, in opposition to the image of the collective in Western societies, where liberal democratic principles required the state to respect and nurture individual rights.18 In the face of this disparity, it is important to look at the interactions between the individual and the collective, and in particular between the individual and the regime. I will therefore examine events in which the discourse of civil rights appeared, as well as struggles to promote such rights. One of the basic assumptions on which this book is based is that awareness of human rights and efforts to promote them are evidence of the growing empowerment of the individual and his or her enhanced status within society. Mapai, the largest of the labor parties and the party of government of the Yishuv and of the state of Israel for its first three decades, viewed the protection of the individual’s fundamental social and political rights as a central value. It therefore worked hard to secure them.19 Civil rights, however, needed more protection.20

Introduction xix

The discourse of rights was not silenced, as some studies have suggested,21 when the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, decided in 1950 to enact a set of basic laws as an alternative to a constitution. Social, political, and civil rights were an important issue on the public agenda. Most work on Israel’s first years paints with broad strokes; it focuses on political parties and policy debates. Such accounts describe the period from the outside, at a distance of time, and critique it with the benefit of hindsight. The purpose of this book is not only to present a comprehensive picture of some of the changes that took place during this period, but also to portray them, as much as possible, from the point of view of the Israelis who experienced them. My goal is to understand these people’s feelings, expectations, and disappointments. Only by comprehending the mentality of the period; the way people saw the society they lived in and their own place within it; how they felt and what they thought about their country, their lives, their pasts, and their futures; and how they coped with the challenges they encountered can we today understand the changes that occurred during the country’s critical early years.

This book is divided into three parts, revolving around three thematic axes. In each part, I will seek to point out the agents of change and the causes of the process of individualization. The first part is devoted to the relationship between the regime and the public, set against the background of the enforcement and implementation of the austerity policy pursued by the government. Chapter 1 looks at how housewives in the original population coped with the austerity regime. Little scholarly attention thus far has been devoted to this sector, its opinions and beliefs, and its relationship to the authorities and the Israeli community at large. I propose that housewives were agents of change who accomplished or motivated a process of individualization in Israeli society. Chapter 2 examines the austerity regime through the prism of the rule of law. It follows the government’s enforcement policies, the extent of public compliance, and the reasons Israelis violated the austerity regulations. Chapter 3 is devoted to the role of the judicial system and its relationship with the government and the Knesset. In chapters 2 and 3, I argue that the failure to implement and enforce the austerity program undermined trust between the individual Israeli and the government. In my view, mutual alienation between the two encouraged individualism.22

xx

Introduction

The book’s second part, comprising four chapters, examines the political arena. The intention is to reveal Israelis’ positions on the issues of the day through the mirror of the actions and words of the political parties that competed for their votes. Politics is thus discussed as a means, not an end in and of itself. An extensive discourse on rights evidenced itself in the two election campaigns examined here, reflecting, I argue, the needs and travails of the veteran Israeli public. This discourse serves as a way of plumbing what the public thought about the proper relations between the individual and the collective. Chapter 4 looks at the campaign leading up to the local elections of November 1950. Chapter 5 analyzes the election results, their significance, and their implications. Chapter 6 focuses on the subsequent national election campaign. Chapter 7 discusses the outcome of the national elections and the comprehensive and significant policy changes that followed them, both in the area of mass immigration—which manifested the collectivist ethos—and in the government’s economic program. Another thread that runs through this group of chapters is the political establishment’s intervention in and attempts to influence the electoral process, thus violating its autonomy. Part 2, in particular chapter 7, offers evidence of such tampering, and considers how this affected the foundations of Israeli democracy and the collective consciousness of the country’s society, particularly that of the veteran Israelis. Part 3 examines the effect that the massive immigration of the state’s early years had on the first Israelis and their attitudes toward the Jewish collective. (The state’s non-Jewish citizens were perceived at that time as “others” who lay outside Israeli society.) This section is concerned with the history of emotions, portraying the revulsion the old-timers felt toward the immigrants, especially those from the Middle East. This attitude had its source in an unflattering image of the immigrants as constructed by cultural agents, the immigrants’ living conditions, and the foreignness of their customs. Chapter 8 offers a theoretical explanation of the term “disgust” and discusses how this image of the immigrants was created by mediating agents—national leaders, bureaucrats, and journalists. The chapter also examines the immigrants’ living conditions during their first years in Israel, and the connection between those conditions and the group’s negative image. Chapter 9 shows how immigrants were seen as parents, and how the veteran Israelis’ impressions of immigrants were affected by the marriage practices of some from Islamic lands. Chapter 10 sums up the relationships between old-timers and immigrants and examines the role that the veterans’ sense of disgust toward the

Introduction xxi

immigrants played in the formation of the Israeli collective. It also looks at how this revulsion transformed the old-timers’ attitudes toward the collective. In contrast with the common image of Israeli society at its inception being a mobilized society ruled by an all-powerful party machine, I will show that Israeli life was in fact shaped not only by the country’s decision makers but also by how the average Israeli related and reacted to the elite’s principles. Social attitudes and moral values are not only instilled in the public by intellectuals, scholars, and political leaders—that is, from the top down—but also by agents of change, often difficult to identify, among ordinary citizens.

⡤ at home and on the street

⡬ Chapter 1

Austerity Desperate Housewives and the Government

I

n April 1949, when the young state of Israel was in the final stages of its War of Independence, its government imposed an austerity regime. The country’s exhausted, battered population, consisting both of those who had arrived in earlier years and the new immigrants who began pouring into the country after the end of British rule, wanted to recover from their wounds. Now they faced rationing and price controls on food and other commodities. Rationing was not new to them—it had been instituted during the war, although in a limited way.1 Many Israelis had hoped that life could return to normal in peacetime, but the goal of the new measures was to enable the state to absorb the immigrants—refugees from Europe and the Islamic world, most of whom arrived with few possessions and who, following their arrival, endured substandard nourishment, housing, and health services. The austerity program was only one aspect of the government’s intervention in the economy, but it directly affected the lives of the entire population. Rationing and price controls were not an Israeli invention. During World War II, similar policies had been imposed by the British administration in Palestine. Israel retained most of the Mandate’s legal code, so the young state already had on its books the laws and regulations required to institute such a program. England had imposed an austerity system on its own citizens during the war, and this policy continued during the postwar rehabilitation period. It came to an end only after the general election of 1951, which returned Winston Churchill and his Conservative party to power. The new British government significantly reduced state intervention in the economy and phased out rationing and price controls, ending them finally in 1955.2 Israeli policymakers used England as the model for their austerity program. Notably, the Hebrew word chosen as a translation for “austerity,” tzena, is a form of the

4

a t ho me an d o n t h e s t r e et

Hebrew term for modesty and humility—an abstract value, not just a public policy.3 The idea of a planned or managed economy was an accepted one at the time, and not only as an emergency measure. The world—especially the industrialized countries—was still traumatized by the Great Depression that had begun in 1929. One of its manifestations was mass unemployment, which had lasted for a decade even in the wealthy United States and was seen as a failure of the free market. Most Western governments of the postwar period thus saw it as their duty to intervene in their economies in order to guarantee full employment. These views were highly compatible with the political culture of the Israeli leaders, many of whom were socialists. Even leaders of Israel’s nonsocialist parties believed in some form or another of economic statism. During the austerity regime’s first nine months, it was largely accepted by the public,4 which cooperated and obeyed its rules. In May 1949 a research institute conducted a public opinion survey of housewives’ reactions to rationing.5 The survey was carried out in the country’s three large cities (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa) and included women of all ages, classes, and income levels, and from all countries of origin. The sample consisted of 1,628 women, nearly all of whom who had come to Israel before the War of Independence. Most of them were Ashkenazi; 22 percent were Mizrahi. A majority, 56 percent, believed that the Supply and Rationing Ministry was distributing food fairly and preventing the emergence of a black market. But by the beginning of 1950, when rations were cut and food reserves used up, consumers’ compliance decreased,6 and a black market began to flourish. The government tried to tighten its control, instituting a number of enforcement measures, directed first at black marketeers and subsequently at consumers.7

Rationing and National Identity The austerity program regulated food consumption and was aimed at ensuring that citizens received adequate provisions regardless of their economic resources. In practice, this meant significant restrictions on the availability of certain products; some commodities were unavailable in the legitimate market for long stretches of time. To understand how this affected society and individuals, it is necessary to consider the significance of the unavailability of certain foods, and to understand the decision by public representatives to deny themselves and the public a portion of their usual food consumption. Apart

Austerity 5

from cases of shortages and religious injunctions, people today refrain from eating for three principal reasons: to diet, in order to achieve a normative or healthy body; because of anorexia nervosa, an illness that usually appears among teenage girls;8 and as part of a politically motivated hunger strike. All three of these cases involve individuals or small groups, even if the phenomena are widespread, as in the case of dieting. Israel’s austerity program, in contrast, was aimed at not just reducing but also at standardizing the consumption habits of its citizens. Rationing actually augmented the food supply of many people, who would otherwise have been unable to afford sufficient food at market prices (as was the case in England during World War II).9 But it required a significant portion of the population to eat less than it was accustomed to, and later to get by with fewer goods of other types as well. Was there a connection between the food restriction policy and the Israeli leadership’s wish to create good citizens and a good society? Was the austerity program partly based on the idea that self-restraint and economy were virtues in and of themselves, and that the state could foster and even enforce them in order to divert resources to higher, worthy goals? Was the rationale that people who give up all or some of their pleasures will eventually reach a higher level of humanity? The answer to these questions is a complex one. The austerity regime was not imposed for ideological reasons. The decision was a rational one, made by policymakers as a way of achieving the common goals of Israel’s Jewish population and of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were still knocking on the young country’s doors. Once it was imposed, however, other justifications and explanations were also offered. Some of these cited frugality, a value central to the pioneering ethos of the early waves of Jewish immigration (aliyot) to the Land of Israel; others, as I will show, emphasized religiosity. In a Knesset speech defending the policy, Dov Yosef, the minister of supply and rationing, told the public that austerity did not mean asceticism.10 In other words, the policy had socioeconomic, not cultural, goals. He said that the purpose of the program was to realize the socialist principle that society should meet each individual’s basic needs. In this view, the state had a duty to ensure the welfare of its citizens by subsidizing prices of basic commodities. It had to intervene in and steer the economy, and to ensure that material resources were expended in pursuit of the national goal of immigrant absorption.11 David Ben-Gurion portrayed the austerity program as a moral imperative: “We do not have the right or moral justification to match the dimensions of immigra-

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tion to our true or imagined economic needs.” Reverberating behind these words was the British administration’s position that no more Jewish immigrants should be allowed into the country than its economy could absorb. (Ben-Gurion was also responding to Israelis who argued that further Jewish immigration should be restricted, in light of the country’s economic travails following the War of Independence.)12 Eliyahu Eliashar, a member of the Knesset representing the Sephardi party, said that the Knesset should resolve not to restrict immigration because “this is the soul of the nation, of the country; not only the soul of the nation and the country, but the soul of [our] brothers, whose lives hang in the balance.”13 According to the rhetoric of the political Left and a part of the Right, austerity was a way not only of lowering the cost of living but also of constructing the collective identity based on the principle that the strong should sacrifice some of their pleasures to help the weak.14 The decision to impose the austerity regime was based on the assumption that the success of the Zionist enterprise required placing the good of the collective, not of the individual, at the center. Giving up material enjoyments was portrayed as a way of aiding the destitute. Yet it expressed not only empathy for the poor but also, and perhaps in the main, a willingness to contribute to the building of the nation. In all human societies, food distribution is a way of expressing family relationships and of creating or maintaining social ties.15 I therefore propose that, in instituting the austerity program, the country’s leadership was demanding that the old-timers invite new immigrants and the poor to take a seat at the table. By accepting the strictures of austerity, the veteran Israelis symbolically offered the newcomers a meal, akin to hosting a social event through which the collective could be built into a nation—and not just any nation, but a worthy and moral one. Sharing food, or sharing the lack of it, thus marked out the boundaries of the collective and enabled the group to see itself as acting morally and selflessly. One member of the Knesset, Uri Zvi Greenberg, sought to shift the discussion from practical economic needs to spiritual ones. One of the great poets of his generation, Greenberg represented the Herut party, the right-wing party headed by Menachem Begin, although Greenberg’s views and attitudes placed him on the group’s fringe. His response to Yosef shows that the collective ideal was not foreign to the Right. Israeli society’s economic values would not change, Greenberg insisted, until the Jewish people underwent a fundamental spiritual metamorphosis. And he offered what he viewed as a pragmatic pro-

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posal: the imposition of a nationwide system of abstinence, an austerity program that would be imposed for a lifetime and not, as Yosef was proposing, for only four years. Greenberg argued that if the Israelis were to sense that BenGurion, in requiring such a program, was acting as the prime minister of everyone in the country, treating no one with prejudice, they would accept such a life of self-restraint.16 Greenberg’s insistence on the need for a change of inner values and his use of traditional language relating to the Holy Temple to proclaim it were not coincidental. He wished to make the body of each Israeli Jew into a sanctuary for the performance of a rite intended to take the nation to a new and higher spiritual level. But the goal of the economy’s captains at the time, in particular the leaders of Mapai, was quite mundane. They sought to direct and restrain consumption so as to make it possible for the country to absorb Jewish immigration. In their view, the austerity regime was thus a temporary measure. They did not seek to create a society based on pioneer simplicity,17 but rather one in which people lived in comfort and good health. It was clear to Mapai’s leaders (as it was to Greenberg)18 that the pioneer ideal was appropriate only for a few. Nevertheless, the view that the individual’s body was a legitimate object of socionormative intervention, and that restraining its physical needs was a moral value and not just a practical way of achieving some other purpose, was common at both ends of the political spectrum. So was the belief that the extent to which individuals succeeded in limiting their physical needs was a measure of a society’s cultural advancement. Self-control during the austerity period was thus linked to the formation of the Israeli collective. The implementation of this program, the task of turning it from abstract to concrete, was placed on the shoulders of Israel’s housewives.

Housewives at the Front Israel’s housewives were deployed on the front line of the socioeconomic crusade.19 They had to cope first with a limited supply of food and later, beginning in July 1950, also with restrictions on clothing and shoes. They had a double set of responsibilities—to provide their families with adequate nourishment, and to comply with the government’s regulations. These responsibilities clashed when, as happened at times, the black market became the only place to obtain staple provisions. Urban housewives as well as immigrant women in transit camps faced much more difficulty than women in farming communi-

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ties—the latter were able to feed their families homegrown produce.20 As a result, most of the burden of rationing fell on housewives in the cities and immigrant transit camps. The housewives were well aware of their responsibilities to the public. They knew that buying on the black market was a violation of the law and, no less important, of social and ethical norms. Patronizing the black market, they were told, was tantamount to undermining their government. They realized that when more food was sold illegally, less was available through legitimate channels for the poor and indigent immigrants. Presumably they were also aware of the risk—getting caught would disgrace them and their families. A housewife, in this context, was a married woman who managed a household, whether or not she worked outside the home. Generally the term applies only to women who do not have outside jobs, and this is the standard definition used in official and statistical reports. In practice, however, working women also managed their households, in addition to their outside jobs. In most families, it was the wife and mother who was responsible for seeing that her family was fed and clothed, and that their home was properly furnished and cared for. There was little difference in this regard between women who earned a salary and those who did not.21 Urban housewives bought all their food and supplies in stores. They could not choose which store to patronize because they could purchase their rations only from specific outlets or merchants to which they were assigned—corner grocery stores, co-ops, greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers, and milkmen. Other goods could be purchased freely.22 Each store had a list of clients for whom it received supplies. Each family received a ration book, the state’s most important means of supervising and monitoring the program, and was able to buy goods at fixed prices in exchange for coupons from the book.23 Information about the allocation of supplies to stores was printed in the daily newspapers and broadcast on the radio. But the housewife who went to the store to purchase these goods was often told that, despite the announcement, the supplies had not arrived.24 Housewives frequently complained about these instances, and resentment turned into bitterness.25 Satirical columns in the newspapers hurled harsh barbs at politicians: “After they shouted and promised with loudspeakers that they would give it all, if only we would vote for them, the milkman came and said he has no milk. . . . So Mom opened her two eyes wide and after that her mouth and asked [sic]: ‘But the newspaper says that there is milk.’ So the milkman told her that she could get milk out of

Austerity 9

her newspaper, or to take her newspaper and put it in her milk pot and cook it until it boils.”26 Israeli housewives often dreamed of the abundance and comfort enjoyed by their American counterparts: “All provisions are delivered to their homes, most of them ready to eat, packed in jars and cans. Doesn’t that sound like a dream? The shopkeepers and merchants treat her magnanimously and with all the respect due to a woman who plays an important role in life. The radio devotes many hours to women. There’s a radio in every kitchen and a housewife can be in her kitchen and hear and learn about all innovations and techniques in the field of home economics.”27 Clearly, Israeli housewives of the 1950s were anxious about a number of things. Some of their problems were physical—they had to lug their groceries home by themselves, and there was a shortage of packing materials that made this task more difficult—meat, fish, and soft cheeses were packed in old newspapers, and each item dripped on the others on the way home from the store. Housewives also grumbled about receiving only raw materials that required considerable processing to turn into food that their families would eat. Unlike in the United States Israeli stores offered no Campbell’s soup or other readyto-eat, well-packaged convenience foods.28 Shopping was also an emotional burden. Housewives were frequently humiliated at the store. Shopkeepers and suppliers, burdened by their low profit margins and the hours of paperwork that the rationing program required of them, could turn abusive if they had angry housewives demanding to purchase wares that had not been supplied. If shortages, lines, and bad food quality were not enough to make a housewife miserable, she also found herself treated badly. Huge demand combined with minuscule supply meant that shopkeepers and suppliers could mistreat and insult consumers, most of whom were women, with impunity.29 Women also felt that their enormous efforts were not appreciated or acknowledged by those around them.30 Normally, housewives set their own agendas and schedules, structuring their time so that they could accomplish their duties. Their schedules provided their lives with regularity and gave them a sense of control.31 Like Western housewives, the Israeli urban housewife had clear standards about her work at home, including how much time it took to do a proper job of cleaning and cooking, and for getting the rest she needed to do her job efficiently:32 “It is the duty of a housewife to see to it that everything is done in its assigned amount of time, according to a plan. Then she will also have time free to rest. On the average, cleaning one room, including mopping

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the floor, takes half an hour. While food is cooking on the kerosene burner, there is time to clean parts of the apartment in accordance with the plan. . . . A housewife should accomplish most of her tasks in the morning.”33 But no matter how well she planned, the housewife’s schedule was constantly disrupted when the rations promised by the government did not arrive. Instead of devoting most of her morning to housework, she had to waste hours on end waiting in line for food. Dvar Hapo’elet, a monthly women’s magazine published by the Histadrut’s Women Workers’ Council, maintained that “housewives spend an average of three hours a day seeking out provisions.”34 Standing in lines in the August heat or in the extreme cold of the winter of 1950 not only made it physically difficult for them to do housework and upset their plans for getting everything done—it also robbed them of their professional pride because, under such conditions, they could not live up to their own standards. They were mortified and depressed:35 “You only have to walk down the streets of the city in the morning to see what housewives have to put up with in accomplishing the part of their work done outside the home—their purchases. Most people have never seen this: men are at work in their offices and workshops. Only a handful have witnessed the sight of dozens of women in single file at the door to a store, as if they were begging or waiting for a handout.”36 The growing shortages of food sparked a string of complaints from housewives. Correspondents for women’s magazines and the women’s sections of daily newspapers (most of whom were women), and male journalists who wrote about women’s issues, devoted a great deal of space to housewives’ tribulations. There were notable differences in how housewives of different backgrounds accepted and justified the austerity strictures—women from labor movement families were more likely to do so than women from families associated with the middle-class parties of the center and Right. Dvar Hapo’elet extolled sacrifice and frugality: Rome, which conquered the world, was a community of puritan farmers who lived frugally. Not only individuals who set themselves great goals have rejected abundance and softness—all the great movements and fighting organizations have had a puritanical character. Such was Cromwell’s revolutionary movement, which left its mark on English history; so it was with the pioneers of the New World, the Puritan followers of John Knox, who sailed in fishing boats to the New World. . . . The Americans’ great admiration for women . . . has its solid roots in the faithful companionship of the pioneer women in that time of scarcity. . . . Our

Austerity 11 slogan for the future, not only in this time of austerity, is: a nation of workers does not aspire to lavish food but rather to [a society in which] “every person has sustenance according to his needs.”37

A writer in La’isha, a women’s weekly magazine, evinced understanding for the problems of the economy but asked what the government was doing to make things easier for housewives—“to make the two ends meet, the demands of the home and the supply in the marketplace.”38 At the end of 1950, the differences in attitudes between women’s magazines aimed at the middle class and those written for the working class gradually grew smaller when commenting on rationing in general and food rationing in particular. The Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization, which united women’s organizations affiliated with all political groups, worked as a broad coalition to improve nutrition and clothing, to promote the interests of consumers, and to improve the status of housewives. This cooperative effort led to the formulation of common stances and actions to address women’s issues.39 Housewives developed a number of coping strategies. Many wrote letters to newspapers and magazines about the shortages. Going public with information that everyone already knew might have looked like no more than a way of letting off steam. But a closer look shows that complaints printed in newspapers had clear objectives. In printing such grievances, publications sought to give voice to the feelings of the reading public. The writers aspired to alleviate the housewives’ loneliness. They made their readers feel that someone was aware of their problems and empathized with their plight. Indeed, housewives often felt alone in their work and in their efforts to raise and feed their families.40 All urban housewives tended to make the same complaints. Even though they were competing for the same goods, giving voice to their difficulties in the press created a sense of solidarity. Furthermore, these complaints were meant to be heard by men including their husbands—who, the housewives felt, were not sufficiently attentive to their hardships: If the situation with regard to food and clothing is difficult in our country, the state of the housewife is seven times worse than that of a man in these matters, especially as regards nourishment. Because if the men “still haven’t died of hunger,” it’s not the ration portions that have done it. It’s his wife who has gotten up early in the morning and gone out with her basket to the market, stood in lines, run from store to store, and in the end not gotten much for her home. The truth must be said: were she to hand these purchases over to her husband, as they are,

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a t ho me a nd o n t h e s t r ee t he would without a doubt go hungry. It’s the thinking and working hands of the housewife that prepare the husband’s more or less satisfying meal, because without thought, without her creativity, there is no way to prepare a proper meal from rations alone. But do the men appreciate their wives’ efforts? That is extremely questionable!41

The published complaints were meant to be seen by policy makers. Editors and journalists hoped that acquainting politicians and public officials with the popular mood would compel them to take action to relieve shortages and improve the way people were treated.42 The press also offered advice on how to achieve better nutrition despite the shortages: “What, then, is the solution? We should immediately start growing our own food—at home! How many of us have yards that are not fully utilized? Lots! So why shouldn’t we organize our neighbors to plant vegetable gardens? Also: we should demand that the minister of supply and rationing permit the construction of chicken coops in yards. Then we’ll have eggs, and chickens to eat as well. Women must take the initiative.”43 The women’s pages of the daily paper and the magazine La’isha offered recipes that took into account the scarcity of supplies. The Supply and Rationing Ministry also offered recipes.44 These seem to have been quite useful to readers, because at a certain stage La’isha began printing a “weekly austerity menu” instead of a few recipes each week. The instructions offered creative ways of varying dishes, balancing types of food (to the extent possible), and maximizing the use of scraps and rinds. Marmalade could be made from orange peels,45 soup from leftover bread,46 and soft drinks from the water vegetables were cooked in.47 Substitutions were suggested for unavailable items—bimkomim, or “insteads,” in the slang of the time.48 Foods that were available were enhanced or “stretched.”49 Women had used similar strategies under British rule, as had American women during the days of World War II food rationing. Both, for example, had made butter go further by adding gelatin.50 Housewives’ ability to cope with preparing meals under conditions of austerity depended largely on their motivation, knowledge, creativity, and talent, a government survey found. Many women displayed a great interest in cooking and devoted a large amount of time to it. But at all socioeconomic levels there were also women who prepared monotonous food, and who exhibited profound ignorance of and little interest in cooking. The survey also found that

Austerity 13

women’s social milieu had a large effect on their kitchens—good relations with neighbors were a critical factor.51 At holiday times, housewives’ anxieties and frustration grew. Although on a daily basis they were willing and ready to cope with hardship, they expected a significant improvement in the basic food supply for the holidays, and some relief from their constant exertions. There was no such relief when Purim arrived in 1950: I was mortified when faced with my children on the day before Purim. At school they were told about the feasts held on this holiday, about hamantaschen pastries filled with poppy seeds, about the fish eaten on the festival, and more. Now the holiday was before us. I hadn’t obtained any poppy seeds, because there weren’t any to be had. Dr. Dov Yosef thinks they’re a luxury. For the holiday meal we didn’t even have a fish filet. They didn’t taste hamantaschen and we did not have a festive meal. I ask a simple question: Do those who regulate our food not have hearts? Do they not believe that at least on a holiday children should be compensated for their everyday misery?52

During the weeks before Pesach (Passover) that same year, many women were distraught because supplies were particularly bad: The past week was a “black week” for housewives in Tel Aviv. The entire week the proprietor of the corner grocery store greeted housewives with the response: Nothing. No margarine, no oil, no eggs, no soap, etc. So it went on and ended with “nothing.” Only on Friday afternoon, just before the Sabbath began, at an hour when housewives had already prepared what they had prepared, or what they hadn’t (because most of them didn’t), two eggs per person suddenly appeared, but from which it was too late to cook anything, and which served only to mock us— here, they actually did give us something! . . . The illusions that [the government was] stocking up for Pesach dissipated. (By the way, most prefer to receive regular supplies each week rather than a show of enhanced supplies for each holiday.)53

The knowledge that preparation of festive dishes required items that were extremely scarce during the rest of the year—eggs, fish, and, in particular, meat54—was enough to make women worry that they would not be able to prepare proper holiday meals. To alleviate these fears, a reporter from La’isha spoke to the Supply and Rationing Ministry’s spokesman, Dr. Israel Kastner, and asked what Israeli women would be able to purchase for Pesach.55 A Davar correspondent depicted housewives chasing down their family fish ration for

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the holiday evening meal. He sympathized with the housewives but also with Minister of Supply and Rationing Yosef, who was, to put it mildly, not a popular man.56 Despite housewives’ low expectations for Pesach,57 the ministry kept its promises and families were able to celebrate the holiday properly.58 But half a year later, on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year at the beginning of autumn, the country was suffering from severe shortages. The portions of meat and fish were tiny and not always available on time,59 and most food products that were not rationed disappeared from the stores.60 “Liora’s Diary,” a satirical column in La’isha, offered this account of a desperate Israeli housewife’s attempt to obtain the two kinds of fruit traditionally eaten at the new year feast: “Dad comforted Mom . . . because she didn’t manage to get anything for the holiday. She wanted to get rimonim [in Hebrew, the word means both pomegranates and grenades] and Dad said that he’d soon be going on reserve duty and would bring her as many as she wanted. . . . Then she began to complain that she had spent hours looking for apples for me but couldn’t find any. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he asked. ‘I’d have given you an address for apples.’ ‘Really?’ said Mom. . . . ‘Sure, just go visit any high ranking official and you’ll find a lot of apples in his house.’”61 Humor was one way of coping with austerity, both a sort of treatment and palliative. The press’s satirical columns, joke departments, and cartoons often addressed the shortages.62 Humorous essays were also published from time to time.63 Housewives breathed a sigh of relief when the holiday season came to an end: “The holidays have finally reached their end. In normal years, despite the huge amount of work involved, women are excited by the arrival of the holidays. This year, each holiday brought with it resentment, anxiety, and despair. The most basic things were not available. . . . Unlike in normal years, no guests were invited. When five in the afternoon arrived, the time for visits, women were in a panic—what if someone rang the doorbell despite it all, and there is nothing to serve. No fruit, no candy, no cake, not even cookies. . . . Thank God, the holidays are over.”64

Deteriorating Nutrition As the quantity of rationed food declined, its quality also declined precipitously. Food unfit for human consumption was sold to consumers, as reported in the newspapers: “I bought a bottle of wine—and it was sour! I bought a can

Austerity 15

of milk powder—it had an awful smell! Half of the ration of tomatoes I received was rotten. A bottle of ‘syrup’ is composed of dye, saccharine, and water—a product that has no justification. . . . Recently the bread has been inedible . . . garbage cans are full of substandard bread, damp and doughy inside.”65 Processed foods were of bad quality and contained ingredients they were not supposed to have. Insects, moldy seeds, sawdust, sand, straw, and stones turned up in coffee, sweets, and other products.66 The government’s inspection of food production and marketing was ineffective because the oversight body was short on money and staff, not to mention means of transportation and flasks for taking samples.67 The state of sanitation in food processing factories was so inferior that the Ministry of Health’s sanitation division suggested the establishment of special public health courts. The authors of the proposal argued that the country’s law enforcement agencies were focused on punishing thieves and murderers, even though substandard food plants presented a much greater danger to the public.68 There was little connection between the number of calories and basic food values that Dov Yosef promised to give Israeli citizens and what housewives, especially mothers, were actually able to give their families.69 This continued under Pinhas Lavon, who as agriculture minister was responsible for the supply of food from the end of 1950 through 1951. The disparity became even more severe in the summer of 1952, when the supply portfolio was returned to Dov Yosef. Furthermore, mothers usually gave most of their own rations to their children (and sometimes to their husbands), because they put their family’s nourishment and health before their own.70 The fact that core nutritional needs went unmet for such a long time made its mark on the housewives who, whether for lack of money or for reasons of conscience, refrained from supplementing their rations with purchases on the black market: “A young woman . . . said: ‘I give the eggs to the children, so that they at least eat something. And I, when I leave for work after a thin slice of bread with jelly and tea, lately I feel so nauseous and weak that I can’t work any more’.”71 Another woman described her expedition for cake or sweets: “There were times when I was choosy and selective and the product had to be the absolute best . . . now I am willing to make do with all the trash that gets sold now, just as long as it gets the bad taste out of my mouth and quiets a bit the feeling of hunger brought on by malnutrition.”72 Such complaints were well founded. Dov Yosef knew very well that the calo-

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rie allowance theoretically allocated to each citizen was smaller than that supplied in other countries that had imposed rationing. His ministry’s nutritional advisor demanded that he enlarge the rations. The accepted standard was an average of 2,800 calories per person per day. But in February 1950, the actual rations in Israel, according to Dov Yosef himself, were 2,500–2,600 calories a day. In October 1950, the daily newspaper Ma’ariv claimed that it counted only 2,300 calories.73 A survey conducted by the Israel Science Council in 1950 found, unsurprisingly, that rich families were in much better health and much better nourished than were poor families. Children in the latter suffered from maladies brought on by dietary deficiencies, but in all families wives and mothers suffered most from the austerity program. The greatest shortages during the austerity period were in animal proteins—meat, eggs, fish, and poultry. These foods, the survey found, were distributed unequally among family members: “It is notable that among all ethnic groups animal proteins are given primarily to the children (in differing proportions in different groups), so that in many cases both parents are deprived. But frequently notable is the fact that the proteins are divided between the father and the children, or given primarily to the father, and the mother remains deprived as a result of both.”74 A blood test taken from participants in the survey demonstrated the consequences of malnutrition for mothers, and the fact that they were worse off than fathers.75 Studies conducted after World War II in England also showed that mothers suffered the most physical harm from rationing, in part because they often gave their portions to other members of the family, children in particular. British officials noted that many women were in a state of constant depression and that this caused a decline in national morale.76 The physical damage that austerity wreaked on Israel’s women became evident in the fall of 1951. There was a steep rise in illness among women, including a large number of spontaneous abortions, premature births, and miscarriages. Doctors were unable to determine whether the cause was malnutrition or mental pressure deriving from long periods of standing in lines and uncertainty about the food supply.77 Many women seem to have sacrificed themselves for their families, since the criterion by which society judged them was their concern for others. Although the message that the authorities gave to the old-timers was that they should reduce their consumption and sacrifice a bit for their immigrant brethren, within families, many wives and mothers sacrificed themselves for their husbands and children. Women, as Carol Gilligan writes in In a Different Voice, identify goodness with self sacrifice.78

Austerity 17

At the end of 1950, Pinhas Lavon demanded that the government raise its budget for food purchases. He claimed that the supply of food to the population had declined by 20 percent and no longer met minimum requirements.79 The government made huge efforts to obtain supplies without compromising its policy of open immigration. Israel asked the United States not only for loans and grants to help it absorb the flood of immigrants, but also for food supplies.80

What Will the Children Eat? Another burden on the mothers of babies and small children was the severe lack of the special foods that these youngsters needed. Babies up to one year of age were allotted bananas, but as soon as their first birthdays arrived, their mothers no longer received a banana coupon. Cornstarch, ready-made cookies, ground rice, milk powder,81 butter, cream, and honey could not be obtained in the cities at all. Urban mothers felt that they were being dealt with unjustly because rural children seemed to be getting much better nourishment: “As for the babies, in farming villages and kibbutzim they are fed well, while in the cities babies do not receive butter, cream, or honey, only a bit of milk, and almost no fruit. Feeding a child is most difficult from the age of one through three years old, but there are almost no special arrangements for this. Bananas are given only up to the age of one year. What is a sixteen-month-old baby in this country—an adult? And is a city baby less of an Israeli citizen than a rural baby?”82 After years of being taught by experts that babies should be fed abundantly, mothers were expected to change their ways and to make do with the little that was available. This was unrealistic, a writer for Ma’ariv argued: Unfortunately, mothers don’t have any confidence in Dr. Yosef ’s experts, and the minister, for his part, displays almost total contempt for public opinion and for the psychological aspect of rationing, nor does he give much consideration to their claims and demands. . . . Have any of you visited a well-baby clinic . . . ? I have. Three years ago, and recently. I heard—then—how they counseled a young and inexperienced mother, emphasizing how important it was that the baby receive a banana or two each day, and two eggs, if they don’t disagree with him, and a teaspoon of melted butter in his hot cereal, and a complicated concoction of homemade white cheese, mashed apples, and seasonal fruit juice. On my recent

18

a t ho me a nd o n t h e s t r ee t visit I heard how they tried to allay a mother’s worries by explaining to her that margarine is just as nourishing as butter, that one egg every other day will also do the job, that hot cereal can be cooked without cornstarch, and that the necessary vitamins can also be obtained by injection.83

The writer also noted the ways by which mothers obtained the quantity of food their small children needed. He found that they often supplemented their children’s meals with a part of the rations meant for them, and sometimes for their husbands. Since the parents were not getting proper nourishment, their health declined. If they were sick, they were entitled to a supplementary ration, according to the austerity regulations. Sick parents qualified the family for at least another dozen eggs a month, another one or two kilograms of chicken, and sometimes butter. Another way of topping off children’s food supplies was to buy on the black market. Other journalists also offered accounts of mothers in pursuit of food for their children: “What are babies fed? Their stomachs cannot digest our bread. They are hungry. They are really hungry. And mothers go crazy. The minute she doesn’t have food to give to her child, a mother forgets all her political principles, she stops being a member of a party in the coalition or opposition. She is only a mother whose little ones are hungry. She picks through all the streets that lead to the black market. She pays any price for an apple, for a package of cornstarch, for a liter of milk.”84 In 1950 epidemics of scarlet fever and polio broke out among children. The latter forced mothers, in addition to all their other burdens, to keep their children at home all day and every day, out of fear of infection.85 Because of their fears, their anger at the shortage of healthy food for their children turned into horrible frustration. In an article headlined “The Mother-Terrorizing Disease,” Hannah Meirhoff described how they felt: The doctor, his bag in hand, speeds down the street in his automobile, going from one house to the next, soothing, quieting, writing prescriptions. The most important thing, he says, is to strengthen the child. To toughen him! Yes, you must toughen him! How can you toughen, can you do it with a portion of frozen meat that’s full of fat? No fruit, no vegetables, no additional chicken? Can one now really, in this time of illness, allow your child to have insufficient food? How will he fight against all the bacteria and viruses lying in wait to endanger his health? No, no, that cannot be allowed to happen, all of you must find a way to supply your children with the food they need. No complacence! Concern for our children’s health is no less important than the defense of the country. Our future depends on this generation

Austerity 19 now growing up! We shout and our voices are not heard. The mother stands alone in her struggle to keep her children healthy. She has little strength and she has no way of rectifying the situation.86

A severe soap shortage that coincided with the epidemics made it difficult to maintain a proper level of hygiene, adding to mothers’ worries.87 In the winter of 1951–52, a gathering of pediatricians alerted the public that illness among children and infant mortality had risen steeply.88 In the summer of 1952, the Medical Council on Nutrition issued a report stating that those socioeconomic groups that had to rely solely on food rations did not receive sufficient nourishment.89 Lillian Cornfeld, whose nutrition columns and austerity recipes made her famous during World War II, commented that housewives didn’t need scientific backing to know that the food they were preparing for their families was inadequate.90 A subcommittee of the Medical Council on Nutrition wrote that it was urgent to improve the supply of food, especially for young children. The doctors demanded that rations include more eggs, milk, dairy products, and other items.91 Those economic classes that depended entirely on rations were suffering severely, but even worse was the condition of people who could not afford to buy the rationed food. And this group, made up of residents of poor neighborhoods and immigrants’ transit camps, was growing. In the fall of 1952, when a change in government policy caused food prices to shoot up, food rotted in stores because people could not afford to buy it.92 The findings of a nutrition expert who visited Israel on behalf of the United Nations at this time presented evidence about the country’s poor that caused the government considerable embarrassment. The expert claimed that he had never, on his travels around the world, seen so many cases of severe malnutrition as he saw in Israel.93 The food situation improved at the end of 1952 but worsened again at the beginning of 1953, when food prices again rose precipitously. More and more inhabitants of poor neighborhoods sold their rations just to obtain enough bread.94 The government, which had intended to end its subsidies of dairy products, was warned not to do so.95

Rationing of Clothing and Shoes In July 1950, the supply and rationing minister announced that clothing and shoes would also be rationed. The new strictures met with a public outcry.96

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Those in the commercial and industrial sectors were especially furious, since they faced a loss of income and dreaded the possible collapse of their businesses. Retailers closed their stores in protest. A short time before the closures and immediately following them, housewives stormed the stores, buying whatever they could for fear of future shortages.97 Each family now received a certain number of points for clothing, shoes, and textile products for the home. But the few points given were not enough to meet the needs of a family. The new strictures destroyed what little confidence the public still had in the government’s ability to control the economy and ensure adequate supplies, and further reduced housewives’ room to maneuver.98 Housewives protested heatedly.99 They were fed up with the pressure of rationing and with the injustice and inequality caused both by corruption and by the fact that families in rural areas had more access to better food. The point system just made it worse, because families did not receive enough points to meet their minimum needs and because the new measure imposed yet another burden.100 The vehemence of the public’s response seems to have taken the government by surprise. The ministers held a tense discussion, ending with a decision to appoint a public commission to study the decree.101 Among the commission’s members were representatives of the Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization.102 Women’s ways of coping with the rationing of clothing and shoes were similar to those they used in response to food rationing. They complained and criticized the order, but they also used their sense of humor and creativity to make do. One especially amusing piece was written by Ora Shem-Or in the daily newspaper Haboker: First of all, take advantage of these hot summer days to walk around the house naked. Children, of course, can go naked outside as well. In this way we can keep our summer clothes in good condition for the winter. If you have a one-piece bathing suit, you can wear it when you need to run to the grocery store or butcher shop. Save your bathrobe for use as a wonderful evening gown. Shoes are a more complicated matter, at least as regards children. They are not accustomed to going barefoot and you won’t be able to get them used to it in a single day. A single pair of shoes should last them a whole year, despite the odd (but true) fact that their feet grow by at least two sizes during the course of the year. So you face two choices: you can follow the Chinese practice of binding your children’s feet with bandages, very tightly, so that they won’t grow—or you can buy large shoes in

Austerity 21 which your child’s foot will get lost. Pay no attention to the injunctions of orthopedists who claim that healthy feet require shoes that fit properly. Dr. Dov Yosef knows better.103

The rationing of clothes and shoes produced the same side effects as food rationing. Severe shortages ensued, and basic goods like white and khaki cloth of decent quality could not be obtained. The quality of goods declined to the point that children’s shoes made of imitation leather lasted for only a few weeks. The same was true of the government-sponsored line of utility clothing, called Lakol in Hebrew, meaning to provide basic goods at a low price. The British administration had also sponsored such a line of clothing manufactured in Palestine, but it had aimed for quality and up-to-date designs, offering well-cut suits and knits in contemporary styles, made of durable fabrics. In contrast, the cut of Israel’s austerity clothes was old-fashioned and unattractive.104 During the two years of clothes rationing and strict oversight of textile products, demand went up and down. Beginning in the summer of 1952, after a steep price rise that came in the wake of the government’s new economic program, the demand for clothing and shoes plunged in a manner never seen before. Clothing prices in the free market were far beyond the reach of the average consumer, yet Israelis showed no interest in the Lakol line.105 Yet two years after clothes were first rationed, and despite ongoing complaints, there was still a severe shortage of basic goods for new mothers and babies: “There is great rage and much consternation over the lack of the primary items needed for babies in this country, which makes an effort to be civilized in the way it raises children. Only now has the first tender gone out for the manufacture of diapers. They still can be obtained only on the black market. Babies’ undershirts and tiny cotton pants cost huge sums, a mattress protector is a luxury, and until just a short time ago a luxury tax was imposed on the purchase of a simple crib.”106 In the summer of 1950, women’s pages in the newspapers started publishing articles offering advice on how to manage in spite of the shortages. Despite women’s initial reluctance to trade clothing with strangers, out of fear that other people’s garments might carry diseases, the articles proposed the establishment of secondhand clothing and shoe exchanges for children. Despite the tight rationing, newspapers associated with middle-class political movements continued to publish fashion columns. Alongside dressmaking patterns, advice on fabrics, and suggestions about how to be both

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fashionable and frugal, the newspapers pictured silk evening dresses, highlights of Paris styles, and the latest fur coats.107 Women who could not buy the fabric of the quality and quantity needed, yet still wanted to be fashionable, were offered helpful advice: “This year’s fashions come to your aid in helping you wear what you can afford in a way that makes you feel good, and really to be dressed well. A long dress is no longer a must. When you wear a short dress, just say that you are going along with the fashions in London and New York, and that you don’t follow the dictates of Paris (by the way, there they still prefer the ‘long’ fashion and big crinolines). In particular, being ‘in’ will save you points and fabric—a tight skirt is economical, elegant, and handsome. A deep décolletage, especially appropriate for formal occasions, saves money and points.”108 Keeping up a pretty, well-groomed, fresh, and fashionable appearance was, for bourgeois women, not just a way of showing their socioeconomic affiliation, but also valuable in and of itself.109 Despite—and perhaps because of— the declining standard of living, newspapers and magazines catering to this group published articles offering beauty tips and advice on how to keep up morale. The authors of these pieces called on women not to give in to dejection and encouraged them to get out of the house and enjoy themselves.110 Why did some newspapers continue to cover foreign fashions? Why did they not limit themselves to offering advice that matched their readers’ pocketbooks and accorded with legal restrictions? Was it because they assumed that some women were able to dress according to the latest Parisian trends? Perhaps they considered fashion news from Paris to be essential, interesting cultural information, even if it was not practical—just as newspapers reported international news in other areas? Or was it meant to provide an escape from the privations of the time?111 Comparing the demand for fashion news in Israel during the early 1950s to the demand for it in other countries during the austerity period that accompanied World War II is not helpful, because the world fashion hub in Paris ceased operation during the Nazi occupation. In that earlier period, the British utility line was instituted in order to save on raw materials and prevent a sharp rise in prices. The Yishuv became a center of clothing manufacture (for both local consumption and export), but production was never great enough to meet demand, either in Palestine or beyond.112 In the 1950s, Paris reestablished itself as the world fashion capital—it could hardly be ignored then. Another problem with such a comparison is that the design of the utility line produced in Palestine was inspired by British wartime fash-

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ions. At the time they were considered smart, and they were of reasonable quality, under the circumstances. The Lakol produced in Israel during the 1950s, however, was unattractive and shoddy.113 Israeli women of the 1950s craved fashion news from Paris, and the craving prevailed over other values. One fascinating example can be seen in a magazine called Ha’ishah Bamedina, which could be described as a feminist publication. The magazine’s editor sought to educate her readers: “Now let us ask ourselves, we Hebrew women, in the midst of our difficult war of survival, at a time when the building of our homeland requires sacrifice, sweat, and blood, are we to be slaves to the international queen, ‘fashion,’ that is inappropriate for us and our capacities?”114 But a year after this moralizing plea, the editor gave in and printed fashion reports by two of her writers who had made visits to Paris and New York. Coverage of new fashions from overseas soon became a regular feature.115 Despite hard times and the high regard in which frugal living was held, a part of the Israeli population lived well. Fancy public events were held, attended by well-dressed men and women. They often bought their clothing overseas, or ordered it from elite tailors and seamstresses in Israel. Newspapers and magazines frequently profiled Lola Ber, a local upmarket fashion designer.116 Some of Israel’s well-dressed elite were diplomats or other representatives of the state who were sent overseas, where they could stock up on fine clothes. These travelers did not hide their finery in the back of the closet, but rather took them out at every appropriate opportunity.117 The interest that lower-income women displayed in fashion seems to have been in part a desire to emulate the cultural repertoire of the wealthy and the trendsetters.118 Those who felt that their social standing had risen—such as old-timers who moved up when new immigrants started filling the bottom rungs of the social ladder, or people who became part of the new bureaucratic class—sought to advertise the fact through the clothing they bought and wore.119 WIZO—the Women’s International Zionist Organization, whose members came from the middle class in Israel and around the world—held a raffle in the winter of 1952 to raise money to aid immigrants living in transit camps. Christian Dior, then the leading fashion designer in Paris, contributed a prize, an evening dress he called “Israel.” In the first round of the raffle, held by WIZO in Paris, the dress was won by the wife of the first secretary of Israel’s diplomatic legation in the city. She donated it for the next round, which was held in Tel Aviv. The event was quite a success—demonstrating not only that Israeli

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women were devoted to philanthropy, but that they also would have loved to win such a dress.120 In Davar, the Histadrut newspaper, Yemima Tchernovitz-Avidar published a scathing condemnation of women from the labor movement who gave into the fashion imperatives set by well-off women. Triggering her response was an invitation she had received to a press ball held in February 1950, a fundraiser for a planned new building for the journalists’ association: I would like to pause for a minute to consider something an acquaintance, a writer, said to me. I asked her if she would be going to the ball and she responded: “I don’t have a long dress!” I see her words as an extremely dangerous turning point in our public life in this country. . . . I am not envious of long dresses . . . but . . . I am concerned about the mad race about dresses. . . . I don’t care if the rich class in our country has fine clothes sewn for it, but why should we, the great majority of our class, imitate them? Do we imitate the rich in the way we live? Don’t many government ministers and senior army officers still live in workers’ housing, while their wives work hard at housekeeping and bear the burden of earning a living for the family? Do the salaries earned by ministers allow anything more than a simple life and austerity? It is good and fitting that this is the case, and we should not change it, because this is the spirit of our country.121

A writer for the Histadrut’s Dvar Hapo’elet recognized the fact that the working class aspired to emulate the lives of the better off in all ways, not just in fashion. She pointed her finger not at the bourgeoisie but at the mania of consumption and the pursuit of pleasure that had overcome the working class itself.122 Beryl Raptor, a member of the Marxist-Zionist Mapam Party, sharply criticized the habits of the bureaucrats during a Knesset debate on the rationing of clothing: “I would very much like this to begin first with the government and its workers, and the officials of public institutions, and then maybe the workers and common people will also understand that simple clothing, austerity in clothing, austerity in shoes and economy with money, is not dishonorable. But if reality is different, if there is pursuit of luxury, beginning with high government officials and ending with the officials of public institutions, then the same rule applies in every home and in every workers’ party, and there is a race to see who wastes more and who spends more; in that case, a life of frugality and simplicity is considered dishonorable.”123 The more ostentatious consumption was condemned, the more widespread it seemed to become. Isser Harel was then chief of the Israel Security Agency,

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the country’s secret internal security service popularly known at different times by its Hebrew acronyms Shin Bet and Shabak. He testified that even the family of David Ben-Gurion was criticized on these grounds: at the height of the austerity period, Ben-Gurion’s wife, Paula, attended an extravagant party in an upscale hotel organized by the fashion designer Lola Ber. The wife of Israel’s president was there, too. Harel said that he warned Ben-Gurion that the common people believed that their leaders did not live as they lived. And, he said, as long as they thought that their leaders lived better, the people would want to emulate their leaders.124 Urban housewives, who controlled 70 percent of the family budget and thus to a large measure determined what goods the family purchased,125 seem to have been the leaders in imitating the consumption patterns of Israeli society’s hidden elite—the wealthy. The labor movement was the country’s social and intellectual elite, but the picture was different when it came to consumption and private behavior. Women seem to have been less committed than men to the era’s code of austerity. Their low level of allegiance was probably a product of their relatively marginal social status. In the absence of other options, it seems likely that they sought to demonstrate their social position through consumption. In 1952 Alfred Bonne, a founding member of the economics department at Hebrew University, investigated the question of why the Israeli government had successfully implemented its austerity plan until the beginning of 1950, but from that point onward “the public’s attitude to the economic policy and the legislation it involved changed and the implementation of this policy weakened.”126 One explanation he offered cited a behavioral pattern common in many human societies: the tendency of the public at large to imitate the consumption patterns of the well off.127 Bonne pointed out that the standard of living of the veteran Israelis had risen during the country’s early years, despite the austerity program. In contrast, the residents of the transit and immigrant camps had a low standard of living. Veteran Israelis, Bonne reported in a study published in 1953, had been able to use labor unions and political pressure to substantially improve their financial situation—that is, they enlarged their share of the national income.128 Once this had happened, in the early 1950s, the old-timers were able to engage in a certain measure of conspicuous consumption. The women who were castigated in the advice columns of women’s magazines for pushing their men to enlarge the family income,129 and who dis-

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played their family’s status through consumption,130 seem to have aspired to emulate the lives of the bourgeoisie. Their standard was sometimes a local one, sometimes an imported one (including foreign fashions or kitchen appliances).131 These aspirations were not limited to the way they managed their households132 but could be seen in most areas of consumption. The women’s consumption patterns were also affected by other factors: the Israeli economy’s chronic shortages, the declining value of the Israeli currency, lack of confidence in the government’s policies, fear of even greater shortages in the future, and the middle-class aspirations of their husbands.133 Overconsumption seems to be an inherent aspect of human social behavior. Yet no one claims that it appeared during the austerity program’s first nine months. Perhaps this “natural” consumer behavior on the part of housewives appeared later because at that time social, moral, and ideological barriers diminished or disappeared. What caused this to happen?

The Black Market Women, responsible for providing their families with food, were the principal purchasers of food products on the black market. When rations were cut at the beginning of 1950, the volume of commerce conducted on the black market rose. The Supply and Rationing Ministry did all it could to suppress these illegal transactions. Its inspectors boarded buses to search passengers’ bags, rummaged through the contents of people’s cars, and checked women’s shopping baskets in the open-air markets.134 At one point they entered and searched private homes, enraging the public and alarming even women of the labor movement.135 In a letter to Davar, the poet Anda Amir-Pinkerfeld wrote: “Something quaked inside me when I heard about the house searches, and about the right to conduct them at the discretion of the protectors of order and justice. From this point onward, every house in Israel is exposed to evil plots and revenge, to slander. A door has opened to blackmail. . . . Better that a few dozen gluttons get fat and feel good than for every home to be open to searches. Other means can be found to catch the thief without putting at risk the feelings and rights of citizens.”136 House searches were a threat to every housewife, whose homes were not only their castles but also their workplaces. They did the shopping, so they were responsible for what was in the home.137 Furthermore, since they spent most of their time at home, they were likely to be around when the inspectors arrived.

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After rationing of clothing and shoes was announced, the black market expanded until it was used by all classes. At the end of the summer of 1950, BenGurion established a task force to battle illegal commerce.138 The government spent several months trying to change the buying habits of the public as a whole and of women in particular, and to encourage them to make do with rations through persuasion139 and strict enforcement of the law.140 It failed. Further attempts to change habits, as well as enforcement operations conducted by the government during 1951, also failed.141 The government worked to suppress the black market not only with respect to housewives, but also throughout the economy. One reason for its failure was that housewives, whether they belonged to the labor movement or the bourgeois camp, had a structured, systematic repertoire of practices, and a clear view of their responsibilities. This included certain minimum levels of consumption of food and other basic items, such as soap, below which they refused to go. Whatever its intentions, the government was unable to keep its promises to ensure the availability of necessary supplies. Housewives thus ceased to trust the government. That being the case, their strong sense of duty to their families led them to the black market.142 While women’s organizations worked together under the umbrella of the Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization to lobby the government to improve the supply of food, clothing, shoes, and cleaning products in the legal market, housewives as individuals took the opposite tack, working together but not as an organized group: A war is raging between Israel’s mothers and the Minister of Rationing and Supply [sic], and even though it is not inflaming public opinion nor has it been accompanied by sensational developments, it has had a profound effect on our economy. It is an uncoordinated guerrilla war, without a central command—a war fought by each mother on her own. But because they all have identical aims, and their tactics are similar everywhere, it is highly effective, as if it were directed by a high command and planned by a brain trust, not in a hundred thousand different places. The declared war aim is: the health of the child. But declared war aims are not always true, and they are never the only ones. In my opinion, this is a war for conservative methods of managing a household, and there is a strong element of selfishness in this rebel movement. But that is not the main thing. The main thing is that mothers have made the first breach in rationing’s defensive line, and they were the first to instigate a black market in Israel.143

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Obviously, the accusation that it was women who created the black market was unfounded. During the austerity program’s first nine months, they were not the source of inflated demand, and the black market remained relatively small. It is also obvious that the black market would not have expanded when rations were reduced at the beginning of 1950, had families not had money to spend—which they did, thanks to the government’s economic policy. Unable to withstand demands for pay increases, the state printed money, but it was inefficient in collecting taxes, which citizens generally did their best to evade. The result was an excess of cash in the hands of some consumers, which stimulated the black market. Women were not acting selfishly when they bought food on the black market, although they were acting in the interests of their own families, out of concern for their children: “A black market cannot exist without demand. Here it has been created by demand from mothers. The cost of food on our black market is so high that only a very small number of people are prepared to pay such prices for themselves. But for their children—that is another matter.”144 The priority given to children found expression in other ways as well. Like American women, Israeli mothers believed that it was their primary responsibility to provide for all their children’s physical and emotional needs.145 When mothers had to decide between patriotic obedience to the government and the welfare of their children, few hesitated to choose the latter.146 The press portrayed the veteran Israeli women as sincerely concerned about their children, while depicting immigrant women as not placing their children first.147 This highlighting of the alleged disparity between the mothers in these two groups seems to have reinforced the veteran Israeli mothers’ determination to make their children their priority.

Housewives and the State: A Two-Way Street As their principal victims, women viewed the austerity regulations and their enforcement in a unique way.148 Austerity impinged on precisely those aspects of life that were under the housewife’s purview: nourishment, child care, cleanliness, and household purchases. Women suffered because their voices were not heard; as a result, they had little influence on areas of public policy in which they were expert. The quality and quantity of nourishment, the way goods were supplied, and the rationing of clothing and shoes were all determined by men and dictated to women.

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Women with jobs outside the home, who were no less responsible for their households than were full-time housewives, were even more vulnerable. They could not spend hours shopping, and the rations their families needed were often gone by the time they got to the store in the afternoon.149 Old-time Israeli women who had jobs lost them as part of a policy of replacing female workers with immigrant men, whom the government wanted to bring into the workforce. This was accomplished by levying high income taxes on women’s salaries. Wives and mothers with full-time jobs had difficulty obtaining domestic help, partly because the official pay scale set for such work was so low that few people would agree to work at this rate.150 The result was that it was generally not financially worthwhile for married women to work outside the home, so they “returned, to the delight of whole families, to their homes.”151 Women who had worked as teachers, nurses, secretaries, and physicians found themselves unemployed and frustrated, partly because of the resulting decline in their social status.152 When the austerity program began—and so did long lines to buy food— housewives lost their sense of autonomy, the aspect of their roles that they viewed most positively.153 Their schedules were now determined by the distribution of basic goods. They also lost their prerogative of expressing their personal preferences, tastes, and characters through their purchases. Wherever they looked, people were wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, and using the same furniture.154 Cooking, which most housewives everywhere generally view as an enjoyable and creative task, became an exasperating and disillusioning chore when basic food items were lacking. Housecleaning, which most women generally do not like in any case,155 became almost impossible when basic items like soap and household cleaning fluid disappeared from the legitimate market and the quality of floor mops declined.156 Caring for children became more difficult because mothers had to be away from home for long hours to shop. Even worse was the fact that, if they had to bring small children with them, everyone had to stand in line for hours on end. Shopping, a task that housewives enjoy as a rule,157 became a nerve-racking nightmare. Even more burdensome was women’s awareness that they were not doing a good job at their most important task, child rearing. As we have seen, this was one motivating factor in women’s decision to break the law. Such transgressions were not viewed—at least by some, and perhaps by most, women—as a deviation from society’s norm, but rather as adherence to a higher one.158 Nevertheless, it is clear that many women felt demeaned, in their own eyes and in

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those of the public, and felt that they had declined morally when they had no choice but to become criminals: “Fellow workers, who were until not long ago among the best of us, now buy on the black market. They admit that it is shameful to buy an egg on the black market, but there is no other way, because otherwise they have nothing to feed their children.”159 It was the government that had created this unfortunate situation, and it was to the government that women directed their grievances.160

The Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization In February 1950, Israel’s housewives were informed that an initiative to establish a nonpartisan organization to represent them was starting to come together: The goal itself is simple and matter-of-fact: a general, nonpartisan organization of housewives, for the purpose of improving the woman’s working conditions at home, to ease her task by the institution of improvements and bettering the objective conditions of housework. Concern for her working conditions will raise the value of her work in the eyes of her family and of the public, until we attain an awareness that the labor of the housewife is as specialized as any other type of work. At that point the housewives’ organization will serve as a trade union uniting all those who work in the profession, guaranteeing the standing of its members, and will represent them in all public forums and respond to their professional and practical problems.161

The main purpose of establishing such an organization was to elevate the low social status of housewives (and of women in general). The organization aimed to address the issues of the day by ensuring that women were made part of the austerity program’s decision-making mechanisms: “Women are absent from all the systems that determine our lives, from supply to the planning of houses and kitchens. It is certainly a sad sight when not a single woman is part of the Ministry of Supply and Rationing’s staff and management, who could offer guidance to those involved in importation, the planning of the austerity menu, and the distribution of food, from the point of view of the population’s real consumers, since no one is more fundamentally and deeply knowledgeable about this than housewives.”162 The ministry had its own plans to establish a Housewives’ Institute, but the new organization presented itself as the authentic representative of the country’s housewives, a grass-roots organization rather than a top-down creation.163

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The organization united a broad spectrum of women’s organizations: the Organization of Work-at-Home Mothers, WIZO, Mizrahi Women, Hapo’el Hamizrahi Women (these last two representing religious Zionist women), Progressive Women, the Hebrew Women’s Union for Equal Rights, and the Central European Immigrant Women’s Organization. Nevertheless, an internal document produced by the ministry presented the establishment of the organization as its own initiative.164 And, in fact, there is some evidence that the organization enjoyed government support.165 Yet when—in 1950, after clothing and shoes were rationed—the organization was recognized by the Supply and Rationing Ministry as an “official advisory institution,” a columnist for Ha’aretz expressed doubts about how effective it could be and whether it could truly represent Israel’s anonymous housewives.166 Dvar Hapo’elet doubted that the organization could really take concerted action on consumer issues, given the heterogeneity of its composition.167 But the fact that two representatives of the organization served on the advisory commission that the government set up to propose changes in the clothing rationing program was seen as an impressive achievement.168 The two were Irma Pollack, a member of WIZO and the force behind the establishment of the organization, and Ulla Kuznitzy of the Organization of Work-at-Home Mothers. They submitted their demands at the commission’s meetings—in writing, to ensure that the demands were clear and to give them more weight. The women called for ensuring that each citizen received a minimum allocation in the framework of the rationing program, a means of ensuring the quality of rationed goods, and an enhancement of enforcement against the black market. They also demanded: 1. Free shoe repairs or some other arrangement outside the constraints of the points allotted for shoes. 2. A meter of cloth per person on the ration card of the head of the family, for the purpose of repairs, white or khaki or blue at the discretion of the purchaser. 3. Exemption from clothing points for children up to three years of age, from the Lakol brand. 4. Additional shoes and clothing for teenagers going for [pioneering agricultural] training. 5. Special arrangements for public institutions, such as children’s institutions, boarding facilities, etc. 6. . . . special consideration for charity projects. . . . 7. Recognition of housekeeping as a work sector and the allocation of work clothes accordingly [workers in some sectors received extra points to compensate for wear and tear on the clothing they worked in]. . . . 10. Price labeling on every item in stores, in money and in points.169

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At the commission’s final meeting, Irma Pollack said that she was “prepared to fight for the recognition of the worker at home as an important and professional worker, who must be given the same considerations as any other worker.”170 The commission’s chairman replied: “That is a serious subject but it should not be linked to how women are respected and valued. The proposal to count all housewives as workers is an impossible one and will make hash of all our computations. . . . It is impossible to accept the proposal as a whole to include housewives on the list of workers who must receive additional points.” Ulla Kuznitzy responded: “I propose that the ministry encourage, in consultation with women’s organizations and experts, the manufacture of an improved and strong work smock appropriate for housework. One smock of this type should be recorded in the personal ration book of each woman.”171 In the end, the commission accepted some of the women’s demands. There was no argument with the call to ensure the quality of merchandise, although it was not in the purview of the Supply and Rationing Ministry to do so. The commission also proposed granting a ration coupon for a single repair to the soles of shoes. Furthermore, it recommended augmenting the number of clothing points awarded to each citizen by fifteen percent, to require marking prices and points on all items in stores, to grant significant increases in the number of points given as gifts to babies through welfare institutions, and to supply housewives with a work smock in exchange for a small number of points.172 The commission, consisting mostly of men, accepted those of the women’s demands that made it possible to maintain existing economic and social conditions within the framework of rationing. The demand by the two women that housewives be recognized as professionals and allocated additional points for their work smocks implied a radical change in their status, one that the commission’s members were not prepared to address and certainly did not want to accept. Representatives of the Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization met with decision makers from time to time. These sessions included meetings of the task force, headed by Ben-Gurion himself, created to fight the black market. It invited representatives of WIZO, and the Histadrut’s Women Workers’ Council and Organization of Work-at-Home Mothers, to appear before it. Also invited was an unofficial representative of the country’s housewives, Hannah Even-Tov, a senior official in the Office of the Prime Minister. Although she had a career, Even-Tov was not excused from her domestic duties, including those related to her children. She did her best in this context to

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advance the common interests of all housewives—ensuring an adequate supply of necessary goods, maintaining supply schedules, creating mutual confidence between housewives and the government, and reducing commerce on the black market. The women explained to Ben-Gurion why they had no choice but to resort to the black market at times. Even-Tov told the task force in no uncertain terms that if she had to go to the black market to get soap for her son, who had just returned from the Negev desert, she would do so. Shoshana Hareli of the Organization of Work-at-Home Mothers described the atmosphere of fear that had descended on the public at large: fear of even greater shortages in the future. Ulla Kuznitzy painted a distressing picture of how the government had failed to consider the probable consequences of its policies— it was, she maintained, imposing strictures that the public could not abide. On October 3, 1950, Ben-Gurion addressed the country in a dramatic radio talk, asking the people’s help in uprooting the black market. He mentioned the great potential of the women’s organizations in this regard and said that they had committed themselves to standing by the government. Acknowledging that the government’s organizational efforts had failed, he asked those who had stumbled into the arms of the black market to leave it and reignite “the moral light hidden deep in their soul,” thus demonstrating their patriotism.173 Echoing the rhetoric of England’s World War II leaders, he declared that the role of housewives was no less critical than that of soldiers at the front.174 Ben-Gurion recognized the great power that lay in the hands of his country’s housewives, but he depicted them as victims rather than fighters: “It seems to me that the principal factor here is the housewife. Because the thing that the public suffers from most when it is absent is food, and the first victim in this matter is the housewife, who must prepare food for her children, for her husband, for the entire family. Therefore, she can also be the most important factor in solving this problem. It is therefore necessary to establish an organization that can help her, and if she is unjustly deprived or if people sell to her in an improper way, they have to stop.”175 But Ben-Gurion did not translate his awareness of the housewife’s economic power and the organizational potential of the women’s organizations into action. During the tenure of the task force he headed, representatives of the women’s organizations were not given any significant role in shaping policy. A new government was formed at the end of 1950. When Dov Yosef was moved to the transportation ministry, Irma Pollack pointed out one of his notable failures in his previous position—not bringing women into the decision-

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making process.176 The leaders of the Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization grew more confident. Women’s magazines and newspapers regularly reported on their meetings with government officials. And the organization voiced its demands more clearly and unambiguously.177 Women representing the organization met with the minister of agriculture, the director general of that ministry, and the chief inspector of the economic police (the branch of the police force responsible for enforcing the austerity policy). These encounters resulted in a decision to establish a framework for regular consultation between the organization and the directors general of the agriculture and industry ministries. The women also met with the prime minister. Some of their proposals were accepted and carried out.178 They gained somewhat more influence in 1952, when representatives of the organization were appointed to a new National Advisory Council on Food and Public Services, under the aegis of the Commerce and Industry Ministry. Dov Yosef was the minister, and he referred questions to the council and from time to time accepted the proposals of the women’s organizations.179 What did the government want, and what did housewives demand? The Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization had a twofold purpose: to improve living conditions for women and their families immediately, to every extent possible, and to enhance the status of housewives in their own and in the public’s view. The government sought to use housewives and their representatives as window dressing for the implementation of its policies, without granting them real decision-making authority and influence. When it came to actual power, women remained marginal. The government was well aware of the reasons that sent housewives shopping on the black market—and many ministers evinced sympathy and understanding of these motives. But the country’s leaders tried to solve the problem by improving supply. Despite their egalitarian principles, it simply did not occur to Mapai’s male leaders that women could or should be involved in making policy that affected them. And although the cabinet’s sole woman, Golda Myerson (later Meir), did speak up and demand certain practical improvements, empowering women was decidedly not on her agenda.180 No one responded to the demand made by Irma Pollack of the Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization that women be included in policy making. If the authorities saw housewives as playing a role, it was limited to offering advice and volunteering. Given this attitude, it should hardly be surprising that the organization did not manage to gain extensive public support, even from the women’s organi-

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zations that had brought it into being.181 The country’s housewives did not mobilize to help the government. They did not sign up with the voluntary inspector stations that the Commerce and Industry Ministry set up to help police the black market.182 The longer the austerity program lasted, and with it the ups and downs in supplies of basic items, the longer women continued to seek out what they needed on the black market.183

Citizenship, Parenting, and Morality The question of whether men and women have different moral standards has been studied extensively. Early psychologists, such as Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget, assumed that men possessed superior moral qualities, on the ground that, so these writers claimed, men were better than women at developing rules that enable fair judgments of people.184 In contrast, Carol Gilligan has argued that women speak in a different moral voice than men do, and that they tend to base moral judgments on feelings of empathy and compassion—what she calls the care ethic—while men base such decisions on abstract principles of justice and rights. Gilligan proposes that there are two parallel moral codes, a feminine one of helping people in need, caring for others, and feeling empathy; and a male one based on a justice ethic, an imperative to act fairly. Gilligan does not view women’s morality as inferior to that of men. In her view, these two conceptions complement each other. Each is important, and together they create a complete concept of morality.185 But the scientific community has not been able to provide proof of Gilligan’s theory. Empirical research conducted after she proposed it has not produced consistent findings about moral and ethical differences between men and women. Instead, studies have shown that moral thinking in men and women alike is based on both principles of justice and principles of care.186 Ariela Friedman sums up these findings: “In many areas, when men and women are examined under laboratory conditions, individually or with questionnaires, we do not find many differences between them, but when we examine everyday interactions, the differences come to light. It seems as if each gender possesses both approaches, and can function according to the justice ethos or the care ethos, but that the circumstances of life enable and encourage each gender to give more expression to one side of the moral scale.”187 Housewives, we have seen, acted as agents of change who transformed Israeli society. Responsible for the spending of the lion’s share of the family

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budget, they expanded the role of the black market as a source of household provisions. They also seem to have led other social strata in emulating the consumption practices of the moneyed elite. Men, in contrast, played the role of guardians of morality. They made policy and called for equality for the entire population, and for guaranteeing the rights of the weak. They served in the police force and as government inspectors and searched women’s bags and baskets. When they came home to their wives after work, they generally received a nourishing meal made up at least in part of goods bought on the black market. Most men were thus able, at least when it came to household purchases, to keep their hands relatively clean. Clearly, however, the overwhelming majority of black-market profiteers, butchers, money changers, and other economic criminals were men. Were Israeli women morally blemished during the austerity period? They were not. Housewives had to grapple with the moral dilemmas presented by the failures of the austerity regulations. Women believed that providing the poor and immigrants with sufficient food was a sufficient justification for imposing rationing, and they did not protest against it.188 On the contrary, women of all rungs of society recognized that the austerity regime was essential and sought to cooperate with it.189 At times, however, they voiced hopes that the government’s policy would change and that minimal but sufficient supplies would be distributed on schedule, so that they could once again become upstanding citizens. They frequently used the language of morality. Through the organizations that represented them, they sought not only to put the economic arrangements that affected them on a proper footing but also to make them more ethical.190 In their public activity, as well as among themselves, they did their best to avoid having to deal with the black market. Housewives seem to have linked their role as cleaners of the home to a larger responsibility for cleanliness—a responsibility to purge themselves and society of moral afflictions.191 Israeli housewives of the 1950s were largely defined by the boundaries of their homes. They saw their first priority as providing proper care for their children, and the male Israelis around them did not dispute that belief. The care ethic was thus a stronger factor in women’s daily lives than the abstract justice ethic. The primary mover of women into the black market was need. As long as they were supplied with what they considered to be necessary minimum provisions, they complied with the austerity regulations. When rations were cut so that women did not have this minimum, and when basic goods

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such as oil, soap, food for babies, and even bread that the austerity regime was supposed to provide could not be obtained,192 women had no choice but to buy these goods on the black market. As far as these women were concerned, the norms applying to their role as housewives and mothers took moral precedence over their abstract duty as citizens to the law, and through it to the poor and weak outside their homes. Women’s sense of duty to their children and homes remained unaffected when they were portrayed by the government and other Israelis as accessories to undermining the foundations of the economy.193 Women were the ones who paid the high price of austerity. They bore an arduous burden on a daily basis, without being able to see any end to the onerous difficulties they faced.194 The insensitivity to their suffering displayed by government officials, especially by the minister of supply and rationing,195 as well as the refusal to involve women in making decisions on matters that affected them and on which they were expert, contributed to a steady decline in women’s opinion of the authorities, to the point where they no longer viewed the government’s dictates as establishing norms they were compelled to abide by. One of the important struggles conducted by Israeli women in the early 1950s was the battle to obtain proper nourishment and clothing for their families. It seems reasonable to conclude that the public campaign conducted by women’s organizations for larger food rations and better means of supply, along with the covert actions taken by myriad individual women to obtain on the black market goods that they believed were essential, forced the government to change its priorities and economic policy and to devote more of its budget to purchasing and supplying food.196 Of course, women were not the only ones who could claim credit—they were joined by nutritionists, physicians, and economists. The austerity regulations, their implementation, and the consumer behavior of housewives moved these women from the private into the public sphere. During this period, housework became visible, for a short time. Yet this did not significantly improve the housewife’s social status.197 Nevertheless, the visibility of the housewife, and the electoral power that political parties realized lay in the hands of women, contributed to an improvement in the legal rights of Israeli women.198 But before considering the effect of austerity and women’s interests on Israeli politics, it is necessary to stress the power of the individual consumer who based her actions on her view of the normative behavior required of her as a wife and mother, and on her need for social status.

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Superficially, housewives were acting in their own interests, as egotists, even if the interests in question were in fact those of their families and not their own. On another level, however, the actions of housewives as individuals and collectively were a manifestation of individuation. They sought to break free of the government’s and society’s dictates and of some social norms that required obedience to the state, and to express their allegiance to other norms. In both of these ways, they set in motion fundamental changes in Israeli society.

⡬ Chapter 2

Austerity and the Rule of Law

What Is the Rule of Law? The rule of law does not just mean compliance with the law. It also connotes the desire to uphold, in both practice and theory, the fundamental values of an enlightened society: justice, individual rights, and democracy.1 The rule of law has two aspects—the formal and the substantive. The formal rule of law means that the law of the land prescribes binding prohibitions and sanctions.2 In this sense, the concept refers both to the legality of the regime and to the imposition of the law. But this is a procedural principle; it simply states that a law, to be legitimately enforced by a regime, must have been legislated via proper procedures. It says nothing about the content of such laws.3 Furthermore, the formal rule of law requires that laws apply universally and uniformly to all.4 Consistent application of the law is an absolutely necessary condition for the rule of law. It is a cornerstone of the legal systems of all democratic societies, and of the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.5 Uniform enforcement of the law is also a biblical principle: “There shall be one law for you and for the resident stranger; it shall be a law for all time through the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before the Lord; the same ritual and the same rule shall apply to you and to the stranger who resides among you.”6 However, in its substantive aspect, the rule of law pertains to the content of the law. That is, as Leon Shelef has written, a law must be evaluated according to a set of values that lies outside the legal system. A state cannot be considered to be a “state of law” just because it enforces laws effectively and uniformly. In addition, its laws must not violate basic human rights and must not arbitrarily discriminate between citizens or perpetrate inequalities on the basis

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of factors irrelevant to a person’s actions or beyond his or her control, such as sex, race, and social class.7 The concept of the rule of law took shape during the twentieth century in the writings of the English jurist Albert Venn Dicey.8 He identified three aspects of the concept: (1) the supremacy of law over arbitrary governmental power; (2) the equality of all persons, including those who wield power, before the law; and (3) the court as the defender of personal rights.9 This third aspect requires that citizens have easy and direct access to independent courts in which judges are free to act—without fear of reprisal and without having to follow the dictates of the regime and its agents—to guarantee the rights of citizens when they are in a legal conflict with the government. Dicey thus viewed the rule of law as the opposite of the rule of power.10 In Israel, this independent court function is filled by the High Court of Justice—the Supreme Court sitting as a court that hears cases between citizens and the state, with the power to review and overrule the actions and decisions of the other branches of government. In this guise, the Supreme Court acts energetically and serves as an exemplar, fulfilling its unique role as the country’s most important protector of fundamental civil and human rights. During Israel’s first decade, however, the court was sometimes viewed as reluctant to perform this role, and it often took a formalist position.11 Another important and central principle that lies outside the formal and substantive demands of the rule of law should also be mentioned, because it is integral to both—the principle of balance.12 The wish to safeguard the rule of law is liable to clash with other values, especially in times of crisis. The point at which the needs of society and those of the individual intersect is the point of balance, and a society beset by severe deprivation or war has a different point of balance than does an affluent society in peacetime.13 History shows that even preeminently democratic countries like the United States and England have, in critical times, infringed on individual rights and breached the principle of the rule of law.14 The previous chapter showed that, in a democratic state, the success of public policy during a state of emergency depends on the public’s cooperation. The state must gain the public’s trust and convince the public that the emergency measures are necessary, and that the measures will be used legitimately.15 This chapter will address these issues and review the Israeli government’s efforts to impose its authority, while at the same time it sought to gain the public’s confidence.

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Enforcement Measures In April 1949, the government imposed rationing and price controls on the supply and sale of food products to the public, as well as on raw materials for industry.16 At the end of July 1950, this austerity policy was expanded to include clothing and shoes as well.17 The policy was instituted in a postwar economy that was absorbing huge numbers of immigrants.18 Dov Yosef, then minister of supply and rationing, was charged with implementing the policy. Until the end of 1949 prices remained stable, and the rations provided the population with a reasonable number of calories. But the picture changed at the beginning of 1950. Even though the cost of living index continued to decline in 1950, it was based on official prices. It did not take into account prices on the black market, which by 1950 had almost become a white market, as nearly the entire population participated in it.19 Beginning in January 1950, the Supply and Rationing Ministry had difficulty providing, in a timely fashion, the rations it had promised the public. That winter Israelis received fewer fresh vegetables than they were supposed to. Meat and egg rations were reduced, the former because most meat was imported and the state was experiencing a shortage of foreign currency; the latter because of the effect of a harsh winter on local production. In January no coffee was provided in the rations. During the spring and summer, oil, sugar, and bread were not always obtainable. In the hot summer months, there was hardly any soap available for purchase—legally.20 To obtain these basic goods, Israelis began to buy on the black market, which grew from a marginal operation into a mechanism to which many Israelis turned on occasion to obtain basic supplies, not just luxury items.21 Dov Yosef ’s response was to ratchet up enforcement. At the end of January, he declared an offensive aimed not just at black-market suppliers, but also at the consumers who patronized them.22 Three weeks later, ministry inspectors began to raid private homes in search of contraband. The ministry’s district chiefs of inspectors were empowered to authorize such searches. The public responded with outrage, prompting a Knesset debate.23 The police minister suggested to the supply minister that he follow police procedures: “We do this [search private homes] only with a warrant from a judge, which should be the practice in your ministry as well, because in this way we avoid censure, resentment, and slander.” Yosef wrote in response: “As you are aware, the question of whether we must apply to a judge for a search warrant is now being clarified

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by a committee of the Knesset. I doubt whether this is desirable as regards the efficacy of the inspection procedures.”24 At the end of February, the public learned that the authority of the supply ministry’s inspectors had been further augmented: in addition to stopping people they suspected of violating economic orders and escorting them to the police, the officials were now authorized to arrest suspects if they refused to give their addresses or to accompany the inspectors to a police station. In March, the press reported that dozens of inspectors were carrying handguns. Only the police minister’s vehement opposition kept Yosef from arming them all. In the face of public indignation, the use of guns was soon discontinued.25 During a cabinet discussion of the policy, Interior Minister Haim Moshe Shapira—who was also Health Minister and Immigration Minister—warned that “given the tension in the country today, the statement about giving inspectors police authority will only exacerbate tension unnecessarily.”26 At the end of March, the police raided a cafe in Tel Aviv and searched the patrons for foreign currency. Since Israel desperately needed foreign currency to maintain its economy, which was heavily dependent on imports, Israeli citizens were barred from holding anything but local money. By law, Israelis who received currency from relatives or other sources overseas, or who brought foreign currency back from trips to other countries, were required to change it to Israeli pounds at the official rate, which was far lower than that of the black market. The raid was widely covered in the press. It was not clear who gave the order for this operation; senior police officers claimed they had no prior knowledge of it.27 In October, according to press reports, army and police personnel blocked all the roads into Tel Aviv. Armed patrols roamed the roads and fields around the city and stopped and searched every car and pedestrian. The action was repeated in February 1952. The Voice of Israel, the state-run radio station, denied that the personnel involved were equipped with firearms.28 That same month, to fight the black market, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion assumed emergency authority for three months, giving him—under laws that remained in force from the British colonial administration—the powers of a high commissioner with regard to the black market.29 During this time, Ben-Gurion and Dov Yosef wanted to take action against newspapers “that regularly and with clear purpose slander the government with gross falsehoods,” but they reached the conclusion that they did not have the requisite legal power.30 But the official Voice of Israel radio station denounced certain newspapers that did

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not support the government.31 These new enforcement measures were in addition to those already in use, which included roadblocks where inspectors searched the bags of travelers, and the tracking and occasional arrest of merchants, butchers, shopkeepers, and others caught dealing on the black market. Paid informers were also used.32 In the face of the public protests aroused by these draconian enforcement measures, the government had to explain to the public—and justify to itself— why such extreme actions were necessary.33 Yosef and Ben-Gurion offered a variety of justifications, at different times and before different audiences. First of all, they claimed, the measures were lawful. Since it was democratically elected and since it had decided to retain the legal code of its predecessor, the British Mandate administration, the government was empowered to make and implement such policies.34 In other words, the principle of the formal rule of law was cited to justify the measures. Beyond this, Yosef and Ben-Gurion insisted that the public did not object to the policies. In other words, the policymakers simply denied that the public had been adversely affected by the enforcement drive. A third justification followed from the first two, as a response to Israelis’ demand that the regime guarantee their civil freedoms. The leaders denied that any of the authorized actions involved an infringement of civil rights. No citizen had the right to violate the law, they insisted, and law-abiding Israelis had nothing to fear. In other words, if a policy or measure was lawful it could not, by definition, violate civil rights.35 Here, too, the regime reduced the rule of law to formalism, while ignoring its substantive aspect. A fourth justification was that the public as a whole wanted to see the black market suppressed, and advocated stronger government action to this end. With this argument, the regime claimed a further source of legitimacy beyond having been elected: the governed consented to its policies. The fact that senior officials adduced this putative consensus in their effort to rally public support implied that the citizenry, as well as the leadership, believed that public consent—if it indeed existed—could legitimize extreme measures.36 The fifth justification was that extraordinary enforcement measures were used only when absolutely necessary and in response to specific circumstances. For example, Dov Yosef denied that home searches were new, contending that his ministry had always had the power to conduct them and, in any case, did so only on a limited basis—when an accumulation of information indicated that a specific home was stockpiling black-market goods.37

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Likewise, when he armed his inspectors, he cited instances in which they had been attacked.38 The sixth and final justification was a restatement of the purpose of the austerity program: equal provision of food and other commodities to all citizens. The government’s underlying assumption was that any other economic policy would make the rich richer and leave the poor hungry.39 Clearly, the regime sought to justify its actions by appealing to certain values—particularly equality and freedom from want—manifested not only by the austerity policy but also by other aspects of the government’s social and economic program and the concept of the right to work. In contrast, it made little, if any, reference to the individual freedoms that are the basis of classical liberalism.40 Furthermore, in contrast to the dual principles of majority rule and civil rights that undergird the foundation of established liberal democratic states, the Israeli regime’s conception of democracy at this time was based entirely—or at least largely—on majority rule. Israel’s leaders saw no need to consider laws in the light of other values; rather, their view was that a law was legitimate simply because it had been legislated via proper procedures. In this sense, the regime did not uphold the principle of the substantive rule of law: that laws must be evaluated in accordance with values that lie outside the legal system, values that derive from the very nature of a democratic state.41

Public Responses to the Austerity Policy The public’s reaction to the austerity program changed over time. During its initial months, almost everyone complied with the regulations. But as shortages became more severe, a black market began to flourish, despite the government’s enforcement measures. Illegal commerce soon reached such dimensions that even Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, who had at first refused to be alarmed, was shaken.42 How did citizens justify breaking the law? In general, they argued that they accepted the austerity program in principle, but that some of its particulars made it impossible for them to comply with it entirely. One example comes from an editorial in Haboker, the daily newspaper of the centrist bourgeois General Zionist Party, leader of the parliamentary opposition: “The question was never one of principle, whether rationing was necessary or not. During the war strict rationing was instituted and the public accepted it willingly, because people were convinced that there was no other choice. They would even have agreed to more severe rationing had they been

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convinced that it was necessary. Today, too, these same circles would remain committed to the tradition of national discipline, were they convinced that rationing was absolutely necessary, and that it was imposed equally on all circles and classes.”43 The editorial raised two objections to the austerity program: it questioned whether the policy was necessary, and it cast doubt on whether the policy was being applied equally. These were two of the objections that the public also raised to the austerity regime. Others related to economics, culture, psychology, social factors, politics, and questions of law, ethics, and justice. The principal causes of the growth in the black market were uncontrolled wage increases and the unavailability of goods though legitimate channels. The government printed currency without instituting mechanisms for absorbing the public’s excess money—for example, higher taxes, prices, and other fees. This created demand pressures that found an outlet in the black market. Other reasons included the failure of the government’s economic program in other areas. Its policies discouraged production for export, and the lack of raw materials for industry and the high demand in the domestic market also reduced exports. Foreign investors were deterred by the country’s bureaucratic red tape and by the government’s socialist reputation.44 Culturally, rationing sought to standardize behavior by prescribing what food people should eat, what clothes they should wear, and what level of personal hygiene they should maintain.45 It ignored individual tastes, traditions, and habits. Clothing, for example, provides a way for people to display their social status, their affiliation with communities and subcultures, and their individual personalities.46 Forcing people to dress less well than they were accustomed to, and to wear the same clothes as everyone else, thus infringed on their dignity and self-esteem. And people in the 1950s were much less flexible and less willing to try new foods, or to vary unwritten protocols and routines of cleanliness and personal grooming, than they are today.47 The Israeli public, both old-timers and new immigrants, had experienced war, migration, and state-imposed austerity regimes. The people worried that conditions would only get worse. So shortages of basic commodities such as bread, oil, and soap, exacerbated by rumors that the government’s warehouses were empty, made them fear that they would not be able to obtain such goods legally in the future.48 Another psychological factor was the public’s lack of confidence in the government’s promises. As we have seen, the Supply and Rationing Ministry found

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it difficult, in part for reasons beyond its control,49 to supply the public with food and other basic goods in a timely and adequate way. Although many households found the shortage of meat the most onerous part of rationing, the meat ration was cut50—even though the government had promised to increase it.51 The crisis of confidence became more severe, as noted above, when the government announced that it would ration clothing and shoes as well. This distrust lay behind many of the other factors that led people to buy on the black market, and it was widely cited by the press. In addition, Israelis felt increasingly alienated from their government, which they perceived as a hostile regime that imposed its will by fear. Noah Brand, the Supply and Rationing Ministry’s director general, sent a memorandum to his staff saying: “It should be clear to all of us that, while protecting the honor of the government and civil servants, we must prove to the citizen that the most important part of our job is to serve him and give him our undivided attention. . . . We must break free of our daily routine to do everything to ensure that the citizen indeed feels that he has access to his government.”52 The public viewed the state apparatus as inefficient, arrogant, and at odds with citizens, as the Ma’ariv article cited in the introduction shows, with its reference to officials’ “endless refusals, and the endless forms, and the arbitrary treatment, and the dilettantish attitude.”53 Proof that this was an accurate portrayal of what citizens encountered is the fact that the civil service made a great effort to change such practices.54 Some civil servants demanded that the government clean house, dismissing all corrupt officials.55 It should be noted that at this time the civil service was anything but nonpartisan. Ministers took an active interest in the political affiliation of the civil servants in their ministries. Membership in the right party was thus a major determinant of a government worker’s position and rank. The politicization of the bureaucracy no doubt affected the way its members worked and the quality of the service they provided to the public.56 Especially noteworthy was the public’s revulsion against the Supply and Rationing Ministry’s inspectors and workers. Israelis felt that, in the eyes of these officials, every citizen was a criminal or, even worse, an enemy.57 I have already described the public’s reaction when it learned that the ministry’s inspectors were searching private homes for items purchased on the black market. These reports could be found not only in opposition publications, but also in newspapers that supported the government.58 They even appeared in the organ of the ruling elite—the Histadrut’s daily, Davar.59 The impunity with which the

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authorities could invade the privacy of citizens seems to have been unbearable, and to have made people feel that they were not safe even in their homes.60 The publication of Amir-Pinkerfeld’s letter, quoted in the previous chapter, shows that Davar was willing to publish condemnations (up to a limit) of the Histadrut’s dominant party, and that the newspaper and its readers did not accept uncritically everything the government did. It is also reasonable to assume that the editors decided to publish the letter because they realized that the public wanted to send the government a message. The implication was that in this case the ministry had crossed the line of legitimacy. Law enforcement agencies saw it differently. Isser Harel, the Shin Bet chief, advocated home searches as a form of psychological warfare.61 The public’s sociopolitical justification for not complying with the austerity regime also derived from its lack of confidence in the government. The opposition parties to Mapai’s right, the General Zionists and Herut, represented middle-class voters—shopkeepers, manufacturers, and other businessmen. This class felt that the government’s economic program was threatening its livelihood.62 When clothing and shoe rationing was announced, these people feared that the real intention was to liquidate the private sector. Similar sentiments could be heard from members of the United Religious Front, a party in the government coalition.63 There is no evidence to support the claim that this was the government’s intention, but Mapai’s leaders were not, to put it mildly, sympathetic to the travails of businessmen.64 Right-wing newspapers took advantage of the situation to fan the fires burning in their camp. The merchants were sincerely afraid.65 What they saw from their point of view was real class warfare.66 Minister of Justice Pinhas Rosen of the Progressive Party, which also championed middle-class voters, was generally a reserved man. Relaying his constituents’ fears, he told his fellow ministers: “I will say only that the greater number of these very moderate types, people who belong to the Progressive Party, are now convinced that the [clothing rationing] order has been issued for no other reason than to destroy private commerce. The goal of this order is in the end, they say, to transfer all business from the private to the other sector.”67 The public was also suspicious of the legal grounds for the austerity program. As it did in other matters, the government promulgated the austerity ordinances by decree, under a state of emergency. The laws that allowed it to do this were ones inherited from the British, a foreign overlord, and the public perceived them to be fundamentally tarnished, illegitimate, and inconsistent

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with the rule of law. Citizens had trouble understanding “the absurdity that the Israeli government was maintaining the very same laws that the Mandate administration used to suppress every flicker of Hebrew freedom and the sovereignty in this country.”68 As shown in the previous chapter, many people felt that the government was confronting them with an unfair ethical dilemma—having to choose between being either law-abiding citizens or good parents.69 The secretary of a workers’ council told Ben-Gurion, in a consultation about the black market he held with the Histadrut sector (the labor federation was not merely a union; it owned and operated construction firms, factories, and the health insurance and medical services organization that provided care for the great majority of Israelis): “You can decide what you want, but the minute my child doesn’t have the small amount of sugar he needs, I will buy it on the black market and I won’t tell my wife not to do it, either.”70 The government was also perceived as being insensitive to the poor and to the injustice it was committing against them. One notable example was the shutting down of a charitable project that distributed food to the hungry— people who were not even able to buy the rationed food. Another was the confiscation of merchandise, especially food, from immigrants when they arrived in Israel.71 The public’s instinctive sense of justice was also offended when it saw that the great majority of black-market profiteers were not apprehended and punished. Instead, the full force of the law was brought to bear on the weakest— consumers and small retailers.72 The most common accusation made by the press during these months of crisis was that the austerity regulations were being enforced in a discriminatory and unequal fashion. Average citizens felt that they were being treated worse than people who had connections to food-marketing cooperatives. Private building contractors maintained that the Histadrut’s Solel Boneh construction company was being given preferential treatment; manufacturers claimed that they were being discriminated against in acquiring raw materials; and opposition newspapers asserted that they were being allocated less newsprint than Hador, the new newspaper launched by the ruling party, Mapai. Newspapers published photographs of invoices and detailed accounts of the state’s discriminatory practices against private businesses.73 Similar accusations were voiced in the Knesset and at cabinet meetings.74 Over and over again, the opposition press called on the Supply and Rationing Ministry’s in-

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spectors to go after the big criminals of the Histadrut sector. After a period of restraint, in August 1950 Ha’aretz, an independent liberal daily with ties to the Progressive Party and a middle-class readership, joined the chorus of accusers. Even if press reports were sometimes exaggerated and aimed at alienating the public from the government, the shortages were real; the government had its hands too deep in the lives of individuals; and the civil service was inefficient, arbitrary, and sometimes corrupt.75 It is difficult to estimate to what extent organizations and people with ties to Mapai benefited materially, but there seems to have been substance to the claims made by the press, the opposition, and some members of the coalition. An authoritative source on this is Isser Harel, the Shin Bet chief. In his memoirs, he writes about the reports he made to Ben-Gurion during the period that his organization was involved in fighting the black market. Harel relates that he told Ben-Gurion that the Histadrut’s Solel Boneh construction company was doing black-market business with merchants and contractors in violation of the law. Ben-Gurion was furious, Harel writes, and declared that if the report were true, he would liquidate Solel Boneh. Harel responded that it was true and that he could prove it; nevertheless, he was certain that Solel Boneh would not be shut down. Harel also claims to have told Ben-Gurion that many lawbreakers justified their actions by referring to the government’s shortcomings. He notes that, despite the austerity regime, government ministries—including divisions of the Office of the Prime Minister—were holding lavish parties. He adds that he also told the prime minister that kibbutzim sent food packages to their members’ relatives in the cities, and that government and Histadrut officials received food packages from Tnuva, a cooperative society that marketed agricultural produce and that was affiliated with the Histadrut.76 Undoubtedly, ordinary citizens were the main victims of such corruption, because they had no connection to the centers of power and influence.77 As for how the law was enforced in the Histadrut and private sectors, the evidence is sufficient to state categorically that law enforcement authorities acted with bias. People from the labor movement were treated leniently. They were first given warnings, and only later, perhaps, was administrative or legal action taken against them. Such was the case when kibbutzim were caught dealing on the black market. Even when some of them were brought before the Histadrut’s internal disciplinary courts, many of them continued to break the law.78 In the autumn of 1950, the public’s attitude to the rule of law had reached its nadir.79 People were convinced that the state was not treating its citizens

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equally, and some did not believe that the government intended, as it had promised, to change its ways. The austerity regime was seen as being partly illegitimate because of its violation of basic civil freedoms,80 and because, as the economist Chaim Barkai claimed, people no longer felt—as they had in April 1949—that the situation was so critical as to justify these measures.81 The government seemed unable to maintain the delicate balance between its legitimate need to take extraordinary measures in a time of emergency and its respect for civil rights.82 To pursue such a draconian policy, the government required the consent of the public. It largely enjoyed such support when it came to security policy, but not in economic policy. The rule of law is not a concept that exists in a vacuum, disconnected from political ideology and social issues. On the contrary, careful adherence to its requirements and acceptance of the ideas of both the formal and the substantive rule of law require unambiguous political decisions.83 The liberal and right-wing opposition press, as well as some Israeli workers, refused to accept what they saw as violations of their fundamental rights and freedoms, which they fought to protect. The General Zionists, a center-right party that advocated a market economy and represented middle-class voters, and Herut in particular took up this cause.84 Aharon Barak, chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court from 1995 to 2006, has portrayed the rule of law as a two-story building. Its ground floor is material, based on individual rights and majority rule. Its second floor is the law in its formal sense, which everyone must honor.85 Dov Yosef and Ben-Gurion seem to have understood the rule of law in a much narrower way. For them, the foundation was largely majority rule, while the second floor was the governing authority’s requirement that citizens observe the laws, even when the state was unable and unwilling to enforce them equally. Justice Yitzchak Olshen, one of the original members of Israel’s Supreme Court and later its chief justice, recalled the words of Israel’s first chief justice, Moshe Smoira, at the court’s first session: “It is as if each one of us has heard in his own ears the voice of history speaking to him from on high and calling him to abandon everything that connects him to his surroundings and to rise up to the peaks and from there to judge and to settle disputes between the country’s citizens, to stand guard on the principle of the ‘rule of law’ and to enforce justice for every person, without prejudice of any kind, and to be impervious to all influences.”86 But to remove the principle of equality from the rule of law is to remove its moral foundation, and to raise the question of

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whether the law needs be obeyed.87 In seeking to enforce the austerity policy, the government thus did not strictly adhere to the formal requirements of the rule of law. And it preferred to ignore the substantive aspects of the concept. Yet this statement must be qualified by noting that the Israeli state’s approach was not one that neglected fundamental human needs, but one that was devoid of a concept of civil rights at the same time that it proclaimed a concept of obligations.88 The refusal of housewives and others to comply with the austerity program led in the end to a revision of the government’s economic policy. Despite the continuing force of emergency provisions grandfathered into Israeli law from the British Mandate’s books, Israel was a democracy, not a police state.89 Mass disobedience by the public, which through its votes possessed the power to determine the future of political parties, could change the way the government behaved and bring about a significant relaxation of the austerity policies—and eventually their termination.90 Between 1949 and 1951, the government learned the limits of its powers. It realized that it could not impose on Israelis strictures that they could not and did not want to comply with. It was unable to persuade the citizens that it had implemented both its rationing and enforcement measures in a just and equal way. In the public’s view, the austerity regime was enforced inequitably, with this playing a major role in the policy’s failure. Another contributing factor was the manner in which the policy was enforced—that is, the state’s failure to capture and bring to trial the major players in the black market.

⡬ Chapter 3

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he courts were not inclined to hand down the range of convictions and punishments that the government thought it needed to enforce rationing and price controls.1 Neither were the police and inspectors able to apprehend the major players in the black market, who were thus not brought to justice.2 The special tribunals that heard the cases of price gougers and speculators worked energetically and were enlarged from time to time in an effort to respond to changing needs, but they seemed to be unable to handle the mushrooming number of cases.3 Trials of economic offenders brought before the Magistrates’ Courts were delayed, sometimes for years.4 Inspectors were careless in preparing cases,5 and according to press reports, the penalties imposed were far too lenient to serve as a deterrent. Al Hamishmar, a daily newspaper published by Mapam, then in the opposition, reported that from September 1950 through May 1951, the Tel Aviv district attorney’s office filed charges against 852 black-market speculators.6 In the end, 17 cases were dismissed, and 78 of those charged were acquitted; 86 were fined around 100 Israeli pounds (IL), and 13 were given fines of between IL 100 and IL 500. (In June 1951, the average monthly wage of an industrial worker was IL 139; this would be equivalent to $1,244 in 2011, not that different from today’s average monthly wage of an unskilled worker in agriculture, which is about $1,530.)7 Only 51 out of the 852 people charged were sentenced to jail terms, and in most cases these were short ones. Another 394 were assessed small fines. The single largest fine was IL 1,000. Notably, the maximum fine allowed by law was IL 7,000, and the maximum prison sentence was seven years. Up until 1951, the maximum jail sentence imposed by the courts was a year and a half. Al Hamishmar later reported that from April to October 1951, a total of 4,242 cases against people dealing in the black market were opened in Tel Aviv, but only ten per-

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cent of these were brought to trial. The average fine imposed in Tel Aviv was IL 150. In Tiberias, 515 cases were opened; 17 percent were brought to trial; and the average fine was only IL 9.8 But the press generally made another point as well. In an interview published in Haboker, an unnamed judge described how he felt about such trials: A fact unknown to many, and which we judges encounter each day, is the feeling that surrounds us that all those criminals brought before us are small fry, the flotsam and jetsam who get caught when they go wrong. But the big sharks who mangle the law are for some reason never brought before the courts. If it happens that one of them does appear before us to answer for his crimes, he comes equipped with the best legal defense, ready for battle, while the public prosecutor trots behind him without sufficient preparation. . . . Clearly, then, when it comes to the small-time violators, whose numbers are large, the conviction rate is higher. And we judges are horrified to see that these poor people, the great majority of whom are new immigrants, are not aware of the many laws with which we have been blessed. They are caught committing violations that look like fabrications. . . . There are many such examples and every judge can quote a huge number of convictions for technical violations that were dressed up as serious crimes that threaten the order and peace of the state.9

The government frequently complained about the courts’ leniency. In his memoirs, Dov Yosef writes that in 1951, Ben-Gurion vented his frustration about the lenience courts displayed toward smugglers: “Hooliganism and public disturbances [are] raging at the [border near] Tulkarem and the police are helpless because the judges, instead of punishing the criminals, only require them to behave well.”10 In November 1951, the prime minister ordered the attorney general to prepare legislation that would permit courts to impose larger fines. He also asked that consideration be given to amending the law so that judges would be required to impose minimum penalties, at least with regard to certain crimes.11 Dov Yosef, who was then both minister of justice and minister of trade and industry, maintained that the root cause of the problem was the lenient sentences handed down by judges. But he advised against prescribing minimum legal penalties, for the time being. Yosef raised the subject with Chief Justice Smoira. The latter promised to find a way to explain the matter to the courts. Yosef also met with and spoke candidly at a convocation of the country’s judges.12 Some of them accepted Yosef ’s comments with equanimity, but many seem to have been reluctant to

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hear him out, on the ground that his intervention constituted unacceptable government encroachment on the duty of judges to rule according to their consciences, without interference.13 Yosef ’s papers contain letters from judges who attended the meeting and who were displeased by the interjections of some of their colleagues. Those who took the trouble to write to him wanted to lend him moral support.14 He sent one of these letters of encouragement, which supported harsher penalties, to the chief justice.15 The national police chief, Yehezkel Sahar, told the prime minister that he, too, was displeased with the courts. He complained about the huge backlog of cases, including many involving economic violations, and noted the leniency of the sentences imposed. According to Sahar, the problem was not just the penalties that the law allowed, but rather the sanctions actually imposed by the courts, which afforded no disincentives to potential criminals or violators. He added that “in this area it seems as if the judges are entirely detached from reality and indifferent to the Knesset’s intentions. The Knesset saw fit some time ago to greatly increase the extent of the range of punishments for economic crimes (up to seven years in prison and a fine of IL 10,000). This cannot be seen in the judgments handed down by the courts.”16 In response to Sahar’s letter, the minister of justice received further information from the attorney general, also indicating that the courts were handing down overly lenient sentences.17 Given this ongoing dissatisfaction with sentences, especially for economic violations,18 Dov Yosef proposed removing economic cases from the hands of currently sitting judges. He proposed appointing new judges to the Magistrates’ Courts, to whom economic cases would be assigned. But the attorney general, whose assistance was required, dragged his feet despite repeated requests from the minister. One of the difficulties was that it was not easy to recruit high-quality jurists to serve on the lowest bench. Talented attorneys had no interest in becoming civil servants. Yosef thus asked the attorney general if it might be possible to issue orders requiring lawyers to serve as judges for a limited period (in the way that physicians were required for set periods of time to treat immigrants in the transit camps), so as to reduce the backlog of cases.19 Supreme Court Justice Olshen was also critical of the lenient sentences handed down by the lower courts. He wrote in his memoirs that most judges in the Magistrates’ and District Courts had not been able to overcome their natural feelings of compassion. He claimed that they could not distinguish between routine crimes like theft and those that had become even more com-

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mon and that needed to be uprooted by the imposition of heavy punishment. Among the violations that Olshen included in this second category were embezzlement by civil servants and price gouging. Judges, he maintained, tended to let people convicted of such crimes off with ridiculously light sentences. He testified that he had been required in many cases to state, in appeals of such cases to the Supreme Court, that in imposing such sentences judges were turning the country into a paradise for criminals.20 The public learned of the executive branch’s dissatisfaction with the courts, perhaps because the ministers’ attempts through behind-the-scenes persuasion to correct what they saw as a problem were not successful. One especially outspoken article appeared in Davar. It stated that the time had come for a serious and profound inquiry into the relationship between the country’s judges and the economic regime. The author wrote that the courts had not yet formulated for themselves procedures appropriate to the needs of an economic program during a period of what was called ingathering of the Jewish nation’s exiles. Like other institutions, he wrote, the courts had not yet arrived at a proper understanding of their role within the national system. He deplored the backlog of speculation cases and argued that, when the cases were heard, the sentences imposed were far too indulgent. He reached what he saw as the unavoidable conclusion that “this does not testify to sympathy for the economic regime decided on by the legislature.” He also argued that the state could not enforce the economic policy because judges were not imposing appropriate punishments. He accused them of working according to the book on economic matters, rather than giving due consideration to the consequences of their rulings. For the sake of their own self-respect, he insisted, the judges should address this subject seriously.21

Parliament and the Judiciary: Dov Yosef versus Moshe Smoira A few days after this article was published in Davar, policymakers became concerned that the rule of law faced an even more serious challenge. On January 7, 1952, opponents of the Israeli government’s initiative to commence direct negotiations with West Germany rioted outside the Knesset. The negotiations were aimed at reaching an agreement under which West Germany would pay reparations to Israel; most of the rioters were supporters of Menachem Begin’s Herut movement. At a meeting of the cabinet on January 13, Ben-Gurion warned his colleagues that “a democracy that hesitates to use force to defend

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itself is doomed to destruction.” On the same occasion, he made the following comments on the judicial system: I’m afraid to actually say this, they say it is contempt of court, but most judges are acting like they were an association for the encouragement of crime. You only need to know one example to realize this. A Jew raped a girl, and since he was an ultraOrthodox Jew and it happened before Rosh Hashanah [the Jewish new year, when believers repent their sins], the judge thought he was justified in letting him go, and he said to him, in the meantime it was Rosh Hashanah, you must certainly have regretted your transgression, and that was enough for him and he didn’t punish him. Something like this is unbelievable. There are acts of violence and rape in this country, there are mobs, in every land of immigration the percentage of criminals is large, but on top of that we don’t have enough policemen on our force.22

Ben-Gurion went on to address the problems of the police force and law enforcement, and he proposed the establishment of a border guard unit. Half of it would be devoted to guarding the country’s borders, while the other half would train in the center of the country. This latter group could be deployed from its base within an hour or an hour and a half to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Haifa, “because mass disturbances will take place for the most part in the cities.” Simultaneously, he asked for special legislation for the protection of policemen, which would include required minimum sentences for attacks on law enforcement officials.23 As minister of justice, Dov Yosef drafted legislation to this effect. In his memoirs, he cites figures in support of this initiative: in July through October 1951, there were seventy-seven instances of violent resistance to on-duty policemen. In thirty-three of these cases, judges imposed fines that collectively reached IL 400 (about $3,504 in 2011). In most cases the fine was IL 10 (about $87 in 2011) or lower. “In fact,” Yosef writes, “the government had no choice, even though it is undesirable in principle, [but] to pass a law requiring the judicial system to impose a minimum prison sentence.”24 Justice Olshen relates in his memoirs that the judges were split on the issue of minimum sentences, but that most of them supported the idea. In order to advance the bill in the face of the opposition’s vigorous objections, Yosef attacked the judges collectively in an outspoken speech in the Knesset: “It is my duty and my right to say such things. Are they [the judges] angels with wings who descended from heaven, guardians sent by God, who know what is right and what is not right? They are human beings just like me, they can make mis-

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takes like me, and I am allowed to criticize their rulings. I fear for the future of justice in this country.”25 He also took the opportunity to attack what he termed the substandard level of the Israeli press.26 Unsurprisingly, his language caused a public uproar. Chief Justice Smoira and his Supreme Court colleagues took the exceptional step of responding with a stern letter to Yosef Sprinzak, the Speaker of the Knesset:27 “His speech is liable to undermine public trust in and respect for the judiciary. One of the foundations of every cultured society is the rule that judges answer to no authority in their judgments except that of the law. The public’s confidence in the judiciary depends on scrupulous observance of this imperative. Following the minister’s speech, there is reason for concern that a growing number of people will say that judicial rulings, whether strict or lenient, have been handed down under the influence of the justice minister’s speech, undercutting belief in judges’ independence.”28 The Speaker returned the letter to its sender, a symbolic act meant, he said, to underline the separation of powers and the sovereignty of the legislature. Another way of looking at his action is to see it, as the legal historian Pnina Lahav does, as an additional slap in the face of the court.29 Dov Yosef ’s papers include a letter of protest about his speech sent by judges of the Tel Aviv Magistrates’ Court to Chief Justice Smoira. The judges sent Yosef a copy. They wrote: “The Minister of Justice’s recent speech in the Knesset debate on the amendment to the penal law . . . included comments that constituted an unjustified blow to the court system and to the public’s confidence in the independence of judges. The speech requires, we believe, an appropriate response. We reiterate all the more forcefully the demand that the court system be separated from the Ministry of Justice, to prevent the principle of judges’ independence from becoming a hollow one.”30 Prime Minister Ben-Gurion referred to the incident in a speech to the Knesset about another matter. Defending the position taken by his justice minister, he asserted that ministers and members of the Knesset had the right to inform the Knesset of the shaky state of the judiciary and the fact that the courts’ current approach to applying the law was causing a proliferation of crime.31 In a later session, Dov Yosef reaffirmed his right, as an elected official, to say whatever was on his mind. The prime minister regretted that the chief justice had given the press his letter to the Speaker. According to Ben-Gurion, this was not a constructive action, and it violated the principle of the Knesset’s sovereignty.32 The Jerusalem Post, an English-language daily owned by an arm of the Histadrut, published an article that criticized Ben-Gurion for intervening in

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the debate between the judges and his justice minister, calling it a regrettable error of judgment.33 Decades later, Amnon Rubinstein, a professor of constitutional law and a government minister, sharply criticized Smoira’s letter, writing that it was difficult for him to understand the judges’ feelings at the time. In Rubinstein’s view, criticism of the courts does not affect judicial neutrality and is legitimate in the framework of the Knesset’s proceedings—all the more so when the legislature is debating a bill submitted in response to lenient sentences.34 Shimon Agranat, who served as chief justice from 1965 to 1976, maintained many years after the fact that there is no need for a dialogue between the branches of government in the form of conversations or correspondence.35 A short time after the event, the justice minister and attorney general visited the chief justice in his chambers, presumably seeking a reconciliation. The chief justice and district court judges told Yosef that the reason they did not hand down stiffer sentences was “the inefficient way in which charges are filed by the state’s attorneys and because the prosecution does not appeal light sentences, except in a handful of cases.”36

The Press and the Controversy The dispute between the government and the courts was covered extensively by the press.37 Herut, the newspaper of the party of the same name, led the attacks against Dov Yosef. The party’s leader, Menachem Begin, had been suspended from the Knesset following the riot outside the building on January 7. The newspaper depicted Yosef as the vanguard of the regime’s attack on the country’s last citadel of civil liberties, the courts. Yosef, the newspaper maintained, “clearly indicated that what the Mapai leadership had plotted for a long time was to take control of the judiciary and turn it into an obedient tool of the regime.”38 Sharp criticism of Yosef ’s speech also appeared in the principal opposition paper, Haboker, the organ of the General Zionist party.39 Ma’ariv, the largest commercial daily at the time, published a pointed satire about what Mapai hoped to see: “There should be a minimum penalty for each and every offense. . . . In fact, Jews should all be in jail. Look, it’s just not a healthy situation for the state when such a large portion of its inhabitants are at liberty. Look, a person in this country can do too many things, anything that comes to his mind. Look, he can buy what he wants to eat and what he wants to dress and the shoes he wants and he can work and get paid just as he

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wants. And he’s got much too much freedom of speech, that’s a real problem for the country. So . . . we need to make sure that we can keep a better eye on these Jews. . . . And you can’t really keep an eye on a person unless he is in jail.”40 A sharp retort to the attacks on Dov Yosef and the prime minister appeared in Hapo’el Hatza’ir, a periodical with ties to Mapai. The uproar that followed Yosef ’s speech, it argued, was politically motivated, meant to impede the government and Yosef himself, and did not really originate out of concern for the independence of the judiciary and the respect due to judges.41 On January 22, 1952, just over a week after the cabinet meeting and a few days before Yosef ’s remarks in the Knesset, Hapo’el Hatza’ir’s lead article, written by Yisrael Cohen, offered a lengthy analysis of the critical role of public opinion. Of the three branches of government, Cohen argued, only two were open to public scrutiny. The third, the judiciary, “lies outside the field of vision.” This disregard was not beneficial to either the judiciary or the public; it would be better for everyone if public opinion could prevail on this branch of government as well. Nevertheless, he argued, “this applies to public intervention via democratic means, such as the press, speeches, lectures, and the analysis of rulings, not the interference of the other two branches of government, which is liable to be detrimental to democracy.”42 This would seem to rule out Yosef ’s own intervention. Cohen further maintained that the law of the land was not just a product of legislation by the Knesset, but also of the law’s interpretation and the establishment of precedents in the form of court rulings in response to real-life situations. He called on judges, prosecutors, and attorneys to be attentive to currents of public opinion and “to the voices arising from the fabric of our lives,” which, he suggested, their rulings indicated that they were not. He maintained that lenient sentences against lawbreakers of all kinds (except those convicted of murder or homicide) did not accord with the need to quench “the scalding lava of misdemeanors and felonies.” The light sentences handed down against speculators, price gougers, and smugglers, he said, undermined the very foundations of society.43 In the autumn of that year, Hador, Mapai’s evening newspaper, also criticized the sentencing practices. It maintained that the courts needed advice about finding the proper balance between protecting the individual from the executive power and protecting the state from those who “mocked the law.” The impression made on the public, the newspaper claimed, was that not all judges always knew how to maintain the delicate balance between these two

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conflicting requirements.44 Herut, for its part, praised the Supreme Court for standing firm against the tyranny of the bureaucracy.45 To put it mildly, the executive was clearly not pleased with the way the judiciary functioned. Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary that Haim Cohn—who replaced Dov Yosef as minister of justice for a short time—was loudly criticized for appointing lawyers with right-wing affiliations to the Legal Council, a state agency that oversaw the legal profession. Ben-Gurion added that he had counted the number of judges who came from Mapai circles and found that of the country’s forty Magistrates’ Court judges, only five were associated with Mapai. Of the thirty district court judges, only four were, and only two of the Supreme Court’s seven justices.46 There is no way of knowing whether the liberal sentences handed down against violators of the austerity regime were due to carelessness on the part of inspectors, a backlog of cases and red tape, faulty work by public prosecutors, or the fact that the offenders who appeared in court were more often than not accused of relatively minor violations. It may well have been that the judges— who, after all, were themselves citizens who had to cope with the exigencies created by the government’s policy—understood why average men and women became lawbreakers in the face of their difficult economic plight. Presumably the judges were reluctant to punish them severely because of the difficulty of adhering to the unrealistic demands of the austerity regime. It also seems that judges showed compassion in part because many of them, as statements of the government’s supporters testify, identified ideologically with the liberalcentrist camp, even if they were not members of political parties. The centrists as a group were fed up with the austerity program. In any case, it is fairly clear that the courts did not function as an effective deterrent to the violation of austerity regulations. The fact that the government was unable to enforce its policies evenhandedly, and that the courts were not conveying the message that the government wished to get across to the public, contributed to alienation between the enforcers of the austerity program and the citizenry, and between the executive and the judiciary. Presumably, these differences, along with the difficulties inherent in the austerity regime, encouraged Israelis to refuse to abide by the government’s strictures. Impelled by a sense that they were being treated unfairly and unjustly, and in the absence of any significant deterrence, many citizens acted in their own interests and formulated rationales to explain their conduct. This was not the behavior of a mindless mob; these Israelis were fully

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conscious of their own motives. They formulated a counterposition, one that opposed the government’s policy in principle and in practice and that at least partly denied its legitimacy. This in turn deepened Israelis’ consciousness and awareness of their individuality. In the first stage of this process, people sought to justify their violation of the law. Later, buying on the black market was seen as an imperative for survival. Eventually, it came to express a lack of confidence in and alienation from the state. This alienation was on one level a sign of individuation—that is, a desire to shake free of the collective. On another level, it expressed a trend toward individualism—a desire to establish a firm foundation of individual rights. In the case at hand, the specific right at issue was the right to equal treatment. It was not possible to pursue a rationing policy when the populace believed that the burden of rationing was not being distributed equally and that some people were above the law. When food was scarce and clothing, soap, and other basic items were difficult to obtain, living frugally required a high sense of mission and obligation toward the collective— which the public largely lacked. From this distance in time, this civil disobedience can be viewed as a victory of the people against the executive. The question of whether that victory was for the public good is open to interpretation. Whatever the case, the outcome was a breakdown of the formal rule of law. The formal rule of law is in practice a contract between the regime and the public. In its words and its actions, the public accused the government of having violated the unwritten compact between them, inasmuch as it was not acting justly (among other faults). The regime seems to have believed that it had the power to overcome the opposition of a populace that was not displaying a proper sense of communal responsibility. The government believed that it was acting in the best interests of the state (even if this involved short-term harm to its citizens). Both sides felt hurt. The public certainly did not want their young country’s economy to collapse, but they demanded a different social order than that offered by the ruling establishment. As happens in democratic regimes, the people achieved this goal, after a fight.47 The regime grappled with disobedience to the law and what it viewed as overly lenient sentencing practices for many years and in a large number of cases.48 In most of these, it dealt with groups that did not accept its authority.49 In this case, however, the regime faced off against the bulk of the populace, which included people who were mindful of the principle of respecting the law and who generally sought to live as law-abiding citizens. The lack of a demo-

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cratic tradition, along with the traditions of getting around the law that were an inherent part of Yishuv culture under British rule and that were carried over into the early years of independence, exacerbated the problem.50 From a comparative point of view, it should be noted that the scholarly and public consensus that the British wartime and postwar austerity regime was a success, and that this testified to the character of the British public, has recently been challenged. Contemporary scholarship has found that the black market in England was sizable, both during and after World War II.51 The size of the black market reflects the limits of public consent to regulation and the limitation of consumption. When British subjects were committed to the war effort and Israeli citizens to immigrant absorption, these commitments restricted people’s use of the black market. In both countries, people proved themselves willing to make sacrifices for what they believed was the common good. But later, during the postwar period in England, and when shortages caused great hardship in Israel, disobedience increased and the black market expanded. The policy of enforcing equality in the consumption of food and other basic commodities did not succeed in either England or Israel. Those who could afford to do so supplemented the goods supplied by the state by buying items on the black market, even if they did so infrequently. Those with low incomes had to make do with the official rations, which were not always available. The burden of immigrant absorption was thus not imposed equally on all parts of the population. Women suffered more than men, and children, the indigent, and immigrants suffered more than those with money to spare.52 The practical goal of the austerity program—lowering the standard of living across the board so as to keep the poorest from going hungry—was largely achieved during the years 1948–51.53 But another goal was to use equality of consumption as a means of creating a common national identity of a type that the government desired. This goal was not achieved. Shortages and flaws in the regime’s implementation of the program, along with its limited conception of the rule of law, elicited precisely the opposite reaction from the public—egoism (on the family rather than the personal level), and alienation from the collective.

⡤⡤ in the city square

⡬ Chapter 4

Austerity Tested The Local Elections of 1950

The Political Situation on the Eve of Local Elections In mid-October 1950, a short time before local elections were scheduled, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion faced a crisis within the ruling coalition. It was not his first, but its timing, against the background of the old-timers’ loss of trust in his government and the impending elections, clearly made him uneasy.1 The crisis was prompted by the failure of rationing and price controls in the face of public opposition to the program, and by the deliberations of the task force set up to combat the black market. Ben-Gurion moved to halt the decline in public support by reshuffling his cabinet and instituting a new economic policy. He relieved Dov Yosef of the Supply and Rationing Ministry, which he dismantled, transferring the food division, which enforced rationing and price controls, to the Agriculture Ministry. He placed that portfolio in the hands of a Mapai stalwart, Pinhas Lavon. According to the economic historian Chaim Barkai, Ben-Gurion and his Mapai Party sought to redirect the public’s attention from the unpopular rationing and price controls to the Agriculture Ministry’s primary task, that of food production.2 Whatever prestige Yosef had left was sacrificed on the altar of Ben-Gurion’s attempt to enhance the popularity of his government, in its new form.3 In an effort to mitigate the anger of merchants and manufacturers, whose profits had been hurt by the rationing of clothing and shoes, Ben-Gurion appointed Yaacov Geri, an apolitical technocrat and industrialist, to the post of minister of industry. The imperative of battling the black market and the changes in the cabinet were a product, Barkai argues, of the state of the economy and the public’s frustration with the ongoing shortages.4 The economic, social, and political situation that Israelis faced at this time would have required a government re-

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sponse even if municipal elections had not been approaching. But the looming election campaign inevitably affected political actions, their timing, and the way they were presented to the public.5 The government announced a new economic program. One provision was the institution of varying foreign currency exchange rates to encourage exports without discouraging certain imports. Investors as well as exporters received a better exchange rate. The government issued bonds indexed to the rate of inflation and permitted the sale of a small amount of state-owned land in order to give citizens another way to spend their money, in the hope that this would reduce the amount of money spent on scarce goods—money that drove prices up and expanded the black market.6 Simultaneously, the government carried on its campaign to suppress illegal commerce via both police actions and a public relations campaign. According to the memoirs of David Horowitz, who served as director general of the Finance Ministry and later as the first governor of the Bank of Israel, this combination of “economic and police policy offered no remedy for the economy’s troubles.”7 The new measures were tantamount to acknowledging that the government’s previous economic program had failed. In a radio address in which he sought to enlist the populace in the war against the black market, Ben-Gurion admitted candidly that “not all is as it should be in the government’s operations.”8 He openly criticized Dov Yosef. Seeking to be frank with the public without causing panic, he presented as complete an accounting as he could of the state of the country’s food stocks. Although he did not say so explicitly in his address, his purpose in offering solid numbers seems to have been to impress on the public that it bore responsibility for its own well-being. Yosef had pursued the opposite approach, concealing the facts from the country’s citizens so as to spare them anxiety. At a cabinet meeting a month and a half before this broadcast, Ben-Gurion had said: “We need to tell the public the exact truth, that is what we can promise, and what we promise, that’s what will be, and there is nothing more than that. The public will know what it can hope for. Our public is not idiotic. If the government tells people you won’t get ten eggs a week, because we only have four eggs per person per week, but you’ll get those four eggs on time—they won’t be pleased, but they will understand that if there aren’t any, there aren’t. But if they don’t believe that, either, then the foundations are undermined.”9 When the government vested total power in Ben-Gurion to suppress the black market, the move was inevitably interpreted as an emergency measure

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and an admission that the policy of price controls and rationing did not have the public’s support. Judging from the reaction of Ben-Gurion and his first two governments to plummeting public trust, the crisis that preceded the local elections of 1950 seems to have been a much larger and more powerful one than the periodic coalition crises his administration had faced before. Participants in government and Mapai forums that discussed the economic and social crisis termed it a “catastrophe” and referred to the public’s behavior as a “psychosis.” Ben-Gurion asserted that one of the foundations of the black market was “the feeling that there is no law and no enforcement, no government.”10 In the Knesset, the coalition had to cope with the opposition’s vociferous demands to hold new elections. The opposition parties insisted that elections were a legal imperative, primarily on the ground that the first Knesset had actually been elected as a constituent assembly, although it functioned as a legislature once the provisional governing council was dissolved in 1949. (In June 1950, the Knesset decided to legislate a series of basic laws in lieu of a constitution.) They argued that this required the legislature to obtain a new mandate from the electorate.11 Another argument was that the population had changed hugely since the first general elections, as a result of mass immigration. The Knesset thus no longer represented the population. The opposition assumed that, during the twenty-one months since the last elections, public opinion had also changed, largely as a result of the ongoing economic and political crisis.12

The Local Elections Law The subject of local government elections was raised in the press as early as the winter of 1948–49, when the interior committee of the provisional state council discussed changes in the law governing municipalities. The discussions dragged on, and the elections were postponed several times. Principally, the committee wanted to change the procedure. Local elections under the British Mandate administration were inegalitarian in the extreme—suffrage was restricted to males aged twenty-one and older who had paid a certain minimum local tax (although some municipalities did grant the vote to women and the indigent). In the end, the committee decided that local councils would be elected on a proportional basis, and the voting age was reduced to eighteen.13 The elections were postponed repeatedly for a number of reasons. One of them was apparently Mapai’s apprehension about competing in local elec-

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tions when it was pursuing an unpopular economic policy.14 The postponements, and the delay in the revision of the election law, gave the opposition ammunition for castigating the Mapai government.15 Once the new legislation was completed, the coalition parties presented their innovations as an achievement. Mapai particularly touted its accomplishment, but the religious Zionists also trumpeted the changes, which significantly expanded the citizenry’s political rights.16 The extension of the vote to women and to all inhabitants of every locality corrected a long-standing injustice.17

The Parties Prepare A polarized political system and public discourse can highlight the range of opinions and forces operating within a society, especially at election time. During election campaigns, political parties seek to differentiate their positions sharply from those of their opponents. As part of this process, issues, positions, and perceptions undetectable at other times rise to the surface. Campaign rhetoric not only offers evidence of what parties say to attract voters, but also betrays what they refrain from saying. Contenders in a political contest may use grandiose oratory to conceal parts of an ideology or program that they think voters will not like. An analysis of public discourse during and immediately following an election campaign can thus highlight discrepancies between the fiery rhetoric offered before an election and the realistic agenda subsequently pursued by the parties that form the government. Elections also offer a way of discerning how political parties understand the wishes of the populace whose votes they seek, and what they tell the public in order to gain its support. During an election campaign, parties say what they think the public wants to hear, or seek to educate the public and convince voters to support particular policies. An examination of the way political parties relate to the populations whose votes they seek makes it possible to identify groups that different parties believe are potential defectors from the rival camp to theirs, and why they think such groups might switch their loyalties. The points of similarity among the platforms of different parties show the issues on which a conscious or unconscious consensus exists among citizens. Transcripts of discussions held in closed party forums reveal the process by which election strategy is crystallized. Proposed strategies and tactics make it possible for the historian to see into the conceptual world and the social and cultural views of party members. The outcomes of elections can and do influence the policies

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pursued by the resulting government, as well as the public agenda and day-today life. The public and political discourses about the results express and reflect contemporary concepts and values, and the mood of the public—or a section of it. The dissension in Mapai’s ranks as the party prepared to fight an election in the midst of a political, social, and economic crisis is revealing in just this way. Government ministers and the prime minister himself found themselves the targets of fierce invective in party forums. At a meeting of the party’s Political Committee, Minister of Finance Eliezer Kaplan responded to his critics: As I listen to all the things my comrades have said here, the inevitable conclusion is that all or almost all members of the government should resign, and then the parliamentary faction will either provide other people for the government or we’ll have elections. . . . (D. Ben-Gurion: I have heard horrible things from the comrades. I said, why don’t you take it to its conclusion and tell us “Go to hell?”) I warn our comrades against this. And not because I want to prevent criticism. . . . With all the freedom to criticize that they have, they shouldn’t talk that way, because by talking they amplify the psychology that the government doesn’t have the civic courage to resign. The courage is there. But there is also fear, and the fear is not of resigning but of the consequences of resigning.18

Mapai clearly began the campaign at a disadvantage, and not only in the realm of public opinion. At least part of the time, the party feared that it would soon have to face the voters in a general election as well.19 The immigration-induced surge in Israel’s population caused the party machine anxiety, in part because it had to figure out how to win the hearts of the newcomers. Activists sensed that they did not have the means—in particular, the instruments of mass communication—that they needed to address the immigrants in their own languages.20 Middle-class tradesmen and skilled workers, as well as members of the professions (some of whom had identified with Mapai in the past) were not expected to vote for Mapai in 1950, largely because of its economic program.21 The members of the party’s bureau, the body that ran its day-to-day administrative affairs, were well aware of the severity of the austerity program as a whole, and especially the panic it had caused among housewives. They knew very well that even if the government’s new economic policy were to succeed, its benefits would not be evident for a few months. That would be months too late to help Mapai in the local elections. Even the votes of Histadrut members, a group that the party should have had in its

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pocket, did not seem guaranteed.22 Given the obstacles, the Mapai apparatus realized that it would have to mobilize the party membership in an all-out battle to win the elections, knowing that they would have to “defend and cover for the mistakes made by our government.”23 In speaking of the public’s crisis of confidence, the members of the party’s bureau voiced their anxiety about the approaching elections. Yet the evidence indicates that Mapai officials did not really think that the public had changed in any fundamental way. They still believed that the country’s citizens were, by and large, prepared to make personal sacrifices for other Israelis and Israel. The problem, in their view, was that at this particular point in time, the public was undergoing a spiritual crisis. The optimistic presumption was that it was a passing phase, but that view was abandoned once the election results came in. Some members of the party began to sense that the public’s willingness to make sacrifices had declined, and that they confronted voters much more concerned with their private affairs and personal welfare than had been the case in the past.24 In predicting the results of the local elections, party activists ranged from confidence that the party would win in 80 percent of the municipalities, to more realistic estimations. They thought that the party had good prospects in cities like Lod and Ramla (inhabited mostly by new immigrants), and the moshavot (the Zionist farming villages founded at the end of the nineteenth century, many of which were in the process of urbanization). But the realists believed that victory in the large cities of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa was no more than a fantasy.25 Tel Aviv, which had been ruled by the bourgeois center almost continuously since it was founded, was the biggest concern: “The central place we expect a debacle is Tel Aviv, and I don’t say defeat, I say debacle. A debacle is more than a defeat. This is the major campaign of the Rokach regime; it is the principal campaign of the General Zionists; here they plan to build themselves up in anticipation of elections to the Knesset, image-wise and symbolically. A debacle in Tel Aviv can sometimes mean a debacle throughout the country, because Tel Aviv is Tel Aviv and it has huge psychological and political repercussions.”26 Consequently, Mapai conducted its municipal campaign, at least some of the time, as if its defeat were preordained.27 The middle-class General Zionists were Mapai’s chief nemesis. As the elections approached, the General Zionists organized special sections for immigrants, according to their country of origin: Bulgarians, Turks, Central Europeans, Sephardim, and Yemenites. It had a women’s organization that, in addition to doing political work, engaged in social welfare and educational

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activities. The party also sponsored youth groups. Like its rivals, the General Zionists and organizations associated with it offered aid to immigrants who then cast their lot with the party. Like the Histadrut, it sponsored a health plan and a housing construction company. It helped its members settle in different parts of the country, in particular in the cities and the moshavot.28 The General Zionist Party did not archive its documents, which has made it difficult for historians to ascertain the mood of the party’s members during the local election campaign. The party activist Shneur Zalman Avramov, later elected to represent the General Zionists in the Knesset, wrote in his memoirs that the General Zionists were weak and divided at the time.29 Yet the party conducted a vociferous, fiery campaign. The passion with which its leaders and officials reacted to the order rationing clothing and shoes showed that it got its message across effectively. It was clearly intent on scoring a success. It made a sophisticated bid for voter support, taking maximum advantage of the opportunities that came its way.30 Eliyahu Eliashar, who served in the first Knesset as a representative of the Sephardi party and later switched to the General Zionists, pointed out the benefits that the opposition could reap from the impending vote. In all democratic countries, he noted, municipal elections serve as weather vanes of the public mood and often herald the results of national elections.31 A part of the General Zionists’ campaign in the local elections was aimed not just at the narrow goal of gaining municipal power, but also at chipping away at Mapai’s hegemony on the national stage. They called on voters to use their local ballots to cast a vote of no confidence in the Mapai-led government. The middle-class party sought to destabilize the government coalition so as to force Mapai into a general election.32 The left-wing opposition joined the free-for-all against the government. Mapam, vociferously pro-Soviet, also had an interest in using the municipal elections to undermine Ben-Gurion’s coalition and to demonstrate that the balance of political power had shifted. Mapam’s goal was to win enough seats in the Knesset to make it impossible for Ben-Gurion to form a government without its participation.33

Fighting for Votes The local elections presented an organizational challenge. The Interior Ministry had trouble keeping track of the huge number of immigrants who had ar-

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rived in the country. In October 1950, it counted about 411,000 eligible voters. Some 35,000 individuals—mostly immigrants—filed appeals about their registration, most claiming that they had been unjustly denied the right to vote or had been registered in the wrong location. The legal system had to determine whether or not the petitioners should be allowed to vote.34 In the end, some 450,000 voters were certified to cast ballots in forty-three municipalities.35 The summer of 1950, when the voter rolls were made public, marked the official beginning of the election campaign.36 The press addressed a variety of issues during the campaign. Unsurprisingly, some of them were specific to certain localities. Education, welfare, and infrastructure are, of course, always issues in local elections. I will focus here on the national issues that were at the heart of the struggle for votes. The most important was the economy. Both the right-wing and left-wing opposition blamed Mapai for the country’s economic decline. Left-wing newspapers accused the ruling party of aiding the bourgeois right, charging that the masses suffered from shortages while speculators were getting rich. Mapam accused Mapai of having created the conditions that allowed the black market to flourish, and that its campaign against the phenomenon was colored by party considerations.37 The black market was a prominent theme in the speeches made by all parties, and they all condemned it.38 Opposition parties accused Mapai of bias in the distribution of rations. They castigated the government for undermining the rule of law through its inability to supply rations when and where promised. Mapai was also responsible, its opponents claimed, for its failure to implement price controls effectively. The opposition accused the government of not enforcing economic strictures on people with ties to the Histadrut and its subsidiaries. Furthermore, the opposition charged that Sephardi and Oriental Jews suffered discrimination—they were kept away from the centers of power, high-paying jobs, and economic resources like business loans and bore the major brunt of rationing and price controls. The private sector was depicted as being strangled by the Histadrut and its subsidiaries, which enjoyed special treatment, and the government was blamed for the fall in the value of Israeli currency. Opposition parties also accused Mapai of violating civil rights and democratic values. Dov Yosef had no choice but to address the food crisis at election rallies. He spoke apologetically, comparing the supply of food in Israel to that in England and claiming that the decline in the quantity and quality of the nourishment

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being supplied to Israelis had not had any adverse health consequences. In defense of his policies, he claimed that the mortality rate in Israel was the lowest in the world. He told his audiences that a limited diet was actually beneficial to people suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, which, he noted, were typical Jewish maladies. He implied that a vegetarian diet would guarantee a long life.39 The parties used different tactics to appeal to different sectors of the public. Mapai called on its traditional supporters to rally around it. It expected that its core members would display their gratitude at the polls for the Histadrut’s achievements and its contributions to their welfare. True, Mapai declared that its potential voters were “the worker . . . the laborer . . . the official . . . the working intellectual class . . . people of culture and intellect . . . the inhabitants of the suburbs [in Israel, unlike in the United States, the suburbs were where poor people lived] and poor neighborhoods, the artisans”40—but it fought for the support both of its secondary pool of voters, craftsmen, and of its primary supporters, the workers. During the campaign, Mapai officials expressed their concern that the working public, the party’s heart and soul, might not vote for it. This anxiety turned out to be justified. The General Zionists and Herut also made a major effort to gain the working-class vote. They appealed in particular to the workers and poor of the Oriental community, rousing the ire of Mapai.41 In fact, Mapai was incensed that the General Zionists were not content to seek the votes of their traditional supporters—tradesmen, independent farmers, and manufacturers. The parties also appealed specifically to housewives, in response to the mood of women voters. A writer for the General Zionist daily Haboker estimated that “there is hardly a woman who is pleased with the state of the country, whether she belongs to the working class or the professions or the well off, because getting groceries . . . demands the kind of effort that makes them all mad. The problem is entirely different. The question should be put this way: Are the sacrifices being demanded of women really absolutely necessary because of the mass immigration, or could things be otherwise? Our answer is: Yes, definitely. Very much so. But our government did not want otherwise.”42 The writer, a woman, claimed that apartments could be constructed more cheaply and better than those built by Solel Boneh; that produce could be sold at cheaper prices than those set by Tnuva, the farm produce marketing cooperative society; and that there were better stores than HaMashbir—all three of these firms being Histadrut enterprises. True, she wrote, municipal elections

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did not send candidates to the Knesset, but the public could use them to show its dissatisfaction with the government’s policies. The issues falling under the purview of the local authorities, she added, were particularly important for women. The General Zionists portrayed themselves as supporting individual freedom, a free-market economy, and unrestricted immigration. They opposed monopolies (for example, the public transportation cooperatives, Dan and Egged, and Tnuva, all having ties to the Histadrut) and supported substantive democracy.43 Herut also made a direct appeal to women at its election rallies. The current regime, Herut’s leaders charged, had turned the Hebrew woman into nothing more than a number. They portrayed housewives as victims, spending their entire day making their way through a thicket of points and food shortages. Women, Herut’s spokesmen claimed, could use their votes to force a fundamental change in the way the country was governed and to usher in a period of production and plenty.44 Herut viewed self-employed artisans, some of whom had supported Mapai in the past, as a target population. The party surmised that Mapai would fail to get this group’s support because the artisans would oppose a regime they viewed as taking food from their mouths and the mouths of their children.45 Mapai had decided that its local slates of candidates would appear under the name of the Histadrut. So, to promote Mapai candidates throughout the country, Ben-Gurion sent out a “letter to voters” that laid out the labor organization’s achievements. The Histadrut, he said, did not look after the interests of workers alone—it also sought to help members of the professions, small tradesmen, and artisans.46 The General Zionists responded vehemently to the letter. Their response reflects their appreciation of the respect with which BenGurion was held by the public. The General Zionists presumed that despite the government’s failures and blunders, Israelis nevertheless viewed Ben-Gurion as an eminent leader of great integrity and undoubted devotion to the public. The General Zionists were concerned that the prime minister’s personal support for the Histadrut slates would be detrimental to their campaign. So they focused their anger on Ben-Gurion’s appeal to “their” voters. An editorial in Haboker noted the government’s long-standing dispute with the associations representing the country’s doctors, merchants, and craftsmen—which were not Histadrut affiliates. The editorial claimed that all the Histadrut’s achievements had actually been aimed at advancing the interests of its members and officials, rather than the interests of the public at large.47

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As the election approached, it became increasingly clear that the General Zionists had become Mapai’s chief rival.48 In his letter to the voters, Ben-Gurion portrayed this party as having controlled local governments in the past under the sponsorship of the country’s foreign overlords, who had appointed people associated with the party to municipal positions without holding elections.49 His point was that the General Zionists were antidemocratic, whereas Mapai had worked to promote equality and to amend the local government law to make it democratic. In response, the General Zionists touched on no less raw a nerve—the public’s sense that the austerity laws were being enforced unequally, and that people with ties to the regime and the Histadrut were getting more resources, raw materials, and food than were people without such connections. In other words, the economic and social crisis was not the only concern of voters as the municipal elections approached. Equality, democracy, and civil rights were no less important issues. The claim of inequality seems to have been a key weapon for supporters of the General Zionists. The claim that the private sector was being shortchanged, and especially that citizens without connections to Mapai and the Histadrut were not getting their fair share, was the middle-class party’s chief ammunition. They played on the public’s resentment of the disparity between what the average person had to put up with and the myriad perks and benefits that people with connections to the government and Histadrut received.50 Mapai, for its part, portrayed the General Zionist administration in Tel Aviv as exploitative, discriminatory, and inequitable. Mapai’s charges seem not to have made much of an impression—the incumbents won handily in the city.51 The General Zionists claimed that their fundamentally capitalist ideology was in fact more egalitarian than socialism. Freedom, they said, promised the individual not only personal liberty but also equality, regardless of the notable inequality that is the inevitable result of a free market. For the General Zionists, their battle against the socialist regime was aimed not only at gaining control of the country’s economic power centers but also at shoring up one of the foundations of democracy, individual rights. “Socialism is by nature undemocratic,” an article in Haboker claimed. “It is doctrinaire and inflexible, thwarts initiative, and strips the individual of his individuality. . . . We favor real democracy and are fighting against the dictatorship of socialism, which enslaves workers even more than capitalism does.”52 The General Zionists accused Mapai of systematically blocking the estab-

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lishment of real democracy in Israel. A prime example was Mapai’s decision not to write a constitution for the country.53 The erudite discussion of democratic and constitutional principles conducted in the Knesset and its committees found its way into the election campaign. Everyday experience and needs were explained to the public as deriving from the fundamental tenets of democracy. Election rhetoric helped instill these principles in the public mind and explain to the voters how public policy affected their lives at home, on the bus, and in the corner grocery store. The principle of equality, as it entered public discourse before and following the local elections, went beyond the tired slogans of class or sectorial warfare. Herut and the ethnic parties made ethnic discrimination an issue in the elections: “The Sephardi and Oriental public is increasingly becoming aware that they are second-class citizens, that the current regime discriminates against them, that they are treated like stepchildren in government and municipal offices. . . . The Sephardim and Oriental Jews are disadvantaged and discriminated against in all the benefits that the state gives to its citizens: in acceptance for civil service and municipal positions, in education, in housing, in social work services, and so on, the feeling is that a person belonging to these ethnic groups receives no support or aid.”54 In response to these charges, Mapai proclaimed that its “melting pot” policy promoted equality and cultural enrichment. Its party newspaper, Hador, claimed: The complex reality of our lives makes it impossible to ignore the existence of different ethnic communities, the varieties of traditions, cultures, countries of origin, and internal relations that have for generations shaped the spiritual and social character of each ethnic group. This variety can truly enrich the culture of the entire nation. We do not aspire to “Prussian” unity in our nation, to a unity that denies shades of culture and tradition, but rather to a unity based on intermixture and grafting [new ethnic groups onto the main body of Israeli society]. . . . Each community in Israel will not contribute to the culture of the nation by negating [its cultural heritage] itself but rather through a vital effort to draw out and purify its uniqueness and to make it the possession of the collective.55

Mapai did not apologize for being biased, or even admit that discrimination existed. It pointed out, however, that objective conditions sometimes unintentionally produced discriminatory results. Mapai accused ethnic parties of exploiting their communities’ sense of victimization to achieve sinecures for

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their leaders.56 Since equality, democracy, and civil rights were central issues in the elections, each party offered a broad and comprehensive statement of its democratic principles. Mapai—which justifiably cited its expansion of suffrage as proof of its commitment to broad-based democracy—also enumerated its achievements in expanding civil rights.57 But the Communist newspaper Kol Ha’am disputed Mapai’s democratic credentials, noting that the government was not allowing municipal elections to take place in regions where there was a large Arab population (although Arabs living in municipalities that were not under military rule did participate in the elections). These zones remained under military rule and, the Communists charged, Mapai had abandoned these citizens to exploitation by military personnel and local leaders appointed by the army.58 The General Zionists claimed that their goal was to restructure life in Israel and make it easier, and to turn the country into a model of freedom and equality.59 Herut proclaimed its allegiance to civil liberties in the context of other issues, such as its advocacy of a constitution, and claimed that the country’s urban centers could not flourish without individual freedoms.60 On the eve of the elections, the General Zionists made a new claim. They attacked Mapai for limiting freedom of speech: “We are now in a time when a large part of the population is too hesitant, anxious, and even terrified to try to say what they really think. The fact is that a large proportion of the citizenry is apprehensive that, if they speak their consciences freely, their positions and even livelihoods will suffer.”61 Mapam devoted much of its campaign not only to equality, which was to be expected given its socialist ideals, but—ironically for a party that at that time adhered devoutly to the Soviet Stalinist line—also to civil liberties, particularly freedom of conscience. The party presented itself as a force that would “nurture the true foundations of democracy, true civil equality, to prevent discrimination against minorities and ethnic groups, and to prevent corruption.”62 Principally, it charged that the government had infringed on civil rights through religious coercion. Mapai, it said, had surrendered to the demands of the United Religious Front, a member of Ben-Gurion’s coalition, to enforce religious law in the areas of marriage, divorce, and Sabbath prohibitions, such as prohibiting public transportation on Saturdays. Mapam made sure that this subject would be in the headlines in the days just before the elections.63 As election day approached, tempers rose and political messages became sharper.64 In a front-page article in Haboker, Yosef Serlin of the General Zion-

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ists summarized the issues that faced the voters: the quality of each party’s candidates, their experience, and their qualifications; and the likelihood that the results of the local elections would lead to early elections for the Knesset and thus to a change in regime. A change of government would liberate citizens from arbitrary strictures, by which he meant the austerity program: “An ambience of supervision is taking form, a system of intrusion into the lives of citizens, into their very refrigerators. The ambience of informing has even reached children. A climate is being created in this country that is detrimental to individual freedom and to the sense of liberty, and all this for the purpose of glorifying rule by decree as a way of life in this country, a calamity for the citizen and a catastrophe for the state!”65 The elections were a test for the young country’s democratic foundations, in particular free choice and proper procedure. Mapam accused Mapai of pressuring Arab voters to vote for its candidates.66 The ominous atmosphere was lightened by humor, as in this passage from Ma’ariv: “The ‘parliament’ of Rothschild Avenue has now, of course, taken up the subject of the municipal elections. If the ‘parliament’ was representative of most voters, I doubt if [Tel Aviv Mayor] Israel Rokach would be reelected. But they are not leaving Mapai out, which they blame for all the troubles and hardships that have come upon us . . . as well as this plight of the rise in power of the . . . General Zionists. . . . Mapai is guilty . . . because . . . Mapai conducted ‘this kind of politics’ . . . and pushed the masses into Rokach’s arms.”67 Despite the humorous tone of this piece, the writer pointed out a week later that many voters were going to the polls perplexed and confused. He said that they did not know whether to continue to support the parties they had voted for in the past, or to cast a protest vote against the government by voting for one of the opposition parties. The choice between the two largest parties, Mapai and the General Zionists, seemed like one between a cheat and a liar. The author of the piece suggested to his bewildered readers that they vote for the party that, in their locality, seemed best suited to addressing the problems of infrastructure, education, industry, commerce, and immigrant absorption. He warned them not to trouble their heads with big, fateful issues that were not, in any case, going to be determined by the municipal elections.68

⡬ Chapter 5

The Municipal Election Results and Their Significance

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he municipal elections were held on November 14, 1950. Support for Mapai declined precipitously, compared to what it had been in the elections for the first Knesset. The General Zionists made large gains. Mapai’s slates of candidates received 27.3 percent of the votes; the General Zionists 24.5 percent. In comparison, Mapai had garnered 35.7 percent in the national elections of 1949, when only 5.2 percent of voters had supported the General Zionists. The latter party picked up the votes that Mapai lost, but other contestants, such as the religious parties and Herut, whose principal support was in the cities, also saw some of their voters switch to the General Zionists. The General Zionist gains in the big cities were especially impressive. In Jerusalem the party’s vote surged from 1.0 percent to 15.9 percent. In Tel Aviv it climbed from 7.2 percent to 31.1 percent. There, the new votes came largely from Mapai, which lost a third of its strength, and from Herut and the religious parties, which saw their support decline by a similar proportion. In Haifa the General Zionists zoomed from 7.7 percent to 22.2 percent, again largely at the expense of Mapai, Herut, and the religious parties. Mapai did not suffer alone—it dragged the other coalition parties down with it.1

Mapai An editorial in Hador, the Mapai newspaper, claimed that the vote was a big success for Mapai: “The election results speak for themselves: despite the oppositionist mood of the citizenry, despite rationing and austerity, which adversely affect habits and needs, despite all this, [Mapai] held its ground.” But Mapai’s stinging decline in Tel Aviv could not be papered over. Despite the numbers, the author of the editorial minimized the significance of these returns: “Tel Aviv is

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not the country and the country is not Tel Aviv.”2 Davar also did its best to play down the significance of the results and to make excuses.3 Writers in the Histadrut newspaper claimed that within two days after the election, it had become clear that the strength of the workers’ parties had grown in nearly every city and locality except Tel Aviv. One writer rejected the opposition parties’ demand for early elections to the Knesset, on the ground that the municipal balloting did not testify to any “major shift in the balance of power that would justify new elections.”4 Only on November 17 did Davar acknowledge that the Histadrut’s slates had failed. The writer quoted a member of the organization’s executive committee, who called on the labor movement to take stock and reinforce unity. The fact that the two major labor parties, Mapai and Mapam, ran separate slates was, he said, the principal reason for the decline in the working class’s power.5 But denial continued.6 Full awareness of the dimensions of the defeat appeared only in the periodical Ashmoret, published by Mapai’s young guard. One writer there attributed the loss to the public’s hatred of Mapai because of its failures, especially its moral failings. He acknowledged the party’s mistakes while at the same time pointing to its many achievements. Yet he made no attempt to rationalize its failure to distribute resources and food equally.7 In another article in the same publication, Avraham Ofer argued that the government’s economic policy, the severity of the austerity program, and especially the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy were what sealed the party’s fate. He devoted most of his attention to the state of civil rights: We need to let the public feel freer. Obviously, we are not yet at peace with the Arab countries. People are aware of the restrictions on citizens that are necessary to get out of the economic jam, but our public rejects the imprisonment of people and leading them handcuffed through the streets of the city, in particular before they are proven guilty in court. It does not accept, in any way, the arrest of people in the middle of the night, taking them out of their beds, even if they have not reported for reserve duty or something like that. It will not get accustomed to “scenes” at the port when immigrants come, it does not want to be subject to the fear of arbitrary confiscations [the reference is to the seizure of food and other items from immigrants upon their arrival]. Here the regime, the army, and the police have too many rights. Let’s give more rights to the citizen. [Citizens] will not give up one thing, which can’t be bought with foreign currency—more freedom.8

A few days later, Mapai’s daily, Hador, also acknowledged defeat. A party activist argued that the party’s initial attempt to interpret the election as a vic-

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tory was unacceptable. He offered several reasons for the defeat. One was the searches of immigrants’ luggage upon their arrival in the country, and the confiscation of some of the food they had brought with them to sell. Dollars were also confiscated from the immigrants, he noted, and replaced with Israeli currency at the official exchange rate, which was far lower than the black-market rate. Not only immigrants were hurt by these actions, he said. The newcomers lost all their savings and were left penniless and resentful. But their relatives also suffered. Some of these people, he believed, had voted for the General Zionists in revenge. A second reason was the war against the black market, which had resulted in senseless damage to merchants for inconsequential violations. One example he offered was the arrest of a shopkeeper on Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv because a few already faded “rags” on display in his store window were not listed in his inventory. Another example was the arrest of building contractors when inspectors found them with tiny, uninventoried quantities of pipes or wood—the assumption being that the material had been acquired on the black market. Such cases, he wrote, aroused the anger not only of the victims themselves, but also of their employees, members of the Histadrut. These workers also voted for the General Zionists, out of revenge. A third reason, he suggested, was the bad attitude toward overseas investors who came to Israel with good intentions, wishing to establish businesses. Government bureaucrats, most of whom were affiliated with Mapai, exhausted such entrepreneurs with red tape until they went home and took their money with them. The fourth reason this writer gave for the election debacle was the way the clothing and shoe rationing order was implemented. Mapai lost a lot of votes as a result, he said, especially among women. At a Mapai Central Committee meeting at the end of November, party officials castigated the author for daring to criticize the party publicly.9 Addressing a Central Committee meeting convened to discuss the election, Party Secretary General Ziama Aharonowitz (later Zalman Aran), explicitly acknowledged that Mapai and the other coalition parties had been for all intents and purposes defeated by the General Zionists. The most painful thing for the party was the fact that many members of the Histadrut had not voted for it. A full 12,000 members who had in the past been identified with the party did not bother to cast their ballots or, even worse, voted for the General Zionists. Aharonowitz gave four reasons for the rout: 1. The “measures of rationing” in both senses—the quantity of goods and the measures used to enforce it. Many citizens viewed both with indignation.

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in the city square 2. The second factor is the government apparatus, the general assumption that if a person needs the help of the civil service and thus comes into contact with the bureaucracy, he immediately becomes an enemy of the government. 3. The third factor is the lack of any policy toward the middle class—artisans, small tradesmen, and professionals. The impression is that it was assumed a priori that they would turn their backs on us. 4. The fourth factor is a failure of public relations. No one in the population has any clear idea what the connection is between the great ideal of the ingathering of the exiles and the suffering of the individual.10

The general problems raised by Aharonowitz, alongside other factors that had brought about the debacle, were then discussed in detail. The Central Committee concluded that fundamental changes had to be made in the economic order, the first being making more food available to the public.11 Participants at the meeting also resolved to act to bring the middle class closer to Mapai.12 At a Central Committee meeting a week later, other speakers denounced the despair that had overcome the party. They said that those who acknowledged defeat had lost their senses. Nevertheless, they enumerated the reasons for the loss and pointed fingers at the people responsible. Dov Yosef was the principal target of the delegates’ poison arrows. One speaker said: “We suddenly turned rationing into an ideal, and that’s what we warned our comrades about in the election, you can lay siege to a city, but you can’t keep an entire country under siege. You can’t turn a thing into an ideal when public opinion opposes it.”13 Another speaker took a similar tack: We must realize that we are now dealing with a diverse public, a public that is perhaps ready for a big one-time sacrifice, but not for a little sacrifice every day and at every hour. Those who speak to this public in the name of a higher interest, in the name of the state, are trying to move the clock of history backward. In their imaginations they see a time, twenty or thirty years ago, when people lived on a dry crust of bread spread with inspiration from above and faith, and with great ideals. But then we were few. . . . We were select. . . . Today there is a large public, with different levels of education, of culture, ways of life, and conceptions of life. To demand of this public what we demanded twenty years ago of the public then—that is, unfortunately, futile.14

Some of the speakers referred to the inner moral weakness of the party, its members, and its representatives in the government and bureaucracy, who were making demands on the party that they themselves could not abide by:

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Do we all eat the same food? What does “restrict your calories” mean? Is this the way we live? Does our public, our officials, live this way? What moral right do we have to do this? . . . We need to educate people in the pioneering spirit. Are we educating people in the pioneering spirit? Actually, we’re educating them in careerism, our youth are immersed in a careerist atmosphere. . . . Mapai does not express the reality of austerity. . . . I tell you that I am not reconciled with this . . . relationship between the government apparatus and the public. If so, with what inner conviction can I explain that the situation is not so bad? . . . Do we have the power to demand of the nation that it hold itself back?15

The disparity between the pioneering ideal and the actual lives of party and Histadrut officials came up again and again, and for a long time were a fixture of the internal discourse within Mapai. Pinhas Lavon, who had recently received the agriculture portfolio and responsibility for the food supply, informed the committee’s members about facts with which the public at large was well acquainted, but which, he claimed, had somehow escaped the eyes of some of his policymaking colleagues. He said that what the government had told the public in 1950 about nutrition simply was not true. “We wanted to persuade the Jews in this country that we were actually providing them with sufficient food. But they didn’t understand, so they were not satisfied with this food,” he said sarcastically. Lavon related that a physician from overseas had offered him a scientific and medical explanation for the policy’s failure. When a human being does not receive sufficient animal protein, the doctor explained, he becomes irritated and unbalanced. This could explain why Mapai lost the election. Lavon said he was not sure that this was really the cause of the election debacle. But, he said, after assuming his new post and learning the facts, he no longer doubted that the nourishment provided to Israel’s population did not meet the standards of what could fairly be called “a reasonable level of subsistence.” A democratic country could not, he argued, maintain such a regime. He claimed that the British austerity program, had wisely had made a Herculean effort to ensure that everyone received the necessary minimum amount of food, while the government had kept down wages and profits, and even imposed higher taxes than Israel had. The minimum had not been defined by erroneous theories, but rather by the population’s real needs, taking into special consideration the British people’s special predilections. The administration had enough common sense, he said, to realize that its citizens needed certain items, even if the quantity was restricted, in order to hold out. What we need, Lavon asserted, is less ideology and more common sense.16

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Mapai’s membership realized that the government had failed in its attempt to inculcate Israelis with the values of cooperation, equality, and especially sacrifice in the name of supporting immigration and the state. Neither did they see much chance of succeeding at this task in the future. Many of Mapai’s supporters thus recommended that the party and its members in the government and bureaucracy adopt a strategy that would ensure not only the building and fortification of the state, but also the continuation of Mapai rule.17 In practical terms, the plan Mapai adopted to minimize the damage caused by the local elections was to sign a compact with Mapam regarding municipal government. The agreement guaranteed that the workers’ parties would rule in most settlements and prevented the General Zionists from using their electoral gains to achieve power. The right-wing parties were, of course, furious, and proclaimed that Mapai and Mapam had colluded to exclude them. They viewed the alliance as a dishonest and democratically illegitimate attempt to perpetuate the labor movement’s control.18

The General Zionists Unsurprisingly, the General Zionist daily Haboker reveled in the party’s impressive gains. So did its Knesset members.19 Victory was sweet, but party spokesmen and journalists displayed little generosity toward their opponents, who they felt had played an unfair game against them.20 Haboker published reports about how Mapai campaigners in Jerusalem had unlawfully tried to tip the election their way. Another article claimed that the Arabs of Beit Safafa, an Arab village that had been annexed to the capital, had all voted for the Mapai slate; a few weeks before they had all been given “thousands of food and clothing points.”21 Just before the election, Haboker had reported that Mapai had imposed a reign of terror in Yehud, a town east of Tel Aviv that was inhabited by immigrants. According to the paper, the ruling party had hired teenagers to attack General Zionist campaigners and disrupt the events they organized. One father in the town, whose daughter was sick, complained that the local Histadrut-run health clinic had refused to treat her even though he was a member of the labor organization—on the grounds that he did not belong to Mapai and had instead joined the General Zionists. A workingman in Yehud who had transferred his daughter out of a Histadrut-sponsored school related that he had been threatened with dismissal from his job if he did not transfer her back.22 In Karkur, General Zionist candidates who were members of the

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Histadrut received threatening letters from the town’s workers’ council (the local Histadrut chapter). The newspaper printed a copy of the letter.23 Yet another Haboker article claimed that eligible voters in cities and moshavot, especially new immigrants, discovered too late that their registrations had been canceled because “left-wing activists working in abandoned towns [Arab settlements whose inhabitants had fled or been expelled during the War of Independence, where immigrants had been settled] knew how to remove people from the voter rolls.”24 After learning of their success, the General Zionists sought to use the spotlight they were enjoying to tell their supporters that they had made the right choice. Their party, they proclaimed, was a morally superior alternative to Mapai. Reinforcing their positive image would improve their chances in the anticipated general election. The General Zionists thus depicted the local elections as a freedom march—one whose destination was not just private enterprise, but much more.25 Haboker’s editor-in-chief, Yosef Heftman, protested the left-wing parties’ description of the election results as merely “a move to the right.”26 He offered a vivid account of the sense of helplessness, suffocation, and weariness that had overcome many citizens in view of the huge difficulties they faced. The election results showed, he claimed, not that the public had moved to the right but rather that it had matured—Israelis now understood that they had to oppose the current regime.27 Another writer in the newspaper attributed the metamorphosis in public opinion to two factors: the General Zionists’ success in convincing voters that something was rotten in the state, and the implosion of the socialist dream in the wake of two years of badly administered austerity. He stressed that “the Jew is by nature an individualist and cannot live and breathe in a repressive atmosphere of orders and planning imposed from above.”28 Haboker put much energy into persuading its readers that it was time for new Knesset elections, as the General Zionists’ members of the Knesset were advocating.29 Among the many reasons offered in support of the demand, one in particular, offered by Heftman, involved the inevitable comparison between Israel and England. It pointed to the inherent disparity in Israeli society of the time between collectivist ideology and an individualist worldview: Our “Labor” party will have to give up the idea that it can impose on the entire population the character that it decreed in advance. . . . It will have to give up its

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in the city square vision of a unique chosen people for this Land, as it describes itself, a nation living in kibbutzim, in the spirit of the preachers of manual labor. . . . It will have to give up the principle that all other people who have not achieved collectivist social life are ephemeral, a middle class that has a right to exist only during a transition period, but whose hour to leave the stage of life has indeed come. That may be a good thing, or not, but the ruling party will have to accept the fact that this nation, the Israeli nation, includes people who do not subscribe to the socialist destiny and the collectivist social order.30

Heftman gave voice to the aspirations of many members of that generation who wished to live their lives as they saw fit, without having to surrender to the strictures of a hegemonic party. This individualist principle was broader than simply the advocacy of property rights and free enterprise, which were central tenets of the General Zionist platform. At the time of the local elections of 1950, General Zionist representatives felt that they could offer Israelis the right to live their lives as they wished. This was diametrically opposed to the concept of a mobilized citizenry that Mapai continued to try to sell to the public. The General Zionists were attentive to the public mood. They said what people wanted to hear and gave public legitimacy to personal needs and desires.31

Mapam Mapam charged that Mapai’s incompetence had shored up capitalism in Israeli society.32 But the party had to resort to an apologetic rhetoric to explain the decline in support for the workers’ movement as a whole.33 It had to blame someone, so it blamed Mapai for promoting bourgeois ideas and encouraging the working class to abandon its roots.34 Whatever the cause, Mapam (and not just Mapam) was correct in its analysis—Israel’s workers were becoming more bourgeois.35 A party spokesman made note of cultural influences: The imperialist intervention in Korea was not only the signal for the beginning of the offensive by the cabal of the international bourgeoisie—it also intensified the bourgeois spiritual, ideological, and propaganda offensive. It is using all the means at its disposal—newspapers, literature, film, radio . . . to mask the true face of imperialism and present it as the “defender of democracy and freedom,” as a force that can hold back the “danger” of Bolshevism. . . . We can find proof of this if we examine our “spiritual imports.” Do not recent American films, which ostensibly seem to lack any ideology, actually educate our audiences, and especially our youth,

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in the American spirit? The same can be said of the abundance of American literature in our bookstores, and especially the substandard work lately to be found in that literature. . . . There can be no doubt that the propaganda offensive of the international bourgeoisie, aimed with all severity at our country as well, has had no small effect in reinforcing the right-wing atmosphere in our Land.36

Western culture’s steady penetration of Israel (and its eager adoption by Israelis) could be seen in high culture—literature, the visual arts, and music— but even more so in popular culture—film, pop music, fashion, consumer habits, hygiene, and health. This certainly had had an impact on the local culture in several realms, from civil rights to consumption patterns. Yet this was not a new phenomenon. It had begun under British rule, although it intensified and broadened after independence.37

Herut Herut, the party of the right, was initially pleased to see Mapai battered. On November 16, an editorial in the party’s newspaper described the election results as the collapse of Mapai’s “one-man rule.”38 But Herut itself also suffered a resounding defeat. While the General Zionists saw their support soar, Herut, with a similar economic platform, remained far behind. Like other observers, its officials and representatives estimated that former Mapai voters had cast their ballots for the General Zionists as an act of protest against food shortages, long lines, and the bureaucracy’s bad treatment of citizens. As was the case with Mapam, writers in Herut noted that the working class was turning bourgeois: “The members of Mapai’s intelligentsia are far from being ascetic idealists . . . it is engaged in the frenzied pursuit of material assets and pleasures. Its slogans are electric refrigerators, automobiles, luxury trips, and so on, for itself. This constitutes a shedding of and reaction against the spirit of working for social equality that once characterized the labor movement. . . . For that reason . . . many workers are now seeking . . . another party and another source of public support. As a sign of protest—for themselves, out of despair with Mapai, they went to the polls and voted for the General Zionists, and less often for Herut.” But the votes were not just protest votes, this writer maintained. He took the fact that these people had not cast their ballots for Mapam as evidence that they had given up on socialism in all its guises.39

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The Independent Press David Giladi, a writer for Ma’ariv—at the time the country’s most widely read newspaper—trumpeted the Right’s gains and asserted that if Knesset elections were held at that time, the coalition parties would barely be able to secure a majority. In a sober and objective analysis of the results, he noted that the nationwide vote totals showed that the coalition parties had won more support than the opposition, and that this advantage would probably be more pronounced in elections to the Knesset. But the results nevertheless provided moral justification for an early general election, as the General Zionists and Herut demanded.40 The following day, on November 16, another one of Ma’ariv’s writers, Yitzhak Zilber, argued that the results came as no surprise. He maintained that the election was a victory for the average citizen and for Israeli democracy, and that the public had demonstrated its desire for more openness and liberalism in daily life, more freedom and less red tape.41 Giladi, also writing that day, argued that the results were tantamount to a women’s insurrection against the regime: What happened on Tuesday, November 14, was a women’s rebellion, a rebellion by the women of Tel Aviv who voted against Dov Yosef. . . . The mass of voters will not be content with circuses alone, they want bread as well. . . . It’s the women who know whether the bread [that the government claims is being supplied to the stores] is a metaphor or real bread. . . . The pot full of vapor instead of nourishing food is the concern of the housewife. She runs from one market to another, goes to the greengrocer, stands in line at the butcher’s . . . she waits for the milkman who treats her arrogantly, and whose status has grown in reverse proportion to the cream in the milk, she wages a quiet and stubborn war with the shopkeeper. She says that certain specific rations have been allocated, and he says, allocated, but not delivered. And mothers of babies . . . conduct unending duels in this land flowing with points and ration coupons. . . . Anyone who closely followed the lines at the polls, as the poll supervisors can also testify, saw that women took a much greater interest in this election than men did. The fair sex stood out in the lines and women participated in spontaneous debates at the voting booths. . . . A number of incidents at polling places serve as evidence of this women’s rebellion. These cases show that husbands were not always of the same opinion as their wives with regard to whom to vote for.42

Another article in Ma’ariv told of just such a scene. An immigrant couple was walking to a polling station in Jaffa, arguing loudly: “He had spent the

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last hour giving her propaganda for the Histadrut. She stood her ground. She didn’t understand anything about politics. She shouted: Austerity! . . . There’s no meat. . . . [Inspectors] are ransacking our refrigerators. . . . Black market. . . . Yosef. . . .” The two of them, the article said, went into the voting station separately.43 The archives do not contain breakdowns of voting patterns by gender. But such breakdowns were done after the British elections of 1950 and 1951, and they show that women tended to vote for the conservative party that offered a change in economic policy. A writer for Ha’aretz stated unequivocally, and with obvious regret, that the election results demonstrated that the voting public had taken the opportunity to remake local governments in order to express its view of the national government’s policies. He claimed that citizens were most angry about inequality between the private and public sectors. In the writer’s view, there was no way of avoiding early elections for the Knesset, because the representation of the parties in the legislature did not conform to current public opinion.44 Another writer in that newspaper, Amos Elon, took the same basic line as the General Zionists in an article titled “The Second Israel Votes.” He had visited Safed, a small town in the Galilee, just before the election and offered the newspaper’s readers his impressions of rallies conducted by different parties, and of his conversations with new immigrants living there: “What party are you from?” I explain my job. “There is pressure on the voters,” one man tells me, his blue eyes looking at me sadly from under a furrowed brow. . . . All sorts of important people and people with connections were threatening, he said, all kinds of sanctions, or the withdrawal of assistance or unemployment—if a person would not vote in a certain way. Is that true? Of course it’s true, someone interjects. As an old-time Israeli, do you believe it? Who will you vote for? I ask them not to be hasty and to lay out the facts. Who was threatening whom? You couldn’t know for sure. But there was fear that whoever voted for the opposition would suffer. . . . “But those are rumors.” “Rumors here, rumors there,” one of them said, summing up the situation. “That’s the way it is. Zelbe zach in Romania [that’s the way it was in Romania].45

Elon depicted the new immigrants as, for political purposes, blank slates, ignorant, and easy prey for political agitators: Why should it be surprising, then, that most of the people you meet in this city have been incited, to an astonishing point; that two boys from Morocco explained

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in the city square in utter seriousness that the only reason they belonged to the Communist Party was the fact that they were workers. . . . Why should it be surprising, then, that an immigrant I met coming out of a rally held by an extreme right-wing party was full of venomous hatred for the ruling party? After all, the speaker at the rally had shouted: “Mapai has already dressed the children in blue shirts; [Mapai’s functionaries are like] Cossacks . . . all they need is a whip!” . . . Many Central European immigrants I spoke to (whether or not they belonged to Mapai) displayed strong tendencies toward socialist extremism, based in many cases on statements like “Wall Street controls Solel Boneh” (a Bulgarian immigrant) or “The old-time inhabitants are getting rich at the expense of slaving immigrants” (a young highschool graduate from Yugoslavia). On the other hand, the immigrants from Arab lands I spoke to displayed special interest in the Herut movement because of: (1) their hatred of the Arabs, (2) their religious observance . . . [and] (3) open animosity toward Ashkenazim and a sense of being discriminated against (“they call us blacks”).46

A few days later, writers in Ha’aretz again discussed incidents that had sullied the democratic image that Mapai sought to project. An article summing up the local elections argued that the shocking drop in support for Mapai was not only due to its economic policies. Also to blame was the party’s use of pressure tactics and economic coercion to force citizens to join Mapai or to remain members of the party against their will. Such actions, the writer said, alienated large parts of the population from Mapai.47 Many immigrants knew little about the country’s political parties and misunderstood the rules of democratic government. Seeming to exploit this situation, the parties failed to educate the immigrants in democratic procedures— to put it mildly. Mapai may have fought to broaden suffrage in local elections, but this same democratic spirit seems not to have infused many of its field operatives, who were intent on achieving victory by any means. Many Israelis thus shared a sense of crisis and an awareness that there was a gap between their hopes and reality. Even before the elections, in October 1950, the philosopher Natan Rotenstreich described the public mood in an article called “Israeli Society in Crisis”: A thing has happened within the state of Israel that we had not anticipated, and it is alienation from the state on the part of large portions of society. Our innocent assumption was that one of the foundations of the state of Israel would be a feeling of identification between society and the state, in which “our” country would

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be perceived not only as a glorious thing, but as a possession to be fostered and kept up through constant nurturing. But reality has knocked us in the face, and has presented us with a spectacle of estrangement between the society and the state . . . a disparity between the moral cast of Israeli society as exemplified by the state and the actual morality that imbues the world of the individual.48

Rachel Cohen-Kagan, a member of the Knesset representing WIZO (the Women’s Party), had made similar remarks a few months earlier.49 Following the elections, Rotenstreich asserted that Mapai’s greatest weakness was the regime’s moral corruption.50 The local elections demonstrated that large portions of the public disapproved of the government’s economic program and believed, as did the opposition parties and other critics, that it had failed.51 The results also showed that the public had lost confidence in the government’s ability to supply it with food and to enforce the law of the land. Furthermore, the elections seemed to demonstrate that much of the public profoundly feared an economic cataclysm. This dread was supplemented by feelings of helplessness, frustration, and anger, which spread across those parts of the population that felt that they had been discriminated against in the distribution of the country’s scarce resources. These people felt that they had been treated badly and that their fundamental rights had been trampled on. The state apparatus that controlled a large part of the Israeli economy was young, inexperienced, and ignorant when it came to public service.52 In the face of severe shortages, and out of fealty to party,53 organization, settlement movement, or the Histadrut, the bureaucracy was inefficient and plagued by corruption at all levels. This began with individual dishonesty, which everyone condemned,54 and ended with corruption on the level of the collective and the institution—a kind of corruption that was then, according to contemporary social norms, viewed as semilegitimate.55 There is no way to quantify its extent, but contemporary sources confirm what human nature would lead us to expect: the strongest group was the most corrupt. It had the means, power, and conviction that its cause was just, and it could depend on the silence of its members. Weaker groups felt persecuted and were more careful to keep their hands clean, if only to ensure that they did not lose their jobs. The economy was thus not the only issue at play in the local elections, as the historian Yechiam Weitz has argued.56 Justice, equality, morality, and freedom were also on the agenda. Judging by the actions of the political parties, the discourse of rights that

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characterized the election campaign testifies to the public’s interest in equality, individual liberties, and the status of the individual. The parties would not have invested so much of their energy in making such arguments if they had not thought that they would fall on willing ears. Furthermore, even if the motives of the parties were not pure, and even if they made claims that were inconsistent with their ideologies, these arguments clearly influenced the public. In the short run, the election results made it more difficult for the governing coalition to function. Knesset Speaker Yosef Sprinzak said that the Knesset and the government operated “with utter limpness” following the elections.57 The blow the elections dealt to Mapai could be sensed at gatherings of party members. They had lost confidence in their ability to keep control of the government. The stinging rebuff the party had received at the hands of the voters sharpened the political senses of the party’s leaders and field activists. They devoted considerable time and effort to preparing for the two election campaigns of 1951—for the Zionist Congress and for the Knesset.

⡬ Chapter 6

From Poll to Poll The Elections to the Second Knesset

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he results of the local elections demonstrated the public’s lack of confidence and were a central factor in the decision to call early elections to the Knesset, as both Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett acknowledged.1 The immediate cause of the government’s downfall was a dispute between Mapai and the United Religious Front over the education that immigrant children in the transit camps should receive.2 At the time, elementary and secondary education was offered by several different “streams,” one of them a religious school system run by the Histadrut. After much arguing within the government, parents—including new immigrants— were allowed to choose what sort of education they wanted for their children. The United Religious Front demanded that its own “streams” be granted exclusivity in offering religious education to immigrant children. In short, it demanded the dismantling of the Histadrut’s religious school system. BenGurion refused to agree, even though he had up to that point gone to great lengths to appease the religious parties and to ease tensions within the coalition. After three long days of Knesset debate, Mapai’s refusal to give in led to a vote of no confidence in the government on February 14, 1951. The United Religious Front voted against the government it was serving in, and against Mapai, which it had supported in the ruling coalitions since independence. Notably, Mapam, which in the local election campaign had presented itself as a tireless force against religious coercion, supported the position of the religious parties.3 Another factor that led to the dissolution of the coalition was the severe economic crisis brought on by the burden of mass immigration, along with the economic consequences of the Korean War. The war pushed up the prices of basic commodities such as wheat, meat, and raw materials used to produce

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food and clothing. Transportation of goods by sea was also disrupted. The government found itself in a bind. On the one hand, shortages, especially of foreign currency, required it to restrict imports. On the other hand, it had to restrain demand so that it could continue to absorb large numbers of immigrants. Under the circumstances, there was no way it could repeal price controls. But the controls dampened local production and exacerbated public discontent, especially in the cities.4 Despite the declining economy, the government did not make any changes in its immigration policy. Although some leaders advocated limits on immigration, this was not a realistic option for the government at a time when large numbers of newcomers were arriving from Iraq and Romania. It viewed immigration from both countries, particularly Iraq, as a rescue operation. Efforts were made to slow the flow of immigrants but, given the circumstances, to no avail.5 During the months between the local elections of November 1950 and the national balloting in July 1951, another round of elections occurred—to the Zionist Congress, a body in which Zionists from around the world were represented.6 The latter campaign overlapped in part with the national election campaign.7 In the end, the General Zionists, although they ran slates of candidates in the Diaspora, decided to boycott the elections to the Congress that were conducted in Israel. This extreme measure was necessitated, they said, by improprieties in the collection of dues and the registration of voters and by the failure of the local branch of the World Zionist Organization to publish its voter rolls in an orderly way.8 Since Mapai faced no serious opposition in Israel, it won handily. Its leaders were pleased.9

The Competitors Most of the voters in the local elections had been old-time Israelis. Since the immigrant and transit camps, where most of the newcomers lived, were temporary or had not yet been chartered as settlements, their residents did not vote for local governments. But large numbers of new immigrants would vote in the national elections. For this reason, apparently, Ben-Gurion did not want religious education, the immediate cause of the government’s collapse, to become the central issue in the elections.10 The principal battle was between Mapai and the General Zionists.11 Mapai began its preparations for the polling as soon as the government fell in February 1951. Ben-Gurion laid out his party’s general election strategy:

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I see these elections not as a skirmish between parties for power or influence in the Knesset. In my opinion these elections should be turned into a deliberate effort to establish internal foundations for the country. On May 14 [Independence Day], the country was founded as far as the rest of the world is concerned. But there can be no state without a united and responsible people. This Knesset was a display of dysfunction, helplessness, and shameful and dangerous irresponsibility. Deep in my heart I believe and am certain that this is not a true reflection of the people. A gaggle of overwrought, rash, hateful, and ambitious hacks . . . is not a people. But I am certain that there is a people—and we must find roads to reach it, to educate it, and to mobilize it. This is, in my opinion, our principal mission. . . . A stable, strong government is a vital necessity for the state of Israel. . . . The condition for a stable government is—an absolute majority [for Mapai] in the Knesset.12

With regard to tactics, Ben-Gurion said that votes resulted from individual decisions, meaning that every man and woman needed to be approached personally.13 He told his audience to avoid the mistakes they had made leading up to the local elections. Workers’ votes should not be taken for granted, he maintained—all workers should be canvassed, except for the members of Mapam, who of course would not vote for Mapai. Ben-Gurion was concerned that working-class women would continue to vote against his party.14 Other Mapai officials agreed and demanded that the party target its message specifically at housewives.15 Yet despite all the efforts being made to gain the support of the wives of party members, during the six months leading up to the elections, party officials continued to worry about how the women would vote.16 In an appearance before Mapai functionaries in Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion stressed not his party’s major achievements or its central values, but the everyday life and welfare of the individual, things of which, he said, party officials were too often ignorant: “We, especially our activists, are immersed in great things. And we don’t notice the so-called small things, but when there are children at home, and your husband comes home late from work, the big things for a woman are milk and vegetables for her child. These are the big things that our functionaries don’t think about, because for them these things are readily available. But they are the main part of life . . . and they must be changed.”17 Ben-Gurion also stressed the importance of appealing to the middle class. The party made a special effort to gain the support of self-employed tradesmen and craftsmen.18 Immediately following the local elections, many members of Mapai had fiercely criticized the government’s economic policies, arguing that

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they made it impossible for the self-employed to earn an honest living. According to Zalman Aran, the party’s secretary general, Mapai’s economic policies had not taken into account the fact that the party would face democratic elections.19 It needed middle-class votes to win. During the months before the Knesset elections, Mapai made a considerable and sincere effort to help this group and to solve some of its problems,20 and not just because of immediate political pressures or the campaign. The party wished to entrench itself in the bourgeoisie in order to establish itself as a large, popular movement that spanned economic classes. Mapai worked hard to stem the flight of working-class voters that had been evident in the local elections, and to bring home voters who had strayed then. The party found itself facing a conflict of interest. The growing demand for skilled workers, the right to strike exercised by parts of the workforce, and the outsized profits that some sectors were able to make by taking advantage of shortages together set in motion a vicious circle of wage hikes and price increases, with no accompanying improvement in production efficiency or quality.21 With elections in the offing, the price for their support demanded by different groups—among them truckers, bakery owners, and bakery workers, even those who were loyal Mapai members—rose.22 Mapai had trouble deciding what to do. Should it retain its role as a national ruling party, responsible for the country’s economy and the welfare of all its citizens, or should it give priority to remaining in power by faithfully representing the interests of its base, the country’s workers and wage earners? Aharon Becker, the Histadrut’s trade union chief, argued that although good economic practice required the party to freeze wages, the government should not do so because such a step would be unacceptable to the working public, which would cease to support the party: “I believe that we could do that if we had the feeling that what is demanded of us would apply to the entire population without the exception of any class. . . . It may be that someone will come and say that the [economic] analysis is correct, but additional pioneerism is demanded of the Hebrew worker in this Land. . . . He must ignore everything around him and carry on his historic task of going in the vanguard. I might well also agree to that, but the worker will not listen to us, he will not accept it. We cannot demand of him things that will cause him to turn his back on us. . . . From the party’s political point of view that would be a serious, fatal mistake.”23 Many members of Mapai favored rewarding the workers, even though this was not in the best interests of the economy.24 Ranged against them were ide-

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alistic party members like Rachel Katznelson-Shazar, one of the most prominent women in Mapai. She wished to educate the working public by pointing out its moral shortcomings: The situation that has prevailed since the establishment of the state looks like a mental or spiritual illness. . . . We have a very tough internal enemy. . . . People who lack for nothing are always talking about what they lack. People who have good housing, good food, good furniture—they, too, are complaining about shortages. The party’s Central Committee should use this opportunity to tell the public that this is a time of emergency. . . . Electoral considerations should not obscure the needs of the country. . . . We need political and economic tactical considerations that can . . . slay this internal enemy, the paralysis of conscience. . . . This internal enemy is more terrible than the Arabs. We defeated the Arabs, but I don’t know if we will defeat this enemy.25

Becker and Katznelson-Shazar claimed that Israel’s workers had turned hedonistic and were evading their responsibility for the public good. This is clear from their reference to a new belief in Israeli society (or at least one that they had newly noticed), which held that to be a pioneer, to be in the vanguard and maintain a modest standard of living at a time when other members of society were consuming more, was to be a dupe. Workers were not accepting the discipline that their leaders demanded of them because they did not want to lose while others were winning. This was an available, convenient, and timely excuse. But it was perhaps useful also in papering over a deep-seated turn toward a me-first attitude, a refusal to sacrifice individual welfare on the altar of the general good when other members of society were not doing so. It signaled the end of the age of innocence and pioneering Zionism, at least on the economic level. In mid-May, the Mapai-led caretaker government that ruled between the Knesset’s no-confidence vote and the elections found itself facing increasingly severe economic repercussions from the Korean War. Global prices of goods and raw materials continued to climb, as did shipping costs. Furthermore, the American government’s generosity toward Israel declined. Israel could no longer count on free shipments of milk powder and other vital foods. The external pressures to raise food prices in Israel were reinforced by upward pressures on domestic prices, coming from both workers and employers. Bakers were demanding wage increases at the same time that bakery owners were seeking larger profit margins. Butchers and shippers of meat, ice, and

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milk were also demanding wage hikes. Mapai’s ministers and party leaders did their best to persuade party-affiliated workers to defer their demands until after the elections, but they were trapped—they felt compelled to increase some wages but feared the effect at the polls of the consequent price rises.26 For tactical political reasons, Mapai tried, as much as it could, to postpone such difficult decisions until after the elections. The exception was in education, the issue that had been the immediate cause of the fall of Ben-Gurion’s second government and of the impending national elections. Mapai decided to merge the welter of class and party-based educational “streams” into a single state-run national system.27 In doing so, it adopted, at least for public consumption, the position long advocated by the right-wing parties. Several reasons have been offered for Mapai’s reversal on the education question. One was the large size of the Histadrut’s workers’ school system, which led Mapai to hope that it would dominate the public school system and make it possible to instill labor values in all the country’s children. Another was public pressure, especially on the part of new immigrants who were fed up with the narrow, partisan nature of the schools and of the systems’ unbridled competition for pupils. A third reason was the ideological fissure between Mapai and Mapam, and the fear that Mapam’s ardently pro-Soviet ideology would percolate into the Histadrut’s workers’ school stream.28 Adopting the General Zionist position that education should be public also helped Mapai build up its image as a truly national party that sought to serve the public at large, rather than just its traditional voters.29 But on all other issues Mapai procrastinated until after the elections. It did not dare launch a new economic program, even though the country desperately needed one right away. The questions of restricting immigration, freezing wages, and raising prices, as well as the pursuit of direct negotiations with Germany over reparations payments, were also put off until after the voters had given their verdict.30

Volunteerism versus Mamlachtiyut Later scholarly work has linked the metamorphosis from the Yishuv to Israel to the shift of the society’s center of gravity from the voluntary institutions of the earlier period to the new state apparatus. To this latter end, Ben-Gurion formulated and implemented a doctrine of mamlachtiyut, a term best translated as “statism,” but with far broader connotations. By it, he meant that Israelis

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had to shift their loyalties from the class and political sectors to which they had owed allegiance during the Yishuv period to the state itself. The country’s citizens had to realize that their previous voluntary affiliation with and participation in Yishuv society had given way to a binding duty to the state and its laws. Yet, paradoxically, Ben-Gurion also fought to preserve and further citizens’ volunteerism. He strove to bridge two irreconcilable goals—keeping the pioneer spirit, with its emotional and mental commitment, and constructing and consolidating state institutions. The result was a crisis for the labor movement. According to both historians and the public discourse of the time, sources of authority such as politicians and high-ranking officials of the period broadcast an ambivalent message. On the one hand, state institutions such as the army desperately needed talented young people. Young Israelis flocked into the ranks of the bureaucracy and military for the sake of the country—as well as to further their own interests. On the other hand, the labor movement sought to preserve the pioneering spirit—that is, it decried careerism, advocating instead that young Israelis act out of ideological commitment. Scholars and thinkers have maintained that pioneerism collapsed not only because of structural and institutional changes, but also because of a new, postindependence social milieu, characterized by the spiritual anticlimax that comes over all revolutionary societies once they face the need to institutionalize their achievements. Another claim is that the origins of the crisis lay in economic processes that began during the Mandate period, which intensified with the widening of the gap between social classes after independence.31 The collapse of the pioneer spirit and the careerism of young people came up for discussion in Mapai institutions as early as the winter of 1949–50, leading to the establishment of an organization called Shahal, a Hebrew acronym for Pioneer Service for Israel.32 Its purpose was to enlist Mapai activists in important work for the good of the collective.33 Shahal did not succeed in holding back the sociocultural transformation of Israeli society, including that of the Mapai membership.34 After the local elections and a few months before the national elections, Mapai resumed its discussion of the pioneerism crisis. The party’s young guard demanded that Mapai draw the necessary conclusions from its disastrous showing at the polls and make ideological and organizational changes within the party, with the aim of promoting the democratic process.35 But the young people were dismissed by the party machine and leadership. The most effective way of rejecting their position was pointing out the

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young guard’s lack of pioneer credentials—they had not endured poverty and hardship while establishing new settlements, lived in the center rather than at the frontier, and had not set aside self-interest to work with immigrants in the camps.36 In this intraparty struggle, the leaders charged that the young party members calling for change did not have the moral standing to criticize their elders: I here stand beside quality youth, and I have a feeling, especially since the founding of the state, that the youth’s cynicism is covering up internal flaws. I asked our young people: Why don’t you stay in the army [after your mandatory service]? Can’t you leave the farm for a year or two to be in the army? But it’s not a matter of not wanting to leave the farm—it’s simply more comfortable here[.] Why are the party’s youth not going to the Negev? When I went through [worked in] the Negev, I felt a spiritual need to spend another year living in those conditions, but no such feeling exists among our youth. . . . Maybe we need to consider what pioneerism is today! I think that a big change needs to be made in this concept. Pioneerism without a state and pioneerism within the state are two different things.37

This discussion directed attention to the normative change that society had undergone, but only for a short time. Since the discussion had been motivated by political developments and concerned not only values but also the struggle for power within the party, the party’s attention was diverted away from ideas to the issue of power.38 An examination of statements made by party members, Ben-Gurion first among them, shows that they were no longer fighting to reinstate old pioneer values. Rather, they adopted pragmatic positions that enabled the party to win elections.39

The General Zionists The General Zionists expected that they would make major gains in the national elections, increasing their Knesset representation from seven seats to perhaps three times that number. But they assumed that Mapai would nevertheless remain the largest party and form the government. Their election campaign was thus based on the assumption that, following the elections, Mapai would invite them to join the coalition and that they would influence government policy from the inside.40 The General Zionists found themselves under fire from the early stages of the dual election campaign, first for the Zionist Congress and then for the

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Knesset. Party members in the United States were the recipients of most of these attacks. Mapai and its American affiliate accused the General Zionists of seeking to restrict immigration to Israel.41 The middle-class party ended up spending most of the campaign trying to rebut these charges. In the period preceding the elections to the Congress, the General Zionists in Israel hosted two important American Jewish leaders, Emanuel Neumann and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. Ceremonies and rallies were organized in their honor, with the goal of promoting the General Zionist campaign in both rounds of elections.42 The party also announced that American Zionist leaders were looking forward to a General Zionist victory, and that such a result would encourage investment and development in Israel and open a new page in relations between the state and the Zionist movement in the Diaspora.43 The General Zionists adopted a detailed platform that addressed most of the issues Israel faced. They were put in the following order: relations with world Jewry, security, foreign policy, and domestic policy. Under the latter heading came individual rights, education and culture, and market-based economic and financial reform, in that order.44 Unsurprisingly, the platform severely criticized the government’s disastrous economic policies. Although the economy was the major concern of this middle-class party, the platform devoted much space to civil rights: We view individual freedom as a fundamental condition for the development and prosperity of nations. . . . The vital need to unite Jews from so many lands of origin . . . requires abstaining from any coercion or pressure on the individual that is not required in order to enforce the most elementary laws. . . . This is the source of our opposition to any regime that discriminates against any type of citizen. . . . Political independence with regard to the outside world cannot be founded on subjugation within the country. Freedom of religion; freedom of thought and expression, orally and in writing; freedom of political and professional organization—we see all these not just as matters for public pronouncements, but as principles the full implementation of which must be ensured in real life. All the above applies in particular with regard to the country’s non-Jewish inhabitants.45

In a single breath, the party combined its commitment (which appeared in the printed platform in large type) to Jewish religion and tradition with its opposition to religious coercion (which appeared in regular type). Nor did the platform ignore women. The party declared that it advocated full equality for women, although, as will become clear below, it meant equality only for Jew-

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ish women.46 The party declared its profound commitment to democracy: without democracy, it stated, there could be no individual freedom. The platform also opposed too much concentration of power in the cabinet and the use of emergency powers in times of peace. The General Zionists also deplored the heavy censorship of newspapers as well as communications by mail and telegraph. They maintained that there should be no censorship except in wartime. Furthermore, they condemned the violation of civil freedom caused by the obstacles that the authorities placed in the way of citizens who wanted to travel overseas.47 In an article on freedom of expression that appeared in the party’s newspaper, Haboker, Rabbi Silver wrote: “Organized propaganda overwhelms a man to the point where he cannot make proper judgments. A government that wants to suppress its citizens restricts the press and prevents them from making proper judgments. The press must therefore be free of all government pressure, as well as from direct pressure from political parties. A newspaper should educate the public in the truth and act for the good of the nation and of humanity. In our times, when human freedom has been taken from human beings, in the era of the atom bomb, the press has a lofty calling—to defend the human spirit and to serve the freedom of man.”48 Elsewhere, spokesmen for the General Zionists protested Mapai’s control of the most important state-owned communications medium, the radio. They claimed that the transition government was using the state radio station as a tool in the Mapai campaign.49 Throughout the campaign, the middle-class party accused Mapai of constraining the freedoms of action and of political association of the Israeli public, especially new immigrants.50 The General Zionists presented themselves as champions of individual rights, seeking to take this title away from their rival for the middle-class vote, the Progressive Party, which was part of Mapai’s coalition.51 When Mapai activists pressured voters to cast their ballots for their party, the General Zionists and Herut took this as not the individual initiatives of eager members of a ruling party, but rather as a centrally directed tactic.52 They claimed that “the organizational structure on which Mapai’s political strength lies consists entirely of materialistic economic pressure and material utilitarianism,” and that “most members of Mapai, and those who follow them, see this fact as a deplorable necessity.”53 Passions rose as the elections approached. The General Zionists complained that Mapai agents had violated their right to organize freely and called the situation a “reign of terror.”54 Given the paucity of sources in the archives, there is no way of knowing

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whether the General Zionists’ vociferous advocacy of material democratic values represents what they actually believed, or whether the accusations they made against Mapai were merely a campaign tactic. There are some indications that the latter was the case, in particular with regard to the Civil Union— a General Zionist faction that gradually took control of positions of power at the expense of the rival Liberal faction. The Civil Union’s members were mostly independent farmers. Their culture was not democratic, and their intellectual horizons extended no farther than their farms and towns. A huge cultural abyss separated them from the Liberals. One proof that General Zionist leaders (with the exception of Peretz Bernstein of the Liberal faction) used the rights discourse cynically is the nature of the demands that the General Zionists made in their postelection coalition negotiations with Mapai. The issue of civil rights in general did not come up. The General Zionists did, however, stand up for one right—the right to travel abroad freely—in the negotiations that preceded the formation of the next government, at the end of 1952, and during that government’s tenure.55 The General Zionists seem, then, to have used the rhetoric of rights because they believed that it would win them votes. Their campaign slogan was: “Let us have a life in this country.”56 To attract votes, they handed out food and clothing in transit camps,57 and Haboker sponsored a contest to guess the election results. The prizes included a two-week vacation at a hotel on Mount Carmel, a cruise on an Israeli ship, airplane tickets to Eilat, three Hebrew dictionaries, and six books.58

Fighting for Votes women Mapai clearly had good reason to target women, given the likelihood that many women, including the wives of party members, had voted for the General Zionists in the municipal elections.59 The latter party realized that it enjoyed an advantage among this resentful population. It devoted a plank in its platform to women60 and aimed part of its electioneering at them. The party took out a series of illustrated advertisements in Haboker in which it promised what it thought women wanted to hear. It also issued a campaign booklet especially for women:61 “Do you want to keep going on like this? You need to think about tomorrow. Perhaps you have a daughter on the verge of maturity. Your daugh-

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ter might soon want to have a home of her own, start a family, be herself the mother of children. That’s all well and good, but have you thought about what you will need to do to that end? To find an apartment, furnish it, and all that at fantastical prices far beyond all expectations. And then—to run the home, to be subject to the ration book, do you want your daughter to live tomorrow the way you do today? It’s in your hands to change things, with your vote—to change the government. We’ve had enough of Mapai rule.”62 The General Zionists had a women’s auxiliary that addressed social and educational issues in addition to campaigning for the party.63 The sources are too sparse to draw unambiguous conclusions, but the General Zionists seem to have felt that the severe shortages and the results of the local elections virtually guaranteed them broad support among urban women. The party therefore invested more energy in seeking the support of other groups than it devoted to women.

arabs The General Zionists opened their Knesset campaign in Druze and Arab villages. To garner the support of these minorities, they emphasized free enterprise— specifically, the right to market agricultural produce free of governmentimposed price controls and quotas. The party also pledged economic assistance in other areas, promising that a General Zionist government would offer subsidies to enable the minorities to modernize their farm machinery. And the Arabs were promised that their individual rights would be respected, including the freedom of religion. Although the General Zionists did not explicitly commit themselves to ending the military regime to which nearly all the country’s Arabs were subject, they implied that this would be their goal. In doing so, they went to the heart of the problematic status of Israel’s Arab citizens at that time.64 Immediately before a rerun of local elections in Acre in June 1951—there had been irregularities in the previous elections—the military regime was abolished. A writer for Haboker, concerned that Mapai would get the credit for granting new freedoms to the city’s large Arab population, quoted himself as having advocated the end of military rule throughout the previous year.65 Hador, the Mapai newspaper, published a scornful item on the General Zionists’ activity in Arab villages. At the conclusion of a meeting between a General Zionist activist and a local Arab leader, the paper reported: “The sheikh

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asked, as he escorted them to their car, ‘And what will be, Mr. Shmuel, if you don’t succeed, and Ben-Gurion stays in power? What will the villagers’ help on election day be worth then?’”66 The question, implying that the villagers would vote for Mapai anyway, demonstrated the Arab population’s dependence on the ruling party. The reporter and his editor also displayed their confidence that Mapai had this community in its pocket. The journalist in this case clearly felt no obligation to the fundamental democratic principle that citizens should receive services from the state regardless of their political orientation. Voting for the General Zionists was clearly seen to be a sin, and the punishment meted out for the sin was crystal clear. Mapai’s domination of the Arab population seems to have been based on improper use of the authority of the military governors. In one case emerging from the elections, the military governor of Teibe, Captain Tzvi Elpeleg, was court-martialed for “election tampering,” “threatening voters,” and “conducting election propaganda.” The indictment stated that he had taken part in the election campaign when, in June, he had warned several inhabitants of Teibe not to campaign or vote for the Communists. Elpeleg was also accused of warning several residents of the village that they would not be able to find work if they did not vote for Mapai’s satellite Arab slates. But the case was dismissed, for technical reasons, before evidence was heard.67 In the country’s first Knesset elections, just after the state was founded, the right to vote was granted to all Jews who had immigrated and registered before the voter rolls were closed, and to those Arabs counted in the census of 1948. The right to vote was not limited formally. Yet, in practice, no independent Arab party gained Knesset representation until the 1980s. Menachem Hofnung argues that, since Arabs did not enjoy free movement, they were unable to organize politically. Furthermore, the military governors’ rewards and promises ensured that the great majority of Arabs voted for Arab candidates from affiliates of Mapai.68

storekeepers and craftsmen Both the General Zionists and Mapai adopted a new tactic in Israel’s second round of national elections. Rather than appealing only to their natural constituencies, as the parties had done in 1949, they each now sought to raid the other’s backyard. The General Zionists campaigned among the workers, the poor, the Arabs, and the new immigrants living on the country’s periphery.

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Mapai, for its part, sought to win the confidence of storekeepers and tradesmen who had suffered under the austerity program by instituting new policies that protected their interests.69 The proprietors of large businesses were the backbone of the General Zionist party, so Mapai competed largely for the votes of small merchants, the owners of corner grocery stores, and craftsmen who ran their own workshops. But Mapai faced a number of obstacles. First, Histadrut functionaries were generally hostile to small businessmen and the owners of small grocery stores, whom they saw as superfluous middlemen.70 Second, the government’s economic policy made life difficult for any grocer who obeyed the law because the state set their profit margins and kept them very low. However, rationing was a golden opportunity for price gouging on the part of those shopkeepers who did not abide by price controls.71 Mapai also fought the General Zionists for the votes of craftsmen. In terms of ideology and class, these people belonged to the working class. In practice, since they were not organized as a pressure group, they suffered from the austerity regime because of the chronic shortage of raw materials, and because government offices preferred to channel what raw materials there were to midsize firms that employed a larger number of workers and used materials more efficiently.

immigrants One of the most important constituencies that became a battleground for the two parties was the immigrant population. Mapai was proud of its immigration policy and promised to continue its project of bringing the Jewish Diaspora to Israel. As it had in the past, it accused the General Zionists of opposing mass immigration. In making this point to immigrant audiences, Mapai implied that the immigrants owed a debt to the party that had brought them to Israel, banking on the assumption that they would support a liberal immigration policy because they had friends and relatives who were hoping to immigrate.72 The battle for the immigrant vote focused all the country’s parties on the inhabitants of the transit camps. Even before the Knesset elections, the camps operated as fiefdoms. They were divided among the parties of the governing coalition in accordance with a quota system. The arrangement was sharply criticized by the press: “The transit camps turned into ghettoes. Sentries watched over them, party emissaries did everything to ensure that the immigrants would feel helpless without their guardians and the party.”73

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Given the way the transit camps were set up, their inhabitants were indeed entirely dependent on the government and its representatives. Under the circumstances, special provisions of the ordinance governing the elections to the second Knesset addressed campaigning in the camps. Their directors and staffs were forbidden to use their positions to influence residents to vote for a particular party. But the law was not enough. Innumerable complaints of violations were aired in the press and the Knesset, with parties accused of pressuring voters, making false claims, and even using violence. As election day approached, competition between the rival parties and institutions intensified. Even though the General Zionists, as an opposition party, lacked access to the transit camps, they conducted an active and aggressive campaign for immigrant votes there and in the semicommunal cooperative farming villages, called moshavim (singular, moshav), where many immigrants had been settled. The attempt to penetrate the latter, which were controlled by the Moshavim movement, affiliated with Mapai, met—as Haboker reported—with an aggressive response. The Moshavim movement used force to block the supply of bread and water to families who identified with the General Zionists and prevented the party’s representatives from contacting immigrants.74 Their attempts to make inroads into the huge reservoir of immigrant voters in the moshavim undoubtedly angered members of the labor movement as a whole, and of Mapai in particular. The Moshavim movement in large measure viewed the immigrants as its property and thus saw the General Zionists as trespassers.75 The General Zionists charged Mapai of violating the election laws. Even though the charges came from the opposition, the wealth of evidence, stemming from a wide variety of sources, indicates that the Moshavim movement’s functionaries believed that turning the immigrants into productive farmers was much more important than securing the freedoms of information, association, and expression. They don’t seem to have asked the immigrants what they wanted. Mapai employed violence as well. According to Haboker, General Zionist election rallies were frequently disrupted by Mapai thugs.76 As election day approached, Haboker reported a rise in violent incidents.77 But despite its aggressive tactics in the moshavim and Arab villages, in the cities, where the great majority of Israelis lived, Mapai seems to have used only standard methods to attempt to win voters’ support.78

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The Elections Approach security The ongoing conflicts with Syria and Egypt cast a pall over the elections.79 But before the balloting, events in Jordan brought tension on the borders to a climax. Ten days before the polls opened, King Abdullah of Jordan was assassinated. Israel’s newspapers were full of reports that the existing balance of power had been undermined. They speculated that Jordan’s neighbors might seek to capitalize on the crisis by seeking to annex Jordanian territory.80 The tension that pervaded Israel is evident in contemporary press reports.81 An editorial in Davar asserted that “clearly, this assassination requires the state of Israel to step up its level of military and political readiness.”82 The morning newspapers, such as Davar, were more serious in character than other papers, and thus more restrained in their reporting of possible geopolitical developments. They provided the news but did their best not to arouse panic. Nevertheless, they painted a picture of a tense and troubled country.83 A military threat real enough to be alarming but not so severe as to actually lead to detrimental political and military developments was quite useful for Mapai’s campaign, and in particular for Ben-Gurion. As the great leader of the War of Independence, he was generally regarded as “Mr. Defense,” and this reputation served him well as a candidate.84

tough lives In the final weeks before the elections, which took place at the height of a fiercely hot summer, Israel suffered from a severe ice shortage. People had to stand in long lines to obtain what was at the time virtually the only means of refrigeration (only a small number of people had electric refrigerators), and quarrels broke out among them. On Friday, July 13, 1951, two weeks before the elections, the situation reached its nadir. Huge crowds, worried that they would not be able to keep their food from spoiling over the weekend (ice was not available on Saturdays), spent most of the day waiting in line for supplies to arrive: “In the lines, you could see people fainting, crying hysterically, fighting—curses and shouts. In many cases, housewives spent most of the day in line, to be replaced in the late afternoon by their husbands, when the men returned from work.”85 Elsewhere, crowds mobbed ice factories because ice-

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men were not able to satisfy the demand.86 In Haifa, crowds demonstrated against the shortage. The police refused to break up the demonstrations, fearing that they could not do so without hurting people.87 Coming on top of the food shortage, the scarcity of ice was especially frustrating, because good food that people had spent much time and money obtaining was doomed to spoil in the summer heat. So ice also became a campaign issue. Mapai and the General Zionists (who shared responsibility for the ice supply in municipalities they controlled, such as Tel Aviv) tossed the blame back and forth like a hot potato.88 The minister of agriculture took steps to increase ice production, particularly in the Tel Aviv area. But until this could be accomplished, rationing was the rule.89 Unfortunately, in the ferocious summer heat, the ration was not enough to refrigerate food until the following day.90 A correspondent for Al Hamishmar, Mapam’s newspaper, reported irate citizens’ reactions: “And what does the simple person say about all the noisy propaganda? A car with a loudspeaker drove into one of the neighborhoods populated by immigrants, most of whom do not speak Hebrew. ‘Listen, listen,’ the propagandist cried, and an immigrant shouted back in Yiddish: ‘We’ve had enough listening, give us ice.’”91 In his diary, Ben-Gurion wrote that the government’s inability to supply ice was harming his party’s campaign.92 Another difficulty, one that affected the residents of Tel Aviv, was pollution of the city’s beaches. At first the health ministry forbade bathing, which for many was the only way to cool off and have fun in the summer. Later the beaches were opened to adults only. Finally they were opened to everyone, but some people did not trust the ministry’s assertions that the beaches were safe. Ironically, Mapai was the major beneficiary in this case because the cause of the pollution was Tel Aviv’s sewage. Sewage was the responsibility of the Tel Aviv municipality, which was controlled by the General Zionists.93 Another shortage blamed on the Tel Aviv leadership was that of electricity, which resulted in blackouts. In addition to depriving households of electricity, it cut off the water supply to the tenants of apartments on upper floors.94

women’s equal rights law One way Mapai sought to gain the support of women from the old-timer population was the passage of a law guaranteeing equal rights for women. Mapai decided to promote the legislation in part because Rachel Cohen-Kagan, a

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member of the first Knesset who represented WIZO, had introduced a “Family and Equal Rights for Women” bill. Mapai could hardly oppose such an initiative without suffering political damage, so it decided to introduce its own bill. Unlike Cohen-Kagan’s bill, Mapai’s did not intend to abolish the religious establishment’s monopoly on marriage and divorce, and the legislation was presented in the Knesset only after two of the religious parties’ cabinet ministers had given their consent. The law’s opponents viewed the haste with which the government introduced and advanced its bill (in parallel with the Knesset’s consideration of Cohen-Kagan’s proposal) as proof that it was intended mostly for political gain.95 The General Zionists promised Muslim voters to do what it could to modify one of the law’s most notable provisions, a prohibition against bigamy, so that it would apply only to the Jewish population. But the amendment they proposed to this effect did not pass.96 The elections were certainly not the only reason the law was introduced, but the insistence—by Mapai and BenGurion himself—that the law be enacted before the election, and its limited scope, indicate that its promoters were less concerned about principle than they were about their urgent political needs.97

the final push During the four days prior to the election, both major parties stepped up their campaigns. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion gave speeches in the three large cities, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv. Then he broadcast a radio address on Saturday, July 28, which was quoted extensively by the newspapers the next day. An analysis of the party’s campaign strategy, as presented in this speech, demonstrates the changes that had taken place in Israeli society. Ben-Gurion presented a draft of his speech to the party’s Political Committee on July 22.98 Its members asked for some changes to central points. They suggested adding a passage addressing the special difficulties faced by Israeli women and the causes of these difficulties: immigration and military requirements. They told Ben-Gurion that, following King Abdullah’s assassination, he should stress the security issue. The committee’s members also said that he should promise his radio listeners an improvement in their living conditions and state that the period that would lead to an easier life had begun. They also asked him to speak directly to the working public, and also to make appeals to the middle class, artisans, and shopkeepers.99 Instead of using his usual first-

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person plural, in this speech Ben-Gurion frequently spoke in the singular. A number of committee members commented on this. Some liked the personal tone, even if they saw it as a foreign, Anglo-Saxon rhetorical device. Others, however, maintained that the leader’s pronoun should be “we.”100 Party activists pleaded with him to repeat what he had said in the past about the ingathering of exiles, and to promise that it would continue.101 The ideal of gathering all Jews, especially persecuted ones, in Israel was the principal justification for the flaws and mismanagement of which the party stood accused.102 Ben-Gurion responded to these comments at the meeting. He accepted the committee members’ points about the importance of a special appeal to women, and his final version devoted several lines to housewives. Likewise, he specifically addressed both the working public and the middle class several times. But he rejected the other suggestions, saying that his speech was aimed principally at city dwellers, not at rural settlers or new immigrants.103 A number of conclusions can be drawn from this. First, the prime minister clearly believed that the Israelis in the cities would appreciate his new, personal form of address, directed at them as individuals rather than as members of a collective. Another reason for the change was probably his sense that, given the drop in public support for his party (as shown in the local elections), it was better for him to place the focus on himself, as a prime minister who still enjoyed a great deal of prestige and public confidence.104 A third conclusion is that Ben-Gurion suspected that the urban population no longer favored immigration, which lowered their standard of living. Better, he reasoned, not to bring the subject up. He told the political committee’s members that immigration was of interest mostly to the immigrants themselves, since many of them were waiting for relatives to arrive. Nevertheless, he included in his radio address a few sentences advocating continued immigration.105 In referring to the military situation, Ben-Gurion shrewdly linked regional and world events, about which his listeners were understandably anxious, with his reliability and with the confidence he radiated. Between the lines, without saying so explicitly, he suggested that the country was at a difficult and crucial juncture, and that at such a time the government should be left in the hands of someone who had already proved himself steadfast and capable.106 The stress on security at a time of uncertainty seems to have swayed voters at the polls. Cold War anxiety and the fear that Israel was in danger of destruction despite its success in the War of Independence clearly contributed to the victory of David Ben-Gurion and his party. The General Zionists simply did not

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have a leader of Ben-Gurion’s stature, or one with his security credentials.107 They thought it best to not even try to present a leader who could match BenGurion’s charisma; they preferred to offer themselves as a team.108

were the elections free and fair? The first fundamental rule of democracy is that its legislative bodies must be elected. The three central principles of democratic elections are: all citizens must be able to vote (the only limitations being on age); voters must be able to vote for whichever candidates or parties they prefer; and the ballot must be secret, so that no other person or body can punish or reward someone for his or her vote.109 A democratic regime must ensure not only that elections are universal, free, and secret, but also that parties and candidates vie for the support of voters on a level playing field, equally accessible to all. Did Israel’s national elections of 1951 meet these criteria? At the time, newspapers and citizens charged that unfair pressures were put on voters; that immigrants were not well versed in the democratic process; that several parties, including Mapai, exercised undue influence over the votes of immigrants and Arabs; and that most of the country’s political parties were under the surveillance of the security services.110 If this was indeed the case, did the election results reflect actual public opinion in Israel? To answer this question, I will extend my survey beyond the period of the elections themselves. This broader view is essential for casting light on events that took place behind the scenes. Shin Bet kept tabs on the Communist Party and the Arab public. It also infiltrated Mapam, Herut, and the General Zionists. The religious public and its parties were also kept under surveillance.111 In an interview in 2000, Isser Harel, chief of the Shin Bet at the time of the elections, claimed that Mapam became an intelligence target after the agency he led uncovered a conspiracy to take over the government.112 The tip came from the commander of a field unit made up primarily of members of the pro-Soviet Mapam party. Harel soon uncovered similar cells operating in the army, the defense ministry, and the military governments of the Arab zones.113 Herut, with its members’ record of not accepting the authority of the Yishuv leadership, was a target of suspicion because its leaders had, before the establishment of the party in 1948, been the commanders of the Etzel (Irgun) underground military organization.114 The General Zionists were not suspected of underground activity, but the Shin Bet

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targeted them anyway. The surveillance included planting agents and wiretaps, and shadowing some of the party’s officials.115 Harel insisted that the government received no political information from the security service. But another senior figure in the service contradicted him. Yosef Warshavsky testified that the agency tracked the General Zionists for purely political reasons, simply because it was the second-largest political force in the country. If this was indeed the case, it is only reasonable to assume that the results of this political surveillance were reported to Ben-Gurion and perhaps also to his close associates.116 Aryeh Hadar, who headed the Shin Bet’s investigations division, confirmed that opposition parties were targets, and that the information the agency gathered was exploited for political purposes.117 Warshavsky’s account is also corroborated by the conduct and activity of the General Zionists’ leaders, who sensed that they were being followed.118 When the General Zionists joined the government at the end of 1952, someone (the name does not appear in the documents) offered them the possibility of establishing their own party-run secret service that would use the same methods against Mapai and other rivals. The apparatus was meant to purge the General Zionist party of moles and prevent its members from leaking information that might harm the party. The same person offered to obtain information for them about the workings of their rivals, and to gather intelligence that could be used to blackmail those rivals in times of crisis.119 The General Zionists quickly accepted, and the information provided by this apparatus seems to have been quite reliable.120 The material that has been preserved and is available to researchers is limited,121 and there is no confirmation that it was indeed used for blackmail. But the very assumption that such material might come in handy testifies to both the party’s sense that it was being spied on and its relatively low commitment to democratic values and the rule of law. When Moshe Sharett became prime minister after Ben-Gurion’s resignation, senior General Zionist figures dared to raise the subject of the Shin Bet’s political surveillance, including telephone wiretaps, with the new premier. They had incontrovertible proof of such wiretaps only in the case of their deputy minister of commerce and industry, Zalman Suzayiv, in 1954.122 Harel claimed that the intelligence gathered by the Shin Bet was never used for provocation or blackmail, and that the agency’s only interest was in identifying security threats.123 The fact that Suzayiv resigned his post suggests otherwise. Since the relevant Shin Bet archives are still sealed, we have no way of

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knowing what use was made of this material. Clearly, however, the fact that the leaders of the General Zionists and other parties knew or even simply felt that they were being followed inevitably had major consequences for the development of Israeli democracy. The Israeli political process operated in an environment of suspicion and fear; internal espionage, secret codes, the dissemination of confidential information, and the covert conduct of policy were part of everyday conduct. The misuse of government agencies for political gain, as well as the opposition’s need to defend itself against these operations, encumbered the development of democratic procedures, which involve a delicate balance between enforcing the authority of the regime and the maintenance of fair rules for the political game. The government argued that discovery of the left-wing cells, the Right’s history of refusing to accept the dictates of the majority (as shown in the Altalena affair, when the Irgun leadership refused to surrender all the weapons on the ship Altalena to the newly established Israel Defense Forces, and the violent opposition of some rightists to the reparations agreement with Germany), and the unmasking of several subversive underground cells justified surveillance of opposition parties and figures for security purposes. Yet if political information about Mapai’s rivals reached the party’s political operatives, as seems to have been the case, the foundations of democratic processes were certainly shaken.124

the press reacts The newspapers were full of stories about how vulnerable groups were subjected to pressures and coercion during the campaign. Haboker frequently ran such reports. Public officials campaigned openly for Mapai in transit camps and in settlements and neighborhoods where immigrants lived, the press reported. These officials promised immigrants that if they registered their children for the right school and took out Mapai party cards, they would receive a range of benefits that had previously been denied to them.125 As the elections approached, Haboker reported that the pressure became increasingly direct and aggressive. In Moshav Gia Bet, for example, where the population consisted of new immigrants from Yemen and Libya, the adult members of fifty-six families registered with the General Zionist Party and only eighteen with Mapai. But the Mapai families ruled the settlement. The Mapai members of the moshav’s council bullied seven residents who set up a General Zionist branch in the village. The secretary of the Moshavim move-

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ment notified them that they and their families were not wanted in the moshav and should leave. Following this warning, the families were told that they could no longer receive supplies at the moshav store or financial support from moshav funds. The seven activists were also dismissed from their jobs at Solel Boneh, a Histadrut-owned construction company. Tempers flared among the fifty-six General Zionist families, and they made an appearance at a party rally at a nearby settlement, where they protested this political harassment and asked for help. The very next day, Haboker reported, each of the families’ wage earners were fired from their jobs.126 Alongside the threats and blackmail reported by the opposition,127 we have reliable evidence that immigrants were tempted with baseless promises and that their votes were bought. Mapai was, it seems, not the only party to engage in such practices.128 But since jobs in both the state and Jewish Agency bureaucracies were allocated according to political party quotas, most officials with whom immigrants came into contact or who had power over their lives were, in practice, agents of the ruling party or one of its associates. As a result, there is every reason to believe that Mapai’s role in these irregularities was a large one.129 Israel’s Arab citizens, who lived under military rule, were also dependent on Mapai and apprehensive about coming out publicly against the ruling party. In principle, they were supposed to cast their votes secretly, but the election results disclosed the political profile of each village or town.130 Even in the absence of explicit threats, Arabs feared the price they might have to pay if their communities did not identify with Mapai.131 Opposition and nonpartisan newspapers reported or insinuated that Mapai functionaries operated in illegal ways. According to these articles, the party’s agents did all they could to frighten their opponents in the Arab sector and to buy votes for Mapai. True, similar accusations were leveled at the General Zionists, but they had much less influence than Mapai among the Arabs.132 The opposition also accused Mapai of a long list of other shady practices. Haboker reported that Mapai functionaries had been given the authority to issue state identification cards,133 and that civil servants had been given a questionnaire aimed at finding out what their politics were.134 Greengrocers had been informed, the newspaper claimed, that they would not receive produce from Tnuva if they did not join the storekeepers’ association set up by Mapai.135 The opposition was convinced that at least part of the police force had been mobilized to help the ruling party, and that it enforced the law only when accusations were directed against opposition supporters.136

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At the beginning of the campaign, Ben-Gurion sought to conduct proper democratic elections, at least within the Jewish population. At a meeting of Mapai’s Political Committee, he said that he wanted to use the elections to educate the Jewish public in democracy.137 But he also justified manipulating the elections in the Arab sector.138 Whatever his educational aspirations, his “teachers” of democracy—his party’s functionaries—were not all that clear about the nature of democracy.139 Peretz Bernstein of the General Zionists said that Mapai, fearing it would lose the elections, had shed its thin Western veneer and had reverted to the tried-and-true methods of the East. It was using its political power and government control to influence the results.140 Unfortunately, in democratic countries, short-term political imperatives often override long-range ideological commitments. It is difficult to estimate the accuracy of the charges made by Mapai’s rivals, but when their allegations are juxtaposed with reliable testimony, the conclusion seems inescapable that Mapai activists, fearing they would lose power, acted in ways that violated the most fundamental norms of democratic society. The democratic teaching that Ben-Gurion envisioned never took place. Rather than being a lesson in democracy, the elections turned out to be, at least for a portion of the population, a lesson in corruption.141 Were Mapai’s activists exceptional in the context of their times? Did their opponents act differently? The answer is that most parties with the means to exert power over immigrants (including Mapam and Hapo’el Hamizrahi, a religious party) did so.142 But Mapai’s strength, size, influence, and organizational capabilities, and the expectations of the public and of Ben-Gurion, put the ruling party’s actions under a spotlight.

⡬ Chapter 7

The Outcome of the Elections to the Second Knesset

W

hatever fears its leaders might have had, and whatever the opposition’s hopes, Mapai won the election handily. It received 45 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, only one fewer than it had held before; nearly 37 percent of the 695,007 citizens who cast votes chose Ben-Gurion and his party.1 Another fourteen slates of candidates won seats, and three of these were Arab lists set up by Mapai and loyal to it. Together, those three won five seats, three more than in the previous Knesset. In other words, Mapai actually emerged from the elections with more loyal legislators in the second Knesset than it had had in the first. But the General Zionists did not lose. They nearly tripled their representation, winning twenty seats compared to seven in the previous Knesset, and became the country’s second-largest party. Their ranks swelled further when the three representatives of two Mizrahi ethnic slates (two Sephardim and a Yemenite) merged their factions with the middle-class party. Mapam, which had previously held second place, did not do well, winning only fifteen seats compared to nineteen. Herut suffered an even greater decline, capturing only eight seats, six fewer than before. Mapai’s Progressive allies lost one seat, emerging with four; the Communists gained a seat and now had five. The four religious parties (two of them ultra-Orthodox, two religious Zionist), which had run as a united front in the first elections, ran separately this time and won a total of fifteen seats, one fewer than before.2 Israel’s voters had shunned the extremes of both Left and Right and shown their preference for the parties in the center.3 In Tel Aviv, the two large parties together received 60 percent of the vote. The big loser in the big city was Herut, most of whose voters migrated to the General Zionists. The General Zionists actually won the same absolute num-

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ber of votes they had received in the municipal elections, but the city’s population had grown in the meantime, so its proportion of the votes declined from 30 percent to 25 percent. Mapai’s support came mostly from the two ends of the city—the well-off north and the poor south. The General Zionists’ base was in the middle-class neighborhoods of the city’s center.4 Mapai led by a huge margin in the immigrant population, winning 48.2 percent of its votes. The other party that did better among immigrants than in the population at large was Hapo’el Hamizrahi, a religious Zionist party with links to the labor movement and the Histadrut. It won 14 percent of the immigrant votes, but less than half that share of the total votes. Both these parties did well among immigrants who lived in transit camps, but much less so in the new immigrant towns.5 The General Zionist base was, in contrast, the established population of the cities and moshavot. Only 7 percent of its voters were new immigrants. Paradoxically, neither the economic situation nor the public mood had changed much since the local elections. What, then, can explain the dramatically different results in the national poll? In seeking causes, we must keep in mind that elections are always chaotic events with large numbers of variables. Some events in an election period arise from deliberate actions, such as party campaigns and the routine actions of state agencies. But many events are unplanned—some internal, such as the actions or blunders committed by the government or opposition parties, and some beyond the parties’ control. We may assume that voters were swayed by the economic hardships they faced and by their dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of the national and local governments. We may also assume that voters abandoned Mapai for the General Zionists because of the shortages of ice and basic commodities, shortages that grew more acute in the days leading up to the elections. On the other hand, the closure of Tel Aviv’s beaches due to pollution certainly disillusioned voters who might have otherwise voted for the General Zionists, the party that controlled the municipality.6 But, all in all, the social conditions that worked in their favor in the local voting still prevailed at the time of the national elections. Large sectors of the population believed that the austerity regime was being enforced against average citizens but not against those with ties to Mapai and the Histadrut. People felt, apparently with considerable justification, that many officials were corrupt and motivated by self-interest.7 However, the assassination of Jordan’s King Abdullah seems to have played a decisive role in convincing people to vote for Mapai despite their reserva-

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tions. Another external factor that may well have been influential was developments in the world economy. Deliberate actions included the well-planned General Zionist campaign, which played off citizens’ anger, frustration, and resentment at the austerity regime. But the fact that, outside the economic realm, the party had no clear principles or ideology seems to have worked against it. This party was also at a disadvantage because its leaders lacked experience in defense and foreign affairs. Surveillance of the party may also have enabled Mapai to hamper and counter its campaign. The success of Mapai and Hapo’el Hamizrahi among immigrants, and of Mapai among Arabs, seems to have been due in part to vote buying. But there is no way to quantify the affect of pressure, threats, and forgeries, or to separate their effects from those of legitimate means of persuasion.8 And, given that many immigrants nevertheless cast votes for other parties, it seems reasonable to assume that the extent and effect of such illicit practices was limited. Mapai’s legitimate campaign was adept and successful, especially in the cities. It knew how to highlight its achievements and the collective goals that it still sought to realize. And its greatest electoral asset was its chief, Ben-Gurion.9

A Comparison with England The opposition Labour Party swept the British national elections held in July 1945. The party’s leadership assumed as a result that the public shared its social values: full employment, a welfare state, and a mixed economy. It also assumed that the citizenry would consent to a continuation of the wartime austerity policy and to even more stringent belt tightening, as part of a postwar recovery program. Although the austerity program caused hardship, the new government hoped that its record of achievement and its honesty in providing the public with all the facts would persuade voters to continue to support it. Ben-Gurion, too, had hoped that if he told Israelis the truth and ensured efficient and fair distribution of the food available, he could persuade them of the justice of his cause. But at the beginning of the 1950s, the British Labour Party’s explanations fell on deaf ears. Even worse, they turned out to be an impediment. The British public as a whole displayed no inclination to understand economic issues in depth, but it was very interested, on a daily basis, in the limited supply of food and other austerity measures. Economic issues were the focal point of the British national elections of

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1950, 1951, and 1955. Labour sought to defend its policies of full employment and equal distribution of food, while the Conservatives based their campaigns on criticizing rationing and price controls. In particular, they aimed their campaign at women. Housewives were a key constituency for both parties. The Conservatives’ gains in 1951 and especially in 1955 were largely due to their success among women. In fact, the party channeled the anger of citizens who were fed up with austerity, and on this basis was able to return to power in 1951. Labour’s egalitarian ideology could not guarantee it the support of most voters in the long term, because the public’s basic instincts remained individualistic. Britons were interested primarily in the welfare of themselves and their families.10 Support for Labour declined precipitously in the British election of February 1950. This sounded a warning bell for Mapai, which evinced considerable interest in the British austerity program. Mapai leaders watched nervously as the British public rejected the country’s austerity policy, and then its Labour Party. It seems likely that the British election played a role in the dramatic changes in economic policy that Israel’s labor government instituted at the end of that same year.

Beyond the Numbers The election results and their causes are not the whole story. Under the pressure of an election campaign (in fact, a series of election campaigns), Israeli society revealed that it was undergoing major changes, changes that ran deeper than the public discourse at the time suggested. This transformation was revealed—and perhaps also partly catalyzed—by the election campaigns of 1950–51.

democracy There is no way of measuring the phenomenon, but we may assume that the illegitimate means by which Israel’s political parties sought to pressure immigrants to vote for them intensified the alienation of the newcomers from the Israeli establishment. Even worse, these actions no doubt impeded the development of a democratic consciousness among them. The reports and rumors of such vote tampering must have hindered the development of democratic values among young people and reinforced their cynicism. The disparity be-

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tween the high talk about democracy and actual practice11—in which civil rights were often disregarded, inequality was the rule, and the cleanness of elections was doubtful—led at least some citizens to distrust the ruling elite. The loss of confidence was focused on the area of internal affairs; when it came to foreign and defense issues, people still generally believed in the government.12 The mistrust came on top of the public’s conviction that the state had failed to enforce the austerity program equitably, and that the bureaucracy had displayed incompetence and favoritism. Even those Israelis who chose to join and vote for the ruling party did not necessarily do so out of ideological motivations. The dangerous mix of personal interests and the party’s willingness to give preferential treatment to its supporters led to a feeling of partial estrangement from the ideology its supporters were supposedly serving.13 As a result, Israelis were slow to adopt the values of citizenship, and alienation between the public and the establishment grew. The situation encouraged Israelis to fight for their own interests14 within what seemed to them to be a cynical, alienating world that was replete with double talk and lies. This unschooled democracy15 led to two reactions, two alternative dreams. One was a dream of a return to collectivist pioneering society—that is, reestablishment of the Yishuv’s ancien régime.16 The second was a dream of civil rights and substantive democracy.17 When the pioneering option proved not to be attractive to many,18 the second dream began to take on substance.

the aliya question At the end of 1950 and the beginning of 1951, a debate began about how much more immigration—aliya, to use the Zionist word—Israel could absorb, and what its composition should be. For the most part, the debate took place in closed forums rather than in public.19 A variety of opinions were voiced in ruling circles.20 Those who advocated restrictions on immigration faced off against Ben-Gurion who, at least until 1951, consistently and uncompromisingly insisted on the unlimited immigration of all Jews.21 Ben-Gurion claimed that the country’s security required it to have two million Jewish inhabitants, and few publicly challenged this assertion. Unconstrained aliya was fundamental to the Zionist ethos, the moral justification for the very existence of the young state. This being the case, people could not, for ideological and psychological reasons, oppose it publicly. To argue that only as many immigrants should be allowed in as the country’s economy could absorb was to adopt the

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position taken before independence by the British Mandate administration. The Yishuv leadership had always vociferously opposed this policy, asserting that it was a violation of Zionist principles. It was thus nearly impossible for any Israeli leader to advocate limitations on immigration in the 1950s without putting his public career at risk. But, in fact, proposals to limit immigration were already being debated by the end of 1948.22 Immigration and finance officials in the government and the Jewish Agency attacked the agency’s immigration department for disregarding quotas that it had set itself.23 Similar critiques appeared in the press. For example, Hamashkif published an article by Meir Grossman, a member of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors representing the revisionist movement. He claimed that criminal negligence was allowing immigration to swell despite a shortage of housing and money for the immigrants’ absorption. Immigration had to be controlled, he wrote, or the blessing would turn into a curse. Other articles, published later, referred to the immigrants’ putative negative characteristics but did not demand the restriction of aliya.24 However, during the election campaigns of 1950–51, a consensus on unlimited immigration prevailed, and arguments for restricting immigration reappeared only after the general elections. During the period preceding the elections, Ben-Gurion and other Mapai spokesmen did not change their official position. The ingathering of exiles was part of their campaign platform, and they continued to advocate it.25 The public debate was first framed as a political argument. Mapai claimed that the General Zionists’ economic stabilization program included both a move to a market economy and the restriction of immigration. Herut joined in the attack.26 The General Zionists denied the charge and claimed that they supported free immigration unreservedly. The Knesset’s debates and articles in the partisan press show various parties accusing their opponents of wanting to restrict immigration.27 Did the General Zionists really advocate putting the brakes on immigration? In the absence of public statements and internal party documents to that effect, no clear proof is available. Without a doubt there was a certain amount of hypocrisy in Mapai’s accusations, because some of the ruling party’s members in fact supported restrictions on immigration—in particular, allowing into the country only healthy young newcomers who could contribute to society.28 Whatever the case, it was not until the elections of 1951 that any party dared take such a position openly. Yitzchak Rafa’el, who until 1951 was one of

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the most prominent advocates of unrestricted immigration,29 later acknowledged that, in 1951, more than 80 percent of the newcomers arrived from what were defined as countries in distress, in which Israel conducted no medical examinations of potential immigrants. The consequence was the arrival of sick, elderly, and handicapped immigrants, overburdening Israel’s health and welfare services to the point of collapse.30 In other words, even though limitations on immigration were desperately needed to enable the country’s social services to offer adequate treatment to those who had already arrived, and though funds for the absorption of more immigrants was severely limited, no national leader could publicly acknowledge those facts. During 1951, the public became increasingly aware of the awful conditions under which the immigrants were living. As the flow of arrivals increased, the situation grew severe.31 The economy continued to decline. By the end of the year, Israel’s foreign currency reserves had been depleted, and suppliers of goods and banks were increasingly unwilling to grant the state credit.32 In closed meetings, immigration was frequently put in an economic context. Such was the case in a consultation the Mapai Knesset faction held with Minister of Finance Eliezer Kaplan and David Horowitz, economic advisor to the government. Horowitz said that the state was coping with three central issues: immigration, defense, and providing the country’s inhabitants with a reasonable standard of living. The country could not do all three, he claimed. “I favor a law providing for unrestricted immigration,” he declared, “but not so much of it.”33 At a cabinet meeting at the end of August 1951, after the elections, Horowitz stressed that because of the shortage of foreign currency, the importation of raw materials for industry was shrinking, causing a drop in productivity. Although he did not say that immigration should be halted, his report on the country’s foreign currency reserves was so bleak that the implication could hardly be missed.34 Mapai could not, for tactical and internal reasons, declare before the elections that it was going to limit immigration. One central reason was that BenGurion, the party leader and prime minister, still refused to even think of it. Even at this point he continued to insist, unlike several of his colleagues, that the country had the capacity to take in many more immigrants. Furthermore, announcing an immigration quota before the election would have been tantamount to admitting that the government had failed or was about to fail to ensure the security of its Jewish inhabitants—because, as noted above, Ben-Gurion

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had declared that the country’s defense required that it have a Jewish population of at least two million. Despite his initial inclination, for tactical reasons, to keep the immigration issue off center stage in his final campaign speech, and even though many members of Mapai had suggested that the reason for the General Zionist victory in the municipal elections had been its implicit advocacy of immigration quotas,35 Mapai had no choice but to stay the course. It had to present mass immigration as an impressive achievement and to advocate its continuation, despite the suffering it caused. Had Mapai expressed ambiguity about immigration, its already serious credibility problem would have gotten even worse. After all, it had justified its major policies of the previous three years as necessary for the absorption of huge numbers of immigrants. Faced with Mapai’s offensive, the General Zionists had to prove that they, too, were loyal advocates of unlimited immigration, even though by this point, in July 1951, they presumably believed that continuing the policy would lead to disaster. Given their economic and social stance, it might seem logical for them to have called for limits on immigration. But they, too, were trapped in a tangled web of internal party interests, demands for political correctness, and the imperatives of their election campaign. They simply could not voice their real thinking on the subject.36 As I have noted, we have no documents that could enlighten us about what they spoke of in private. We do know, however, that when the General Zionists joined the Mapai government in the winter of 1952, at least two of their ministers, Israel Rokach and Yosef Serlin, supported selective immigration.37 The old-timers also addressed the issue ambiguously. They showed little interest in the fate of the immigrants. Indeed, there was a consensus in the Knesset that the public at large was evading its moral responsibility toward the new arrivals. Legislators accused the public of not doing enough for the immigrants and of abandoning them to their bitter fate. Too few old-timers opened their homes to immigrant children, who were left to live in freezing tents through a harsh winter.38 So few doctors and nurses consented to work in the transit camps that it became necessary to compel them to do so.39 Not enough people volunteered to help the immigrants.40 When the Jewish Agency called on teachers and the members of other professions to work in the camps, it received only six applications,41 so mandatory mobilization of trained personnel was instituted. People who had reservations about the dimensions of immigration and the composition of the new population, and who believed that the best way to

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ease the absorption of immigrants who had already come was to slow down the rate at which newcomers were arriving, generally did not voice these opinions openly. The views emerged, however, in Jewish Agency and government forums,42 and it seems safe to assume that they were also voiced in the homes of some old-timers. The behavior of these Israelis indicates that they were weary of living the hard life and anxious to improve their standard of living, even at the price of slowing down the flow of newcomers.43 The election results serve as evidence that Mapai’s accusations that the opposition opposed immigration did not hurt and might even have helped the General Zionists.

New Government, New Policy The General Zionists wanted to make good on their impressive gains by joining the Mapai government.44 The middle-class newspapers supported this move, arguing that a Mapai–General Zionist coalition would express the public will.45 For its part, Mapai sighed in relief—the general feeling among its members was that their party’s collapse had been halted.46 Mapai, which together with its Arab clients had emerged from the election stronger than before, no longer felt threatened.47 It spent two months negotiating with potential coalition partners and then reestablished the old coalition, minus the Progressives.48 The General Zionists were left out, too. Yet although Mapai had managed to remain the core party in the government despite the harsh economic conditions, its secretary general, Zalman Aran, maintained that if the party did not prove itself in the coming four years, it would lose power.49 Its leaders were well aware that the veteran Israelis were becoming increasingly bourgeois, and that their needs and political inclinations were thus likely to change. The old-timers were fatigued with the burden of collective responsibility and desperately wanted to focus on themselves, to put the needs of the collective to one side and to live the kind of normal life in which they could focus their attention not just on their livelihood, but also on their personal development, their homes, and their families.50 Even before Ben-Gurion signed the coalition agreement, his government had instituted a new economic program, although it was officially proclaimed only in February 1952.51 It could not have been put in place before the elections, even though the leadership (at least in the Finance Ministry) realized that it was essential, because it would have sabotaged Mapai’s election campaign.52 The nature of the new program has been a subject of controversy among

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scholars. Mainstream economists maintain that the new policies promised a good way of achieving the government’s economic and national goals, under the conditions that prevailed at the time—in particular, the crumbling of the austerity regime.53 Other writers have maintained that the change in course was caused by the decline in power of the officials responsible for supply and rationing, and the rise of treasury officials and bank executives. In this view, the new program was based on the ideology of professional economists and financiers but was not necessarily in the public interest, or the best way of meeting the country’s economic needs.54 In any case, the new program was comprehensive. The Israeli pound was devalued through an adjustment of official exchange rates, effective toward the end of 1951. Prices rose steeply. In the area of monetary policy, credit and the money supply were constricted; in fiscal policy, government expenditures were reined in. The goal was to address the principal problems that were so clear in the crisis of 1951—the exhaustion of the country’s foreign currency reserves and the inflationary pressures that led to a boom in illicit commerce on the black market.55 Following a series of discussions and debates, unlimited immigration turned into selective immigration. Immigrants were chosen on the basis of their health, occupation, age, and willingness to engage in agricultural labor.56 The flood turned into a trickle. According to Chaim Barkai, an economic historian, the economic leadership demanded a reduction in immigration. He maintains that although restricting immigration was not an explicit part of the new economic program, “it was a significant component of this policy, which included an effort to reduce the burden on the economy’s resources.”57

The Selection Regulations The proper pace of immigration was an issue from the time that mass immigration began. During the country’s first months, Haim Moshe Shapira restricted the number of newcomers. His ministry instructed its immigration officers to ensure that those who entered the country were healthy. In November 1948, medical supervision was instituted in displaced persons camps in Europe. But strictures against accepting sick and handicapped immigrants were not comprehensively enforced. In the years that followed the establishment of the state, decisions were made at various times to restrict the number of immigrants in accordance with plans and budgets, but these decisions were not carried out. The innovation in the fall of 1951, then, was not that the Jewish

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Agency (which bore primary responsibility for immigration, although it coordinated its activities with the government) decided to be selective in accepting immigrants, but that it decided to implement its policy. The intention was to reduce the flow of immigrants, to enforce the previously unimplemented quotas, and, as far as was possible, to ensure that the immigrants who arrived were able-bodied.58 According to Aviva Halamish, the Zionist movement’s immigration policy— whether selective or nonselective—derived largely from the Zionist enterprise’s needs and the conditions of the moment. Preference for immigrants with specific characteristics was not a new phenomenon. Although the principle of unlimited immigration was a focal point of its ideology, the specific immigration policy pursued depended on what, by the criteria of the movement’s decision makers, would contribute to the success of Zionism.59 In the autumn of 1951, most candidates for immigration were Jews from North Africa, India, and Iran. A number of writers have addressed the question of how their identity affected the criteria for selection. The debate over this issue has been notable for its discord, which has at times turned ugly and personal.60 Some historians conclude that selective criteria were instituted in keeping with a decision to ease the pressure on the country’s economic resources. Immigration was limited, they maintain, in part to make it easier to absorb the immigrants who had already arrived. In this view, the selective criteria were intended to permit the immigration of Jews of high economic potential.61 Devorah Hacohen attributes the restriction of immigration to the growing sense on the part of both the public and the government leadership that the quality of the immigrants was declining. The top officials in the absorption system, especially those responsible for health care, argued in 1951 that what the country was experiencing was in fact selective, not nonselective, immigration—but that paradoxically, or tragically, the selection favored the unfit rather than the fit. The immigrants were not representative of their home communities, many observers maintained. In fact, they claimed, the successful and well off chose to remain in their countries of origin, or to emigrate to more comfortable locations. The weak, the failures, and the vulnerable ended up in Israel.62 On the other side are scholars who argue that the selection criteria were adopted because of cultural prejudice. This claim comes in several versions. One is that the Israeli leadership sought to restrict immigration from North Africa, Iran, and India in order to maintain Ashkenazi ethnic dominance.63

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Another maintains that the purpose was to choose young immigrants who could be detached from their “Levantine” culture and quickly resocialized.64 Yet another claim is that the new rules were meant to steer the immigrants into working-class pursuits that would put them at the bottom of the social scale and help the established Ashkenazim grow wealthy.65 A third view merges the cultural and economic arguments. Avi Picard, for example, argues that the selective policy was not malicious, nor did it arise out of a conspiracy to exploit new immigrants or prevent their arrival. But there was, he claims, a desire to cut off young immigrants from their cultural heritage in order to create a “new man” in Israel. According to Picard, the need to settle “empty” parts of the country and to increase agricultural production, at a time when most old-timers were unwilling to do either, led to these missions being assigned to the new immigrants, who had no power to turn them down.66 In my view, economic factors were the main impetus for the decision to limit immigration.67 Continuing to allow all immigrants into the country at a time when Israel no longer had any lines of credit would have caused a catastrophe. The state would not have been able to meet its debt payments. The immigrants’ living conditions were another reason. To admit more at a time when those who had already arrived were enduring substandard housing, sanitation, hygiene, nourishment, and health, and at a time when at least some of the absorption system was on the verge of collapse, would have been a recipe for disaster.68 This fundamental fact overshadowed all others, including political, public, and personal considerations. It also affected the limits of cultural toleration of individuals and groups, as it is natural for people who feel economically insecure to evince little tolerance for others. On the verge of disaster, with foreign currency reserves depleted and public discipline with regard to the austerity program dissolving, the state preferred to invest what little resources it had in people who could contribute to its economic growth and who would not be a burden on an already overextended economy. The state had a difficult time providing for the welfare of those already living in the country, so it had no choice but to reduce the extent of immigration. The tool of selective immigration had been available to the absorption institutions during the country’s first three years. It was finally implemented with efficiency and determination, but only when there seemed to be no other choice. Immigration was restricted and made selective, it seems clear, also because the veteran Israelis were displeased with the austerity that mass immigration

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had compelled them to endure. This resentment found a political outlet in the elections to the Knesset. The old-timers were not willing to keep on suffering for the sake of the immigrants and needed a respite.69 The same phenomenon could be seen in England in the wake of its austerity program, which led to the Conservatives’ return to power in 1951. Psychology must also be included in the equation. The more severe the shortages, presumably the greater the public’s hostility not only toward the establishment but also toward the immigrants, who were seen as the cause. Decision makers sensed the public mood. And the cultural intolerance of many old-timers for the North Africans is clear.70 However, this factor was less salient at the time the new regulations were instituted. It was of greater weight later, in particular in the face of the immigration crisis of 1952–53, when emigration exceeded immigration, and in 1954, when immigration from North Africa resumed, if on a smaller scale. But the economic crisis continued even after immigration declined. In January 1952 Israel faced, David Horowitz warned at a cabinet meeting, “a physical disaster” in the form of widespread hunger and a collapse in production.71 By May 1952 the country’s fuel reserves had dropped to the equivalent of a ten-day supply. Had petroleum deliveries not resumed then (in part thanks to Horowitz’s exertions), the country would have found itself without electricity and unable to pump water to homes, farms, and industry.72 In short, the old-timers’ attitude toward immigration entered a new phase in the autumn of 1951. Immediately after the elections and in their aftermath, Israelis openly expressed their weariness of the burden of immigration.73 The Jewish Agency and the government believed that these negative feelings,74 as well as the problems of the immigrants, had to be overcome before Israeli society could face new challenges. So they resolved to stop organizing and funding the immigration of Jews who did not meet the new standards.75 The nationalist right-wing opposition charged that the government had abandoned the principle of gathering the Diaspora into the Jewish state. In his history of Jewish nationalism in Morocco, Yaron Tzur reports that the Jews in that country continued to register for immigration to Israel, but that only about 30 percent of them met the criteria.76 Israeli policymakers claimed, not without justification, that the flow of immigration had turned into a trickle for external reasons, unrelated to Israel’s immigration policy.77 At the same time, they argued that the country needed high-quality pioneer immigrants, and that it could not serve as a refuge for the mentally deficient and unproductive.78

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The selective immigration policy and its implementation were a product of the country’s economic, social, and political conditions. Ben-Gurion’s new government, his third, pursued policies that had originally been advocated by the General Zionists.79 Despite Mapai’s denials, the new economic program prepared the ground for the General Zionists to join the coalition, which they did in the winter of 1952. In 1954, when the economic picture improved, the country was better equipped to take in immigrants. That summer the government drafted a plan for controlled immigration, with the newcomers to be sent immediately to agricultural settlements. Immigration from Morocco and Tunisia resumed, but immigrants still had to meet criteria of potential productivity.80

Political Lessons, Processes of Change, and Explanations Mapai had to change in order to adjust to the harsh state of the economy, as well as to the demands of its traditional voter base, the workers, and its new constituency, the middle class.81 The rise of the General Zionists was a warning. The old-time Israelis were not able to bear this much economic hardship, and they opposed the constriction of their civil rights that the austerity program had brought. There is every reason to believe that the Yishuv fought British rule not only to gain Jewish self-determination, but also freedom of a type they did not enjoy under the Mandate regime.82 The discourse of rights that pervaded the election campaigns of 1950 and 1951 testified to what Israelis desired. The outcomes of those elections showed that the old-timers wanted more than just a change in the government’s economic policy. They wanted an end to price controls and rationing—not simply because they were difficult to live with, but also because they were seen as a violation of Israelis’ personal freedoms.83 The election results shone a spotlight on the dissolution of the old Yishuv collective. Mapai assumed that these Israelis would enlist in the common cause, but they found themselves unable to bear for long the burden and responsibility that their leaders imposed on them. The rising power of the General Zionists signaled to the Mapai leadership that the old-timers were turning to a party that legitimized the needs of the individual and put less emphasis on the requirements of the collective. Mapai’s political base of workers were gradually becoming middle class, and the public institutions that were the core of its power were intent on achieving collective benefits that would im-

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prove the standard of living of the people they represented. The party had no choice but to accept the fact that even though its socialist rhetoric invoked the Israeli public as a whole, its longtime members and voters—who were mainly organized laborers—operated as an interest group rather than as representatives of the nation. A true sense of duty toward the collective, especially toward its weakest members, would have compelled these Israelis not to demand frequent salary increases.84 Mapai was unable (perhaps because of Mapam’s pressure from the Left) to reject these demands. To please its voters, Mapai’s wage agreements gave preference to skilled laborers with seniority and to white-collar workers.85 Despite its austerity policy, the government was forced to print money to pay for the higher wages. In doing so, it dealt the country’s currency a mortal blow. In the end, two different sectors expected the government to raise their standard of living—middle-class professionals and organized labor. Together they shook the underpinnings of the austerity policy and forced the government to end it. Minister of Finance Eliezer Kaplan described the situation in this way: The country stands on the brink of economic devastation, and everyone—from cabinet ministers to street cleaners, from judges to—I don’t know to whom to compare them—everyone has made a compact of grab as much as you can eat, without concern for what will be with this tiny country. . . . If our comrades were to come and say: I don’t care that this merchant, or this cabinet minister or another industrialist lives better, but my life has become harder than two years ago and I just don’t have the strength to bear it anymore, I would understand. But no one is saying that, everyone is claiming that someone else is getting more. A presiding judge claims that his salary should be the same as that of a cabinet minister . . . everyone looks over his shoulder at the other, and what has come of all this?86

Such language shows that at this time Israeli society was undergoing a major restructuring, a profound shift away from a society with a strong ideological and collectivist streak to one based more on individualism and materialism. The rise of the General Zionists signified a broad movement to dismantle the collectivist system. Even those who voted for the labor parties displayed, with their wage demands, sectorial rather than collectivist allegiances. When Mapai blamed the General Zionists for leading the charge against collective values, it was in part projecting the secret desires of one part of society on another part. Considerable evidence shows that many people who had grown up in the labor movement were unhappy living within its narrow, burdensome bounds. They

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did not want to completely abandon their duty and connection to the collective, but they did seek to enlarge their private space somewhat, and to gain more legitimacy for their own needs and individuality. Anita Shapira has described this cultural and social transformation: “Israel of the 1950s, developing rapidly economically and slowly but steadily opening up to Western, especially American, culture, communicated a double message: on the one hand, old Land of Israel values were championed, but ambition, careerism, and higher education were at the same time encouraged, admired, and rewarded economically and socially. . . . The Palmach generation’s most dominant experience, that of togetherness, was replaced by a striving for individualistic expression, for disconnection from the collective and its grip, which was now seen as constricting and suffocating.”87 One of the prominent manifestations of this social change was the undermining of the relative equality that had prevailed within the labor movement. This could be felt not just in the larger working public, but also within the core of Mapai activists.88 Laments about the way Israeli society looked at the end of 1951 appeared in the newspapers. The labor movement was extremely anxious about the changing face of the old-time population. In the few years that had passed since the War of Independence ended, Israeli society seemed to be beating a retreat from its previous achievements and sinking into an “exilic mood.” This was happening because of a sense of psychological release after the tensions of the struggle, the war, the establishment of the state; the effect of the huge wave of immigration, unassimilated by the Yishuv; the loosening of pioneer values and self-restraint, and exaggerated dependence on the state apparatus which, under the guise of patrioticbureaucratic enthusiasm, blurred the casting off of the yoke and the abandonment of duty. It may be, however, that these phenomena were integrated into a larger fabric: the dilution of the Zionist vitality of the generations of settlers dating back to the Second Aliya. . . . The malaise of the Yishuv population, not just the immigrant population, was expressed in four principal ways: the decline in work productivity, more consumption than production, imbalance in the national budget, and disobedience to the law. But the source of the disease was moral collapse.89

The General Zionists’ gains in the local and national elections came in spite of the party’s lack of great leaders, but not just because of the failure of the government’s economic policy. They were also an outcome of the waning of

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the volunteer ethos and its replacement by mamlachtiyut. Scholars have offered a number of hypotheses about what motivated Ben-Gurion to prefer statism to volunteerism. Yisrael Kolat, a historian of the period, believes that mamlachtiyut was a continuation and intensification of Ben-Gurion’s fundamental view that the organization, not the individual, was the central agent for implementing values and ideas. Anita Shapira argues that Ben-Gurion had always been wary of organizations based on spontaneity, and that he preferred institutionalized frameworks. His political rival within the labor movement, Yitzchak Ben-Aharon, maintains that Ben-Gurion simply did not understand how to construct a society, while Yehiam Weitz claims that Ben-Gurion lived in constant fear that if he were to trust to his citizens’ free choices he would fail to accomplish urgent missions.90 What presumably motivated Ben-Gurion was fear that he would lose control or, alternatively, a desire to control events to the full extent possible. Once he finally had the power of government, he wanted to use it, so he chose a strategy that would both legitimize his use of state power and give him (so he apparently believed) the ability to carry out his programs. The country’s large immigrant population lacked the kind of solid identification with the Israeli collective that Ben-Gurion wished to imbue it with. Consequently, he sought to wield as much influence as he could over the shaping of the Israeli state and society. A centralized state cannot easily motivate volunteerism—on the contrary, it is a proven mechanism for suffocating individual initiative. But Ben-Gurion nevertheless hoped that the pioneer ideal could be preserved alongside mamlachtiyut. His resignation from the prime ministership to take up residence in Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert was testimony to this.91 Nevertheless, he cannot be blamed for the decline of volunteerism. In fact, the social conditions that allowed and encouraged it under the Mandate no longer existed. The path to symbolic social capital no longer passed through the country’s border settlements (although volunteerism was still an essential part of the ethos of the Israeli army). Mass immigration was no doubt a contributing factor—it demanded accelerated infrastructure development, which itself created a huge demand for a skilled workforce. The economic and social status of skilled laborers, who largely came from the veteran population, rose now that the country had a new reservoir of cheap, unskilled labor. This rise in status in turn brought a rise in income, changing the old-time working class. Instead of demonstrating proletarian solidarity with the new class of unskilled workers, the old-timers shut themselves off from the newcomers and worked

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to shore up their own position.92 This self-imposed segregation from the newcomers was only to be expected, given the economic threat presented by such a massive influx of cheap labor.93 Another explanation for the societal shift is the generational gap. The generation of the old-time Israelis, called the “generation in the Land” (dor ba’aretz) in Israeli parlance, is generally viewed as having grown up in the shadow of the “founding generation,” the Zionists who arrived in Palestine during the early twentieth century to set up settlements and establish the ethos of Yishuv society. The members of the generation in the Land have thus often been depicted as being concerned primarily with consolidating the Zionist revolution rather than with rebelling against their parents.94 According to Oz Almog, it resolved its “second-generation complex” by stressing and fostering its native-born character, a trait that allowed it to claim cultural superiority over its parents. These natives, called Sabras, also defined themselves through a cultural choice— they made defense of the Yishuv their special field of action, founding military organizations in which the older pioneers played only a secondary role. This gave the generation in the Land professional exclusivity and hegemony. The third way in which the Sabras resolved their second-generation complex, Almog writes, was by evincing extreme piety.95 The generation in the Land, the great hope of the founding generation, suffered a great blow in the War of Independence. Those who survived the war bore its scars. The anger and pain they felt as a result of their war experiences did not become a subject of public discussion, but it changed them internally. Part of the experience of togetherness and the sense of being a vanguard of the Jewish people disappeared when the war ended and the soldiers were discharged. The founding generation, led by Ben-Gurion, wanted to continue to make use of the services of the generation in the Land. But the younger generation launched a covert rebellion, invisible even to themselves. They withdrew from the larger society and dodged the appeals and commands of the founders. The sons and daughters did not say “no,” but they evaded taking on those tasks that did not conform to their personal interests. For external consumption, they continued to use the old collectivist discourse and to see themselves as a chosen elite, but in practice they lived in a way that diverged from the lifestyle that the founders asked them to live.96 In fact, two contradictory messages were aimed at them. The first demanded that they continue to enlist in the collective project, while the second told them to advance themselves and pursue individual careers. Given the choice between the two, the career advocates won easily, not only because of

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the personal benefits a career offered, but also because this reflected a new, up-to-date idea. Volunteerism wasn’t sent off to the graveyard of history (certainly not in the military context), but it started to look a bit musty, like last year’s fashions. Gaining social status by rising through the bureaucratic or military hierarchy was viewed by society at large as much more legitimate than getting rich from entrepreneurship. But many workers did start businesses, becoming contractors who employed workers of their own, and this too was viewed as legitimate if, for example, it involved building infrastructure in the country’s outlying areas.97 Workers in fact moved into the middle class throughout most of the Yishuv’s history, but at this time, because of the economic and social opportunities that it offered, the process accelerated and broadened. The discourse of rights that has received so much attention here offers another explanation for these social changes. As I have shown, use of the concept of rights came to the fore during the local election campaign. Political parties used it to offer voters a clear message. They did not always mean what they said; sometimes rights were no more than a slogan. But the fact that they chose this slogan proves that they thought it was one the public wanted to hear. The demand for rights sometimes came from the grass roots, from the angry housewife or harried bus passenger. It may have had its origin in fatigue, but it also resounded as a wish. The state of Israel restored to the Jewish people (or at least to its Zionists) its freedom as a nation. But in the face of the difficulties of daily life at the time, citizens felt that they were not free to live their lives as they wished. The balance between solidarity with other Jews in Israel (which seems to have been correlated with society’s cultural and economic cohesiveness) and the desire to express one’s personal uniqueness was thrown out of kilter when solidarity was both imposed and expressed in a hierarchical system in which some were more equal than others. The solidarity ethos was certainly not entirely hollow. The austerity program was an expression of national solidarity, and no matter what negative stereotypes the old-timers may have held about Morocco’s Jews, the latter were indeed brought to Israel in the end. Yet some acts of alleged solidarity were counterfeit because they did not bring about sufficient equality. Despite the desire to create a cohesive and egalitarian society, the policies pursued were not evenhanded. They did not provide food, commodities, and services equally to everyone, and they treated citizens like clients, allowing only a small sliver of society to take part in the shaping of public life.98

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The austerity program, some laws, and the overdependence of the citizenry on the authorities were perceived by much of the public as intolerable and illegitimate, imposing unnecessary constraints on their personal freedoms and desires.99 The General Zionists gave expression to the public’s feelings of suffocation and oppression. In its election campaigns, the middle-class party presented itself as the champion of freedom because its leaders believed, with good justification, that the public needed not just food, housing, and work, but also liberty.100 An analysis of the public’s behavior when confronted with the austerity policy and an examination of the elections of 1950 and 1951 reveal several aspects of the process of individualization that Israeli society was undergoing at the time. Personal and family egoism trumped solidarity in the area of consumption as well as in the job market, where the old-time Israelis pursued careers and demanded wage increases. The sense of oppression that pervaded Israeli society at this time reinforced the impulse toward individuation—to break free of the burden and demands of the state and the collective. To do this, Israelis needed to institutionalize and guarantee their personal freedoms in custom and in law.

⡤⡤⡤ somewhere in the transit camp

⡬ Chapter 8

Terms of Abhorrence How Old-Time Israelis Viewed Immigrants from the Islamic World

T

he mutual repugnance or disgust that may arise when the members of two cultures encounter each other is apparently a very common phenomenon. Charles Darwin documented one example of such a response. Sitting with a naked aborigine in Tierra del Fuego at one point in his travels, he opened a can of meat. The native stretched out his hand, touched the meat, and recoiled. His revulsion was matched by Darwin’s sense of disgust at having this naked savage’s hand (which, Darwin noted, did not seem dirty) touch the food he was about to eat.1 The subject of these final chapters is the intercultural encounter between the veteran Israelis and Jewish immigrants from the Islamic world—the Mizrahim, as these immigrants and their descendants have come to be called in Israeli society and scholarly discourse.2 I focus on the Mizrahi immigrants specifically, rather than all the immigrants who arrived in Israel’s early years, because the old-timers’ reaction to the former was much more intense, harsh, and qualitatively different than their response to immigrants from Europe, including Holocaust survivors. Furthermore, these initial reactions to the newcomers from North Africa and the Middle East developed into long-lasting stereotypes with important social and political consequences, as the sociologist Moshe Lissak has noted.3 Old-timers tended to view all the newcomers who arrived in the mass wave of immigration as inferior, but attitudes toward the immigrants from the Islamic world were unique in many ways. I will examine these attitudes by surveying the discourse of the veteran population about the personal hygiene and parenting skills of the Mizrahim.4 I will argue that the basis for the old-timers’ attitudes toward these newcomers was a sense of disgust, one that served to reinforce the process whereby established Israeli society underwent a process of individualization, coming to focus on the individ-

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ual rather than on the collective. This does not mean that the Mizrahim were devoid of negative stereotypes or of profound revulsion for the members of the population that was absorbing them. An example of such feelings of disgust can be found in Shimon Ballas’s novel Hama’abara (The transit camp), when an immigrant from Iraq says: “When I hear the Yiddish they chatter, I’m overcome with nausea.”5 Sephardim and Oriental Jews had similar reactions to Ashkenazi food.6 The phenomenon is worthy of future study. This subject touches on a raw Israeli nerve. An attempt to propose a coherent and functional explanation for a phenomenon perceived as morally unacceptable (discrimination and prejudice against immigrants) can easily provoke a strong emotional reaction.7 Nevertheless, historical writing based on the moral judgments of the historian’s time can be good only if it helps to clarify the context of the past. I will leave the moral questions to the end of my discussion. Until then, I will examine the evidence without forcing it into the mold of current sociopolitical and moral standards. In any case, the cultural explanation offered here is in no way intended to legitimize historical injustices.8

The Anatomy of Disgust The term “disgust” in its simplest sense refers to something that offends one’s tastes.9 The perception of food plays a central role. The mouth, the sense of taste, and the rejection of food are central to feeling and expressing disgust. But disgust is also linked to smell, touch, sight, and sometimes hearing.10 Beyond physiology, disgust—the threshold of which has lowered as human culture has developed—can also be a reaction to a violation of the standards of taste that are part of a moral and social order. The phenomenon serves as a key factor in the establishment of social control and of the organizing psychic order of human beings. Disgust involves a strong sense of revulsion or fear of something that is perceived as dangerous because of its potential to pollute, inflict pain on, or infect via proximity, contact, or consumption. Western culture in particular finds the secretions of humans and animals repugnant. They are seen as a source of bacterial or viral infection, but they also signify inferiority, evil, and corruption. The sense of disgust is related to binary distinctions such as purity versus contamination, cooked versus raw, clean versus dirty, dressed versus naked, human versus animal, us versus them, life versus death, health versus

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disease, beauty versus ugliness, and the individual versus the swarm (of cockroaches or rats, for example).11 Mary Douglas, who discusses the categories of clean and dirty, argues that dirt is a violation of order. In her view, there is no such thing as absolute filth. Dirtiness, like beauty, is solely in the eyes of the beholder. In part, this is because the designation of a particular substance as filth or dirt depends on where it is found. The recognition that a given substance is so defined when it appears in a particular place testifies to the existence of an order that gives rise to this principle. Douglas maintains that the desire to remove filth derives not from fear or anxiety (which are negative reactions) but rather from a wish to organize the environment (which is a positive reaction). Cleaning is thus a creative act linked to other actions such as decorating, furnishing, and painting the home. It is meant to create unity or to compel the home to fit appropriate ideals.12 Walter Strauss’s definition of the term “sanitation” corresponds to a large extent with Douglas’s. Strauss labored to instill standards of hygiene among Israelis in the 1950s, when he headed the Health Ministry’s public health division. He called sanitation a way of life. In his view, a clean home, village, and workplace were tantamount to a high quality of life. He also believed that cleanliness was an ideal, the guiding light of a worthy society.13 Disgust is also connected to sex, hygiene, death, and the body’s surface and covering. Clothing and the look of the skin are of special significance. Dress places a person within a social context. Skin, like clothing—despite its being external—is taken to indicate a person’s inner nature. In the past, ailments that caused blemishes of the skin were viewed as allegories for a person’s moral state.14 Disgust and its connection to all these categories have to do with the desire of humans who consider themselves cultured to distinguish between animals and themselves—in other words, to overcome nature by means of human culture.15 Emotions, and their immediate expression, are subject to social, cultural, and sometimes even linguistic interpretation.16 Like other emotions, disgust is connected to culturally conditioned ideas, conceptions, and insights. Disgust must have an object. One investigator of the subject, William Miller, has argued that disgust appears along with a sense of danger from, for example, pollution or infection. Sometimes it appears along with a sense of contempt, and together they construct a political and social hierarchy. Despite the efficacy and apparent stability of this social construction, it is in fact fragile and vulnerable. Physical contact with something perceived as inferior, or proximity to a disgusting object

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or person, can transfer inferiority to a person who has previously been free of it. The world, Miller writes, is a dangerous place in which the defiling powers of inferiority are stronger than the purifying forces of superiority.17 Disgust differs from other emotions in that it involves an instantaneous physiological reaction. The danger inherent in the object that arouses disgust is therefore sensible and immediate. This sensory perception is easily aroused— a written or spoken description of a repulsive object or person, or even of the object’s or person’s form or smell, can set it off.18 No other emotion, not even hatred, can be evoked by such descriptions. Disgust is a primal emotion, displayed in a specific facial expression that has as its purpose defense of the individual against pollution and that causes him or her to distance himself or herself from objects and people perceived as menacing. In some cultures and contexts, disgust can be channeled into fear or hatred.19

Imbuing the Original Population with Negative Attitudes Most immigrants who arrived in Israel in the late 1940s and early 1950s were first housed in reception camps (machanot) for a short period. Most of these camps were set up in former British army bases. Families were housed in large barracks or halls with no privacy, and food was in many cases prepared in a central kitchen and served in a mess hall. From these camps, families and individuals were sent to existing settlements or to new ones, mostly moshavim set up in remote locations on the country’s periphery. But the system was soon overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of new immigrants. The Jewish Agency could not afford to provide communal services, nor to provide new settlements with even basic infrastructure. Therefore, by 1950 it had set up transit camps (ma’abarot). These were essentially neighborhoods where immigrant families lived in tents or shacks made of metal, wood, or other materials. Families in transit camps were expected to provide for their own livelihoods and to pay for their water and, if they were lucky enough to have it, electricity, as well as nominal rent on their dwellings. Some transit camps were set up in remote areas of the country’s north and south, while others were built on the outskirts of cities. They were separated from the places where the old-timers lived, which created a physical partition between the two groups. Mass immigration was a central issue for veteran Israelis, one that impinged on their lives. But since many of them did not know any immigrants person-

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ally, a way to disseminate information about the newcomers was needed. The most important such apparatus was the newspapers, but impressions and stories were also shared by old-timers who visited the reception and transit camps, or who worked in them and on the development of new settlements to which immigrants were sent. Senior figures from the government and the Jewish Agency frequently spoke publicly about immigration and about the immigrants themselves. The public heard these leaders’ positions and impressions directly, at public events, and indirectly, via the press. Negative images of the immigrants were instilled in this way, as may be seen in a speech given by Giora Yoseftal at the Twenty-third Zionist Congress in 1951: A fundamental basis for the merging of the different Diaspora communities is changing the life values of those born in primitive lands, and one of the ways of doing this is to support the weak and victimized members of the family unit—the child and the woman. Parents who give everything to their children and who see in their education and health the very content of their lives, who give their food and clothing and money for the good of their children, have nothing in common with those who steal the rations designated for their children and cover themselves with the blankets meant for their children, who send their children to work at a young age and do not understand the duty of education, and who do not know what a doctor and medicine are. There can be no merging of the Diaspora communities if one family sends a woman to work a few days after she gives birth and another family spends its last penny to provide assistance for the new mother. The merging of the communities will not be accomplished by talk, but rather through education and care, by instilling life values, by protecting the right of the weak [to live], by ending the rule of the strong-bodied, by restraining the feral control of the male.20

Yoseftal, one of the central figures in the immigrant absorption effort, here showed that he and his colleagues were concerned about the power relationships within the Mizrahi family. The purpose of social absorption was to bring about a fundamental change in the way immigrant families functioned and to bring them in line with the norms of the veteran population. He called for programs aimed at eliminating adult illiteracy. 21 This would be accomplished, he said, by the establishment of nurseries, preschools, schools, and youth clubs, and by training and educating women. The interventions Yoseftal spoke of reflected the way that resources devoted to immigrant absorption were allocated, and to what ends. Many of the inter-

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ventions were directed at children and teenagers, somewhat fewer at women. Yoseftal made only one reference to men. He saw women and children as the means for shaping the new society. In the years that followed, he continued to trumpet the disparity between what he saw as the enlightened old-time Israelis and the backward immigrants, and he stressed the immigrants’ inferiority in the areas of parenting and gender equality.22 At the Twenty-fourth Zionist Congress, in 1956, he mentioned the improved physical health of the immigrants, who had recovered from the illnesses they had brought with them, and the significant decline in their infant mortality. But, he said, the road to integrating the Mizrahi communities into Israeli society was still a long one: “The Diaspora communities will not become one so long as in one community the child is at the center of the family, while in another the child is nothing but an object to be exploited; the Diaspora communities will not become one as long as in one the health of the mother is a sacred obligation of the entire family while in another community her status continues to be inferior, as it is in the most primitive countries. Only then, when the Land and its defense, Hebrew language and culture, and the Jewish family centered on the mother and child, are equally dear to all of us—only then will we be a nation.”23 Newspapers and periodicals were the primary channel through which information about the immigrants was conveyed to the veteran population. The images they created were primarily negative. More often than not, journalists took a critical and alienated stance. Even when they set out to extol the immigrants and their contribution to the young state, the journalists spotlighted the negative aspects of immigrant character and culture. An article by Aryeh Gelblum in Ha’aretz in April 1949 has become a classic of this type of writing. It was one of a series of pieces published under the banner headline “I Was an Immigrant for a Month.”24 This particular installment had the title “Yemenite Immigration and the African Problem,” and in it Gelblum declared that the arrival of Moroccan Jews was imperiling the Zionist enterprise. Over the course of the series, Gelblum constructed a hierarchy of immigrants according to their countries of origin. He utterly rejected the Moroccans and advocated bringing in Sephardi Jews from the Balkans, whom he viewed as the cream of the newcomers. He also had good things to say about the Yemenites. But in surveying the positive characteristics of the Yemenites, he made a point of saying that they bathed with particular enthusiasm. Still, he said, even when they were clean, he found it difficult to spend time with their hundreds of frolicking children because of the smell they gave off.25

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Readers and other writers reacted sharply to Gelblum’s piece. Many came to the defense of the mass immigration project as a whole, and of North African immigrants specifically. One important defender of the Moroccans, K. Shabbetai (the pen name for Shabbetai Klugman), a writer for Davar, charged that Gelblum’s piece was no less racist than the writings of the Nazis Alfred Rosenberg and Julius Streicher. Yet after attacking Gelblum, Klugman went on to admit that, despite all the fine qualities of the Moroccans, they had one severe shortcoming. This, he said, was their inferior Levantine culture, a pale imitation of French culture that included degenerate Turkish and inferior Arab influences.26 Moshe Lissak, a sociologist who has examined the responses, maintains that Gelblum’s attackers wrote with great ambivalence, arrogance, and paternalism.27 An article in Ma’ariv in the fall of 1949 depicted Yemenite Jews in the Ge’ula camp in Yemen, and described their arrival in Israel: “At the moment they descend from the airplane in Israel, astonished, shy, and alarmed, they are only on a slightly higher level than captured animals. It’s unbelievable. Some dare to ask us for a light for the cigarette butts that they suck on. Then they try to strike up a conversation. Many of them speak neither Hebrew nor Arabic, but rather a strange, unknown language that sounds more like the bleating of beasts.”28 Despite this offensive portrayal, which the reporter followed with a catalog of all the unpalatable aspects of the immigrants, he declared that, on balance, the Yemenites were “good material” and, in his opinion, they could change. His comparison of the immigrants with animals was neither unique nor coincidental.

Old-Timers on Immigrant Hygiene Israeli visitors to Yemen described that country’s potential immigrants as completely lacking in personal hygiene.29 North Africans were also depicted, in internal Jewish Agency documents, as people ignorant of accepted hygienic practices.30 The old-timers commonly viewed newcomers from the Islamic world as lacking any sense of how to keep their bodies and household items clean, and as not knowing how to use a modern toilet.31 Absorption workers, volunteers, and soldiers in the camps, most of them women, worked hard to change the immigrants’ habits.32 Medical institutions also tried to instill proper sanitary practices in immigrant camps (both reception camps and transit camps) and settlements.33 Health Ministry officials regularly visited the transit camps to inspect and, where they could, improve sanitation. Their findings were often worrisome, and their reports portrayed the ugly surroundings

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in which the immigrants lived: “The store is located in a corrugated tin shack with no floor, and the bread and other goods lie on the filthy ground, everything covered with thousands of flies. The entire area behind the shack is covered with excrement. There is still no shower and the people have not bathed since they arrived. There are two latrines in two corners of the transit camp, so people choose more convenient places out in the open rather than go to the latrines. So you run into feces everywhere, smelly and covered with flies. No place has yet been arranged for washing dishes, so each woman washes hers at the entrance to her home, which of course creates a swamp.”34 In their accounts of the camp, other visitors stressed the connection between the substandard physical and social conditions. Reporters were shocked to see the housing that the immigrants lived in but were also highly critical of their character and culture. A correspondent for Zmanim, a newspaper put out by the Progressive Party, wrote: “I traveled . . . to the huge pile of filth. . . . Have any of you seen nauseating gray-green sludge from which a stench rises like a vapor in the midst of human dwellings? If you have not seen such a thing, all you have to do is go to a couple transit camps. . . . [And] all these people are born, live, and give birth to new offspring in inhuman conditions of filth, of contamination, of loathsomeness, of apathy, ‘leave me alone and let me play backgammon.’ . . . . I wandered around among the shacks, stepping carefully over the mounds of feces and filth that cover the ground everywhere you look. I saw the latrines, shoddy and stinking structures.”35 And from an article in Ma’ariv: In its sixth year, the Holon transit camp is a stinking, filthy, poverty-stricken neighborhood. Its paths are covered with piles of rotting garbage; sewers overflow and their putrid water flows slowly, carving channels between the rows of tents. The doors of the public latrines have long since been knocked off their hinges. A heavy stench lies over the camp. Mosquitoes and huge numbers of carrion flies swarm over the piles of refuse. Their cacophonous buzzing never stops, twenty-four hours a day; and when the summer comes they are supplemented by the caterwauling of the ever-multiplying alley cats, which dig through the garbage and infest the tents. . . . In one corner, next to the shack where the showers are, one can find a group of half-naked, barefoot urchins, doing target practice with slingshots on cats. Snarled hair and splotches of grime cover their faces and necks.36

The article also described other games the transit camp children played, such as collecting rotten watermelon rinds from piles of garbage. The children

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were described as playing enthusiastically despite “the stench and putrid effluent from the garbage heaps.”37 These and similar depictions linked the environment to its residents—people who live under difficult sanitary conditions and who are not careful with their personal hygiene become identified with filth. This was one of the foundations of the revulsion and disgust that characterized the old-timers’ attitudes toward the inhabitants of the transit camps. When they dismantled the camps, the authorities had to grapple with two principal problems: many residents refused to leave and move into the public housing projects that had been built for them, and immigrants who had moved fled back to the camps. When immigrants insisted on staying in the camps or moving back to them, old-timers were astonished, given the conditions there. This was sometimes cited as proof that the newcomers actually preferred to live in close proximity to filth and sewage. Ze’ev Schiff wrote in Ha’aretz: I journeyed to the transit camp so beloved of its inhabitants. The housing conditions there and the hygiene would shock any person. The impression you get is that this is one of the nastiest transit camps in the country. . . . Its inhabitants are still housed in tents. This filthy tent camp has been in existence for four years. For the last year and a half it has been in the throes of dismantlement, but as of today it has still not been dismantled. [More] . . . than 300 people live in fortyseven tattered, frayed, rickety tents. The tents long ago stopped looking like tents . . . through the canvas one can see all the filth that has piled up inside. . . . Two rusty iron beds stand on bumps and pits, over which threadbare blankets with large oil stains are spread. Sometimes a scrawny chicken roosts on one of the blankets. Sheets are nowhere to be seen. Heaps of rags stand in the corners. . . . Outside the tents, there are only three double faucets in the entire camp, of tiny bore. These are the faucets from which the residents of the camp get their water. . . . Sewage flows between the tents . . . piles of excrement lie alongside the tents at the edge, because the four latrines that serve these 300 people overflowed some months ago. No one has been in a rush to empty the latrines, which emit a stink that can be smelled all over. Garbage has piled up and has not been collected for three-quarters of a year. . . . One of the two showers has been removed. A single one remains for 300 people in the summer. One resident remarked that there was no need even for that one, since no one used it.38

The purpose of this vivid description was not to reinforce immigrant charges that the institutions meant to care for them did not perform their duties, but

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rather to present the newcomers as misers prepared to live in awful conditions in order to avoid spending any of their money on a new apartment. Immigrants were depicted as not wanting to work, as wasting their money on alcohol and hoarding their abundant belongings (this latter charge was leveled in particular at Persian immigrants and their attachment to their carpets). The immigrants, many old-timers complained, demanded that they receive their new apartments for free.39 It was a short step from this to referring to the immigrants as parasites.40 Articles in other publications also stressed the unsightliness and smelliness of immigrant dwellings.41 One transit camp that residents refused to evacuate was described in this way: “Piles and piles of rotten cucumbers or tomatoes lie in the summer heat, with swarms of flies buzzing . . . over them; grubby children, dressed in rags, fat geese, and hungry, emaciated dogs wallow between the tents, the stands and the puddles, which do not dry even on the hottest days of summer, among the overflowing garbage cans, here emptied once a week or less frequently, among the chicken feathers, remnants of food, and soiled paper.”42 The previously mentioned article on the Yemenites from Ma’ariv compared the speech of Yemenite immigrants to the bleating of animals. The passage above stresses close contact between children and household animals. Physical proximity between humans and animals seemed to the journalists to upset the proper order of things. Douglas links conceptions of cleanliness to place.43 Bits of food on the floor are referred to as “dirt.” But if they are placed in a garbage receptacle, they are “refuse.” Their placement there is legitimate and tolerable. A chicken in a coop or a yard is legitimate in a rural landscape, but a chicken on a blanket is a source of filth. Rags used for work that are kept in a place designated for them are a part of any house or yard, but if the same rags are scattered around a transit camp, they produce a perception of disorder. Chicken feathers, children, geese, garbage, and dogs all mixed together violated the old-timers’ sense of order and threatened pollution, precisely because everything was not in its proper place. Such a sense of danger is a key element of disgust. The veteran Israelis sought to instill their norms of order and cleanliness into the immigrants, but the process was a source of cultural misunderstandings. Some intellectuals of the period viewed this process as a form of cultural oppression.44 Calling for an end to it, Uriel Simon remarked that the attempts to give the immigrants new cultural habits simply confused them. He told a

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story about a Mizrahi Jewish woman of about fifty who had waited alongside him in the corridor of a clinic. She had seated herself on the floor, even though there was space on a bench. A nurse approached her, took her by the arm, and told her that it was not nice to sit on the floor and that she had to sit on the bench. Simon protested this act of publicly insulting the woman, rather than explaining to her that the bench had been provided as a means of helping her keep clean. In other words, Simon also believed that the woman would be better off sitting on the bench, but that she should be asked to do so politely, with an explanation of why it was the right thing to do. In other words, even though he viewed himself as fighting cultural repression, he accepted the fundamental superiority of Western concepts of hygiene.45 A few visitors had better impressions of transit camp life. D. R. Alston, writing in Ha’aretz, related that during his visits to places inhabited largely by Mizrahi immigrants, he encountered well-aired tents and exemplary cleanliness. Contradicting the conventional wisdom, he believed that the Oriental newcomers had the makings of good citizens.46 Another visitor was pleasantly surprised by the living conditions he saw at an immigrant settlement: After receiving a house and plot of land for herself, the Iraqi housewife (most of the residents of these transit camps are Mizrahim) decided to have a contest with her neighbors over who could make their home the most beautiful. The individual family outhouses and the shower shared jointly by every pair of families guarantee that, if the sanitary situation up until now was catastrophic because of outside forces, if the latrines were a disgrace to the place, now that they are locked, they are sparkling clean. . . . Order reigns in each home and the attentive hand of a housewife is evident. How wrong we all were when we condemned the housekeeping of Mizrahim across the board, when we told horror stories about filth, about epidemics, and so on. We would have done better to see what would have happened if a Tel Aviv housewife, proud of her apartment standing on columns above the ground, were to have to spend two years living in a tent and sharing a latrine with twenty families. I don’t think we would have been able to say a single positive sentence about her housekeeping.47

When Walter Strauss gave a lecture to the Rotary Club on sanitation in Israel, he complained that the immigrants were being blamed unjustly for the unhealthy conditions in which they lived. Israeli society, he claimed, had not offered them a model worth emulating.48 The press also offered positive depictions of immigrants, but only a few.

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Infectious Immigrants: Image and Reality Just as immigrants from the Islamic world were suspected, even before their arrival, of lacking a proper awareness of hygiene, they were also viewed, at least in extreme cases, as being vectors of chronic and infectious diseases. When Ha’aretz sent Amos Elon to North Africa to write about the candidates for immigration, his reports were harsh. He described the residents of the Jewish ghettos as living in inhuman hygienic conditions, in the midst of an unbearable stench. The residents of these enclaves did not leave their fetid surroundings for long periods of time, and they ate, drank, slept, worked, and gave birth in the midst of this effluence and filth.49 Elon portrayed the mellah (Jewish quarter) of Casablanca as a place of stench, degeneracy, disease, and perversity. The Jews lived under conditions much worse than those in the city’s Muslim neighborhoods. His use of the word “degeneracy,” here as in other places, testifies to a profound anxiety about the deleterious effect that uncontrolled fertility would have on the Jewish people’s genetic robustness.50 Presumably, given the prevailing view in Israel that the Arab enemy was of substandard stock, when Elon wrote that the mellah looked worse than Muslim neighborhoods, he was underlining the low level to which the city’s Jews had sunk. “We pass through the high wooden divider that conceals the ghetto, and we encounter a wave of reeking air, which rises like a cloud from the abodes of human beings, a stench that is hard to define, as if living human beings . . . are rotting,” Elon wrote.51 In Marrakech he saw frightening figures—children with swollen faces, half blind, with pus-filled eyes, their skins covered with eczema. Two children who looked to him half a year old were actually, he was told, three and four years old. They ate lentils from jagged pieces of tin; one of them had festering sores on his bald head, and another blinked eyes that were covered with dark mucus.52 American Jewish films made to raise funds for Moroccan Jewry pictured a similar state of poverty and disease.53 Immigrants who arrived from Eastern Europe; from the detention camps in Cyprus, where the British interned Jews who had been captured on ships intended to bring Jews into Palestine illegally; and from Islamic lands, including North Africa, Iraq, and Yemen, did indeed suffer from a variety of ailments. Many of them were in poor physical condition because they had endured long journeys from their homes to their ports of departure. On board the ships that took them to Israel, they suffered from harsh and crowded conditions, and

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many fell ill.54 Many arrived after having come down with typhus.55 North Africans frequently suffered from trachoma, scabies, scalp ringworm, and tuberculosis. Yemenites often arrived infected with malaria and bilharzia in their bloodstreams.56 Some Jews from Iran had leprosy, which at the time was thought to be both severe and infectious.57 The immigration of Jews from Cochin, in India, was halted soon after it began, out of fear that elephantiasis, a disease prevalent among them, would spread.58 Many immigrants were infested with lice. At that time such infestations were considered a disease, and strong efforts were made to eradicate the lice. The principal agent for killing them was DDT powder.59 Many sources describe immigrant infants and children as dystrophic—meaning underweight, with atrophied muscles—due to malnutrition and dysentery.60 Immigrants also arrived with venereal diseases,61 to which the old-timers reacted with particular revulsion and disgust.62 The mentally ill and drug-addicted Jews who came to the country during its early years strained the purses of the institutions that cared for them and cast a shadow over the immigrant community as a whole.63 The Israeli Neuropsychiatric Society, which worked to establish institutions to care for those people who required hospitalization, published an open letter stating that the need for hospital beds for psychiatric patients was larger than in other countries because the new immigrants had arrived with “a higher proportion of [mentally ill persons] than in standard populations.” The letter asserted that the harsh living conditions faced by the immigrants in the camps caused a higher number of psychiatric ailments.64 When immigration was limited and selective criteria were instituted to prevent the arrival of young people with personality disorders, psychological tests were administered to some youths, in addition to physical examinations. The tests were meant to weed out people who might damage the Israeli social fabric.65 Old-time Israelis accused the Jewish Agency and the Health Ministry of endangering the health of the country’s inhabitants. The immigrants and their myriad diseases had pushed the country to the brink of disaster, many people believed. Medical institutions blamed the immigrants themselves, claiming that many had entered the country under false pretenses. The Health Ministry’s epidemiological and mortality reports indeed paint a disturbing picture. Epidemics of different types broke out among both immigrants and veteran Israelis, ranging from mild children’s ailments to deadly diseases. The ministry’s doctors assumed that the illnesses resulted from the immigrants’ living conditions and their failure to comprehend the importance

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of hygiene.66 The veteran public, like the health system, took the immigrants to task for causing outbreaks and endangering the public’s health. They were to blame, in the common view, because they were ill and thus liable to infect others. They were also viewed as a danger because some of them were employed in the production and marketing of food and were presumed to lack awareness of personal hygiene. The old-timers assumed that they did not wash their hands after using the toilet.67 At a conference of pediatricians in Tel Aviv, Dr. Erich Nassau, director of HaEmek Hospital in Afula, presented a study that found that when the veteran Israeli and immigrant populations were isolated, they presented distinct epidemiological profiles. Immigrant children commonly suffered from intestinal infections, dysentery, and typhus, while the children of old-time Israelis tended to come down with scarlet fever, polio, and hepatitis. He argued that the immigrants did not put the old-timers at greater risk of disease. Epidemics, he claimed, did not jump from one group to another; it was the immigrants who were the victims of such outbreaks.68 Nassau’s findings contradicted the research of other physicians such as Dr. Haim Sheba, director general of the Health Ministry, who blamed the spread of typhus among old-timers to immigrant housecleaners. He also maintained that the rise in trachoma in the veteran population was attributable to immigrant children’s moving with their families out of transit camps into cities and towns. Nassau himself had warned two years previously, in 1951, that infectious diseases could spread from transit camps to kibbutzim and had presented findings from the field indicating that the danger was a real one.69 In addition, immigrants suffering from chronic ailments were portrayed in the press as an unnecessary burden on the state, and old-timers agreed: “And why do we have to free the country in which [the chronically ill immigrant] was born and worked, and the Jewish community he lived in, and to support him here for years at our expense, at the expense of other sick people? After all, the facts are known, that families and communities send their elderly and ill to Israel and in so doing solve their social problems, whereas our old and sick get no care. When will the inhabitants of this country get the same rights as the new immigrants?”70 A huge number of immigrants requiring social services—the elderly, handicapped, and ill—arrived in Israel at this time. The country had no means of caring for them, and press reports indicate that there was no real understanding of their needs.71 In this time of shortages, the handicapped and sick did not receive the treatment they needed and could not subsist on the pensions

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they were given.72 The press reported their plight and the public sympathized, but the camp in Pardes Hannah, where these people were concentrated, had a powerful and sometimes opposite effect on visitors: “The ‘city of the crippled,’ with its huts and tents, wakes up to a new day. Hundreds of cripples, missing limbs, blind, tubercular, and mad, go out, each one to his ‘workplace.’ For the thousandth time the bus drivers had to use force to push away the dozens of cripples who tried to sneak onto the vehicles without paying. Those who had the money to pay for the ride terrified the other passengers, who are not accustomed to such sights. At the same hour, many of the 200 ‘safe’ mentally ill residents were wandering the paths of the camp, screaming and laughing hysterically.”73 The same writer offered a long description of the sanitary conditions at the camp: The single, sorry-looking garbage truck and the three sanitation workers cannot remove the garbage that has piled up. Many piles of refuse can be found between the huts and tents, empty cans and every kind of garbage in the world. In other words, there is no cleanliness. . . . The latrines are beyond words. On the average, each latrine serves more than 100 people. In passing by one of these structures, which include ten places, I was overwhelmed by nausea. The tin walls have holes and children go in and play in the filth. A person who wants to wash or take drinking water must go to the central faucet or the public “shower,” where the state of cleanliness and morals is not much higher than in the latrines.74

According to one historian, Devora Hacohen, health concerns were one factor—perhaps the primary one—that led the veteran Israelis to change their mind about mass immigration, shifting from support to growing and eversharper antagonism.75 The public mood in turn affected the greatest advocate of unlimited immigration, David Ben-Gurion. Even when conditions were most difficult, at the height of the economic crisis at the end of 1951, BenGurion believed that the problems presented by the immigrant population— housing, education, and employment—could be overcome. But he expressed great concern about the poor health of many of them, especially those who suffered from handicaps or incurable chronic conditions. It was this apprehension that led him to agree, finally, to a change in immigration policy, and to institute selective criteria in November 1951.76 In that year, polio cases began surging, as did those of typhoid fever and dysentery (along with milder children’s diseases). The Health Ministry and other organizations made huge efforts and invested large sums to treat the im-

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migrants. Special quarantine compounds were set up for victims of trachoma and ringworm, and several hospitals were founded to treat tuberculosis.77 Both reception and transit camps were hotbeds of infection because of their unsanitary conditions and a shortage or total lack of soap. Despite the efforts that the ministry made to improve the physical condition of the immigrants in general and of their children in particular, many of them suffered not only from the ailments they arrived with but also from the diseases they caught in the transit camps.78 This was especially true of the severe typhoid fever and less severe dysentery that spread through contact with excrement.79 The fact that some of the immigrants arrived in Israel in poor physical shape and the limited supply of food in the camps made them more susceptible to infection. Thus improving living conditions was what the Health Ministry most wanted the settlement institutions to do. In the summer of 1951, Dr. Sheba demanded funds to create a basic infrastructure of public health for the newcomers: a sufficient supply of clean water, and soap, so that they could bathe. He said that if a proper supply of these basic needs could be assured during the summer, the country could be protected against epidemics.80 Good nutrition, proper sanitation, and a high level of personal hygiene were thought then, as today, to be the fundamental building blocks of public health. The Health Ministry had to cope with insufficient funds, a chronic shortage of drugs, and hostile public opinion. It was accused of being incapable of doing its job properly and of not solving the country’s health problems, especially in the transit camps. But the ministry had no way of alleviating the harsh conditions there, since the camps did not fall within its purview.81 The high incidence of disease and the high death rate were viewed as failures of the absorption apparatus as a whole and of the ministry in particular. The situation was an embarrassment to the country, which claimed to be a land of progress— one of cleanliness and health.82 When all the members of a World Health Organization delegation that had arrived in Israel to offer assistance came down with diarrhea (an event that mortified their hosts), Dr. Sheba asserted that everything you could touch in Israel was filthy.83

Immigrants’ Living Conditions and the Level of Services They Received The immigrants in the reception camps lived a hard life.84 Although sanitary conditions in the public kitchens—where food for everyone was cooked—

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were considered good, the public latrines did not meet Health Ministry standards.85 Some of the camps did not have enough latrines, and the latrines that were built were not designed so that children could use them. Furthermore, they were too far from the camps’ residential quarters. Children and sometimes adults therefore at times opted instead to use areas near their tents or huts. Immigrants received no toilet paper or even newspapers as a substitute. The field taps where the residents drew water for drinking and washing their hands and faces were unsanitary. No mirrors were available for shaving, and there was no soap for washing dishes. The mattresses the immigrants slept on were infested with bedbugs. Swarms of flies, cockroaches, and ants infested tents, huts, and the areas between them.86 Some of the reception camps had showers, and a few even had hot water, but others had no bathing facilities at all.87 Some even lacked any place to bathe infants and young children. The result was that many of the residents did not bathe for weeks at a time.88 A health services system was set up in the camps, but the medical staffs were not always sufficiently skilled and experienced. The doctors lacked examining rooms and the most basic equipment,89 and there was a shortage of nurses. The sanitation arrangements in the clinics were not much better than in the camps in general, meaning that the infirmaries themselves could be the vectors of an epidemic.90 Not all residents were able to receive medical examinations or treatment by a doctor or nurse.91 The camps had nurseries that were meant to offer advanced care for children, but they, too, lacked the most fundamental hygienic conditions—including those necessary for the preparation of meals for children.92 In the transit camps and the immigrant moshavim, where immigrants lived in family units, the situation was even worse than in the reception camps, where services such as food and healthcare were provided by the camp administration. The inhabitants of many transit camps lived in tents, exposed to heat and cold. There were not enough blankets, sometimes not even one per person. Few of the immigrants owned winter clothes. Those from the Islamic world suffered the most, with the Yemenites the worst off. Although in many camps buildings were constructed for children’s facilities, they were not opened because of a shortage of money and trained staff.93 Doctors were in short supply.94 Israel had a relatively high number of physicians per capita (one for every 400 inhabitants), but few were willing to work in the camps, certainly not on a regular basis. As a result, a draft was insti-

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tuted, with doctors called up to work there for one-month periods.95 An attempt to do the same with nurses was not successful—many nurses simply ignored their orders.96 They and the doctors who worked in the transit camps and immigrant villages had trouble reaching their workplaces because of a lack of transportation and access roads; some had to make part of the trip on foot.97 Medical care was not available on a daily basis at all the transit camps. Mothers concerned about their children’s health sometimes had to walk for hours to get to a doctor. In some camps, clinics operated during the day but not at night, when no medic, pharmacist, ambulance, or even a phone to call for help was available. Inevitably, some elderly immigrants and infants died because they were not treated in time.98 In many places, no maternity facilities were available, and women had to give birth in tents. The shacks set up to serve as nurseries lacked bathing facilities, toilets, and running water, and the staff was unable to maintain even the most rudimentary level of hygiene.99 Camp infirmaries suffered from a severe shortage of antibiotics. Largely because of the difficulties of transportation, doctors could not easily obtain laboratory services or consult with specialists. The physicians were also treated cavalierly by the very institutions that were supposed to help them in their work.100 Camps and immigrant neighborhoods were hastily built and occupied within the jurisdictions of existing cities, towns, and rural councils, but with no coordination with the local authorities—partly because the need for housing was urgent and partly because existing communities did not want camps on their land.101 Buildings and tents were often thrown up—without the sanction of the Health Ministry—next to malaria-infested swamps or on sites where there was no provision for draining rain and sewage water. Transit camps and immigrant villages were often occupied before their water systems were hooked up.102 The country did not have enough pipes to supply water to new settlements, many of which were set up in arid regions without any local source of water, nor were there enough tanker trucks to transport water to the communities. The result was that many settlements were supplied with water just for drinking, not for other needs.103 There was a chronic shortage of water in many places.104 For a very long time, many immigrant moshavim who were supposed to support themselves by farming had no water supply—meaning that residents could neither bathe nor raise crops.105 In mid-1952 the Health Ministry was pleased to discover that the Jewish Agency’s absorption department had planned to install showers in transit camp schools. The Education Ministry set aside school time for bathing immigrant children, once a week.106

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Several reports submitted to the Health Ministry describing sanitation conditions in the transit camps noted that not only were the latrines located too far from the living quarters, just as they had been in reception camps,107 but the septic pits often overflowed because they were not emptied frequently enough.108 Many sites lacked sewage systems, and when the systems were installed the work was often shoddy. Pipes were laid above ground or not deep enough. Leaks sent wastewater flowing over the surface, creating swamps. In the absence of clean water, children played in the summer in puddles of sewage.109 Together with the lack of disinfectants and insecticides, the result was infestations of mosquitoes, fleas, and other pests.110 Vandalism was also a problem. Showerheads, faucets, garbage cans, and toilets were stolen or destroyed, further exacerbating the residents’ plight.111 Immigrants appealed again and again to the responsible agencies for improved sanitation. When this brought no results, they complained to the Knesset’s Labor Committee and to President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.112 On top of all this, the authorities would cut off the water supply as a disciplinary measure against the transit camps whose residents did not pay their water bills.113 In other cases the water was cut off to force uncooperative residents to vacate the camps so that they could be razed. Despite the harsh conditions—exacerbated by the cessation of other services, such as garbage collection—many immigrants who had been moved to permanent settlements returned to the transit camps, for a variety of reasons. Often they went back because they had established some social connections and perhaps found work there, and thus they were reluctant to move.114 The Health Ministry did its best to convince the settlement authorities to address the health hazards and to provide the camps’ inhabitants with sanitary, functional facilities. It also worked to provide a regular supply of water of reasonable quality. Yet it did not have the power to shut down a reception camp, a transit camp, or moshav when sanitary conditions did not meet its standards. The ministry did take legal action against the operators of camps to try to compel them to enforce standards, but this was generally not effective because of political intervention, as well as the light sanctions imposed by the courts.115

Nutrition The quality and taste of the food supplied to immigrants in the reception camps affected their physical and mental health. Although a sufficient number

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of calories was provided for each resident, the food was neither tasty nor sufficiently varied, and it lacked some essential components. According to one report, the standard breakfast allotted to each person was one or two slices of bread, a cube of margarine, and hot tea. For lunch the immigrants received noodle soup, and for supper a spoonful of jam, a few olives, a cube of margarine, two slices of bread, and tea. Sometimes they received half an egg per person, and in the winter each family occasionally received an orange. People stood in line for hours to get these provisions. Furthermore, the menu was not adjusted to the tastes of the different ethnic communities, so some of the immigrants did not eat all the food they were offered, further lowering the level of their nutrition.116 In those reception camps where meals were not supplied centrally, the immigrants prepared food in their tents. Since they had no means of refrigeration, food often spoiled. Spoiled food was one of the leading causes of intestinal ailments, especially among infants and young children. Many immigrants brought food with them from their countries of origin, but in many cases some of this food was confiscated from them when they arrived in Israel, in accordance with immigration regulations.117 When immigrants were transferred from reception camps to transit camps, they no longer received meals in dining halls. If family members were unable to find work, the family suffered. Even when they did find work and could afford to buy food, commodities were not always available because adequate supplies did not reach camps and settlements in outlying areas in a timely fashion. These locations suffered in particular from a lack of fresh milk.118 The supply of food to the transit camps came up for discussion in the cabinet, where Dov Yosef—who three weeks earlier had lost his position as the supply and rationing minister and been exiled to the ministry of transportation—was castigated by his colleagues: “Awful things are coming to light, and they are not things that can’t be done otherwise. . . . There can be a situation in which there is an adequate supply of food in the country, but food doesn’t reach the transit camps. . . . Everything is available, the country has milk powder, but it doesn’t reach the children in the transit camps. . . . There is food for meals, but people don’t eat, because they don’t have implements. Do the children and women have to be kept from eating because they have no dishes? It’s possible to make arrangements so they can eat.”119 Yosef ’s successor, Pinhas Lavon, was gravely concerned about the situation. He realized that the shortage of milk powder for babies had caused mothers to embark on desperate quests to obtain it. He also feared that infants

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and children in the transit camps would suffer irreversible damage from malnutrition.120 The Health Ministry division that oversaw well-baby clinics sent urgent letters to the ministry, Kupat Holim Klalit (the Histadrut’s health care organization, the country’s largest, which provided health services to many of the immigrants), the Commerce and Industry Ministry, and other official bodies, demanding that they intervene to ensure the supply of basic foodstuffs to the well-baby clinics in the transit camps. Kupat Holim Klalit’s central office sent out letters and telegrams, begging the Health Ministry to take action to prevent a rise in the price of milk. When the price rose, Kupat Holim Klalit demanded that it be lowered. The organization’s doctors maintained that the situation in the camps was untenable.121 Recommendations by doctors that food rations for children be increased so as to prevent a further deterioration in their health were not always heeded. Even when vital commodities, like milk, were supplied to some of the transit camps in the summer of 1952, the residents were unable to buy them because the price had risen. Parents who bought liquid milk were not able to keep it, because of the shortage of ice. Cans of whole milk powder, which was cheaper and did not require refrigeration, were supplied in 1952–53 only to the inhabitants of transit camps and poor neighborhoods, where fresh milk was not available, as it was in the cities, and where ice for iceboxes was in short supply. Because the powder was a scarce commodity, a large portion of the cans ended up on the black market. The result of the shortage, whatever its causes, was children of substandard weight and notably delayed development in infants and children.122 Press reports portrayed a state of famine. A journalist who visited a transit camp wrote: “One day, in the afternoon, one of the inhabitants, David Ta’anus, led me to view ‘lunch in the garbage cans.’ Four children, aged eight to twelve, picked through wide-mouthed garbage cans holding the scraps thrown out by the central kitchen for the elderly. Ten meters away, two dogs were also pawing through the pile of garbage. When I approached the children, they looked at me in alarm and fled.”123 Preschools and schools, which were supposed to provide meals for the neediest children, did not receive appropriate provisions, and the cooks and teachers had no choice but to serve the children meager meals.124 The most important food was bread; the transit camps had insufficient quantities of it, and what they had was of low quality. During the recession of 1952–53, unemployment and high prices compelled many adults in the camps to restrict their meals almost entirely to bread. Dr. Aharon Berman, a prominent high-school

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principal from Tel Aviv, recorded his impressions of a visit to the Nahalat Yehuda transit camp in August 1953: “Many families are quite literally famished, and a large number of the residents sell their food ration cards to buy bread (because the rations are too expensive for them to buy). One young man told me that most workers do not buy the rations because of their high price. There are many families that have suffered from starvation for many months and they are deteriorating steadily. I saw many people with faces hollow from hunger, covered with creases of despair, with not a shred of hope in their eyes.”125 But the food supply to the transit camps and distant settlements seems to have been inadequate even before the sharp rise in prices that accompanied the new economic policy of 1952. A document from June 1949 on nutrition in Lod, where immigrants had been settled in the homes of the city’s Arabs— most of whom had been expelled during the War of Independence—claimed that heads of families did not receive enough days of work to support their families. As a result, they did not have enough money to buy even bread.126 However, during the winter, when the camps flooded, the bread supply was increased to the hard-hit areas. Emergency stores were opened, bakeries were mobilized, and loaves were sent to the transit camps at the expense of other settlements.127 In the summer of 1954, absorption agencies were still trying to improve supplies and the level of nutrition in the immigrant settlements. Since roads had not yet been paved to distant settlements, the residents suffered from shortages of fresh food. High prices and a flawed supply system led to malnutrition.128 As already noted, immigrants’ nutrition also was endangered because often the food supplied to them was not the kind they liked and were accustomed to. The government ministers responsible for rationing, Dov Yosef and Pinhas Lavon, grappled time and again with demands for changes in the types of food supplied to the immigrants. Golda Myerson (later Meir), then minister of labor, addressed the issue at a cabinet meeting: On the matter of food, the population of the transit camps differs from the country’s old-time population. Situations come into being also when they receive everything we receive, that is not equality. Each of our families, if it receives a can of oats, that’s a great find, but if you give the same can of oats to an Oriental family in a transit camp, it stands there useless. . . . Up to now there has been a just distribution of food, but not just equality, equality sometimes isn’t just, and what has been so far is mechanical equality. I received a ration of beans, the person in the

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transit camps received the same ration of beans, for me it’s just a side dish for something else, for him it’s the main dish. And if they received only that, they have nothing to eat.129

The demand for meaningful, not just technical, equality was directed at Yosef ’s successor, Pinhas Lavon.130 It was not generally met, at least not until the burden of rationing was eased.131

⡬ Chapter 9

Parents, Parenting, and Children

F

or the press, mass immigration was a hot story. Reporters wrote frequently about immigration, the immigrants (both those on their way and those who had already arrived), and their customs. Of particular interest were the education, clothing, and nutrition of immigrant children.1 Journalists were also fascinated by the actions and behavior of immigrant women, and in particular how they performed as mothers. This interest crossed party and ethnic lines. The veteran Israelis clearly thought that the culture of candidates for immigration was of crucial importance. This included their eating habits, health, housing, and personal hygiene. When old-timers described Mizrahi immigrants, they compared their own culture to that of the newcomers, primarily in material and physical terms. The internal and spiritual worlds of the immigrants were most definitely not part of the picture,2 but the physical poverty that the old-timers saw invariably led them to conclude that the immigrants were also impoverished in spirit. This seems to have been what a Ma’ariv correspondent saw when he visited Iran just before a large part of that country’s Jewish population left for Israel. He offered his readers a precise account of these potential immigrants and how they lived. Reporting from Esfahan, the writer, Yizhak Ziv-Av, focused on the community’s children and mothers. On a visit to an Alliance Israélite Universelle school, Ziv-Av interrogated the teachers about their pupils’ nutrition. He noted in his article that their standard daily diet was three rounds of pita with cheese. He stressed that they did not receive any cooked food. The children, he reported, wore rags. A third of them, in his estimate, suffered from trachoma. Most did not bathe for days at a time. After his visit to the school, he went to see what the women of the Jewish ghetto did while their children were in school: “I went up to the roof of one of the houses. I looked down into the ghetto’s courtyards. In the yards women were sitting idly. No-

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where was a fire visible under a pot. A horde of superfluous, unwanted toddlers sat in garbage and stench. They weren’t playing. They sat there listlessly, waiting. I entered two or three of the courtyards. The dread of death hovered over their tiny hovels. The women encircled us and remained silent. They did not even dare to try to speak. They only looked at us with big eyes, the dark black eyes of a Jewish woman, and remained silent. And the children, not born to hope, did not smile.”3 Such newspaper features not only portrayed the wretchedness of the Mizrahi Jews; they also awoke in readers the distress and aversion that their writers felt. Ziv-Av wrote that he had to overcome his natural revulsion toward the filthy children he saw when he sat in their company.4

Parenting Skills As far as many veteran Israelis were concerned, Mizrahi parents, fathers in particular, were unfit parents. This stereotype grew out of the impressions brought back by established Israelis who visited groups of Jews in the Islamic world before their immigration to the new country. It was further reinforced by what the country’s old-timers saw of the newcomers’ children as they arrived, and grew even stronger as the immigrants’ actions were scrutinized by veteran Israelis who worked in and visited the reception and transit camps. When, for example, North African immigrants arrived at a temporary camp in Marseilles on their way to Israel, Israelis who worked there reported that the children had severe health problems. The Israelis attributed this both to the harsh physical conditions in which the children had been raised and to their parents’ ignorance of the most basic rules of hygiene, nutrition, and education.5 Yemenites were the central focus of press reports in 1949. These articles examined at length the parenting skills of Yemenite mothers, whose reputations were established at the time of their arrival. Since the veteran Israeli mothers viewed self-sacrifice as a central maternal value, they made it a litmus test for immigrant mothers. From their first moments in Israel, Yemenite mothers were portrayed as egocentric, preferring their own benefit to what was good for their children: “The cold penetrates the immigrants’ bones, their teeth chatter. A few blankets are passed out for the babies, but mothers prefer to put the blankets on the floor and sit on them.”6 Absorption institutions thus made great efforts to change the immigrants’ parenting behavior. Nurseries and child-care facilities were set up in each

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camp and in many other settlement sites. But when the immigrant camps, including their nurseries, were shut down, babies for whom no other arrangements could be found returned to the family tent. The Jewish Agency provided cribs and diapers, but one newspaper reporter wrote: “In many tents I saw that the crib was full of household objects while the baby lay, in accordance with ancient Yemenite practice, on the ground, swaddled in dark rags, with a piece of dark bread stuck between his lips.”7 This brief depiction displays the writer’s potent critique of the immigrants’ lack of parental capability. Such a laconic description was enough to indicate to readers that the cleanliness of the nursery and the pure white diapers that the baby wore there had been exchanged for the filth of a Yemenite tent and the dingy rags in which he was dressed. Nourishing milk, supplied by public and private organizations, had been replaced by a crust of dark bread. Instead of being in bed, a baby’s proper place, the child was on the ground, which was a source of filth. The article also reported the difference between the improvement experienced by the babies who had spent an extended period in day care and the regression in their conditions after they were returned to their parents, once again to be reared according to traditional methods. The writer noted in particular that the number of cases of dysentery had increased, and that the infant mortality rate had climbed correspondingly.8 Despite the absorption personnel’s attempts to teach the newcomers hygienic practices, many Yemenite women who were given instruction in the transit camps were described as being unable or unwilling to learn how to care decently for their home and children: “The women listen and try to understand, and it ends with Yocheved asking the next day, as she set out for her rounds: ‘Shoshana, did you cook today?’ It turns out that ‘I forgot.’ In fact, it is not forgetfulness, just as they do not forget the many injunctions to air out and clean the tent; despite it the tents are suffocating, their canvas is not rolled up, and the filth is abundant. You might ask: Are they busy? Yet here they are, sitting together at the entrances to their tents, their progeny around them, peering into the sunny autumn air, helpless, wretched, and . . . uncomplaining.”9 As often happened, this image of neglectful parents spread out from one particular community to tarnish the image of all Mizrahi Jews. Jewish mothers from Islamic lands were frequently portrayed as unable to care for their babies and even for themselves.10 The old-timers took two major approaches to the issue of the immigrants’ maternal competence. One was not to blame immigrant women, and to attri-

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bute their shortcomings to naiveté, immaturity, and incomprehension. This was the attitude of many Israeli women who worked with new immigrants in the role of instructors, teaching them how to care for their children and their homes.11 The second approach was to be more judgmental and critical, and the people who took it accused immigrant women of neglect and even abuse of their children. Supply and Rationing Minister Dov Yosef, for example, charged that some immigrants deliberately starved their children.12 Such accusations were more often than not leveled against Yemenites. The low weight of their children was first attributed to the hardships the immigrants had endured on their journey to Israel, and thus Yemenite parents were first met with empathy rather than condemnation.13 But as time passed, this view began to change.14 Yemenite men in particular suffered a precipitous drop in reputation, since the women were often viewed as being the victims of a primitive, tyrannous family structure that allowed men to exploit them.15 In fact, the criticism leveled at Yemenite women looks mild compared with that directed at Yemenite men. The latter, old-time Israelis said, caused their wives and children to suffer deprivation because they were unwilling to work, or because they spent the lion’s share of their pay on themselves.16 Mizrahi Jewish men in general were depicted as not caring for their children. For example, they were accused of selling their children’s rations to buy liquor.17 Even worse, they were accused of sending their children to work and using the money they earned to get drunk.18 Absorption officials claimed that immigrant fathers deprived their children of proper clothing as well as food.19 The poor reputations of Mizrahi parents got even worse during the floods when, it was said, they fled the rising waters and left their children behind.20 When the immigrants moved into permanent housing, veteran Israelis described them as unwilling to set aside even the smallest amount of money to improve conditions at their children’s schools,21 and as taking no interest in their children’s studies. According to a study conducted at the time, Mizrahi parents simply waited for their children to grow old enough to push them into the labor market. When asked to authorize their children’s transfer to boarding schools run by Zionist organizations, they agreed to allow their younger children to go, but not older ones. But when offered money in exchange for their consent, they gave it.22 The immigrants were perceived as grasping in other contexts as well. Both government documents and press reports portrayed them as seeking to avoid paying rent and water bills, as well as the cost of supporting and educating their children.23

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Health Ministry records show that many Mizrahi immigrant children were malnourished and suffered from deficiency diseases—conditions caused by the lack of essential nutrients such as protein and vitamins. The press generally blamed this more on their parents than on their living conditions.24 But it was not just newspapers that fostered the image of hungry children neglected by their parents.25 People who worked to get the immigrants settled into their new country, such as employees of the Hadassah Medical Organization26 and physicians, also expressed doubt as to whether parents would feed their children properly even if a well-balanced diet was made available to them.27 Given these suspicions, the authorities at the Rosh HaAyin immigrant camp (which housed Yemenite immigrants) did not give parents their children’s food. Children up to the age of twelve were fed separately.28 The camp’s staff reported that when food had been apportioned on a family basis, the fathers ate the best food and the children received only what the men left. Once the dining facilities were separated, the staff said, the children not only enjoyed food that had previously been denied them but also learned how to eat while seated at a table, rather than eating on the ground as their parents did. They learned to wait patiently for food to be served and to use cutlery. In other words, the popular image of the immigrant parent was shaped as a polar opposite to the image of the state as a whole and to the absorption apparatus in particular. The latter was portrayed as a good, benevolent arm of the state, while immigrant parents were depicted as uncultured and unable to care for their children properly.29 A variety of institutions thus acted in loco parentis, seeing it as their responsibility to educate children whose parents could not educate them. This was especially the case in the teaching of personal hygiene.30

Infant Mortality One newspaper commented: “Everyone knows: infant mortality is the most sensitive measure. The ultimate measure of a community’s—every human community’s—socioeconomic situation, it is the most reliable expression of a country’s culture.”31 In 1947, the infant mortality rate in the Yishuv was 29 per 1,000. In France at that time it was 51 per 1,000; and in England, 35 per 1,000. In fact, Palestine’s Jewish community had the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, after Sweden and New Zealand. Egypt’s infant mortality rate was estimated to be as high as 250 per 1,000.32 In Morocco and Yemen it was thought

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to be even higher. According to Dr. Yosef Meir, who visited Yemen in the late 1940s, five to eight out of every ten babies born there died before their first birthdays.33 In Iran the infant mortality rate in 1950 was 223 per 1,000, according to the Joint Distribution Committee, although the United Nations gives the figure 186 for the years 1950–55.34 In 1949 infant mortality in Israel’s population, including its Arab inhabitants, rose to 51.71 per 1,000. A breakdown shows huge disparities—in the kibbutzim the rate was 16.5 per 1,000, while among the immigrants it was 157 per 1,000. During some months of that year, 10 percent of the children who died in hospitals belonged to old-time Israeli families, while 90 percent were from transit camps.35 K. Shabbetai of Davar examined the data and claimed that immigrants from Egypt, Iraq, Kurdistan, Yemen, Morocco, and Afghanistan had overwhelmed Israel, “a small country with a great culture.”36 The press attributed the sharp rise in infant mortality largely to the immigrants’ “primitive” customs, giving short shrift to the difficulties of the climate, conditions in the camps, the shortage of food and its difference from the newcomers’ accustomed diet,37 the lack of food for infants, and other vicissitudes of absorption.38 Shabbetai described the effort to reduce the infant mortality rate as a great battle “between the culture of the West, with all its huge failings, and this great and terrible wilderness—the wilderness of superstition, fatalism, unconcern for the young child and infant, neglect, and lack of knowledge.”39 Of course, the old-time Israelis had not adopted Western culture in its entirety, but when it came to health, cleanliness, and the status of the child, the West was their inspiration.40 For the old-timers, the Western culture of hygiene seems to have been an undeniable moral good.41 Immigrant babies were portrayed as underweight, lacking nourishing food and regular meals. The Health Ministry said that one of the most common causes of infant death was premature birth, brought on, the ministry surmised, by substandard maternal nourishment.42 But there was a notable disparity between depictions of immigrant mothers from Eastern Europe and those from Islamic lands. The latter were seen as negligent, but the former were said to worry too much. These stereotypes had practical consequences— in some camps, Mizrahi mothers were compelled to place their children in nurseries or children’s houses, but immigrant mothers from Europe were never forced to do so.43 The practice of preventive medicine in the camps was affected by the presumption that Mizrahi mothers lacked parenting skills. Care of the mother

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and child was emphasized.44 The goal was to increase the weight of babies and children and to lower their death rate. Educational and medical guidance for mothers was considered by old-time policymakers to be one of the first steps toward improving the health of immigrant children during the 1950s—and the success was indeed impressive.45 The mortality rate among babies and children declined, even if the level of disease remained fairly high.46 Health institutions and women’s organizations advocated teaching advanced Western methods of child care to the entire population, both old-timers and newcomers.47 But although immigrant mothers for the most part welcomed and valued the new methods,48 some fiercely opposed them. In the view of the institutions responsible for these interventions, Mizrahi parents accepted the fact that some of their children would die and were thus unwilling to hospitalize children who fell ill.49 For example, the father of a child with diphtheria was quoted as saying that if his son was fated to die, better that he should die in his mother’s arms.50 There was a notable difference between the press’s negative image of the immigrants and how they were portrayed in internal discussions within the Health Ministry. Officials attributed the deterioration of immigrant health to the unavailability of a nourishing diet in Israel as a whole, and among the immigrants in particular.51 According to these officials, the unhygienic living conditions in the transit camps were a central cause of the sharp rise in illness, especially the increase in intestinal ailments. These maladies prevented the effective absorption of nutrients.52 Another cause of poor health among the immigrants was a shortage of hospital beds for the sick.53 It was only after listing all these causes that the ministry’s experts referred to “children living in families that have no understanding of child care, nor is there any chance of improving the situation in the near future via instruction for these simple people.”54 The campaigns conducted by health and women’s organizations succeeded. In 1951, infant mortality among the immigrants declined to 81 per 1,000. In 1952 it was 52.5, and in 1953 it fell to 47.5. But infant mortality among the veteran Israelis had risen, from 29 per 1,000 in 1947 to 35.9 in 1953. By 1956, the rate had declined to 32 per 1,000.55 A Davar correspondent linked this to the burden of mass immigration: “What does this mean? That the victors, not the defeated, paid the cost of the war. How did we get to this pass? It’s very simple: Kupat Holim took the doctors from the kibbutzim and sent them to immigrant population centers.”56 Another claim was that hospital beds had been occupied by sick immigrants, so they were not available to the old-timers.57 When

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the facts were presented in this way, readers took it to mean that children of the veteran Israelis had paid the price of mass immigration.58 There seems to have been some substance to the claim.59 Morbidity rose among the old-timers after the arrival of the immigrants.60 The deterioration in the health of all children, in both groups, was also linked to the types, quantity, and quality of food distributed to the population, first as the result of the austerity policy and then because of the sharp rise in food prices.61 Health professionals were sincerely concerned and made huge efforts to get the responsible agencies to improve the food supply and sanitation, but the agencies did not always cooperate. In the Rosh HaAyin camp, for example, two of the four nurseries were closed in the summer of 1950, when the reception camp was transformed into a work camp. Within just a few days, two babies died.62 Efforts to improve immigrant health ran into the wall of scarcity. Infant clothing, diapers, and blankets were in short supply. Prior to the systematic distribution of minimal clothing, new mothers would leave maternity clinics in the transit camps and hospitals in the cities with their babies wrapped in rags, not diapers. The packet of clothing that the state began to supply to every new mother was so meager that no matter what women did, there was no way to keep their babies in clean, dry clothes throughout the day. Immigrant parents could not obtain or afford to buy cribs, so they improvised.63 In addition to the institutions directly responsible for the care of infants and children, the old-time Israelis organized activities for immigrant youngsters, such as summer camps at kibbutzim. In both cases, old-timers sought to instill their values in immigrant children. They taught good manners, proper eating habits, and personal cleanliness—but their teaching was imbued with their negative attitudes toward the Mizrahi Jewish culture of the children’s parents. The children were thus assigned a task they were unprepared for—mediating between the two cultures. They felt a conflict between their devotion to their parents and the culture instilled in them by Israeli society. Al Hamishmar quoted an immigrant child as exclaiming: “‘There [in the homes of the old-timers] we washed every day!’ (The counselor relates that this boy once told her that his mother bathed him only when she was mopping the floor in any case.) And finally: ‘They loved me so much there!’ (At home, a mother does not have enough time to love each child. There are many children, little space, and great troubles.)”64 For the old-timers, the children symbolized the hope that the immigrants would change and adjust to their new society. The veteran Israelis generally assumed that immigrant children, unlike their parents, took a posi-

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tive view of the transformation they underwent following their contact with the old-timers.65 But awareness of the problems that this transformation would bring in the future could be seen between the lines. After a visit to the Rosh HaAyin camp in 1953, Regina Alazari wrote in Al Hamishmar: “A girl of about twelve stands next to me. ‘Come to our home,’ she invites me. ‘Our place is like the Ashkenazim,’ she added in her singular accent. She is clean and pretty. The sentence touches me deep in my heart.”66

A Roof over Their Heads Concerned that children would suffer greatly during the winter months if they had to stay in tents or shacks, Israeli institutions launched a program called Korat Gag (a roof over their heads) for children six to twelve years old.67 Some of the children were hosted in kibbutzim and in boarding schools of the Youth Aliya program. (Youth Aliya, originally established in Germany in 1932 to encourage Jewish parents to send their children to Palestine alone, managed boarding-school-style institutions for young immigrants.) A call also went out to veteran Israelis, encouraging them to volunteer to take immigrant children into their homes during the winter. When there turned out to be more children than the institutions and volunteer families could take in, a decision was made to house some of the youngsters on army bases.68 All the children were first quarantined in the transit camps for two weeks, to make sure that they were not infected with polio.69 They underwent thorough medical examinations to ensure that they were not suffering from other infectious diseases, in particular of the throat (because of the fear of diphtheria), skin, and eyes. When the children sent to army bases arrived, they were subject to a meticulous cleaning and grooming, because they were found to be in a “terrible, frightening” state. They were described as “loathsome, ragged, famished, and mangy.” Soldiers scrubbed the new arrivals with brushes and dressed them in new, clean clothes. Children sent to live with families arrived with health certificates and ration booklets.70 Some of the families that had offered to take children in rejected the ones sent to them. Most of the hosting families by far were Ashkenazi, and some were prepared to host only Ashkenazi children who spoke languages they knew. Most of the children were Mizrahi; the rejected ones were returned to a placement facility.71 A correspondent for Ha’aretz, shocked by this ethnic discrimination, looked forward to a day when the country’s Ashkenazi citizens would be embarrassed to insist on receiving only their own kind.72

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The program operated in the winter of 1949–50 and in the especially harsh winter that followed. During the second year, its organizers ran into several obstacles that they had not encountered the year before. The first was the growing anxiety among established families about the polio epidemic, for which the immigrants were commonly blamed. The second was the worsening food shortage. Families feared that they would be unable to feed another child.73 The following year, in the winter of 1951–52, children were not housed with families. Instead, they were sent to Youth Aliya institutions, kibbutzim, and army camps. The official reason given was that the Jewish Agency had promised to move families living in tents into shacks or other housing—meaning that most immigrant children would be able to pass the winter with their families, in reasonable conditions, and only a few would need to be sent elsewhere. But the real reason seems to have been that the organizers had concluded that private homes were not appropriate for absorbing immigrant children. Many of the children had been traumatized when they encountered a different culture in these homes, or alternatively when they returned to the substandard living conditions of their parents, still in tents.74 Korat Gag indeed offered physical protection for children. Infants and small children, however, were not removed from their parents and were instead placed in day-care facilities, where they could also spend the night if necessary.75 But the program also had negative consequences, with some Mizrahi children developing feelings of inferiority. They sought to emulate their Ashkenazi hosts and escape their ethnic identities.76 Given the negative attitude that many old-timers had toward the education provided by Mizrahi families, it is hardly surprising that some sought to persuade the children they hosted to abandon their parents and enter kibbutz or other boarding schools, most of which were operated by Zionist organizations. These pressures were exerted on the children without their parents’ knowledge, and children were sometimes removed from their parents’ care without their parents’ consent. At least part of the medical establishment looked askance at this sort of intervention in the lives of the immigrants.77

Children’s Status in Old-Time Israeli Society Children of the veteran Israelis enjoyed the same status they did elsewhere in the West: they were the focal point of the family. The Zionist movement, born

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in Europe, viewed itself as a modern national movement. Basing its ethos on the progressive concepts that were the basis of modernism, it—like European nation-states—set its eyes on the future and thus saw the education of its children as a central task. In this view, parents bore the principal responsibility for their children’s physical and mental health. This contrasted with the premodern belief that a child’s health was largely in the hands of God and fate. The considerable involvement of the old-time Israelis in the lives of immigrant children must be seen in the light of this attitude, both because the values of personal hygiene inculcated in the immigrant population were Western values, and also because they were, to a large extent, free of any particularly Zionist character. Similarly, the moral principle that parents, particularly mothers, should sacrifice themselves for their children was the accepted view at the time in Western societies.78 Intervention in immigrant families’ lives by old-timers should thus not be ascribed to the Zionist ethos, even if in Zionist discourse the children of the old-timers were portrayed as the embodiments and fruits of the Zionist dream of creating a “new man.” These children were not alone in being their society’s hope for the future—at least in the context of discourse (in practice, the picture was more complicated). Immigrant children were no less part of the hope. They were not seen only (perhaps not even mainly) as the children of their parents, but as children of the nation as a whole. A number of agencies and organizations sought to save them from their parents in order “to sever them from spiritual degeneration.”79

Sexual Behavior, Marriage Practices, and Morals The immigrants’ sexual behavior was fastidiously observed, as were their other bodily practices, such as bathing. In contrast with old-timers’ attitudes to married Mizrahi women, which ranged from superciliousness and criticism to sympathy, unmarried women were portrayed in an extremely negative light. Every unmarred young woman was considered to be in danger of descending into prostitution.80 In 1952, those camps populated largely by Mizrahi Jews81 were portrayed as plagued by prostitution.82 At the Pardes Hannah camp, for example, a seventeen-year-old girl came up to David Ben-Mordechai, a correspondent for Haboker, and offered him her body for three Israeli pounds.83 Senior officials reported that dozens of brothels operated in the Talpiot camp in Jerusalem.84 Ze’ev Schiff, of Ha’aretz, described the low sexual morals of the camps: “Most

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of the crimes and misdemeanors in the Hadera district are committed in Pardes Hannah. Prostitution and brothels are a matter of course in the camps, and a visitor should not be surprised to be approached by young men . . . offering ‘a good time’ with young women. Rape and indecent assault are daily occurrences. A few months ago, in the evening, next to the clinic in the middle of the camp, three boys who live in the camp raped a girl. Her cries for help were clearly audible, but no one dared chase away the rapists.”85 Absorption officials and institutions were thus concerned about the presence of unmarried or unattached young women and sought to place them where their morals could be protected. The task of dealing with prostitution was assigned to the Welfare and Health Ministries, and the attorney general was charged with drafting the necessary legislation.86 The most sensitive question was marriage practices. Bigamy, the payment of bride prices, and child marriage were all customary among Yemenite Jews and (except for bigamy) fairly frequent in other Jewish communities from the Islamic world. The old-time Israelis viewed all such customs as unacceptable and primitive and, when they first encountered them among Yemenite Jews in 1949, they took steps to stop them. Unsurprisingly, the customs became major subjects of public discussion, particularly in the newspapers. Mizrahi parents, especially Yemenites, were portrayed as treating their daughters’ virginity as a commodity, offering their bodies to the highest bidders.87 Newspaper articles about the phenomenon expressed profound dismay: “It is difficult, almost, for a European person to understand the casual way in which these girls are sold for miserable pennies to men who are liable to destroy them, to shatter their lives and turn them into hell. In one case it is the parents who are responsible, in another, one of the brothers. And such marriages are always accompanied by threats, beatings, and other acts of violence.”88 Stories of girls being sold for money were elaborated in order to arouse moral and emotional revulsion: “Apparently little girls aren’t very valuable in Yemen and they are sold for the price of a hen. In exchange they [the girls] get a life, short or long, of abuse and slavery.”89 But bride prices were not the principal concern of the veteran Israelis. What bothered them most was the age at which Mizrahi Jews, girls in particular, were married off. The vast majority of the nonreligious old-timers viewed child marriage as immoral, a practice that could not be accepted in a civilized society such as their own. They thus took action to uproot the phenomenon. The first stage was legislation. But even after the Knesset passed a law in 1950 increas-

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ing the minimum age for marriage from fifteen to seventeen, the press reported that Yemenite families continued to marry off their children in violation of the law.90 The establishment had to take measures to persuade parents to end the practice, and to enforce the law. As with bride prices, the press wrote extensively about the phenomenon, as in this article from Ha’aretz: A photograph of two children of school age hangs in the social services bureau in Rishon Letzion: a boy of fourteen with his arm around the shoulders of a young girl, standing at his side. These children are from the Saranoga transit camp, they are Habbanis, from the depths of Yemen, and the intimacy between them is sanctioned—they are married to each other. At school, this boy is the only one who is married, but fifteen girls are. The husbands of the other girls are adult and sometimes old men. I met such a married girl at Saranoga. She was nine years old. She walked wearily and heavily behind a tall, bearded man—her husband. Many of the Habbanis have two or three wives. As soon as their bodies mature they give birth. Despite this, Habbani families are not large because mortality is high. . . . A woman may have given birth to nine children but will have only two alive. This is the rule—a consequence of child marriage.91

It was vital to marry off the girls while they were still small, the reporter explained, because otherwise Arabs would kidnap them as soon as they reached puberty. Only a married woman was considered sacred and untouchable. When the boys and girls arrived in Israel, they were placed in the same classroom in the hope that the new culture would change them.92 Since the old-time Israelis viewed themselves as duty bound to see that these girls enjoyed protection and happy childhoods, child marriage profoundly angered them. They thus felt required to intervene in the private lives of immigrants to prevent underage marriage.93 The press portrayed cases in which the authorities had forced men to give up child brides. One article told of a twenty-five-year-old Yemenite man who arrived at a police station, brokenhearted and in agony, because he had been forced to relinquish an eleven-year-old girl whom he had bought for six pounds. The article presented the girl as a silent victim. The young man was portrayed in a disparaging and ludicrous light—the headline was “The Ashkenazim Caused Him Grief—Forced Him to Give Back His Eleven-Year-Old Wife!”94 Another article mocked a twelve-year-old boy who wrangled with the rabbis who sought to separate him from his eight-year-old wife: “‘My wife has left me and run away, I demand that she be declared a rebellious wife,’ the

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husband tells the Tel Aviv rabbinical court resentfully. [Under Jewish law, a woman declared a rebellious wife by a rabbinic court may be divorced against her will, and her husband is no longer required to support her.] In the course of the hearing, the panel first reaches this conclusion: the Flying Carpet operation [in which Yemenite Jews were ferried to Israel on airplanes] brought lots of magic and wonders to Israel, one of which is without a doubt this tragic case, a result of the backwardness of our brethren.”95 Here, too, the girl was an almost mute victim. When the rabbis asked her if she wished to live with her husband, she said no, and she gave the same answer when they asked her if she knew what his name was. They were unable to get her to say anything else. According to the article, she had been forced into the marriage and had tried to commit suicide. The reporter quoted the young husband verbatim, offering a disdainful rendition of his Yemenite accent. According to the writer, the husband was “incomparably sly—typical Oriental craftiness.”96 Another newspaper article stated that in some cases fifty-year-old men married ten-year-old girls. The men’s claims that they wished to maintain these marriages were also quoted for the benefit of newspaper readers: “I love her and she must be my wife”; “She is already ten and that is old enough”; “I paid the asking price, we are married under Jewish law.” All the girls portrayed in these articles claimed that they were treated badly by their husbands and their families, the latter having used threats and violence to force them to marry. The girls, readers were told, were sick of being beaten, of the hard labor they were forced to perform for their men, and most of all of the sexual relations forced on them. One woman writer on the subject maintained that the social, the economic, and especially the moral attributes of this type of immigrant (that is, the Yemenites) required the intervention of established society, which should remove these children from their homes. She did not specify whether this applied to all or just some Yemenite children.97 Kol Ha’am, the Communist Party newspaper, compared the status of Yemenite women to that of all other Asian women, from China and India to the Muslim areas of the Soviet Union. The writer claimed that Yemenite Jews had adopted the mentality of the Arabs they had lived among. She also accepted the common view that cultures could be ranked according to the status and rights they accorded to women. The better off women were, the more advanced the culture.98 A contemporary study that examined the status of Yemenite girls found a high level of melancholy and depression among those whose parents had

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pressured them to marry. In time, the authors of the study said, many Yemenite women married off by their families resigned themselves to their fates, accepting them as the way of the world, but even years later their marriages remained etched in their memories as traumatic experiences.99 The practice of marrying off young girls was a central element in the criticism leveled at the Yemenites. But their practice of bigamy also contributed to negative perceptions of them. Despite the legal prohibition (included in the Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951) against marrying a second wife, rumors— apparently well founded—claimed that Yemenite men ignored the law.100 They continued to practice bigamy and to wed underage girls. Yemenite women who heard about the antibigamy law demanded their rights and refused to accept another wife in their homes.101 Veteran Israeli women were particularly hostile toward Mizrahi Jewish men, disgusted with their attitude toward women in general and their wives in particular.102 This can be seen in an article by Rachel Elbinger in Hapo’el Hatza’ir: “My attention is roused by a young girl with a small child at her bosom in one of the tents. . . . The rags that swathed her head could not overshadow the radiant beauty of her face and her black velvet eyes. . . . On the nearby bed sprawled her husband. In the conversation that developed . . . he expressed his wish: he desired a ‘Shkenazi’ wife. And when we responded that no ‘Shkenazi’ woman could be as beautiful as his wife . . . he said: ‘Yes, my wife is beautiful, but I gave a lot of money [for her]!’”103 What unites many of the depictions and perceptions presented here is the sense of disgust. I have quoted vivid descriptions of the filth in the mellah and transit camps—of pus, mucus, and the human excrement surrounding the tents; overflowing latrines and their awful stench; scummy puddles; oozing eyes, mangy heads, and lice; and even comparisons of the Yemenites’ language to the bellowing of beasts. Illness (especially eye, skin, and venereal diseases),104 mortality, contaminated food and soiled clothing, the degraded morality that allowed the sale of girls as wives, sexual relations with minors, withholding food from children, the appearance of brothels in immigrant camps, and the perception of Mizrahi men as actual or potential rapists105 all led to expressions of a profound feeling of disgust. How was this feeling conveyed by reporters to readers? One example is an article by Yaakov Zerubavel,106 describing a visit to Jewish communities in North Africa and Asia. He first described the conditions in which North Africa’s Jews lived: “The mellah of Morocco cannot be compared with ghettos anywhere else. You can’t speak

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at all of apartments, of houses. These are burrows dug deep, lumps of clay with apertures instead of doors and windows, without furniture and with no order at all, full of filth and stench. Piles of refuse and garbage cover the entire area and germs bearing all sorts of horrible diseases revel here undisturbed and inflict ghastly deaths on most of the population.”107 Zerubavel clearly wrote about these Jews as if they were animals, linking the two through the use of the word “burrows.” Also notable was his fear of infection with disease. He asserted that these people did not make the proper separations between their bodies and their excretions. The old-time Israelis, like all Westerners, viewed such separation as fundamental to proper hygiene, as indeed it objectively is. But for Zerubavel and other Israelis, concern that the newcomers did not separate the clean from the unclean colored their view of all Mizrahi Jewish culture.108 Later in his article, he noted that the Jewish neighborhood in Fez was located adjacent to the cemetery. In other words, he described the violation of the separation between the living and the dead: “At night, it is hard to make out the boundary between them, and I did not know who to envy—the dead in the graveyard or the living in the mellah.”109 Such a description of life in Jewish neighborhoods in the Maghreb amplifies the sense of disgust, primarily because it stresses the lack of any distinction between the proper and the improper. The veteran Israelis were also aghast when they saw Mizrahi families packed together, parents and children, in a single room—or even more than one family in a single room—without any attempt to screen off the area where the parents slept. Clearly, in such cases, adults engaged in sexual relations in the presence of children and other adults, which the old-timers found abhorrent: “In these burrow-homes several families often live together, adults and children. Here they hold weddings and here children are born. Trachoma, tuberculosis, venereal disease, leprosy, boils—they are permanent guests here, and no one imagines that any effort should be made to get rid of them. Pregnant mothers are surrounded by dozens of children suffering from rickets, along with their half-blind husbands. Barely conscious old men with snarled beards wallow in the synagogue, listening with deaf ears to readings, in Arabic, from the Zohar.”110 Generally children are not perceived as objects that elicit disgust, but in Zerubavel’s depiction, as in those of other writers,111 children do become the objects of revulsion—because they suffer from horrible diseases, because they are closely associated with filth and animals, and also because of their numbers. The image painted here of Mizrahi Jewish men is especially interesting.

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They are virile, inasmuch as they have fathered many children, and yet they are also invalids and weak, blind, or deaf. When the writer cites the language in which these candidates for immigration read sacred books—Arabic, the language of the enemy—he further amplifies the Moroccans’ “otherness.”112 An article by Aryeh Gelblum also discussed at length the proper distance that cultured people ought to keep between themselves and their bodily secretions and excretions. Appearing in this context is one of the central causes of the sense of disgust—bad odors: “On the second night, when I opened my eyes, I saw my Turkish neighbor squatting between her bed and mine and doing her business. The truth is, then, that these dozens of people, especially the women, do not go out to the latrine at night, located not far from the sleeping quarters. . . . Women and men of all ages get up incessantly at night, urinate and defecate in the ‘hall,’ between the beds, into cans they have gathered. . . . And these ‘voices’ do not cease all night. The air becomes heavier. . . . All the time, without restraint, they fire from every direction the trumpeting sounds of their stinking flatulence into the room.”113 Elsewhere, Gelblum repeats the motif of the bad odor exuding from the immigrants, who were not in the habit of bathing. Similar descriptions can be found elsewhere.114 Gelblum went to the trouble of offering a detailed description of the latrines and how they were used. He was especially repulsed by the facts that men and women used the latrine at the same time, with no partition between them, and that entire families used the latrines together.115 The newspaper pieces I have cited here clearly distinguish between immigrants (or potential immigrants) and their places of residence and the way of life of the original Israelis. The old-timers viewed the immigrants as people who did not take the trouble to maintain boundaries between the pure and impure, and between lower and higher functions, thus becoming lower, repulsive beings themselves. Therefore, the fundamental canons of disgust linked the immigrants not only to the symbolic menace of social inferiority, but also to a real danger of spreading a variety of diseases. This fear was exacerbated by the realities of the polio epidemic, which was blamed on the immigrants;116 of the brothels that attracted clients into immigrant camps and communities, thus supplying vectors for the transmission of both disease and low morals from the camps to the old-timers;117 and of the transit camps, which were seen as ugly blots on Israel’s beautiful landscape. Gelblum, who has often been criticized for his attitude toward the immigrants, frequently criticized the bungled ways in which the authorities man-

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aged their absorption. He claimed that the fact that the newcomers were forced to live in humiliating and unfit conditions affected societal attitudes toward them. In one camp, he reported, an old-time physician sexually harassed the local women. Gelblum linked such harassment to the growing number of rapes and attempted rapes committed by old-timers against immigrant women.118 In linking the humiliating conditions in the camps to the violation of immigrant women’s bodies, he implied that, in some sense, the living conditions dehumanized the immigrants in a very literal sense, so that old-timers did not feel obligated to treat them as equal human beings.119 Scornful and judgmental depictions, like Zerubavel’s, were not the only source of such stereotypes. Sympathetic accounts, in which writers identified with the immigrants’ plight, could also reinforce the linkage between their living conditions and their repulsive image. Blaming these conditions on the absorbing institutions, or even on Israeli society as a whole, and expressing real distress at the suffering of the handicapped, ill, and starving children nevertheless tagged the population of the camps as “disgusting.” Many articles that appeared in the press at the time conveyed to readers the nausea that overcame the writer on encountering the immigrants. The sense of peril that the writers communicated in describing the close proximity of immigrant children to excrement infected newspaper readers as well.120 Feelings of fear, of anxiety that the country was being overrun by people with inferior hygienic practices, people of low culture and morals, overwhelmed not only newspaper reporters and their readers, but also those who worked with the immigrants or visited them.121

⡬ Chapter 10

The Construction of a Collective Relations between Immigrants and Old-Time Israelis

V

eteran Israelis told pollsters that they supported immigration, but in private conversations they worried about the quality of the newcomers. Some observers said that the old-timers’ attitude toward the immigrants was one of duty, not love.1 A doctor who worked for a time in a transit camp wrote to the prime minister when he completed his tour of duty: “I received the impression . . . that the transit camp’s children are treated with contempt. The attitude [is like that] toward a stray, troublesome child.” He also wrote: “I saw an Iraqi woman, one who lives in the transit camp and who works for one of the people in our village, lying outside on a wooden bench in the sun during naptime, because in the house [where she works] there is no chair for her—she is alien, polluted, a schvartze [a black]—that is the attitude.”2 Old-timers thus felt alienated from the immigrants. They lorded it over the newcomers, tending not to trust them, and did their best to keep their distance.3 Uriel Simon wrote in Ha’aretz: “Two native-born Israeli girls went to see the transit camp. As soon as they got on the bus that took them there they already felt as if they were in a foreign country—the acrimonious battle in line, the loud Babel of languages, the plethora of strange parcels. . . . All this was amplified when they wandered between the rows of the closely packed corrugated aluminum shacks. . . . It was difficult for them to view boys and girls naked from the waist down, with mucus dripping from their noses onto their upper lips and flies buzzing around their eyes, as their brethren, the members of their nation.”4 In another article, he went even further in his depiction of the foreignness of the immigrants: “A man travels by train and the sights of his country pass before his eyes, among them—the transit camp. It looks like a wound in living flesh, the transit camp with its myriad, shiny tin shacks, crowded around

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stinking latrines. Grimy toddlers, dressed in tatters, stand alongside the road, waving at him with their tiny hands. For an instant gazes meet, and he captures the sparkle in their eyes, but he does not raise his hand in response. He prefers to remain a stranger and far off, he fears contact.”5 Simon accused the old-timers of not taking any interest in the immigrants. The established Israelis felt, he said, that they did their duty by paying their taxes, from which the absorption budget came. He observed that the old-timers who worked in the camps—officials, counselors, teachers, doctors, and nurses— were not valued for their pioneering service to the immigrants. On the contrary, social attitudes turned such work from a calling into a burden, from a respectable job into a dishonorable one. The assumption, Simon wrote, was that if a person worked in a camp he did so because he could not find more congenial work.6 The teachers who took it upon themselves to work with immigrants were not the most experienced or best trained. Often it was the least qualified teachers and officials who received such assignments.7 Some officials sharply criticized the quality of the counselors who worked in the camps. They accused the counselors of being untrained hacks who had been given the jobs in order to serve their party.8 Someone in Mapai suggested that old-time workers should be compelled to live in new immigrant communities in order to strengthen the population—because old-timers with professional skills, when asked to move into immigrant settlements, refused to do so.9 Another type of distance was created by the conduct of the planning and local governing bodies. Planning authorities and local leaders from across the political spectrum firmly opposed the establishment of transit camps within their jurisdictions. The inhabitants of the camps, they claimed, stole fruit and destroyed orchards, and picked vegetables from farmers’ fields. Neighborly relations seldom developed between transit camps and nearby established neighborhoods. The two groups were utterly estranged from each other, and all attempts to encourage cooperation between them failed.10 K. Shabbetai cast light on an important aspect of this rejection and disaffection that was widely acknowledged but seldom spoken of: “Among the young people there is an insult that is much harsher than the normal kind—sexual insult. Our girls, who are generally quite outgoing with members of the opposite sex, loathe North African boys. There was an incident in which some girls came to a dance at Markus House, but when they heard that the boys were North Africans, they didn’t want to get off the bus that brought them. That’s

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not the only such case. Everyone acquainted with these matters knows that it’s typical.”11 The Moroccan boys, Klugman reported, responded with a hatred that was sometimes vented in the rape of Ashkenazi women. He presented the crime of rape not as an outburst of repressed sexuality but rather as an outlet for the pain of rejection.12 The occasional rapes of this type served to amplify the negative stereotypes attached to the immigrants. Such cases cast a pall that extended beyond specific incidents and magnified the old-timers’ fear of the immigrants, producing even more rejection.13 Rape was perceived as a bestial, frightening, polluting deed. The alienation and hostility felt by both sides resulted in myriad confrontations. One such, recorded by Shmuel Hugo Bergmann, occurred on the passenger train from Haifa to Jerusalem. He related that old-timers squared off against Moroccan immigrants because the latter lit cigarettes in a no-smoking car. A soldier of Moroccan origin who took part in the altercation sneered at one of his opponents: “Too bad Hitler didn’t finish off all of you.” An Ashkenazi passenger retorted that he’d been wounded twice in the war, fighting for the right of the Moroccans to immigrate to Israel. A Moroccan girl responded that the Arabs they had lived among had never treated them as badly as the Ashkenazis now did. Bergmann displayed sympathy for the sharp responses of the Moroccan immigrants, and he argued that their reaction was natural and comprehensible given the lack of decent conditions for the immigrants: “We have established two peoples in our country, with our own hands we have created two classes in Israel that are tied to each other only by mutual contempt and hatred. The day will come when all we have built and sought to build in this land will be swallowed up in a class war. . . . A nation is not built by transporting [people] from one place to another. . . . A nation is not created by mechanical reiteration in speeches and on the radio of slogans and ideals that were once powerful and strong but that have been emptied of content. When our youth speak, they put [the term] Zionism in quotation marks.”14 Bergmann’s criticism was directed not at the immigrants but at the country’s failure to take the immigrants in properly. Other writers also voiced severe criticism of the absorbing institutions’ failures. In one of his articles, Uriel Simon discussed the way in which the Mizrahi immigrants had internalized the negative stereotypes applied to them because they were not accepted in established society. As a result, they felt no commitment to the collective’s moral and legal norms.15 Simon believed that the old-timers had a tendency to

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hold the immigrants to the Yishuv’s ideals and values—which the old-timers did not always live up to—without any consideration of the hardships the immigrants faced.16 Academic researchers of the time also criticized the government and the overall society’s attitude toward immigrants. A study on absorption published by Shmuel Noach Eisenstadt in 1952 laid out the central problems that characterized the enterprise: Most of the new immigrants acclimatize in the country in palpable separation from the existing population. . . . A large portion of the new immigrants has [been] settled in new geographical regions that were largely unsettled by members of the established population. . . . A large part of the new immigration entered special, new economic-occupational sectors created largely . . . to ensure their employment, and which afford them inferior economic and social standing. . . . New immigrants and the members of the old population meet and have social encounters, for the most part, in formal bureaucratic frameworks, in which the role of the immigrants, at least at first, is largely passive. . . . There are three principal social outcomes. First, few primary relationships and unmediated personal social contacts. Second, in these circumstances . . . the immigrants . . . are objects operated on by the employment and social welfare bureaus. . . . Third, intensive contact with officialdom, one of the best-off and superior levels in the stratified structure, can intensify the immigrants’ sense of inferiority and of being discriminated against.17

Eisenstadt’s book was widely covered in the press. The newspapers stressed in particular the huge disparity between the bureaucratic relationships on which interactions between old-timers and immigrants were based and the personal and social relations that were the ideal. Most of the media’s criticism was thus directed at the bureaucracy. Yet, in truth, at least part of the responsibility lay with the public.18 Unlike other critics, Uriel Simon pointed out the root cause of the problem—the old-timers’ attitude toward the immigrants— and maintained that the way in which services were provided to the latter had to be changed. He asserted that the way in which aid was given to the immigrants was devoid of human warmth and of a sense of equality, and that this was no less serious a problem than the provision of housing and employment.19 Aharon Geva, writing in Davar, reached similar conclusions. He suggested that the individual volunteer had left the stage of history and handed over his job to the state: “The new immigrant is one of a crowd, a stranger whom people don’t understand. Some even reject him. Some see him as one of those re-

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sponsible for the country’s hardships . . . . because he is a “primitive” person. The immigrant lives far away in a transit camp, in a spiritual “ghetto” and a geographic “ghetto.” . . . The homes of the old-timers are closed to him. . . . The teacher comes at a fixed hour, gives his lesson, and goes home. . . . Now they part and go their separate ways as strangers, just as before.”20 The immigrants’ tribulations did not seem to make the old-timers identify with them. On the contrary, geographical distance, disrespect for those who worked in transit camps (at least with regard to salaried workers, not volunteers), and the consequent ineptitude of those who did such work21 all contributed not to apathy toward the immigrants but to actual revulsion. The veteran Israelis sought to distance themselves from this source of shame, filth, and stench. The old-timers’ socioeconomic standing was not the only factor that dictated the immigrants’ inferior status—cultural factors also played a role. Most old-timers had a hard time identifying with the immigrants because of the negative way in which the newcomers were perceived. Like all perceptions, these were based at least in part on reality. As we have seen, the press published some criticism aimed at constructing an alternative view, according to which the immigrants’ circumstances were not the product of their own inadequacies. These articles blamed the old-time Israelis and officialdom for not providing the proper infrastructure for immigrant absorption and, in particular, for not accepting the immigrants on an emotional level. But these critiques did not change fundamental attitudes.22 The immigrants’ foreignness, caused by their culture and the taint of their living conditions, elicited revulsion and anxiety from the old-timers, with two principal results. First, most of the veteran Israelis displayed a lack of interest in and alienation from the newcomers. And second, in contrast, health institutions and women’s organizations sought to change the immigrants’ lifestyles and hygienic practices, to make them conform to the established community’s practices. In any culture, people with a high tolerance for things that most members of the culture consider disgusting generally belong to categories that place them outside the culture’s normative center. Such categories include children, the mentally ill, and saints (like Mother Theresa).23 Israeli health workers and volunteers for women’s organizations viewed themselves, and were viewed by society, as immune to the contamination that supposedly resulted from contact with disgusting people or things. It is hardly surprising that their work

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was called “sacred labor.”24 Clearly, then, not all of the old-time Israelis felt threatened by the immigrants. In fact, some of those who worked among the immigrants formed positive opinions of them.25 There were a variety of reasons why their reaction might have been so different. If we choose to be skeptical, we can explain their feelings as the product of cognitive dissonance: the low monetary compensation they received for their work may have, paradoxically, made them see their work as particularly important and the people they worked with as human beings worthy of their efforts. On the other hand, it may simply be that the two sides developed human relations based on the oldtimers’ greater exposure to the immigrants, as opposed to the narrow, stereotypical perceptions typical of those who made only brief visits to the camps.

The Cultural Influence of the Hygiene Ethos The position of the old-timers with respect to dirt, personal hygiene, nutrition, sanitation, health, parenting, and sexuality grew out of the discourse on these topics in Western Europe and the United States. The West provided the exemplary norms and practices and the standards for comparison.26 So, for example, the exercise program followed in Israeli schools was borrowed from Denmark, and kindergartens and boarding schools were evaluated in according to the standards of such institutions in Switzerland. When it came to health, the number of hospital beds in Israel was compared to that in Denmark, England, the United States, and Holland. Medical delegations from the West came to Israel to instruct local physicians. The American and Canadian embassies loaned the Israeli Health Ministry films they had made to instruct immigrants in disease prevention, pest control, hygiene, sanitation, and infant care. These films were shown to both old-timers and immigrants.27 In addition, Israelis used as models some local programs from the Mandate period, which imitated, reworked, selected, and mixed a variety of components imported from the West.28 Since the discourse on hygiene and perceptions of the body played a significant role in constructing the sense of disgust, it could be argued that the feeling of the old-timers when they encountered abnormalities was neither deliberate nor constructed simply in response to the immigrants’ ethnicity.29 The established population’s cultural perceptions had taken shape, after all, long before the mass immigration.30 The cultural aversion displayed by the immigrants of the Second and Third Aliyot, most of whom came from Eastern Eu-

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rope, to the no less Ashkenazi and Eastern European immigrants of the Fourth Aliya is evidence of this.31 The Israeli hygiene ethos was a copy of the Western ethos (despite certain differences in practice). In Israel, as in Europe, cleanliness and hygiene were perceived not only as a means of improving public health—particularly the health of the poor—but also as a way of shaping a proper social order and of preserving moral values. In the West, hygiene advocates viewed themselves as responsible for all areas of life. They drew boundaries for proper sexual behavior, advocated ways of educating people in the values of cleanliness, and even sought to instill political views, all in the name of shaping an orderly, productive, and well-behaved populace. In the West, certain social groups were suspected a priori of improper hygiene. The most important of these were the poor, members of the working class, and immigrants. Also suspected of faulty hygiene were prostitutes, Jews, servants, sewage workers, prisoners, and garbage men. These suspect groups were seen as endangering society as a whole because they and their surroundings were considered incubators for diseases that could spread to the rest of the population. In Israel, the immigrants were the suspect group. In both Western societies and in Israel, the family was considered to be the best place for public health officials to intervene. Children were viewed as being most endangered by their families’ ignorance of and inability to maintain hygienic and moral values. The mother was seen as the family’s moral anchor. She would, by caring for her family, contribute to the well-being and welfare of the nation.32

The Power of Cultural Structuring A number of recent studies have examined various aspects of the absorption of the immigrants who arrived in the huge wave of the 1950s. Most of these studies have focused on how the immigrants felt in the face of the attitudes of the old-time Israelis. Less attention has been devoted to the question of how the old-timers coped with the difficulties brought on by mass immigration. These new studies have largely presented the immigrants as victims of lack of attention, repression, or abuse. This view is based, fundamentally, on moral judgment and the desire to remedy a historical injustice. As one might expect, those who take this view find it difficult to empathize with the victimizers and oppressors, and reserve their compassion for the immigrants. This approach also often suffers from anachronism, since it presumes that multiculturalism

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or even pluralism stood before the old-timers as equal alternatives to the culture of hygiene that was the mainstay of their approach to the immigrants. But that is not the case. Those theoretical and educational alternatives available to the public discourse at the time, which were themselves constrained by a specific worldview, were only rarely mentioned in the daily press.33 Akiva Ernst Simon of Hebrew University, for example, advocated the preservation of significant components of the immigrants’ culture and said that the newcomers should be exposed to modernity in a graduated way. He feared that the abrupt imposition of a strange culture would thrust them into a moral vacuum. Carl Frankenstein, also of Hebrew University, demanded that the absorbing culture shed its “aggressive faith” in the absolute superiority of its principles. He maintained that the old-timers should view the immigrants as active subjects, not as objects to be acted on. Such assertions indicate that in fact the opposite was happening. These views could be found among some absorption officials, but attitudes of patronizing superiority were more common. And most people, especially if they did not actually work at inculcating new values, were not exposed to all contemporary ideas on the subject and thus could not adjust their behavior accordingly.34 The hierarchical attitude that is part and parcel of the concept of disgust can explain the old-timers’ innate condescension to the immigrants. Jonas Frykman describes the cultural structuring that lies behind disgust as a kind of computer program installed in human beings and operated by the social practices accepted in their societies. This implies that the claim by some contemporary critical scholars that the veteran Israelis should have displayed a positive and compassionate approach when faced with the stench and filth of the transit camps is unreasonable. It presumes that these people could have acted contrary to their cultural construction—that they could have acted like children, saints, or perhaps lunatics.35 I have distinguished between two approaches taken by the veteran Israelis toward the new immigrants. The first was intervention in their lives, with the goal of changing their habits. The second was segregation. Intervention was pursued largely by public and state institutions, through the agency of a small portion of the absorbing public. Its goal was to extricate the immigrants from their unfit manner of living. Intervention was meant to help them, especially the women and children among them, and to instill in them proper standards of behavior. The overall, long-range goal was to turn the immigrants into an integral part of the national society. Nevertheless, with

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this approach’s achievements—a decline in infant mortality and the gradual elimination of certain marriage practices—came problematic consequences. The process of inculcating these standards contributed to social stratification and impinged on the immigrants’ individual and collective identities. The people involved in intervention engaged in a wide variety of activities based on concepts of hygiene accepted in the West. In this sense, the interveners may be seen as a part of the development of the hygienic movement and of the process through which the “hygienic man” model developed and became established. At the same time, it must be seen as an inseparable part of the central national project of Israel’s first decade—that of building the nation. In other words, it was a direct consequence of the assumption that the immigrants were part of the Israeli collective, and that Israeli society thus had to take responsibility for them. This found expression in pangs of conscience, feelings of guilt, and a patronizing attitude. The goal of intervening was to purify the immigrants so that they could be accepted into the collective as an inseparable part of it. In a more profound way, intervention was aimed at imposing order on a world that the old-timers viewed as chaotic and threatening. Although this imposition of order led to significant (and sometimes rude) intercession in the lives of the immigrants, from the point of view of the old-timers’ cultural perceptions, the imposition of order—in the form of personal hygiene, sanitation, and cleanliness—in immigrant communities and homes was a way of enhancing the old-timers’ sense of security.36 These same acts seemed to some of the immigrants, as they do to many scholars today, an important component of a process of cultural repression.37 The second approach was segregation. The evidence presented here shows that the old-timers’ attitude toward the immigrants determined to a large extent their attitude toward the collective they belonged to. Two dimensions or components of this attitude need to be distinguished—the rhetorical and the concrete. On the rhetorical level, in public thinking and individual consciousness, all Israel’s Jews, old-timers and newcomers alike, belonged to a single collective, a single community with a single fate, whose members were responsible for each other and who identified each other as belonging to a common society. On the practical level, however, relationships were generally based on alienation, hostility, and separation between the collective’s two parts, the members of whom came to be called the first and second Israelis. In reality, the mass wave of immigration was a big bang that fragmented society

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and dismantled its unifying, collective structures. The huge wave of immigration pushed the old-timers—who a few years before had been willing to make great economic, physical, and mental sacrifices for the common good—to close themselves up among those who were like them, and to prefer their private needs to public benefit. The sense of revulsion and its consequences was thus one of the causes, and also one of the expressions, of the old-timers’ process of individualization. For the veteran Israelis, the collective that had come into being in their country looked unpalatable, to put it mildly—even threatening. Few of them identified emotionally with the immigrants, who seemed to spend their lives wallowing in filth, refuse, and sewage, and who smelled bad. Likewise, the old-timers found it difficult to construct connections of brotherhood with people who seemed to be oppressors of women and children. A few of the oldtimers spoke publicly in favor of immigration (although less so of the immigrants themselves), but at the same time they were involved in an accelerated process of economic and social flight from the newcomers. This exacerbated Israeli society’s already existing tendency to split into different sectors.38 In the short run, given the fear of the immigrants, geographical and socioeconomic separation between the old-timers and immigrants seems to have been the only solution that would enable the old-time Israelis to contain and accept the immigrants, if only as part of their imagined collective.39 Many of them, after all, felt that they had a self-evident right to defend themselves, their children, and their physical and social achievements. Their elitist Zionism and their almost exclusive focus on the Jewish community in Israel, which had crystallized over many years,40 as well as their faith in the superiority of modern Western values, accounted for their reactions and their sensibilities. These, as it turned out, could not change in a day, or even over the course of a decade. Despite this, because of the ideological importance of immigration and old-timers’ commitment in principle to the idea of constituting a national collective, they felt guilty about the shortcomings of the absorption process. This sense of guilt grew more intense as the big wave of immigration petered out at the end of 1951,41 and even more so when they were faced with the glum demographic figures of 1953, when the number of emigrants from Israel exceeded the number of immigrants.42 Haboker made an interesting argument about emigration—what Israelis called yerida (descent), the opposite of aliya (ascent), their name for immigration. The article in the General Zionist daily argued that Israeli society had fallen victim to a false doctrine, according to

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which the state bore responsibility for the welfare of individuals and groups. Its author reasoned that change had to come from the old-timers, who must make a concerted effort to break through the “Wall of China” separating them from new immigrants.43 Fundamentally, Israelis who spoke in the name of all major political movements voiced a consensus. Everyone agreed that the veteran Israelis had failed by not displaying a humane approach to the immigrants and by not supporting them. The old-timers were accused of contempt and condescension. They were depicted as having shed all their old commitments and slogans, while at the same time demanding that the immigrants behave like good Zionist pioneers. The crisis of values that led to such behavior was pinned on Westernization, which led to selfishness. Their feelings of revulsion for the immigrants made the old-timers feel superior and created an intense desire to segregate themselves from the newcomers. But at the same time, Zionist ideology, which was still very much part of their consciousness, made them feel that their exemplary society had cast off its ideological assets and its unifying bonds.44

⡬ Conclusion

H

istory, like the world we live in, is constructed from just a few foundation stones. It is composed of matter and spirit, of causes and coincidences. Finally, it is built of events and processes. History consists, of course, of great, decisive, and dramatic events—wars, elections, changes of government, and legislative acts. But historical study ought to address not just great, dramatic events that shape entire eras, but also the life experiences of people coping with the small, quotidian, and trivial, such as hygiene, nourishment, and consumption. In the end, both the great and the small become a meaningful part of history. Why did Israeli society, an idealistic culture at its birth in 1948, whose members spoke in the first person plural, begin to speak in the first person singular in the 1950s? How did this change occur, who were its agents, and what were its causes? In search of answers to these questions, I have examined the challenges faced by urban housewives, the new bureaucratic class, the political parties of the right, and to a certain extent the role of the courts. All these were agents of change in Israel’s early years. I have also pointed to causes: mass immigration, the austerity regime, and the manner in which economic resources were parceled out between old-timers and immigrants. Another important impetus was Western liberal ideology, which acted rather like a “thought virus.” The term “virus” has explanatory power despite its negative connotations because of the virulence of viruses and because their spread is governed by the level of immunity—or in this case, the resilience of the perceptions of people exposed to the virus. In other words, although liberal ideas did not originate among the old-time Israelis in the 1950s, their influence and reception was much greater then and they penetrated much deeper. After the establishment of the state and the War of Independence, the mas-

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sive influx of immigrants was the most influential event of Israel’s early years. To use a metaphor from physics, its mass bent the space occupied by the old society and its governing institutions. The timing of the immigration—during and just after the war, and before the creation of an absorption infrastructure and before conventions of government had come into being—was as crucial as its size and demographic makeup. The country’s Jewish population more than doubled, and most of the newcomers came from very different cultural and socioeconomic milieus than those of the old-timers. They had no acquaintance with or commitment to the collectivist values that had dominated the Yishuv. Inevitably, their huge numbers and alien cultures completely transformed the nature of the young society. The veteran Israelis were ideologically committed to the national collective, and unlimited immigration of all Jews was firmly part of that ideology. But as soon as the immigrants began arriving, a huge gap opened between theory and practice. Even though the primary victims of the mass immigration were the immigrants themselves, the established population paid a heavy price. For a time, the old-time Israelis continued to live their daily lives according to the dictates of the ideology for which they had fought in the past. But their commitment to these ideals—principal among them the unlimited immigration of Jews to the homeland, a right of theirs that had become a central symbol of Zionism—gradually eroded. As the absorbing institutions struggled to cope with the huge numbers of newcomers, the individual immigrant, and to no small extent the individual old-timer Israeli, became faceless. He or she stopped being a fellow Jew and became an object that required a certain number of calories per day, a classroom for his or her child, and a housing unit of a certain size. His or her soul, personality, dreams, and personal needs were not taken into account. This was the case not only because the government and certain sectors of society were collectivist in conviction, but also because, given the burden that immigration placed on institutions and the population as a whole, it was difficult to focus on individuals. It is well known that revolutions wear down their progeny. The centralism that was characteristic of the Israeli government at this time was not only a product of ideology. It was at least partly dictated by the objective circumstances and the drama of living during a seminal historical time. In such circumstances, it was only natural that the tasks at hand would lead to significant state intervention in most areas of life. During the first, formative years of its existence, then, the state took on

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huge dimensions. It sought, even if it did not always succeed, to be involved in every aspect of society.1 The place it occupied in the lives of its citizens, and their dependence on its presence, were together too large to permit the survival of the spirit of volunteerism that had pervaded the Yishuv period. It was not only the fact that new national institutions were established that brought on significant changes, but the fact that the center of gravity of social responsibility shifted from the individual and voluntary organizations to a state apparatus2 that was centralized, authoritarian, and paternalistic.3 This model of government seems to have been the fruit of both initial enthusiasm about independence and the perhaps unconscious influence of the authoritarian traditions of Eastern Europe, the birthplace of a large proportion of the veteran Israelis.4 But, beyond this, it also seems to have resulted from the fear of being overwhelmed and losing control as conditions turned chaotic, with the crowding of ever more immigrants into transit camps. Furthermore, the executive branch of the government lacked experience in running a country and, even more important, did not grasp the limits on power that were appropriate to a democratic polity. And, on top of all these factors, centralism fed off the constant threat to the central government’s authority from other players in the arena. The structure of the regime had a decisive influence on the country’s image, on the individual’s circumstances and status within it, and to a large extent also on the shaping of the connection between individual citizens and the collective. During the state’s early years, the regime largely adhered to the formal components of democracy. Suffrage was made equal, the ballot was secret, and representation was awarded proportionally to the parties that participated in elections. Decisions were made by the principle of majority rule. But the regime paid too little attention to democracy’s substantive components, the respect for the rights of citizens and of minorities. Furthermore, the implementation of even the formal aspects of democracy was imperfect.5 The Israeli political system operated under the surveillance of the security authorities, and economically and politically weak sectors of the population were subject to pressures and threats, especially at election time. These pressures shook the confidence that should have been built up between the state and the citizen and made it difficult to weave a social fabric that could in turn build an Israeli collective.6 Especially affected were the two parties involved in this illegitimate activity—those who exerted the pressure and those on whom it was exerted. Although the former believed that they were required to act for the good of the

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country, which they identified with the good of their party, they treated the latter as clients rather than as citizens. This practice prevented the development of a concept of citizenship in which all citizens were treated by the state as possessing equal rights. Those who were subjected to the pressure acted like victims—that is, they cooperated with the people who pressured them, but did not identify with their motives. This experience of pressure and condescension alienated them from the state, preventing them from forming within themselves an identity as equal citizens, and quashing their desire to belong to their new home. Both sides lost. Elections were thus not only displays of democratic pluralism; they were also experiences of deconstruction, of a fraying of the tie between the citizen and the state, while at the same time they prevented the creation of a social fabric that could unify old-timers and immigrants. The way in which the bureaucracy functioned was another factor that affected the connection between the citizen and his country. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion sought, under his doctrine of mamlachtiyut, to establish a state that stood above loyalties to class and sector. But the civil service, which was charged with implementing and promulgating the policies and values of this ostensibly impartial state, was in fact politicized. Bureaucrats were frequently motivated by particularist considerations, rather than by the universalist norms of proper administration. Inequalities resulted, making citizens identify even less with the state apparatus.7 The individual’s tie to the collective and his or her commitment to the common good lay at the heart of the Yishuv’s collectivism. The weakening of this link led to the estrangement of individuals from each other and fostered individualism. An important part of the shift that took place among the old-time Israelis had to do with processes of socioeconomic change. The most important of these, the weakening of voluntary collectivism and the strengthening of individualism, took place within the labor movement. This sector, which brandished the banner of socialist collectivism within the Jewish nation, itself shattered this ethos. Some of its members moved up, into the middle class. Workers adopted more individualist and materialist lifestyles. Skilled workers, for whose skills demand grew as the economy expanded, sought to exploit this economic opportunity both legitimately, through trade union pressures for wage increases, and illegitimately, by offering their labor on the black market.8 Both phenomena increased the income gap between old-timers and immigrants. And both grew out of the weakening link between the individual worker and the collectivist Zionist ethos. True, workers had turned bourgeois

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before the establishment of the state, and the values of voluntary collectivism had actually been put into practice during the Yishuv period only by a relatively small social avant-garde. But in the 1950s, the phenomenon was much broader than it had ever been before.9 Workers’ wives also contributed to these changes. The transformation was criticized within the labor movement, and its representatives expressed a sense of crisis and loss. The members of the old middle class—who had never been collectivist in their lifestyles, despite their commitment to the national project and its defense forces—also underwent changes. In the mid-1950s, members of this group also looked at Israeli society and blamed themselves for the fact that their country did not look the way it should. A clear distinction should be made between the Right (represented principally by the Herut Party) and the conservative center (represented by the General Zionists), because the nationalist Right viewed itself as an avant-garde with collectivist leanings, at least with regard to issues of patriotism and security. The conservative center, however, was by nature less collectivist in outlook than the Right or the Left. Nevertheless, all three groups—the labor movement, the General Zionists, and Herut—felt that Israeli society was not fulfilling its destiny, and that the veteran Israelis were, to some greater extent, to blame. The old-timers, these groups argued, had not mobilized the necessary spiritual fortitude and had not acted with responsibility toward the collective. Despite their differences, all three groups were united in their concern about the phenomenon of emigration from the Jewish state. The nature of the government, and even more the regime’s centralizing and patronizing modes of conduct,10 produced different reactions. On the one hand, individualism spread and intensified as citizens sought to protect themselves from the state. On the other hand, some people called for a return to the voluntarism of the Yishuv. In the context of emigration, at least on the rhetorical and ideological level, each sector of society criticized itself for having neglected national tasks because they believed that the state would perform them. This type of self-criticism sought to reassign, at least in theory, some of the responsibility for the common good—from the state back to society. It sought to strengthen and renew the commitment to the welfare of the Jewish collective in the form of a willingness to sacrifice and work for national goals such as defense and immigrant absorption, which were at the heart of the Yishuv’s collectivism. In practice, neither this rhetoric, nor the work of volunteers among the immigrants, could turn back the clock. Once responsibility was assigned to the state, the process of individualization became ever more rapid.

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The concept of “individualization process” has three meanings and denotes three distinct phenomena. First, individualism often means a display of egotism, and in its most extreme manifestations it is liable to lead to social atomization. The concept’s second meaning is individuation. In its original context, this referred to the growing child’s need to break free of the shadow cast by his or her parents and to assert an independent, distinct existence. Here I borrow the term to describe the public’s desire to move out of the state’s pervasive shadow and to assert its independence. This concept also expresses the desire of individuals to break free of the state’s, and sometimes society’s, suffocating intervention in their lives.11 The third sense is individuality. After the completion of the process of individuation, or separation, the time comes for the individual to realize and actualize his or her unique identity.12 One of the most important and concrete manifestations of the individualization process at this time was the desire of individuals and groups to anchor their rights in custom, law, and jurisprudence. The lively discourse of rights at the time is evidence of this. The intensity of the state’s intervention in individual lives, and its manner of intervening, led to a reaction. The veteran Israelis’ struggle to improve their standard of living was for the most part a struggle of individuals competing with each other for limited resources. Therefore, although this struggle did, to a certain extent, create a sense of commonality and brotherhood, it should not be forgotten that some people lost out.13 The government’s campaign against the black market was thus more than just an effort to enforce the law or to shore up its own power. Principally, it was a battle against the self-interest of the well off. But citizens (more often women than men) felt as if they were fighting for their very survival. They thus waged a campaign aimed at preserving their sense of self-respect. They fought to make the austerity regime more just. One factor that made it difficult to open a front against the austerity program was the state’s overwhelming economic power. The state was able to dull the impact of the protest movement by turning individuals and groups into vested interests or consumers. The government played a double game— using the state to battle the process by which the working class was turning into a middle class, while fostering the very trends it was fighting. The established working class received economic benefits to ensure that the principal ruling party, Mapai, would not lose its traditional voters.14 The government’s actions reinforced individualism of the egotistical type.

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However, the citizen’s and society’s struggle for individuation required a major effort. And the pressing need of individuals, and of parts of society, to cast off the yoke of the state prompted a reaction against government intervention. The most available solution was to adopt, whether sincerely or cynically, the Western liberal model by launching a campaign for individual freedoms. Already evident in the state’s early years was a causal connection between the movement of the old-time working class into the bourgeoisie and the growing force of the fight for fundamental liberal rights, primarily (but not only) in the political context. Both of these took place at the same time. As soon as the state was taken to be a fact, even an oppressive one, and once forces advocating at least partial liberalism—such as the nonlabor middle class, its political parties, its newspapers, and the courts—began to gain influence,15 the liberal worldview became a model for Israeli society. And that model was a useful way for the opposition parties to frame their dissatisfaction with government policy. The leaders of these forces, whether they used liberal values as a political tool or whether they were profoundly committed to them, disseminated liberal ideas throughout the public and so molded the population’s view of the world. Despite the certain shallowness that characterized Israeli democracy in its early years, the political vision of these social forces, as well as that of the state’s leadership, were based on Western culture.16 Thus, even if the articulation of democratic values was not entirely sincere or coherent, Israelis looked, for example, to England’s well-established democracy as the model to be followed and attempted to realize its values. The adoption of Western values in hygiene, dress, parenting, and health, even before the orientation of Israel’s high culture toward the West had been decided,17 necessarily encompassed other elements of the modernist outlook. What, after all, is a hygienic person? Such a person is in control of his or her actions and urges, acts rationally, and feels the need for certain minimal conditions to maintain his or her health and well-being: nourishing food, fresh air, soap and water, a clean home and environment, uncrowded living quarters, and spatial divisions within the home separating, for example, the rooms of parents and children. The adoption of such standards necessarily led to a demand for higher standards of housing, nutrition, and health care. The hygienic concept to some extent contradicted the contemporaneous ideal of living frugally, because it laid out clear minimum standards below which Israel’s citizens should not be expected to live. Yet this minimum was higher than the state could afford to provide at the height of the austerity period. Fur-

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thermore, since it was borrowed from the West, the minimum rose as the years went by. The Western model first served only as a source of cultural standards, but it gradually became the leading exemplar in other areas as well.18 Finally, since the state saw itself as responsible for the common good, individuals turned their energies to their private needs, pursuing minimal living conditions and a sense of personal value. But this led to a pursuit of money, conspicuous consumption, and the emergence of a scale of social status based on wealth. Israeli individualism was thus largely, although not only, restricted to its egotistical aspects. The adoption of the Western liberal model led the old-time Israelis not only to concern themselves with obtaining the basic requirements of equality, freedom, and justice, but also with pursuing their own needs as many of them moved from the working class and into the middle class. In adopting individualism, old-timers sought to guarantee their right to social mobility and a better standard of living. But in doing so, they distanced themselves from other, weaker segments of the population. Even if the fight for liberal rights was necessary and important, worthy and vital, the interests it served were consistent with those of the bourgeoisie. Adopting liberal values helped defend citizens and organizations from the capriciousness of government, but at the same time it separated the old-timers from the newcomers, who were still fighting for subsistence and employment. The fight for liberal values benefits all individuals in a society, but it also makes it easier for the strong to create a free zone for themselves that protects them from responsibility for the less fortunate. It permits a structural indifference to those individuals for whom the only relevant freedom is the freedom from want. Another factor also contributed to Israelis’ inclination to adopt the Western liberal principle that individuals, their rights, and their needs should take precedence over the collective. The disgust that the veteran Israelis felt when they encountered the immigrants, and their inability to establish ties with the newcomers and include them within their society (although acknowledging them to be part of the Jewish nation) led, we may assume, to a preference for a social conceptual system that left the largest possible physical and social distance between these two parts of the public. The individualization process, in all three senses, thus gradually liberated the individual from the overbearing embrace of society, and turned him or her into a sovereign subject seeking to control his or her environment. It granted individuals a healthy sense of selfhood and of personal rights, but at the same time it encouraged them to forget their duties. Individualism was thus respon-

Conclusion 199

sible for a large step forward—it gave the citizen breathing space and room for introspection. Yet it also helped make the old-time Israelis arrogant, because they were now allowed to concentrate principally on themselves.19 The more critical the citizen became of the ruling establishment and social institutions, the less self-critical she or he was. Historical and sociological scholarship views Israel’s first decade as a dialectic period of both continuity and change.20 I have focused largely on the latter here, but continuity needs to be addressed as well. In addition to the familiar elements of continuity, such as politics, the economy, and the military, it is important to note the desire of the veteran Israelis to continue to live the kind of life with which they were familiar—to eat the food to which they were accustomed, to raise and educate their children as they always had, to keep up the same standards of hygiene—despite changing circumstances. They also continued to seek freedom. Before the establishment of the state, that meant liberation from British rule; after independence, it meant a desire to feel their newfound freedom in their daily lives.21 Another element of continuity was the collective identity of the veteran Israelis, who— despite the huge change in the composition of the state’s population—sought for many years thereafter to preserve some elements of the old Yishuv identity. Since it was a transition period, some of the Yishuv period’s voluntary collectivism, with its utopian foundations, remained evident. The old-timers continued to yearn for the sense of solidarity and mutual responsibility that had characterized the Yishuv, and for the profound meaning that that had given to their lives.22 This sense of responsibility did not disappear from their consciousness, and it made itself felt in the form of feelings of guilt and failure. A person who does not feel responsibility will not feel failure. And despite all the changes, some individuals and groups continued to display a sense of collective responsibility and to devote themselves to national missions.

no t e s

Introduction 1. Ma’ariv, October 4, 1950. 2. See Sivan 1991, 55–101. 3. Gorni 1990, 14–15. 4. Anita Shapira 5757, 253; Ya’ar and Shavit 2001, 1:127. 5. For various approaches to this issue, see Weinreb 5714, 278; Molad, October 1960, 423; Lissak 5726; Y.Shapira 1977, 160; Eisenstadt 1989, 135–40, 162; Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 153–56; Anita Shapira 5757; Y. Shavit 2003. 6. Avraham Shapira 1996, 46. 7. Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 156; Anita Shapira 5757, 261. See also Rozin 2005b. 8. Gorni 1997, 365. 9. Anita Shapira 5757, 261. 10. Ibid., 262–64. 11. Ibid., 261–63. 12. Almog 2002. 13. Almog 5764, 362–65; Rozin 2006a. 14. Anita Shapira 5757, 252–59; Almog 1997, 231–34; Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 179–80. 15. Molad, October 1960, 413–31; Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 179. 16. See, for example, BGAD, January 10, 1951, and July 10, 1953; MSA, 14-1950-25-2, December 14, 1950; Hapo’el Hatza’ir, June 5, 1951, 11. 17. Arieli 5759. 18. Ezrahi 1997, 79–80; Rozin 2006a. 19. E. Gross 1998, 81–83. 20. Lahav 5752, 481–82; Likhovski 1999; Barak-Erez 1999. See also Rozin 2006a. 21. Sharfman 1997, 50. 22. An earlier version of chapters 2 and 3 was published as Rozin 2005a.

1. Austerity 1. An austerity program had been declared in December 1947. Beterem, March 1, 1948, 39–40; Ma’ariv, May 24, 1948; Gilayon minhelet ha’am, tzavim vehoda’ot, May 10, 1948; Hamemshala hazmanit, Iton rishmi, June 30, 34; July 7; and July 21, 1948, 37.

202

Notes to Pages 3–10

2. N. Gross 1997; Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 6. 3. Elhanati interview, October 11, 2004. 4. For an exceptional response, see Ha’ishah Bamedina, May 4, 1949. 5. IDIGA, Hamakhon Lecheker Da’at Hakahal, Mipi Nashim, mekhkar bein akrot bayit al kitzuv mezonot ve’aspka, May 1949. 6. Ma’ariv, January 23 and January 25, 1950; Naor 1986; Genchovski 1986; N. Gross 1997, 140–42. 7. See the discussion in chapter 2. See also Ma’ariv, February 22 and February 27, 1950; Ha’aretz, February 28, 1950; Divrey Haknesset 4:898–903, March 1, 1950; Ha’aretz, March 2 1950; Ma’ariv, March 13, 1950; Haboker, March 20, 1950; Ha’aretz, March 30, 1950; Haboker, October 5, 1950. 8. Bell and Valentine 1997, 25–42. See also Counihan 1999, 76–92; Almog 1999, 26–27. 9. Nelson 1993, 104; Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 44. 10. Divrey Haknesset 1:402, April 26, 1949. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 1:399, April 26, 1949. 13. Ibid. 1:419, April 27, 1949. 14. See, for example, ibid. 1:450–51, May 2, 1949. 15. Lupton 1996, 37. 16. Divrey Haknesse 1:418, April 27, 1949. 17. As proposed by Uri Zvi Greenberg’s use of the term tzena. See Divrey Haknesset 1:417, April 27, 1949. 18. Ibid. 19. Dvar Hapo’elet, Elul 5711, 164. Other fronts concerned raw materials for construction and industry, and products for agriculture; in both those cases, there were also severe shortages accompanied by a black market. 20. La’isha, February 1, 1950; Gorni interview, October 6, 1998; Az’ya interview, winter 1997. 21. See Molad, September 1951, 290–91; GYB 5711, 376–77. See also PLA, IV 230–5-32, December 1942; Dvar Hapo’elet, Cheshvan 5711, 211; Ha’aretz, January 9, 1951; Andre 1981, 25; Oakley 1975b, 1–2, 6. 22. Ma’ariv, July 9, 1950. See also Segev 1984, 284. 23. See Ha’olam Hazeh, June 22, 1950, 4–5; Herut, September 19, 1950. 24. Haboker, March 13, 1950; La’isha, September 28, 1950, 7; Ha’aretz, October 10, 1950. 25. Ha’aretz, January 9, 1951. 26. La’isha, November 29, 1950, 2. 27. Ibid., June 7, 1950, A. 28. Matthews 1987, 203, 211. 29. ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29, 1950, and letter, September 18, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 32:51, 61–62, September 24, 1950. 30. Oakley 1975b, 4–6. 31. See, for example, Hobson 1980, 109. 32. Davidson 1982, 201; Ogden 1986, 141–42, 148–53; Davidoff 1976, 143–46. 33. Davar, January 18, 1950.

Notes to Pages 10–15

203

34. Dvar Hapo’elet, February 1950, 211; and Kislev 5711, 246. 35. Davar, March 30, 1950. See also Segev 1984, 284–86. 36. Ha’aretz, August 29, 1950. See also Haboker, September 28, 1950. 37. Dvar Hapo’elet, Sivan 5710, 124. 38. La’isha, January 11, 1950. 39. Dvar Hapo’elet, Nisan 5711. 40. See, for example, PLA, IV 230–5-32, December 1942; Oakley 1975a, 52. 41. La’isha, October 5, 1950, 1. 42. Ha’aretz, March 21, 1950. 43. La’isha, February 1, 1950, A; and February 8, 1950, A; Davar, April 5, 1950. 44. Segev 1984, 286. 45. Davar, January 11 and January 18, 1950. 46. Ibid., February 8, 1950. 47. Ma’ariv, June 3, 1948. 48. La’isha, February 8, 1950, 3; Ha’aretz, August 1, 1950; Haboker, October 5, 1950. 49. Davar, February 8, 1950. 50. Palestine Post, September 6, 1942; Matthews 1987, 203. 51. ISA, MAG GL 7641/0385. 52. La’isha, March 1, 1950, 3. 53. Haboker, March 13, 1950. 54. Meat consumption in Israel at the time was extremely low. See Riv’on Lekalkala, Tishrei 5716, 24; Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 36–37. 55. La’isha, March 22, 1950, A. 56. Davar, March 30, 1950. See also Naor 1986, 101. 57. La’isha, March 29, 1950. 58. Ibid., April 5, 1950, A. 59. Ma’ariv, October 5, 1950. 60. Ibid., September 11, 1950. 61. La’isha, September 17, 1950, 8. 62. Ma’ariv, January 4, 1950; Ha’aretz, February 23, February 27, and March 3, 1950; Herut, August 4 and August 18, 1950. 63. See, for example, Herut, February 3, 1950; La’isha, March 15, 1950. 64. Haboker, October 5, 1950. 65. Ha’aretz, October 10, 1950. 66. La’isha, April 12, 1950, A; Davar, February 1, 1950; ISA, MAG G 20/2413. See also ISA, DYA P 24/702. 67. Davar, February 1, 1950; Herut, September 19, 1950; ISA, MAG G 20/2413. 68. ISA, OPM G 1382/5433, “Beit Din Le’Briut Ha’am,” undated memo. 69. Ha’aretz, November 28, 1950; ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29, 1950, and letter, September 18, 1950; Ha’aretz, January 9, 1951. 70. ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29 and October 1, 1950; Herut, February 10, 1950; Ha’aretz, November 28, 1950. 71. Haboker, March 13, 1950.

204

Notes to Pages 15–21

72. La’isha, September 28, 1950, 7. 73. ISA, GVM I, 19:34, February 8, 1950; Ma’ariv, October 5 and October 8, 1950. 74. ISA, MAG GL 7641/0385, Seker Letzuna, date missing. 75. Ibid. 76. Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 124–26, 136. 77. Herut, September 2, 1951; Haboker, September 2, 1951; Ha’aretz, September 3, 1951; Hatzofeh, September 5, 1951; CZA, F49–1868, Wizo in Israel, February 1952. 78. Gilligan 1993, 80. 79. ISA, GVM II, 3:25, December 20, 1950. 80. ISA, GVM I, 32:5–6, October 16, 1950. 81. Herut, January 20, 1950; Haboker, September 28, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 32:60–62, September 24, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 32:13, October 5, 1950. 82. Ha’aretz, October 10, 1950. 83. Ma’ariv, September 1, 1950. 84. Haboker, September 28, 1950. See also Dvar Hapo’elet, February 5710, 211. 85. La’isha, May 31, 1950, 3. 86. Ibid., 1. 87. ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29, 1950. 88. Haboker, December 5, 1951; Ha’aretz, December 6, 1951. See also CZA, F 49–1868, February 1952, 17. 89. Herut, August 18, 1952. 90. Ha’aretz, August 19, 1952. 91. Haboker, September 12, 1952. 92. CZA, S 71/1731: Herut, August 18, 1952; Ma’ariv, September 12, 1952. 93. Ha’aretz, October 22, 1952. 94. CZA, S 71/1731; Yediot Achronot, January 6, 1953. 95. CZA, S 71/1731; Haboker, February 22, 1953; Hatzofeh, February 22, 1953; Ha’aretz, February 22, 1953; Kol Ha’am, March 22, 1953. 96. The allocation of points for clothing was equal only among the Jewish population. From the outset, Arabs in villages were allotted fewer points than Jews. See ISA, MSR G2/3/ 1/195. 97. ISA, GVM I, 28:7, August 6, 1950; Ha’aretz, August 10, 1950. 98. N. Gross 5760, 334–37. 99. The response of male reporters is interesting in this context: they anticipated that the new law would lead to growing inequality. See Ha’aretz, August 1, 1950; Ma’ariv, August 4 and August 8, 1950. 100. ISA, MSR G 2/3/1/195, August 11, 1950; ISA, DYA P 19/714, minutes, October 1, 1950. 101. ISA, GVM I, 28, August 6, 1950. 102. ISA, MSR G 2/3/1/195, minutes, September 7, 1950. 103. Haboker, August 10, 1950. 104. Raz 1996, 144. 105. Ibid., 142. 106. Dvar Hapo’elet, Tamuz 5712, 124.

Notes to Pages 22–28

205

107. Ha’aretz, March 12, 1950; Herut, October 5, 1950; Ha’aretz, November 20, 1950. 108. Ha’aretz, November 27, 1950. 109. La’isha, January 4, 1950, 3. 110. Herut, January 12 and February 8, 1950. 111. Zilberman believes that the desire to appear fashionable, beautiful, and up-to-date even if only for a short time is a way to escape from the difficulties of coping with day-to-day life (interview, February 1999). 112. Raz 1996, 100–105. 113. Ibid., 105–6, 137, 142. 114. Ha’ishah Bamedina, Cheshvan–Kislev 5711, 43. 115. Ibid., March–April 1951, 83; May–June 1952, 24; and July 1952, 41. 116. Ma’ariv, August 4, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 28:14, August 6, 1950. 117. Ma’ariv, August 4, 1950. 118. Elias 1994, 502. 119. Ha’aretz, January 23, 1951; Harel 1989, 168. 120. CZA, F49/1868, Wizo in Israel, February 1952, 2. 121. Davar, February 22, 1950. 122. Dvar Hapo’elet, Av 5710, 182; Shvat–Adar 5712, 33–34; and Tamuz 5712, 124. 123. Divrey Haknesset 6:2455, August 7, 1950; Ma’ariv, August 4, 1950. 124. Harel 1989, 168. 125. Divrey Haknesset 5:1623, June 5, 1950; Ha’aretz, February 5, 1952; Ogden 1986, 157. 126. Riv’on Lekalkala, September 1953, 19. 127. Ibid., 24. 128. Ibid., 20–24. See also Ma’ariv, August 4, 1950. 129. Herut, February 23, 1950. 130. Ogden 1986, 158. 131. Ha’aretz, March 31, 1950; La’isha, June 7, 1950, A; and January 10, 1951, 1. 132. Ogden 1986, 152. 133. A. Bareli 2000, 97–133. 134. Divrey Haknesset 6:2450–51, August 7, 1950. See also N. Gross 5760, 334. 135. Ma’ariv, February 22, 1950; Ha’aretz, February 23, 1950; Ma’ariv, March 2, 1950; Ha’aretz, March 2–3, 1950. 136. Davar, February 27, 1950. 137. Haboker, March 9, 1950. 138. ISA, DYA P 19/714. 139. Ben-Gurion 5711, 284–91. 140. Haboker, October 5, 1950. 141. ISA, MSR G 8/17/200; Dvar Hapo’elet, Nisan 5711, 62; and Cheshvan–Kislev 5712, 219. 142. Dvar Hapo’elet, Cheshvan 5711, 211; and Tamuz 5712, 124. 143. Ma’ariv, September 1, 1950. 144. Ibid. 145. Davar, January 25–26 and April 5, 1950; Hewlett 1990, 214; Pottishman Weiss 2000, 59–60.

206

Notes to Pages 28–35

146. Ma’ariv, September 1, 1950. 147. See chapter 9. 148. Segev 1984, 284. 149. Dvar Hapo’elet, Cheshvan 5711, 211. 150. Ha’aretz, March 19–20, 1951. 151. Haboker, August 3, 1950; Yishai 5756, 106. 152. Bose 1980, 84. 153. Oakley 1975a, 42; Andre 1981, 17. 154. La’isha, April 12, 1950, A; Segev 1984, 287–88. 155. Oakley 1975a, 49, 51, 58–59. 156. ISA, GVM I, 28:18–19, August 6, 1950; La’isha, September 28, 1950, 7; ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29, 1950; Ha’aretz, January 15, 1952. 157. Oakley 1975a, 49, 55–58. 158. ISA, GVM I, 30:34, August 31, 1950; Ma’ariv, September 1, 1950. See also Segev 1984, 302. 159. ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29, 1950. 160. Divrey Haknesset 5:1622–23, June 5, 1950. 161. Ha’aretz, February 14, 1950. 162. Ibid. 163. Ibid. 164. ISA, DYA P 14/728. 165. PLA, IV 230-6-113, letter, July 11, 1951. 166. Ha’aretz, August 10, 1950. 167. Dvar Hapo’elet, Kislev 5711, 238. 168. Ibid., Cheshvan 5711, 211. 169. ISA, MSR G 1/3/2/195, letter, September 4, 1950. 170. Ibid., minutes, September 4, 1950. 171. Ibid. 172. ISA, MSR G 1/3/2/195, report, September 7, 1950. 173. Ben-Gurion 5711, 284–91. 174. Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 99. 175. ISA, DYA P 19/714, minutes, October 10, 1950. 176. Davar, November 19, 1950. 177. Dvar Hapo’elet, Tevet 5711, 260. 178. Ibid., Iyar 5711, 87; Tamuz–Av 5711, 152; and Elul 5711, 167. See also ibid., Cheshvan–Kislev 5711, 219; BGAD, August 28, 1951. 179. ISA, DYA P 24/702. See also Macleod 1998, 29. 180. ISA, GVM I, 32:5, 15, 20, October 5, 1950. See also BGAD, August 28, 1951. 181. Ha’aretz, February 5, 1950. 182. Ibid., January 22, 1952. 183. Ibid., January 16 and January 29, 1952. 184. Gilligan 5756, 34–37. 185. Ibid., 93, 99, 122. See also Friedman 1997, 38–39.

Notes to Pages 35–41

207

186. Tavris 1995, 37–71; Friedman 1997, 40. 187. Friedman 1997, 40. 188. La’isha, September 17, 1950, 1. 189. Ibid., October 5, 1950, 1; Ha’aretz, October 10, 1950. 190. Dvar Hapo’elet, Cheshvan 5711, 211. 191. See Davidoff 1976, 122. 192. Ma’ariv, September 24, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 32:5, October 5, 1950; Haboker, October 5, 1950. See also Hirsh 2000 for a discussion about how hygiene was regarded. 193. Ha’aretz, August 29, 1950. 194. For a comparison to England, see Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 149. 195. See ISA, MSR G 11/22/215, circulars of the general manager; Ha’aretz, March 21, 1950. 196. Ha’aretz, February 5, 1952; ISA, GVM III, 7:3, February 7, 1952. 197. See Berkowitz 1996, 193–95. 198. See the discussion of the Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951 in chapter 6.

2. Austerity and the Rule of Law 1. Shelef 1996, 9, 24. See also Barak 2000, 378. 2. Rakover 5749, 9; Barak n.d., 2; A. Rubinstein and Medina 1996, 227–28. 3. A. Rubinstein and Medina 1996, 228. 4. Negbi 5747, 11; Olshen 1948, 15. 5. Aloni 1985, 38; Talmud (Yerushalmi) Rosh Hashana, chapter 1, Halakha 3; Talmud (Babylonian) Baba Metziya 59B. 6. Numbers 16:16–17. 7. Negbi 5747, 12–13. 8. Dicey 1908. 9. Shelef 5752. 10. Cohn 1996, 143, 150–51. 11. Shelef 1996, 33–35; Mautner 1993; Lahav 1999, 135–36. For a different view, see Harris 1997. 12. See Kretzmer 1999. 13. Hofnung 1991, 20. 14. Shelef 1996, 50–54. 15. On the concept of legitimacy, see Barzilai, Ya’ar-Yukhtman, and Segal 1994, 51–54. 16. C. Barkai 1990, 37. See also Beterem, March 1, 1948, 39–40. 17. This policy reflected the spirit of the period. See C. Barkai 1990, 37. See also Giladi 1999, 10–11. 18. C. Barkai 1990, 38. 19. Ma’ariv, February 13, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 25:37 and 30:34, May 31, 1950; ISA, GVM I 30:33, September 7, 1950; ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, October 1, 1950. 20. Ma’ariv, January 8, January 23, February 20, and September 24, 1950.

208

Notes to Pages 41–46

21. Ibid., February 15, 1950. 22. Ma’ariv, January 31, 1950; Herut, February 2, 1950. 23. Ma’ariv, February 22, 1950; Ha’aretz, February 23, 1950; Haboker, February 23, 1950; Ha’aretz, February 28, 1950; Divrey Haknesset 4:898–903, March 1, 1950; Ma’ariv, March 2, 1950; Ha’aretz, March 2–3, 1950; Haboker, March 3 and March 9, 1950. 24. ISA, MSR G 10/25/2/202 (4). 25. Haboker, March 3, 1950; Ma’ariv, March 13, 1950; Haboker, March 24, 1950; Ma’ariv, March 26, 1950. 26. Ma’ariv, February 27 and March 13, 1950; Divrey Haknesset 4:1049–51, March 20, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 21:7, March 15, 1950. 27. Yediot Achronot, March 28, 1950; Haboker, March 28, 1950; Ha’aretz, March 30, 1950; Haboker, March 30, 1950; Hatzofeh, March 31, 1950. 28. Ha’aretz, February 14, 1952; Haboker, October 5–6, 1950. 29. ISA, GVM I, 32:6, October 5, 1950; Haboker, October 6, 1950. 30. ISA, MSR G 14/2/2/206, letter, October 4, 1950. 31. Ha’aretz, October 9, 1950. See also ISA, MSR G 19/200, letter, June 30, 1950. 32. ISA, DYA P 14/728, minutes, June 21, 1950. 33. CZA, S71/785. 34. Aloni 1985, 61–63. 35. See Berlin 1987, 212. 36. It is possible that the authorities chose the arguments to support their legitimacy based on surveys of public opinion. See IDIGA, Hamakhon Lecheker Da’at Hakahal, Tzena vetikhnun hameshek, 1949, and Mipi nashim, May 1949; Hamakhon Lemechkar Chevrati Shimushi, Yoker hamikhya vehoradat hasachar, February 1950. See also Blander 2004. 37. ISA, DYA P 14/728. 38. ISA, DYA P 14/728, letter, March 31, 1950. 39. Davar, March 30, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 30:60, September 7, 1950. 40. See Lahav 5752, 481–82. 41. See Amos Shapira 1973–74. Regarding Ben-Gurion’s position, see ISA, PSC 1:16–17, September 23, 1948. 42. ISA, GVM I, 30:60, August 31, 1950. See also ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, October 1, 1950, 2. 43. Haboker, September 29, 1950. 44. ISA, GVM I, 30:2–14, September 4, 1950. See also Ma’ariv, January 23 and February 12, 1950; Haboker, March 24, 1950; Herut, August 1, 1950; Ha’aretz, August 14, 1950; Herut, August 21, 1950; Ma’ariv, August 24, 1950; Ha’aretz, September 1 and September 8, 1950; Herut, September 24, 1950. 45. ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29, 1950; Ma’ariv, September 1, 1950. 46. Divrey Haknesset 6:2480–81, August 7, 1950. 47. See chapter 8. See also Davar, February 15, 1950. 48. Ma’ariv, January 24 and January 27, 1950; Herut, February 3, 1950; Ha’aretz, September 1, 1950; Herut, September 8 and September 24, 1950. 49. David Horowitz 1975, 103–7, 120–2. See also C. Barkai 1990, 36.

Notes to Pages 46–49

209

50. Ma’ariv, October 5, 1950. See also Divrey Haknesset 6:2435, August 2, 1950; IDIGA, Hamakhon Lecheker Da’at Hakahal, Mipi nashim, mekhkar bein akrot bayit al kitzuv mezonot ve’aspka, May 1949, 31. 51. See Riv’on Lekalkala, Tishrei 5716, 24. For data on British meat consumption, see Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 36–37. 52. Ma’ariv, October 4, 1950. 53. Ibid. 54. ISA, MSR G 22/11/215 memoranda, January 19, February 27, March 17, and August 23, 1950. See also BGAM, March 27, 1949, 16. 55. BGAC, October 6, 1950. 56. CZA, A 309-B22. Peretz Bernstein’s personal archive. 57. ISA, GVM I, 19:52, February 9, 1950; Ma’ariv, February 24 and August 18, 1950; Ha’aretz, September 1, 1950. 58. Ma’ariv, February 22–23, 1950; Haboker, February 23, 1950; Ha’aretz, February 28, 1950; Ma’ariv, March 2, 1950; Ha’aretz, March 2–3, 1950; Haboker, March 3 and March 9, 1950; Divrey Haknesset 4:898–903, March 1, 1950. 59. See Davar, February 27, 1950. 60. Ma’ariv, March 2, 1950. 61. ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, September 29, 1950. 62. Haboker, June 9, 1950. 63. Divrey Haknesset 6:2465, August 7, 1950. 64. ISA, GVM I, 28:5, August 6, 1950. 65. Divrey Haknesset 6:2494, August 8, 1950; and 6:2477, August 7, 1950; Herut, August 16, 1950; Ha’aretz, August 18, 1950; Haboker, October 4, 1950; Ha’aretz, October 4, 1950; Yosef 1975, 236. 66. Ma’ariv, August 6, 1950. 67. ISA, GVM I, 28:10, August 3, 1950. 68. Ma’ariv, February 22, 1950; Haboker, March 24, 1950; Ha’aretz, March 31, 1950; Herut, August 15, 1950; Lahav 5752, 483–84. 69. Haboker, September 28, 1950; Ma’ariv, October 5, 1950; Ha’aretz, October 10, 1950. 70. ISA, DYA P 16/714, minutes, October 1, 1950. 71. Ma’ariv, March 24 and July 28, 1950; Hador, November 28, 1950. 72. Ha’aretz, October 9, 1950. 73. Herut, February 19, 1950; Ma’ariv, March 5, March 8, and July 26, 1950; Herut, August 1–2, 1950; Ha’aretz, August 3–4, 1950; Herut, August 25, September 11, and September 24, 1950; Ha’aretz, October 4, 1950; Ma’ariv, October 8, 1950. 74. ISA, GVM I, 30:25, September 4, 1950. See also ibid., 19:53, February 9, 1950. 75. Ma’ariv, September 5, 1950; ISA, MSR G 22/11/215, memorandum, August 7, 1950. 76. Harel 1989, 168. 77. Ma’ariv, September 1 and September 8, 1950; Ha’aretz, October 10, 1950; ISA GVM I, 25:24, June 7, 1950. 78. Ma’ariv, September 6, 1950; Ha’aretz, September 10, 1950; ISA, GVM I, 25:37–38, May 31, 1950. See also BGAC, October 15, 1950.

210

Notes to Pages 49–54

79. See, for example, Divrey Haknesset 4:899, March 1, 1950. 80. Ha’aretz, February 26, 1950. 81. C. Barkai 1990, 39. 82. Hofnung 1991, 36. 83. Ibid., 11. 84. Weitz 2002, 156–66. 85. Barak n.d., 13. See also Barak 1994,3:38, 366. 86. Olshen 1978, 213. See also E. Rubinstein 5741, 94–96. 87. For discussions of this point, see Negbi 5747, 12; Rakover 5749, 63; Zamir and Sobel 1999. 88. ISA, GVM Elect, 1:5, March 7, 1949. See also ibid., 1:6, March 3, 1949; Davar, September 29, 1959; Yanai 1994; Rozin 2007. 89. ISA, GVM I, 30:34, August 31, 1950. 90. For a discussion of this point, see, for example, Avineri 5751.

3. The Law Enforcement System 1. Two main categories of courts dealt with violators of the austerity program: the Magistrates’ Courts, which were presided over by regular judges; and special tribunals, consisting of a judge and two representatives of the public, which held special courts for speculators and profiteering. The Magistrates’ Courts judges rotated between both types of courts. See Lahav 1999, 119; E. Rubinstein 5741, 56–57. 2. Al Hamishmar, January 24, 1950; Yediot Achronot, March 28, 1950; Herut, October 12, 1950. For other sources, see CZA, S 71/785. 3. ISA, GVM I, 26:36–39, July 5, 1950. 4. ISA, OPM, G 1321/5433; ISA, DYA P 14/728. 5. CZA, S 71/785. 6. Al Hamishmar, June 8, 1951. 7. Hayarchon hastatisti le’yisrael 2 (1950–52): 349. For 2009 data, see the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, “Statistical Abstract of Israel 2009” (http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton60/ st12_41.pdf ) 8. CZA, S 71/785 and S 71/761, vol. 2; Davar, January 8, 1952; Al Hamishmar, June 8 and November 8, 1951. 9. Haboker, February 5, 1952. See also ibid., January 9, 1952; Hapo’el Hatza’ir, January 22, 1952. 10. Yosef 1975, 333. 11. ISA, DYA P 7/759, letter, November 9, 1951. 12. ISA, DYA P 7/759. 13. ISA, DYA P 2/762, letter, November 16, 1951. 14. ISA, DYA P 7/759. 15. ISA, DYA P 2/762, letter, December 3, 1951. 16. ISA, OPM G 1321/5433, letter, November 12, 1951.

Notes to Pages 54–62

211

17. ISA, DYA P 7/759, letter, November 14, 1951. 18. BGAC, November 6, 1951; ISA, DYA P 16/714; BGAD, October 10 and October 25, 1951. 19. ISA, DYA P 2/762, letter, February 19, 1951. Another problem was that the public representatives who were appointed as judges in the tribunals for speculators were appointed by municipal representatives and did not represent, in Mapai’s opinion, the party’s constituency. See BGAD, January 10, 1952. 20. Olshen 1978, 242–43. 21. Davar, January 8, 1952. See also Olshen 1978, 243. 22. ISA, GVM III, 5, 10, January 13, 1952. 23. Ibid., 11, January 13, 1952. 24. Yosef 1975, 333. 25. E. Rubinstein 5741, 97, note 49, quoting Divrey Haknesset 11:6111, January 28, 1952. 26. Ha’aretz, June 25, 1952. See also Lahav 1989, 187. 27. Olshen 1978, 243–44. 28. Ha’aretz, February 11, 1952; Hatzofeh, February 12, 1952. 29. Lahav 1999, 149. 30. ISA, DYA P 11/759, letter to Smoira from the Tel Aviv Magistrates’ Court, date missing. 31. Divrey Haknesset 11:1228, February 6, 1952. 32. Divrey Haknesset 11:1461, February 27, 1952. 33. Jerusalem Post, February 29, 1952. 34. A. Rubinstein 1974, 226–27. 35. Agranat 1985, 234. 36. ISA, DYA P 2/762, letter, February 13, 1952. 37. CZA, S 71/1308. 38. Herut, February 1, 1952. See also ibid., February 29, 1952. 39. Haboker, February 15, 1952. For additional criticism, see CZA, S 71/1308. 40. Ma’ariv, February 1, 1952. 41. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, February 26, 1952, 5–6. 42. Ibid., January 22, 1952. 43. Ibid.. 44. Hador, October 13, 1952. 45. Herut, October 13, 1952. 46. BGAD, July 25, 1952. See also ISA, DYA P 14/728, minutes, June 21, 1950; E. Rubinstein 5741, 55–69; Lahav 1989, 183–85. 47. See chapters 5 and 7. See also Shelef 1996, 56. 48. See, for example, CZA, S 71/1308; Hakol, March 13, 1953. 49. For example, in the Altalena affair, mentioned in chapter 6; during a seamen’s strike in the winter of 1951, where the strikers identified with Mapam and the Communist Party; and incidents in January 1952 surrounding the reparations agreements, primarily involving Herut supporters. 50. Sprinzak 5746. 51. Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 151, 201; Kynaston 2007, 111–12.

212

Notes to Pages 62–71

52. Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 151–53, 201–2. 53. N. Gross 5760, 336.

4. Austerity Tested 1. ISA, GVM I, 28, August 6, 1950.See also Yosef 1975, 254, 258–61; ISA, GVM I, 32, September 24, 1950. 2. C. Barkai 1990, 39. See also Bondi 1990, 468. 3. MSA, 2–25–1950–14, October 19, 1950; Yosef 1975, 259. 4. C. Barkai 1990, 39. 5. MSA, 2–25–1950–14, minutes, October 19, 1950; Yosef 1975, 259. 6. ISA, MOJ G 5/5668, memorandum, September 30, 1950; N. Gross 5760, 346. 7. David Horowitz 1975, 75. 8. Ben-Gurion 5711, 285. The speech was broadcast on October 3, 1950. 9. ISA, GVM I, 32:60, 65–66, September 24, 1950. 10. Ibid., 32:41, 46, September 24, 1950; MSA, 2–26–1950–7, minutes, 5, October 2, 1950, 5. 11. See Divrey Haknesset 7:214, November 15, 1950. 12. See E. Rubinstein 1989, 236. 13. Most news clippings mentioned in this chapter are from collections in the following archived files: CZA, S 71/811 and S 71/714. Hatzofeh, December 9, 1948; Yediot Achronot, December 16, 1948; Davar, January 10 and March 18, 1949; Ha’aretz, June 13, 1949. 14. MSA, 2–11–1949–2, minutes, September 14, 1949. 15. Al Hamishmar, December 7, 1949; Herut, January 10 and January 22, 1950; Haboker, January 23, 1950; Al Hamishmar, January 26, 1950; Kol Ha’am, March 22, 1950. 16. Davar, November 5 and November 10, 1950; Hatzofeh, November 12, 1950. 17. Hador, November 14, 1950. 18. MSA, 2–26–1950–7, minutes, October 2, 1950, 26. 19. MSA, 2–25–1950–14, minutes, October 1, 1950; and 2–26–1950–7, minutes, October 2, 1950, 30. 20. MSA, 2–25–1950–14, minutes, October 1, 1950, 11, 15. 21. Ibid., minutes, July 20, 1950, 15. 22. Ibid.,, minutes, October 1, 1950, 12, 4. 23. Ibid., 9–10. 24. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, October 22, 1950, 48; and minutes, November 30, 1950. See also Y. Shapira 1977, 158–59; Tzameret 1993, 139–40. 25. MSA, 2–25–1950–14, minutes, October 1, 1950, 9–11. 26. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, October 22, 1950, 2. 27. MSA, 2–25–1950–14, minutes, October 1, 1950; and minutes, October 19, 1950, 14. 28. CZA, A-309-B-21, memorandum, June 21, 1950; Beilin 1984, 86–87, 90; Ben-Uzi 2005, 40–41. 29. Avramov 1995, 32.

Notes to Pages 71–78

213

30. Haboker, August 1 and August 4, 1950. 31. Ibid., October 4, 1950. Eliashar left the Sephardim and Oriental Communities faction and the coalition, joining the General Zionists. Officially, he continued to serve as chairman of the faction in the Knesset until elections for the second Knesset, but in fact, he operated outside the coalition after voting against approving the 1950–51 budget. He was elected to the Jerusalem Municipal Council in municipal elections, on the joint slate of Sephardim and General Zionists. See Eliashar 1980, 336–37. 32. See Weitz 1999. 33. Al Hamishmar, November 5 and November 14, 1950. 34. MSA, 2–25–1950–14, minutes, October 1, 1950, 1–3. 35. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, October 22, 1950, 1. 36. Kol Ha’am, July 18, 1950; Hador, July 18, 1950; Yediot Achronot, July 19, 1950. 37. Kol Ha’am, September 11, 1950; Al Hamishmar, October 15, 1950. 38. Kol Ha’am, October 22, 1950; Davar, October 27, 1950; Herut, October 29, 1950; Haboker, October 29, 1950. 39. Jerusalem Post, November 5, 1950. 40. Hador, November 6, 1950. 41. Ibid., November 4, 1950. 42. Haboker, November 10, 1950. 43. Ibid. 44. Herut, November 12, 1950. 45. Ibid., November 7, 1950. 46. Davar, November 8, 1950. 47. Haboker, November 8, 1950. 48. Ma’ariv, November 10, 1950. 49. Ha’aretz, November 10, 1950; Kol Ha’am, November 12, 1950. 50. Haboker, November 8, 1950; Harel 1989, 168. 51. Davar, November 7, 1950; Hador, November 13, 1950. 52. Haboker, November 10, 1950. 53. Ibid. 54. Herut, November 7, 1950. 55. Hador, November 7, 1950. 56. Ibid. 57. Davar, November 12, 1950. 58. Kol Ha’am, October 19, 1950. 59. Haboker, November 9 and November 12, 1950. 60. Herut, November 13, 1950. 61. Haboker, November 14, 1950. 62. Davar, November 13, 1950. 63. Al Hamishmar, November 10 and November 13, 1950. 64. Yedi’ot Achronot, November 9, 1950. 65. Haboker, November 10, 1950. 66. Al Hamishmar, November 14, 1950, discussing the settlement of Beit Tzafafa.

214

Notes to Pages 78–86

67. Ma’ariv, November 7, 1950. 68. Ibid., November 14, 1950.

5. The Municipal Election Results and Their Significance 1. Weitz 1999, 91; BGAD, November 25, 1950, 31–32. 2. Hador, November 15, 1950. See also Divrey Haknesset 7:215, November 15, 1950. 3. Davar, November 16, 1950. 4. Ibid., 5. Ibid., November 17, 1950. 6. Ibid. 7. Ashmoret, November 23, 1950. 8. Ibid. 9. Hador, November 28, 1950; MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, November 30, 1950. 10. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, November 23, 1950. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., minutes, November 30, 1950, statement by Mordechai Sorkis. 14. Ibid., statement by Kopel Schwartz. 15. Ibid., statement by Baruch Eizenstat. 16. Ibid., statement by Pinhas Lubianikar [later Lavon]. When the British government ceased to supply powdered eggs and housewives protested, the product was reinstated. See Kynaston 2007, 106. 17. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, November 30, 1950. 18. Haboker, December 7, 1950. 19. Divrey Haknesset 7:237, November 16, 1950. 20. Haboker, November 15, 1950; Ma’ariv, November 15, 1950. 21. Haboker, November 15, 1950. 22. Ibid., November 12, 1950. 23. Ibid., November 16, 1950. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., November 17, 1950. 26. Haboker, November 17, 1950. He was referring to articles in the Jerusalem Post, November 16, 1950; Ha’aretz, November 24, 1950. 27. Haboker, November 17, 1950. 28. Haboker, November 19, 1950. 29. Divrey Haknesset 7:214–15, November 15, 1950. 30. Haboker, November 17, 1950. 31. See Avramov 1995, 32. 32. Al Hamishmar, November 19, 1950. 33. Ibid., November 24, 1950. 34. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 86–94

215

35. Y. Shapira 1977, 155, 158–59; A. Bareli 2000, 97–104; Molad, July 1949, 204–6; David Horowitz 1975, 29–31. 36. Al Hamishmar, November 24, 1950. 37. Helman 5764. 38. Herut, November 16, 1950. 39. Ibid., November 17, 1950. 40. Ma’ariv, November 15, 1950. 41. Ibid., November 16, 1950. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., November 15, 1950. 44. Ha’aretz, November 16, 1950. 45. Ibid., November 19, 1950. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., November 24, 1950. 48. Molad, October 1950, 4. 49. Divrey Haknesset 5:1622, June 5, 1950. 50. Davar, November 24, 1950. 51. Economists disagree in their evaluations of the government’s economic policy during 1949–50. See Halevi and Klinov-Malul 1968, 5; N. Gross 5760, 325–41. 52. Halevi and Klinov-Malul 1968, 5–6. See also Molad, October 1950, 15–16. 53. Eliashar 1980, 445; CZA, A-309-B-22 (Peretz Bernstein’s private archive). 54. See, for example, CZA, A-309-B-22. See also A. Bareli 2000, 99–101. 55. See, for example, CZA, A-309-B-22. 56. Weitz 1999, 91. 57. Sprinzak was one of the leaders of the Hapo’el Hatza’ir party and of the labor movement in the Yishuv. In July 1948, he was elected chairman of the Provisional State Council, and in February 1949, he was elected the first Speaker of the Knesset. See MSA, 2–11–1949– 21, minutes, November 28, 1950; MSA, 2–11–1950–9, minutes, November 28, 1950.

6. From Poll to Poll 1. Haboker, August 9, 1951; CZA, A 25/245, memo by Moshe Sharett. 2. The United Religious Front was a political faction combining all the religious and ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset. 3. See Tzameret 1997, 180–83. See also MSA, 2–23–1951–55, minutes, December 15, 1951. 4. C. Barkai 1990, 39–40, 53. 5. Hacohen 1994, 117–22. 6. For a discussion of the relationship between Ben-Gurion and the Zionists in the United States, see Gorni 1990, 59–117. 7. MSA, 2–26–1951–8, minutes, February 18, 1951. 8. CZA, S 41/212.

216

Notes to Pages 94–101

9. MSA, 2–23–1951–57, minutes, June 20, 1951. 10. Tzameret 1997, 184–85. 11. MSA, 2–11–1951–11, minutes, April 11, 1951. 12. MSA, 2–24–1951–27, minutes, February 20, 1951. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. MSA, 2–23–1951–55, minutes, February 22, 1951. 16. BGAD, June 17, June 18, July 4, and July 11, 1951. 17. BGAM, Mapai, Knesset Faction, April 11, 1951. 18. MSA, 2–24–1951–27, minutes, February 20, 1951; and 2–26–1951–8, minutes, February 18, 1951. 19. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, December 17, 1950. 20. See, for example, MSA, 2–26–1951–8, minutes, May 16, 1951. See also BGAD, June 28, 1951. 21. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, December 21, 1950. 22. MSA, 2–11–1951–11, minutes, April 11, 1951. 23. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, December 21, 1950. 24. Ibid., and 2–11–1951–11, minutes, May 14, 1951. 25. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, December 24, 1950. 26. MSA, 2–26–1951–8, minutes, May 18, 1951. 27. There is reason to question whether this was a final decision. See MSA, 2–26–1951–9, minutes, September 13 and September 16, 1951. 28. Tzameret 1997, 194–210. 29. Regarding the party’s positions on the issue of the various educational streams, see ibid., 210–15. 30. N. Gross 5760, 346. See also Weitz 2005, 179–81. 31. Anita Shapira 5757; Molad, October 1960, 414, 423–26. See also Molad, September 1951, 212–15 and 216–24. 32. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, June 6, 1950, 1. 33. Tzameret 1993. 34. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, October 16, 1951, 16; Tzameret 1993, 145. 35. In the context of discussions about a constitution, some members expressed the opinion that real democracy began with the party itself. See Davar, March 14, 1949. 36. MSA, 2–24–1951–27, minutes, January 14, 1951. See also M. Bareli 1994, 22–23. 37. MSA, 2–23–1951–55, minutes, January 14, 1951, statement by M. Chaskelberg. 38. M. Bareli 1994, 43–45; A. Bareli 2000, 135–92. 39. For a comprehensive discussion on renewing the pioneering spirit during the 1950s, see Kabalo 2003. 40. BGAD, February 3, 1951. 41. Haboker, April 19, 1951. 42. Davar, February 2 and February 19, 1951; Haboker, April 19, April 25–26, April 29–30, May 6, and July 30, 1951. 43. Ha’aretz, July 27, 1951. See also Gorni 1990, 61–78; and 1994.

Notes to Pages 101–108

217

44. For an earlier version, see CZA, A-309-B-21. 45. CZA, S 71/691; Ha’aretz, July 10, 1951. 46. MSA, 2–26–1951–8, minutes, July 22, 1951. 47. Haboker, June 25, 1951; CZA, S 71/691; Ha’aretz, July 10, 1951, advertisement. See also Rozin 2010. 48. Haboker, April 30, 1951. 49. Ibid., May 2, 1951. See also CZA, A 430/82, letter, March 6, 1951. 50. Haboker, June 24, June 27, July 1, July 8, July 12, July 21, and July 27, 1951. 51. Ha’aretz, July 10, 1951, advertisement; ibid., July 13, 1951; ibid., July 16, 1951, advertisement; ibid., July 20, 1951. 52. Herut, June 22, 1951. 53. Haboker, April 29, 1951. 54. Ibid., July 8, 1951. 55. See Brichta 5737, 139; Al Hamishmar, July 26, 1951; Avramov 1995, 117–32. See also ibid., 28–34; Rozin 2006a; ISA, MOJ, G 7/8004, G 6/8004; MA, M 15/7, Progressive Party. 56. Naor 1996, 271. 57. Ha’aretz, July 17, 1951. 58. Haboker, July 6, 1951, advertisement. 59. Other parties also competed to win over women voters. See Ha’aretz, July 27, 1951. 60. Haboker, July 27, 1951. 61. MA, M 13/7, Progressive Party. 62. Haboker, July 10, 1951; See also ibid., July 12–13, 1951, advertisements. 63. CZA, A-309-B-21. 64. Ha’aretz, June 1, 1951; Al Hamishmar, June 12, 1951. 65. Haboker, June 21, 1951. 66. Hador, June 14, 1951. 67. Haboker, July 26–27, 1951. 68. Hofnung 1991, 212. 69. Haboker, July 8, 1951; Ha’aretz, July 29, 1951. 70. MSA, 2–11–1951–12, minutes, October 29, 1951. 71. Haboker, April 5, 1951. 72. MSA, 2–23–1951–55, minutes, February 22, 1951; and 2–26–1951–8, minutes, July 22, 1951; Davar, July 21, 1951. 73. Hacohen 1994, 247; CZA, S 41/281; Ma’ariv, December 7, 1950. 74. Haboker, June 7, June 11, and June 17, 1951. 75. Hador, June 12, 1951; CZA, S 41/212, letter, May 4, 1950. 76. Haboker, May 7, June 22, and June 24, 1951. 77. Ibid., May 7, June 11, June 17–18, July 11–12, and July 19, 1951. 78. Ibid., July 15, 1951. 79. Ha’aretz, July 17, 1951. 80. Ibid., July 22, 1951. 81. Davar, July 22, 1951. 82. Ibid.July 22–23 and 25–26, 1951.

218

Notes to Pages 108–113

83. See, for example, the reports in Ha’aretz, July 22–25, 1951. 84. Ibid., July 24, 1951. 85. Haboker, July 15, 1951. 86. Ibid. 87. BGAD, July 14–15, 1951. 88. Haboker, July 8, 1951; Davar, July 16, 1951. 89. Davar, July 16, 1951; Haboker, July 16, 1951. 90. Haboker, July 19, 1951. 91. Al Hamishar, July 26, 1951. 92. BGAD, July 20, 1951. 93. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, July 3, 1951, 3–4. 94. Ha’aretz, July 20, 1951. 95. Divrey Haknesset 9:2090–91, June 26, 1951; 9:2099, June 27, 1951; and 9:2172, July 17, 1951; ISA, GVM II, 11:25, July 11, 1951. 96. Divrey Haknesset 9:2189–90, July 17, 1951. 97. Lahav 1993; BGAD, June 17, 1951. 98. MSA, 2–26–1951–8, minutes, July 22, 1951. 99. Ibid., statement by Ze’ev Haring, 6. 100. Ibid., statements by Zalman Shazar, 6; Mordechai Namir, 9; and Moshe Sharett, 10. 101. Ibid., statement by Zalman Shazar, 6. 102. Ibid., statement by Eliezer Livne, 7. 103. Ibid., statement by David Ben-Gurion, 12. 104. The Labor Party adopted a similar strategy in 1992. 105. Davar, July 29, 1951. 106. Ibid. 107. Haboker, July 20, 1951; Ha’aretz, July 27, 1951. 108. Haboker, July 27 and July 30, 1951. 109. On the District Court’s cancellation of elections in one community because of suspected violations of these principles, see Haboker, July 22 and July 24, 1951. 110. A telephone wiretap unit had already been established by 1948. ISA, MOP G 18/3310 (26/1). See also Haber and Melman 2002, 14–15; Melman and Raviv 1990, 45–51. 111. See, for example, BGAD, June 12, 1951. See also Melman and Raviv 1990, 45–51; Daniel G. 5728, 27–29. 112. Harel interview, February 10, 2000. 113. Ibid. See also Tzachor 1997, 197–201. 114. Bar-Zohar 5737, 832; Melman and Raviv 1990, 45–46. 115. Harel interview, February 10, 2000. 116. Warshavski interview, November 24, 1999. 117. Yediot Achronot, 7 Yamim supplement, March 23, 2007, 30–38. 118. Ibid. See also CZA A309-B22. 119. CZA, A-309-B-22. 120. So thought Yehuda Nini, a historian and former member of the service (interview, May 31, 2000).

Notes to Pages 113–118

219

121. The relevant material may be found, if it has not been destroyed, in the archives of the Israel Security Agency, although access is denied to researchers. 122. CZA, A-309-B-22, letter, April 29, 1954. 123. Harel interview, February 10, 2000. See also Harel 1989, 211. 124. It would seem that Mapai had excellent intelligence regarding what was going on behind the scenes at the various political parties. See BGAD, October 23, 1950, and March 8, June 12, July 20, and September 18, 1951. 125. Haboker, April 29, 1951. 126. Ibid., May 30 and June 7, 1951. See also ibid., July 1 and July 24, 1951. 127. For similar claims, see Tzameret 1997, 121–23, 142. See also CZA, S 41/470. 128. Al Hamishmar, June 20, 1951; Yediot Achronot, July 23, 1951; Herut, June 22, 1951. See also Yoseftal 1963, 148. 129. BGAD, June 15, 1951; Hador, May 27, 1951. 130. Jews, too, were exposed to the distressing consequences of this fact. See Kol Ha’am, August 14–15, 1951; Hador, August 5, 1951. 131. Divrey Haknesset 14:1521, June 8, 1953. 132. Kol Ha’am, July 11, 1951; Yediot Achronot, July 23, 1951; Al Hamishmar, July 26, 1951; Davar, July 30, 1951. 133. Haboker, June 7 and June 27, 1951. 134. Ibid., May 23, 1951. 135. Ibid., July 4, 1951. 136. CZA, A 430/82; Haboker, June 18 and June 27, 1951. 137. MSA, 2–11–1951–11, minutes, April 11, 1951. 138. Ibid. 139. MSA, 2–23–1951–56, minutes, April 17, 1951. 140. Ha’aretz, July 20, 1951. 141. Ma’ariv, July 23, 1951. See also CZA, A 430/81, June 7, 1955 (Elihahu Eliashar Archives); Hakol, July 20, 1951. 142. Hacohen, 1994, 247, 277; Ha’aretz, August 24, 1951; CZA, S 71/686; Hador, May 27, 1952.

7. The Outcome of the Elections to the Second Knesset 1. The number of those actually eligible to vote was low due to the grossly defective preparation of the voting lists at the Interior Ministry. Although hundreds of thousands of appeals were filed, it was technically impossible to deal with all of them. Thus, many people were unable to vote, and the results did not reflect the entire population. See MSA, 2–23– 1951–57, minutes, August 13, 1951. 2. Diskin 1988, 27–28; Bader 1979, 60; Haboker, August 12, 1951. 3. Beterem, August 15, 1951. 4. Ha’aretz, August 17, 1951. 5. CZA, S 71/686: Ha’aretz, August 24, 1951; Weitz 5756, 129. Some of these figures are estimates. Weitz claims that Mapai won 60 percent of the transit camp votes.

220

Notes to Pages 118–125

6. Ha’aretz, July 27, 1951. 7. BGAD, September 18 and December 19, 1951. 8. CZA, S 71/686; Ha’aretz, August 24, 1951. 9. BGAD, June 22, 1951; MSA, 2–23–1951–57, minutes, August 13, 1951. 10. Zweiniger-Bargielowska 2000, 36–37, 203–7. 11. On the disparity between discourse and deed, and protests against it, see Bartov 1953, especially 272–73. 12. Ben-Eliezer 1995, 297–305. 13. MSA, 2–26–1951–8, minutes, July 22, 1951, 12. 14. Molad, September 1951, 224. 15. The phrase was first coined by Shulamit Aloni. 16. Molad, September 1951, 212–15. 17. See, for example, Beterem, August 15, 1948, 50–52; and February 1950, 48–53; Ha’aretz, July 20, 1951; Adar 1953. 18. MSA, 2–23–1951–57, minutes, August 13, 1951. 19. Hacohen 5758. 20. Picard 1999, 344–45. 21. MSA, 2–26–1951–8, minutes, March 29, 1951; Picard 1999, 378–80. 22. MSA, 2–23–1948–50, minutes, 14 December, 1948; Hacohen 1994, 71–75. 23. Goldstein 2003, 308–9. 24. Hacohen 1994, 103; Hamashkif, March 25, 1949; Picard 1999, 344. 25. BGAM, Mapai, Knesset Faction, April 11, 1951. 26. Herut, May 15 and July 16, 1951. 27. Divrey Haknesset 3:28, November 9, 1949; Ha’aretz, September 29, 1950; Divrey Haknesset 7:582–83, December 26, 1950; and 7:650, February 2, 1951; Davar, April 13, 1951; Haboker, April 19, 1951; Hador, May 18, 1951; Davar, July 22 and July 26–27, 1951. 28. MSA, 2–11–1951–12, minutes, October 29, 1951. 29. Picard 1999, 345. 30. Rafa’el 1986, 21. 31. Haboker, May 20, 1951. 32. N. Gross 1997, 142; C. Barkai 1990, 52. 33. MSA, 2–11–1951–11, minutes, March 13, 1951. 34. ISA, GVM II, 13:24–25, August 29, 1951. 35. Ashmoret, March 8, 1951. 36. Haboker, July 27, 1951. 37. Hacohen 5758, 304. 38. Hador, January 2, 1951. 39. There was no shortage of doctors in Israel. Hatzofeh, June 24, 1949; Davar, June 28, 1949; Ha’aretz, December 18, 1950; Davar, December 22, 1950; Herut, March 14, 1951; Haboker, March 15, 1951; CZA, S 71/415; CZA, S 71/1147. 40. Divrey Haknesset 7:479–501, December 18, 1950. 41. Yoseftal 1963, 145. 42. Hacohen 5758.

Notes to Pages 125–130

221

43. Ibid., 302. 44. Haboker, August 3, 1951. 45. Ma’ariv, August 3–4, 1951. 46. ISA, OPM G 642/5393. 47. BGAD, August 7, 1951. 48. MSA, 2–26–1951–9, minutes, September 13, September 16, September 26, October 7, and October 14, 1951. 49. MSA, 2–11–1951–12, minutes, October 29, 1951; Weitz 5756. 50. Molad, September 1951, 209. 51. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, February 19 and March 18, 1952. 52. MSA, 2–11–1951–11, minutes, March 13, 1950. See also N. Gross 5760, 338. 53. Patenkin 1965, 95–98; Halevi and Klinov-Malul 1968, 5–6. See also N. Gross 5760, 336–41. 54. Alexander 1992, 85–89. See also Krampf 2009. 55. C. Barkai 1990, 55–61. 56. Hacohen 1994, 305. 57. C. Barkai 1990, 70. See also Halevi and Klinov-Malul 1968, 6. 58. Hacohen 5758, 285–316; Tzur 2001, 287–94, 320–22. 59. Halamish 5760, 190–96. 60. Hacohen 1994, 305; Naor 1991, 145; Lissak 1986, 14; Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 113. See also Picard 1998 and 1999. 61. See, for example, C. Barkai 1990, 70; Halevi and Klinov-Malul 1968, 6. 62. Hacohen 1994, 303; MSA, 2–11–1951–12, minutes, October 29, 1951. 63. Malka 1998, 150. 64. Picard 1999, 390–91. 65. Svirsky 1981, 18. 66. Picard 1999, 381–93. 67. Tzur 2001, 320; Goldstein 2003, 328. 68. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, December 12, 1951, 9–10. See also Picard 1998, 15–16. 69. Giladi 1999, 25. 70. Picard 2004a, 8–15. 71. ISA, GVM III 5:25, January 13, 1952; Yoseftal 1963, 404–5. 72. Yoseftal 1963; David Horowitz 1975, 118–19. 73. Hador, September 20, 1951; Hapo’el Hatza’ir, October 9, 1951, 8; Hatzofeh, November 23, 1951; Yediott Achronot, October 12, 1951; Davar, April 16, 1954. 74. See Rupin 1968, 128. 75. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, November 18, 1952, 7. 76. Tzur 2001, 323. 77. Davar, October 23, 1951; Ha’aretz, May 26, 1953; Yoseftal 1963, 128; C. Barkai 1990, 55; Halevi and Klinov-Malul 1968, 6; Hacohen 1994, 306. 78. Davar, November 9, 1951; Ha’aretz, November 24, 1953. 79. MSA, 2–23–1951–57, minutes, August 13 1951. 80. Arnon 5758, 317–19, 341.

222

Notes to Pages 130–141

81. Ben-Porat 5759, 106–7. 82. Herut’s battle to change the constitutional character of the regime, which continued to rely on the emergency laws, should be viewed in this context. 83. Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 151; N. Gross 1986, 73. 84. MSA, 2–11–1950–9, minutes, December 13, 1950; and 2–23–1950–54, minutes, December 17, 1950. See also Ma’ariv, March 20, 1953; Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 173. 85. N. Gross 5760, 340. 86. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, December 21, 1950. 87. Anita Shapira 1990, 202; Davar, October 21, 1951. 88. MSA, 2–23–1951–55, minutes, January 25, 1951. 89. Davar, October 21, 1951. 90. Weitz 5760 refers to the following publications: Kolat 1976, 28; Anita Shapira 1988, 70–71; Ben-Aharon 5738, 213; Avineri 5740, 227–28. See also Anita Shapira 5757, 260–61. 91. Weitz 1998, 313–15. 92. Molad, September 1951, 213. 93. MSA, 2–23–1950–54, minutes, December 24, 1950. 94. Almog 1997, 246–49. 95. Ibid., 249. 96. Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990, 152. 97. Ibid., 179–80. 98. Molad, September 1951, 222–23. 99. For example, MSA, 2–11–1951–22, minutes, September 11, 1951. 100. Haboker, July 1, 1951.

8. Terms of Abhorrence 1. Miller 1997, 1–3. 2. The term “Mizrahi,” referring to Israeli Jews whose origins lie in the Islamic world, should not be confused with the Mizrahi party, a largely Ashkenazi religious Zionist political party in Israel’s early years. 3. Lissak 1999, 58–59. 4. See Hirsh 2000; Stockler 1977; Schwartz and Shchori-Rubin 2001. 5. Ballas 5724, 100. 6. ISA, MAG G 0433/4472, letter, June 4, 1951; Davar, May 3, 1954. 7. See, for example, Rabinowitz 1995. 8. See, for example, Ma’ariv, September 15, 1995, quoted in Rabinowitz 1995, 7. 9. Darwin 1965, 256–57. 10. Shtal 1979, 58–59. 11. Miller 1997, 5–6, 38. See also Douglas 1966, 4–5. 12. Douglas 1966, 2, 35–36. 13. ISA, MOH G 26/146, minutes, January 14, 1953. 14. See Miller 1997, 52–53; Douglas 1996, 37, and 1966, 130–31.

Notes to Pages 141–149

223

15. Frykman and Löfgren 1987, 172. See also Miller 1997, 6. 16. Goffman 1959. See also Hochschild 1979. 17. Miller 1997, 9. 18. Shuval 1955, 67. 19. Miller 1997, 8–11. 20. Giora Yoseftal was born in Germany, received a law degree, and was a member of Kibbutz Gilad. He served as the director of the Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency from 1947 through 1952 and later became the treasurer of the Agency. He was secretary general of Mapai from 1956 through 1959. 21. Yoseftal 1963, 95. 22. Ibid., 100. 23. Ibid., 118–19. See also Davar, March 25, 1955. 24. This series of articles by Ariyeh Gelblum was published in Ha’aretz starting on April 13, 1949. The whole series can be found in CZA, S 71/197. 25. Ha’aretz, April 22, 1949. 26. Davar, March 3, 1950. 27. Lissak 1999, 61. 28. Ma’ariv, November 11, 1949. For a similar description, see Segev 1984, 177–78. See also Ha’aretz, April 30, 1953. 29. Segev 1984, 178. 30. CZA, S 41/243. 31. ISA, MOH G 13/160, report, January 15, 1951, date unclear. See also ISA, MOH G 12/160; G 14/160; Segev 1984, 184; BGASF, Ma’abarot, 5-YD-1, report, January 1951; Ma’ariv, January 13, 1950; CZA, S 71/932. In my interview with Hadassah Ben-Ito (January 1, 2001), she noted that the immigrants from Yemen were not familiar with toothbrushes and did not know how to use a toilet. 32. Davar, February 15, 1950; Dvar Hapo’elet, Cheshvan 5711, 212. 33. CZA, J 113/2290. 34. ISA, MOH G 13/160, letter, May 31, 1951. 35. Zmanim, November 12, 1954. 36. Ma’ariv, July 11, 1955. 37. Ibid. 38. Ha’aretz, October 11, 1954. 39. Ibid. See also Ma’ariv, February 4, 1953; CZA, S 42/220, letter, December 14, 1954. 40. Davar, November 9, 1951. 41. Al Hamishmar, August 27, 1951; Hapo’el Hatza’ir, January 5, 1952; Ha’aretz, October 27, 1953; Zmanim, November 12, 1954; Ma’ariv, July 11, 1955. 42. CZA, S 71/3383; Reuven Shalgi, “Sakiya A: Ma’abara bederekh lenekudat-yishuv,” Al Hamishmar, date unclear. 43. Douglas 1966, 35. 44. Ha’aretz, October 9, 1959. 45. Lamerchav, March 18, 1955. 46. Ha’aretz, July 13, 1951.

224

Notes to Pages 149–154

47. CZA, S 71/3383; Reuven Shalgi, “Sakiya A: Ma’abara bederekh lenekudat-yishuv,” Al Hamishmar, date unclear. 48. ISA, MOH G26/146, minutes, January 14, 1953. 49. Ha’aretz, April 30, 1953. 50. Ibid., May 4, 1953. See also Stoler-Liss 2003, 278–79; Porter 1993, 2:1255. 51. Ha’aretz, May 4, 1953. 52. Ibid., May 15, 1953. See also Picard 1998, 147–50. 53. Picard 2004b. 54. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, January 6, 1953, 8; Segev 1984, 166–67. 55. BGASC, letter, August 27, 1950, and minutes, September 9, 1951. 56. In 1951, 68,000 cases of trachoma were treated in Israel, as well as tens of thousands of cases of scalp ringworm. See Grushka 1952; Hacohen 1994, 188–90; ISA, DYA P 6/762, report, 1954. 57. BGASC, minutes, April 18, 1951. 58. Ha’aretz, June 24 and July 13, 1953; Davar, July 13, 1953. 59. ISA, MOH G 12/160. Body lice, which some of the immigrants carried, infected them with typhus. See Shuval 1992, 126. 60. Al Hamishmar, April 16, 1953; R. Sapir 1951, 17. 61. Haboker, November 12, 1953; ISA, MOH G 14/160. 62. CZA, S 41/243, memorandum by Dr. Rosenbaum, March 1950, date unclear. See also Bondi 1981, 106. 63. BGASC, minutes, April 18, 1951. 64. ISA, MOH G 29/137. 65. Davar, March 25, 1955. 66. ISA, MOH G 5/191, and MOH G 13/160. 67. BGASC, minutes, July 11 and September 9, 1951. 68. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, January 6, 1953, 8. 69. BGASC, minutes, July 11 and September 9, 1951; ISA, MOH G 13/160, letter, May 22, 1951; ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, August 13, 1951. 70. Davar, February 3, 1952. 71. Ha’aretz, September 1–2, 1954. 72. Al Hamishmar, October 27, 1952; Ma’ariv, March 24, 1953; Hatzofeh, April 3, 1953; Zmanim, April 1, 1954, and February 16, 1955. 73. Ha’aretz, September 3, 1954. 74. Ibid. 75. Hacohen 1994, 195–200; Haboker, December 4, 1952. 76. Hacohen 1994, 304–5. 77. Haboker, November 12, 1953; Yoseftal 1963, 118. See also ISA, MOH G 13/160. 78. S. Rubinstein 1993, 81–84. 79. BGASC, minutes, September 9, 1951; S. Rubinstein 1993, 62; ISA, MOH G 26/146, letter, January 13, 1953. 80. BGASC, minutes, July 11, 1951.

Notes to Pages 154–157

225

81. Ibid., minutes, September 9, 1951. 82. ISA, MOH G 26/146, letter, September 14, 1953. 83. BGASC, minutes, September 9, 1951. 84. ISA, MOH G 26/146, report, June 2, 1953. 85. ISA, MOH G 1/144 and MOH G 12/160; Segev 1984, 184. 86. S. Rubinstein 1993, 48–55; ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, August 23, 1951. 87. CZA, S 71/197; Ha’aretz, April 18, 1949. 88. ISA, MOH G 1/144, letter, June 8, 1949. 89. Ibid., report, June 26, 1949. 90. Ibid.; Hacohen 1994, 190–91. 91. S. Rubinstein 1993, 49. 92. ISA, MOH G 1/144, letter, June 8, 1949, and report, June 26, 1949. 93. BGASC, minutes, October 15 and December 29, 1950; ISA, MOH G 12/160. Women’s organizations initiated a campaign to collect clothes for the immigrants to use. See PLA, IV 230–6-117. 94. Davar, January 8, 1951. See also ISA, GVM II, 1:32, November 22, 1950; Hatzofeh, June 24, 1949; Davar, June 28, 1949; Hatzofeh, December 22, 1950; Ma’ariv, January 9, 1953. 95. BGASC, minutes, October 15, 1950; CZA, S 71/1147; Herut, March 14, 1951; Haboker, March 15, 1951. 96. Hacohen 1994, 191–92; BGASC, minutes, December 29, 1950; BGAO, box 95; ISA, GVM II, 2, December 6, 1950. See also ISA, MOH G 14/160. 97. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, August 30, 1951. 98. Kol Ha’am, May 6, 1952, and April 2 and April 15, 1953; ISA, MOH G 14/160; Al Hamishmar, May 28, 1952, and April 3 and July 5, 1955. 99. ISA, MOH G 12/160, letter, December 12, 1950. 100. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, November 30, 1951. 101. BGASC, minutes, March 22, 1951. 102. Ibid., minutes, June 4, 1950; ISA, MOH G 29/146, MOH G 26/146, MOH G 12/160, and MOH G 14/160; CZA, S 141/28. 103. BGASC, minutes, July 11, 1951; ISA, MOH G 12/160. 104. Al Hamishmar, July 3, 1953; ISA, MOH G 13/160. 105. BGASC, minutes, September 9, 1951. 106. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, June 15, 1951. 107. ISA, MOH G 13/160, report, May 15, 1951; and MOH G 15/143, letter, August 15, 1951. 108. Herut, September 9, 1953; ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, December 15, 1951; Al Hamishmar, April 3, 1955. 109. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, May 3, 1951. 110. ISA, MOH G 13/160, letter, June 24, 1951; and MOH G 14/160, letter, July 4, 1951. 111. Ha’aretz, May 26, 1953; Ma’ariv, December 4, 1953; Haboker, February 25, 1954; Al Hamishmar, February 1, 1956; CZA, S 71/933; ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, December 15, 1951; CZA, A-B A430/78.

226

Notes to Pages 157–165

112. CZA, S 41/281; Haboker, March 21, 1955; Al Hamishmar, March 21, March 28, and June 10, 1955, and January 11, 1952. See also CZA, S 71/933. 113. Kol Ha’am, June 29, 1952; Al Hamishmar, June 29, 1952; Haboker, August 28, 1952; Kol Ha’am, October 17, 1952; Ma’ariv, May 21, 1953; Yediot Achronot, October 27, 1953; Al Hamishmar, October 28, 1954; Lamerchav, March 15, 1955; Davar, November 27, 1955. 114. Yediot Achronot, May 3, 1954. 115. BGASC, minutes, July 11, 1951. See also ISA, MOH G 13/160 and MOH G 12/160. 116. S. Rubinstein 1993, 51–52. 117. ISA, OPM G 3913/5559. See also Kafkafi 1998, 110–11. 118. ISA, MOH G 15/143, and MOH G 12/160. 119. ISA, GVM II, 1:29, 32, 34, November 22, 1950; MSA, 2–11–1950–2, minutes, March 5 and March 12, 1950. 120. Kafkafi 1998, 113. 121. ISA, MOH G 18/181, cable, May 24, 1953. 122. ISA, MOH G 17/181 and MOH G 18/181. 123. Ha’aretz, September 3, 1954. 124. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, November 30, 1951. 125. CZA, S 41/281, memorandum, August 24, 1953. 126. ISA, MOH G 11/155, memorandum, June 23, 1949. 127. Yoseftal 1963, 158; Harel interview, February 10, 2000. 128. BGAO, box 95, report, July 1, 1954. 129. ISA, GVM II 2:24, December 6, 1950. 130. ISA, MAG G 0433/4472, letter, June 4, 1951. 131. Gvi’on 2005, 47–48; Rozin 2006b.

9. Parents, Parenting, and Children 1. Ma’ariv, November 29, 1950; Davar, September 30, 1952. 2. I did not examine the religious press in this light, and it is possible that a different picture would have emerged there. 3. Ma’ariv, November 29, 1950. 4. Ibid. 5. CZA, S 41/243, “Report about the Work in Marseille in 1949.” 6. Hatzofeh, November 11, 1949. See also Pottishman Weiss 2000, 58–59. 7. Ha’aretz, September 18, 1950. 8. Ibid. 9. Davar, December 7, 1950. 10. ISA, MOH G 12/160. 11. See, for example, Davar, June 8, 1951. 12. ISA, GVM II, 2:35, November 22, 1950. See also ISA, MOH G 12/160. 13. Ma’ariv, November 11, 1949.

Notes to Pages 165–168

227

14. ISA, MOH G 12/160. 15. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, December 15, 1951; Shuval 1955, 82, 84; CZA, S 42/289. 16. Tehon 5730, 215–16; Segev 1984, 181–82. 17. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, December 5, 1950, 10; ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, December 15, 1951; Hador, June 14, 1953. 18. CZA, S 71/933; Ha’aretz, March 11, 1951; Yediott Achronot, February 24, 1954; Ha’aretz, September 3, 1954; Al Hamishmar, June 17, 1955. 19. BGASC, minutes, December 29, 1950. 20. Yoseftal 1963, 157; ISA, GVM III, 4:4, December 23, 1951. 21. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, March 25, 1953, 25. 22. CZA, S 42/289; Hapo’el Hatza’ir, January 20, 1953, 11. 23. BGAO, box 95, report, July 1, 1954; and box 95, Ma’abarot, letter, July 1956; BGASF, Ma’abarot, 5–YD–1, diary of Yael Chayut, January 23–February 19, 1951; ISA MOH G 12/160; CZA, S 71/3383; Ha’aretz, October 11, 1954. 24. CZA, S 71/933; Haboker, February 25, 1954; ISA, MOH G 12/160. 25. Hed Hamizrach, March 17, 1950; CZA, A-B A 430/78; Yediot Achronot, February 8, 1952. 26. CZA, J 113/2273. 27. ISA, MOH G 12/160, letters, November 23 and December 7, 1950. 28. Haboker, May 29, 1950. 29. Jerusalem Post, March 28, 1953; Stockler 1977, 121. 30. PLA, IV 230–49–31. 31. Davar, March 25, 1955. See also Hapo’el Hatza’ir, January 6, 1953, 8. 32. Bondi 1981, 71. The United Nations estimated that for 1950–55, the infant mortality rate in Egypt was 202 per 1,000; its website also provides infant mortality data for other countries and periods (http://data.un.org/). 33. Shtal 1993, 366–67; Segev 1984, 178. 34. Hatzofeh, April 6, 1952; United Nations (http://data.un.org/). 35. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, January 6, 1953, 8. 36. Davar, March 4, 1955. 37. ISA, MOH G 13/160, letter, April 22, 1951. 38. For changes in attitudes toward immigrants during the 1980s, see G. Barkai, Barel and Mashiach 5747. 39. Davar, March 4, 1955. See also GYB 5713, 331. 40. Hirsh 2000, 19–22. On nutrition, see, for example, Kornfeld 1949, 29. 41. See Patai 1953, 317. 42. ISA, MOH G 12/160, report, December 4, 1950. 43. Al Hamishmar, March 15, 1951. 44. BGASC, minutes, October 15, 1950; BGAO, box 95, report, July 1, 1954; ISA MOH G 11/155, letter, January 15, 1951; Yediot Achronot, April 20, 1953; CZA, S 41/243. 45. Al Hamishmar, April 16, 1953; ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, May 19, 1952. 46. ISA, DYA P 6/762, report, 1954. 47. PLA, IV 230–6-117; and IV 230–5-40. See also Stockler 1977, 87, 89–90, 94.

228

Notes to Pages 168–172

48. Chatan interview, October 3, 2000. 49. CZA, S 41/243 and S 71/195; Davar, September 25, 1951. See also Shtal 1993, 377–79; Al Hamishmar, April 16, 1953. 50. Yediot Achronot, April 20, 1953. See also Al Hamishmar, March 15, 1951. 51. ISA, MOH G 13/160. See also ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, May 8, 1952. 52. ISA, MOH G 29/146, letter, December 10, 1950. 53. BGAO, box 134, “Report on Settlement of Yemenite Immigrants” and letter, August 31, 1953. 54. ISA, MOH G 11/158, minutes, October 7, 1952; MOH G 16/181; MOH G 13/160; and MOH G 12/160. See also Stoler-Liss and Schwartz 2004. 55. Yoseftal 1963, 118. 56. Davar, March 4, 1955. 57. Picard 1998, 107–8; ISA MOH G 12/160, letter, December 12, 1950. 58. Davar, March 4, 1955. 59. ISA, MOH G 1/144, letter, May 15, 1949. See also ISA, MOH G 14/160. 60. CZA, J 113/2273. 61. Al Hamishmar, September 29, 1950; Herut, October 1, 1950. 62. ISA, MOH G 1/144, letter, August 14, 1950. 63. ISA, MOH G 12/160, letter, December 25, 1950; and MOH G 13/160, letter, January 1, 1951. 64. CZA, S 71/932; “Yeladim Acherim,”Al Hamishmar, September 13, 1955 (date unclear). 65. CZA, S 71/3383; Yehoshua Gilboa, “Me’aliya hamonit leselektivit,” Ha’aretz, May 26, 1953 (date unclear). 66. Al Hamishmar, April 15, 1953. 67. Ha’aretz, January 2, 1951. 68. Hatzofeh, April 4, 1951; Drori 1996, 2:163; R. Sapir, Rivka 1951, 8. 69. Al Hamishmar, December 25, 1950. 70. Haboker, December 21, 1950; Herut, December 28, 1950; Yediot Achronot, January 11, 1952. 71. Haboker, March 28, 1951; Herut, December 28, 1950; Hatzofeh, December 28, 1950; Ha’aretz, January 2, 1951. 72. Ha’aretz, January 2, 1951. 73. Hacohen 1994, 195–96; BGASC, minutes, October 15, 1950. 74. Yediot Achronot, January 11, 1952. 75. Ibid., January 30, 1952. 76. R. Sapir 1951, 11. 77. CZA, J 113/2290. 78. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, October 30, 1951, 18. See also Shtal 1993, 425–28; Pottishman Weiss 2000. See also Hendrick 1997; Zelizer 1994. 79. CZA S 71/204; Ma’ariv, November 1, 1951. A similar approach toward indigent children was prevalent during the same period in other countries. See Hendrick 1997, 11. 80. ISA, MOJ G 19/8004, letter, January 15, 1951. 81. Kachensky 1986, 73–75; Lissak 1999, 76.

Notes to Pages 172–179

229

82. Ma’ariv, December 4, 1953; Yediot Achronot, February 24, 1954; ISA, MOH G 14/160; CZA, S 42/289. 83. CZA, S 71/933; Haboker, February 25, 1954. 84. BGAO, box 95, Ma’abarot, letter, July 1956. 85. Ha’aretz, September 3, 1954. 86. ISA, MOJ G 19/8004, letter, January 18, 1952; CZA, S 42/221. The majority of archival material on this topic is inaccessible to the public due to privacy concerns. 87. Patai 1953, 325–26; CZA, S 71/195; Ma’ariv, November 11, 1949; Haboker, October 23, 1951; Hapo’el Hatza’ir, June 20, 1950. See also Katzir 5744, 223. 88. CZA, S 71/195; Kol Ha’am, July 7, 1950. 89. Ibid. 90. Haboker, October 23, 1951; CZA, S 71/195. 91. Ha’aretz, May 8, 1951. 92. Ibid. 93. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, June 20, 1950, 16–17. 94. Yediot Achronot, July 29, 1950. 95. Ibid., August 11, 1950. 96. Ibid. 97. CZA, S 71/195; Kol Ha’am, July 7, 1950; Haboker, November 12, 1953. 98. CZA, S 71/195; Kol Ha’am, July 7, 1950. 99. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, June 20, 1950, 16–17; Riger 1952; Ha’aretz, April 26, 1996, supplement. 100. CZA, S 71/933; Haboker, February 9, 1956. 101. Herut, April 26, 1951. 102. CZA, S 42/289. 103. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, February 27, 1951, 7. 104. CZA, S 41/243, memorandum by Dr. Rosenbaum, March 1950, date unclear. 105. MSA, 2–11–1950–8, minutes, June 18, 1950; Yediot Achronot, October 28, 1955. 106. Yaakov Zerubavel was the leader of the Po’aley-Tziyon Smol and later a member of Mapam. 107. Al Hamishmar, August 27, 1951. 108. Frykman and Löfgren 1987, 167–70. 109. Al Hamishmar, August 27, 1951. 110. Ibid. 111. Ma’ariv, November 29, 1950; Ha’aretz, November 23, 1953. 112. Shenhav 2003, 67–69. 113. CZA, S 71/197; Ha’aretz, April 17, 1949. 114. Kol Ha’am, January 3, 1952; Hador, June 8, 1952; Al Hamishmar, December 4, 1952. 115. CZA, S 71/197; Ha’aretz, April 18, 1949. 116. During the 1930s and 1940s, polio was rare in Eretz Yisrael, with only twenty to thirty cases annually. In 1950 alone, 1,600 cases were discovered in Israel; in 1951, the rate declined to 853 cases. See Grushka 1952, 297. 117. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, August 17, 1951. 118. Ha’aretz, April 18, 1949.

230

Notes to Pages 179–185

119. CZA, S 71/197; Hamashkif, April 18, 1949. 120. Haboker, February 24, 1954; Ha’aretz, September 3, 1954. 121. ISA, MOH G 14/160.

10. The Construction of a Collective 1. See ISA, MOH G 14/138; Blander 2004. See also IDIGA, “Be’ayot ha’aliya be’einey toshvey yisrael,” August 1949; and “Da’at hakahal al hekef ha’aliya bazman hakarov,” October 1949. 2. ISA, MOH G 14/160, letter, November 30, 1951. 3. Patai 1953, 287. 4. Ha’aretz, November 23, 1953. 5. Ibid., October 27, 1953. 6. Ibid., November 23, 1953. 7. Ibid. 8. ISA, MOH G 12/160, “Ma’abarot Mechoz Rechovot.” 9. MSA, 12–1951–11–2, minutes, October 29, 1951. 10. BGASC, minutes, March 22, 1951; Yoseftal 1963, 142; Hacohen 1996. 11. Davar, March 3, 1950. 12. Ibid. See also Yediot Achronot, October 28, 1955; Weinreb 5714, 282. 13. BGASC, minutes, June 4, 1950. 14. Hapo’el Hatza’ir, October 9, 1951. 12. 15. Ha’aretz, October 27, 1953. See also PLA, IV 230–5-82. 16. Lamerchav, March 18, 1955. 17. Eisenstadt 1952, 29–33. 18. Hador, June 2–3, 1952; Ha’aretz, August 18, 1952, and March 1 and 13, 1955. 19. Ha’aretz, November 23, 1953. 20. Davar, September 10, 1954. 21. Ha’aretz, November 23, 1953; BGASC, minutes, October 15, 1951. 22. Ha’aretz, October 27 and November 23, 1953; Herut, September 30, 1954. 23. Miller 1997, 11–12. 24. Rozin 2005b. 25. See, for example, “Hamora Rina vetalmideha bima’abarat talpiyot” 1986. 26. See, for example, PLA, IV 230–6-117. 27. PLA, IV 230–5-82 and IV 230–6-189; Ma’ariv, December 31, 1950; Yediot Achronot, July 7, 1951; Zmanim, January 7, 1954; Davar, August 16, 1955; Patai 1953, 154; ISA, MOH G 26/146, MOH G 14/150, and MOH G 13/50. 28. CZA, S 71/3383; Davar, “Tachboshet Psychologit,” December 15, 1954 (date unclear); ISA, MOH G 12/160. Compare the issue of the use of DDT in Israel with its use as described in the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Dossier militair gezag, DOC map d 440 11. 29. Douglas 1966, 5. See also Patai 1953, 299.

Notes to Pages 185–197

231

30. Yediot Achronot, September 27, 1992. See also Hirsh 2000. 31. Echoes of this perception may be found in the words of Martin Buber. See BGAM, October 11, 1949, 7. 32. Lupton 1995, 33–44; Wear 1993, 1300–1303. See also Berkowitz 5760. 33. Rottenstreich 1958; Frankenstein 1952; Simon 1951; Frankenstein et al. 1952. See also Patai 1953, 311–13; Segev 1984, 156–58. 34. Frankenstein et al. 1952, 319–22. 35. Frykman and Löfgren 1987, 162. 36. Ibid., 166. 37. See, for example, Svirsky 1981; Kimmerling 5760, 184–90. 38. For discussion of the theory of separation, see Weinreb 5714, 279–84. 39. See Lissak 1996 and 1999, 108–10. 40. See, for example, BGAM, October 11, 1949. 41. Picard 2004a, 45. 42. Hacohen 1994, 314. 43. Haboker, January 8, 1954. 44. Herut, April 23, 1953; Davar, September 13, 1953; Al Hamishmar, November 15, 1953; Davar, December 3, 1953; Herut, December 24, 1953; Al Hamishmar, January 4, 1954.

Conclusion 1. Anita Shapiraa 5757, 260–61. 2. Molad, October 1960, 413–31; Anita Shapira 5757, 261–63. 3. Eisenstadt 1989, 189–90; Anita Shapira 5757, 260. 4. Gorni 1986, 30; Anita Shapira 5757, 260. 5. Y. Shapira 1977, 35–40, and 1993, 41. 6. Y. Sapir 5717, 3–7. 7. See, for example, Herut, July 27, 1951. 8. A. Bareli 2000, 103–5; MSA, 2–25–1949–12, minutes, June 12, 1949, and minutes, July 3, 1949. 9. This conclusion is in accord with research by Dan Horowitz and Lissak 1990 178–81; Almog 1997, 231–34; Anita Shapira 5757, 261–63; and Gorni 1986, 30. See also Molad, October 1960, 413–31. 10. Eisenstadt 1989, 189–90; Anita Shapira 5757, 260. 11. Regarding the individualization of native-born Israelis, see Avraham Shapira 1999, 168–69. 12. For theoretical discussions of individualism and individuality, see Luke 1973, 8; Triandis 1995. 13. Al Hamishmar, November 15, 1953. 14. Moreover, in the 1950s private enterprises began to receive government benefits. See Y. Shapira 1977, 162. 15. Rozin 2006a.

232

Notes to Pages 197–199

16. Eisenstadt 1989, 189–91, 421–24. 17. Both before and after independence, the prevailing culture was that of Western consumerism. However, until the mid 1950s, the most important book publisher was Sifriyat Hapo’alim of the Shomer Hatza’ir. See Z. Shavit 5759b, 7, and 5759a, 245–46, 256–57. 18. See for example, Gorni 1984, 53–54. 19. For a critical analysis of individualism, see Luke 1973, 11–12. 20. Gorni 1997. 21. On the influence of daily life in shaping a culture, see Frykman and Löfgren 1997, 26. 22. See, for example, Ukhmani, Tanai, and Shamir 1958.

re f e r e nc es

Archives BGA

Ben-Gurion Archives, Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute, Ben-Gurion University, Sde Boker BGAC Correspondence BGAD David Ben-Gurion’s diary BGAM Minutes BGAO Ben-Gurion’s office while he served as Prime minister BGASC Special Committees BGASF Subject Files CZA Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem IDIGA Institute for Democracy in Israel, Guttman Center Archives, Jerusalem ISA State of Israel Archives, Jerusalem DYA Dov Yosef Archives GVM Government Minutes (for example, GVM I is Minutes of the First Government) MAG Ministry of Agriculture MOH Ministry of Health MOJ Ministry of Justice MSR Ministry of Supply and Rationing OPM Office of the Prime Minister PSC Provisional State Council MA Massuah Archives, Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak MSA Moshe Sharett Israel Labor Party Archives, Beit Berl Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Amsterdam PLA Pinhas Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research Archives, Tel Aviv

Magazines Ashmoret Beterem Dvar Hapo’elet

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Ha’ishah Bamedina Ha’olam Hazeh Hapo’el Hatza’ir Hed Hamizrach La’isha Molad Riv’on Lekalkala

Daily Newspapers Al Hamishmar Davar Ha’aretz Haboker Hador Hakol Hamashkif Hatzofeh Herut Jerusalem Post Kol Ha’am Lamerchav Ma’ariv Palestine Post Yediot Achronot Zmanim

Government Documents Divrey Haknesset [Knesset minutes] Gilayon minhelet ha’am, tzavim vehoda’ot [Provisional government orders and notices] GYB (Government yearbook; Shnaton hamemshala) Hamemshala hazmanit, Iton rishmi [Provisional government gazette] Hayarchon hastatisti le’yisrael [Israel Statistics Monthly]

Miscellaneous Talmud (Yerushalmi) Rosh Hashana Talmud (Babylonian) Baba Metziya

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in d e x

Abdullah, King of Jordan, 108, 118–19 abhorrence discourse concerning immigrants. See disgust discourse concerning immigrants agents of change, housewives as, 35–36 Agranat, Shimon, 58 Aharonowitz, Ziama (Zalman Aran), 81, 96, 125 Alazari, Regina, 170 Al Hamishmar, 52–53 alienation: from burden of immigration, xiv, 180; of public from government, 46, 50, 60–62, 121, 194 aliyah. See immigrants and immigration Almog, Oz, 134 Alston, D. R., 149 American Zionism, 101 Amir-Pinkerfeld, Anda, 26 Arab voters, 77, 78, 84, 104–5, 115, 119 Aran, Zalman (Ziama Aharonowitz), 81, 96, 125 Ashkenazim, xvii, 127–28, 170 Ashmoret, 80 austerity program: British, 3, 62, 83; election role of, 65–67, 130; enforcement of, 26–27, 41–44, 46–47, 48–51, 52–62, 81, 211n19; inequities in burden of, 21–22, 23, 48–50, 62, 72, 75, 135–36; overview, xiv; public responses to, 43, 44–51, 60–62; rule of law and, 39–51, 59, 61; selective immigration as relief from, 128–29; state vs. citizens and,

196. See also black market; housewives; politics autonomy, women’s loss of under austerity, 29 Avramov, Shneur Zalman, 71 balance principle and rule of law, 40, 50 Barak, Aharon, 50 Barkai, Chaim, 50, 65, 126 Becker, Aharon, 96, 97 Begin, Menachem, 6, 58 Ben-Aharon, Yitzchak, 133 Ben-Gurion, David: austerity program and, 5, 7, 25, 27, 32–33, 42, 43, 44, 49, 66–67; concerns about health of immigrants, 153; criticism of bureaucracy and, xiii; education conflict and loss of coalition, 93; on faithfulness to democratic election processes, 116; on judiciary/executive branch relationship, 53, 55–58, 60; local elections role, 65, 74, 75; and mamlachtiyut, 98–99; motivations for institutional power, 133; national elections role, 94–95, 108, 110–11, 119; popularity of, 119; support for open immigration, 121, 123 Ben-Mordechai, David, 172 Bergmann, Shmuel Hugo, 182 Berman, Aharon, 159–60 Bernstein, Peretz, 103, 116 biblical principle, rule of law as, 39

246

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bigamy among Yemenite immigrants, 173, 176 black market: Ben-Gurion’s attempts to grapple with, 66–67; causes of, 45; child care vs. the law, 18, 28, 33, 37; in election rhetoric, 72; government’s enforcement inconsistency, 26–27, 41–44, 47, 48–51, 52–62, 81; growth of, 41, 44; housewives’ moral struggle to avoid, 8; public’s turn to as privations continued, 4, 26–28; and social mobility, 36 Bonne, Alfred, 25 bourgeoisie. See middle class Brand, Noah, 46 Britain: austerity measures in, 3, 62, 83; electoral shifts vs. Israel, 119–20; legal authority influence on Israeli government, 3, 42, 43, 47–48, 67 bureaucracy, xiii, xvii, 46, 91, 194 capitalism, xviii, 75 careerism, 99, 134–35 care ethic, 35, 36 centralized collectivism. See government child marriage, 173–76 children and child care: food rationing effects, 17–19, 158–60; shelter for immigrant, 170–71; and use of black market, 18, 28, 33, 37; veterans vs. Mizrahim treatment of, 144, 163–66, 171–72 citizenship. See civil rights discourse; collectivism civil rights discourse: governmental denial in, 43, 44; importance in Israel’s socioeconomic shift, 135; and individualism, 61; in local elections, 77, 80, 91–92; in national elections, 101–2; overview, xviii–xix; and public’s disenchantment with government, 50; and veterans’ desire to throw off colonial yoke, 130; voting rights expansion, 68; women’s equal rights law, 109–10

Civil Union/Liberal factionalism in General Zionist party, 103 class, socioeconomic: elites, xv, xvii, 23, 36, 49, 121; housewife alliance across classes to protest austerity, 11; individualism and, 198; the poor’s suffering under austerity, 19, 48; and subjection to austerity, 23. See also middle class; working class cleanliness. See hygiene ethos clothing and shoe rationing, 19–26, 32, 45 Cohen, Yisrael, 59 Cohen-Kagan, Rachel, 91, 109–10 Cohn, Haim, 60 collectivism: and austerity program justification, 6–7, 44; continuation of, 199; criticism of individualism, xviii; decline of, xvi, xvii, 62, 87, 98–100, 130–34, 190, 194–95; immigrants’ rejection of, xvii; individual burden of, 131–32; individualism as oppositional response, xv, xvi, 130–33; and limits of volunatry self-sacrifice, 82; Mapai’s confidence in public’s adherence to, 70; and patronizing attitude toward immigrants, 188; state/institutional responsibility for, xv–xvi, xvii, 98–100, 195, 198 Communist party, 77, 117 Conservative Party (British), 120 consumer protection organization for women, 11, 20, 27, 30–35 consumption envy among middle/working class, 24–25, 36 Cornfeld, Lillian, 19 court system. See judicial system craftsmen’s election role, 73, 74, 95–96 cultural issues: ethnic discrimination in local elections, 76–77; rationing, 45; Western influences, 86–87, 171, 185–86, 190, 191, 197–98. See also immigrants and immigration currency exchange rate, manipulation of, 66

Index Darwin, Charles, 139 Davar, 13, 24, 46, 47, 55, 80, 108 democracy: collectivist rejection of liberal democratic principles, xviii; compromise for security and political gain, 114, 120–21; General Zionists vs. Mapai on, 76, 101–2; importance of independent courts, 40; importance of public opinion in, 59; and Israel’s election irregularities, 112–14; local election campaign rhetoric on, 77; misuse of structures of, 193–94; and national elections, 112–14, 116, 120–21; and public’s power to change policy, 51, 197. See also civil rights discourse demographics of voter groups, 100–107 Dicey, Albert Venn, 40 discrimination: in austerity program burdens, 21–22, 23, 48–50, 62, 72, 75, 135–36; by ethnicity in local election campaign, 76–77; against Mizrahim, 72, 76 disease carriers, assumption of immigrants as, 150–54 disgust discourse concerning immigrants: disease threat, image and reality of, 150–54; hygiene disparities, 145–49; introduction, 139–40; and judgment of immigrants, 176–79; living conditions of immigrants, 142–49, 153, 154–57; moral dimension to, 140, 141–42; nutritional deficiencies for immigrants, 157–61 Douglas, Mary, 141 Dvar Hapo’elet, 10–11, 24, 31 economy: and British post-war elections, 119–20; cost of open immigration for, 123, 128; foreign currency, 42, 123, 126; foreign investment in Israel, 81; government’s avoidance of issues until after elections, 98; Korean War pressures on, 97; national election pressure for

247

changes, 93–94; post-1951 election policy changes for, 126; socioeconomic goals of austerity, 5, 7; uncertainty fears about, 91; wage/price controls vs. catering to workers, 96–97; Western influences as burden on, 197–98. See also austerity program education, 93, 98, 143 Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noach, 183 Elbinger, Rachel, 176 elections (1950–1951). See local elections (1950); national elections (1951) Eliashar, Eliyahu, 6, 71, 213n31 elites, socioeconomic, xv, xvii, 23, 36, 49, 121 Elon, Amos, 89, 150 Elpeleg, Capt. Tzvi, 105 emigration problem, 129, 189–90, 195 enforcement of austerity measures, 26–27, 41–44, 46–47, 48–51, 52–62, 81, 211n19 equality principle, 50–51, 76, 109–10 ethnic discrimination issue in local election campaign, 76–77 Even-Tov, Hannah, 32–33 fairness of national elections, question of, 90, 107, 112–15, 119, 120–21 farming villages (moshavim), 107, 114–15, 142, 155, 156 fashionableness, value of, 22–25 fathers, immigrant, criticism of Yemenites, 165 food and nutrition in immigrant camps, 157–61 food rationing, 4–19, 41 foreign currency, 42, 123, 126 foreign investment, 81 Frankenstein, Carl, 187 Friedman, Ariela, 35 frugality value and austerity program, 5, 197 Frykman, Jonas, 187 Gelblum, Aryeh, 144, 178–79 gender roles, 35–36, 144. See also women

248

Index

General Zionist party: on austerity program, 44–45, 50; boycott of Israel’s elections to Zionist Congress, 94; exclusion from coalition government, 125; government intelligence surveillance of, 112–14, 119; harassment of supporters by Mapai, 115; individualism in platform of, 131, 132, 136, 195; joining of coalition government (1952), 130; in local elections, 70–71, 73–78, 79, 84–86; middle-class sensibility and supporters, 74, 195; in national elections, 100–105, 107, 109, 111–12, 117–18, 119; opposition to inequities in austerity program, 50; and selective immigration debate, 122, 124 generation gap and societal shift, 134 “generation in the Land” (dor ba’aretz), 134 Geri, Yaacov, 65 Geva, Aharon, 183 Giladi, David, 88 Gilligan, Carol, 16, 35 government: Ben-Gurion’s project to shift loyalty from party/class to, 99; centralized power and intervention in citizens’ lives, 192–93; collectivist responsibility of, xv–xvi, xvii, 98–100, 195; corruptions in, 193; criticism of for immigration handling, 182–83; public’s loss of faith in, 20, 45–48, 50, 60–62, 82, 121, 194, 195; public’s turnover of social responsibility to, xv–xvi, 195, 198; women’s relationship to, 28–30, 32–34. See also austerity program; judicial system; politics Greenberg, Uri Zvi, 6–7 Grossman, Meir, 122 Ha’aretz, 49, 89–90. See also immigrants and immigration Haboker, 20–21, 44–45, 58, 74, 84–86, 107, 114, 115, 189–90 Hacohen, Devorah, 127, 153 Hadar, Aryeh, 113

Hador, 48, 59, 76, 104–5 Ha’ishah Bamedina, 23 Halamish, Aviva, 127 Hapo’el Hamizrahi party, 118 Hapo’el Hatza’ir, 59 Harel, Isser, 24–25, 47, 49, 112 Hareli, Shoshana, 33 health issue: immigrants as disease carriers, 150–54; infant mortality of immigrants vs. veterans, 166–70; lack of care in immigrant camps, 155–56, 159; nutritional issues, 14–19, 158–60 Heftman, Yosef, 85–86 Herut, 58, 59 Herut party: and Greenberg, 6; in local elections, 73, 76, 77, 87; in national elections, 117; opposition to inequities in austerity program, 50; opposition to talks with West Germany, 55; and selective immigration debate, 122; suspicions of subversive intentions in, 112; and women voters, 74 High Court of Justice (Supreme Court), 40 Histadrut: alleged harassment of General Zionist members, 84–85; extent of socioeconomic influence, 48; government’s preferential treatment of, 48, 49; Mapai’s attempt to use to get votes, 74; members’ abandonment of Mapai in local elections, 81; objections to austerity enforcement, 46–47; opposition to small business, 106; political leanings in 1950 election season, 69–70; protection of working-class values vs. bourgeoisie, 24; religious school system of, 93 Hofnung, Menachem, 105 holiday pressures during austerity, 13–14 Horowitz, David, 66, 123, 129 house searches for black market activity, 26, 41–42, 47 housewives, austerity role of: black

Index market issues for, 8, 26–28; children’s food needs, 17–19; clothing and shoe rationing, 19–26, 32; as crusaders for austerity, 7–14; introduction, 3–4; moral dilemmas, 8, 35–38, 36, 48; nutritional compromises, 14–19; rationing and national identity, 4–7; relationship to government, 28–30, 32–34 hygiene ethos: and cultural intolerance of Mizrahim, 141, 145–49, 152, 164; immigrants’ challenges in adopting, 156, 164, 167, 185–86, 188; multiple aspects of, 197; and soap shortage during austerity, 19; veterans’ embrace of, 167, 185–86 ice shortages, 108–9, 159 immigrants and immigration: austerity as method to absorb, 5, 7, 17; confiscation of food and foreign currency from, 81; economic costs of unrestricted immigration, 123, 128; hygiene issue, 156, 164, 167, 185–86, 188; individualization contribution, xiii, xvii, 139–40, 188–89, 198; infant mortality vs. veterans, 166–70; job placement priorities over women, 29; living conditions for, 128, 142–49, 168–69, 179; location of origin, 127; Mapai’s support for unrestricted immigration, 111; marriage practices, 172–76; moral imperative to welcome immigrants, 6, 121–22, 124; parenting practices, 144, 163–68, 171–72; perpetuation of negative impressions, 143–48, 162–63, 174–78; preconceptions of voting harassment, 89–90; rejection of Yishuv collectivist ideology, xvii; segregation and distancing of, 180–84, 188–89; selective immigration policy, 94, 101, 121–30; standard of living vs. veterans, 25; stress of post-war influx, xiii, xiv, 139–40, 180, 188–89; summary of veteran/immigrant relationship,

249

180–90, 192; as voters, 69, 70, 71–72, 106–7, 118, 119; as working-class labor pool, xvii. See also disgust discourse concerning immigrants individualism: austerity regime as catalyst for growth of, 38, 61, 70, 86; in BenGurion’s rhetoric, 95, 111; and class divisions, 198; and collectivism’s burdens, xv, xvi, 130–33; conclusion, 191–99; definitional issues, xviii; General Zionist party’s support for, 131, 132, 136, 195; and government malfeasance, 121, 136; immigrant contribution to shift to, xiii, xvii, 139–40, 188–89, 198; and immigration’s burden, xiii, 139–40, 188–89; individualization process, xvi, 125, 195–98; Mapai’s difficulties in dealing with, 97; overview of development in Israel, xvi–xix, 191–99; types of, 196–97 inequities in austerity privations, 21–22, 23, 48–50, 62, 72, 75, 135–36 infant mortality, immigrants vs. veterans, 166–70 intelligence surveillance, political abuse of, 112–14, 119, 219n124 intervention approach to immigrant assimilation, 187–88 Islamic nations, immigrants from. See Mizrahim Israeli identity, 4–7 Israeli Women’s Consumer Protection Organization, 11, 20, 27, 30–35 Jerusalem Post, 57–58 Jewish Agency, 122, 125, 126–27, 142 Jordan, royal assassination and crisis in, 108 judicial system: austerity enforcement handling, 42, 52–62, 211n19; court structure, 210n1; importance of independent courts, 40, 57; and rule of law, 50

250

Index

Kaplan, Eliezer, 69, 123, 131 Katznelson-Shazar, Rachel, 97 kibbutzim, 17, 49, 152, 167, 170–71 Klugman, Shabbetai (Shabbetai K.), 145, 167, 181–82 Knesset, 52–62, 67, 85–86. See also national elections (1951) Korat Gag, 170–71 Korean War, 93–94, 97 Kupat Holim Klalit, 159 Kuznitzy, Ulla, 31, 32, 33 Labour Party (British), 119–20 Lahav, Pnina, 57 La’isha, 11, 12, 14 Lakol line of clothing during austerity, 21 Lavon, Pinhas, 15, 17, 65, 83, 158–59 Left/labor movement, xv, 6, 71, 72, 99, 194–95. See also Histadrut; Mapam party liberalism, xviii. See also individualism Lissak, Moshe, 139, 145 living conditions for immigrants, 128, 142–49, 153, 154–57, 162–63, 168–69, 179 local elections (1950): party competition for votes, 71–78; party preparation for, 68–71; questioning laws governing, 67–68; results and implications, 79–92; situation analysis prior to, 65–67; veterans as primary voters in, 94 Ma’ariv, xiii, 16, 17–18, 58–59, 88–89, 146–47 machanot (reception camps), 142, 154–55, 157–58 Magistrates’ Courts, 210n1 Mapai party: attempt to span multiple classes, 82, 95–96, 99; austerity program handling, 7, 47; coalition formation after 1951 elections, 125; corruption in, 91, 121; election abuses by, 90, 107, 113, 114–15, 119; General Zionists’ post-election criticism of, 84;

government favoritism toward, 48, 49; individualism’s problems for, 97; lessons learned from British Labour Party, 120; local election demoralization, 92; in local elections, 67–68, 69–70, 73, 74–77, 78, 79–84; and Mapam, 84, 98; in national elections, 94–96, 102, 104–5, 106, 107, 109, 110–11, 117, 118; selective immigration policy, 122–24, 130; women’s equal rights law, 109–10; Zionist Congress elections, 94 Mapam party: alleged designs to take over government, 112; in local elections, 71, 72, 77, 78, 86–87; and Mapai, 84, 98; in national elections, 117; report on judicial leniency with black market, 52 marriage practices, 110, 172–76 media. See press medical care. See health issue Meir, Yosef, 167 Meir (Myerson), Golda, 34, 160–61 Meirhoff, Hannah, 18 men, veterans’ cultural intolerance of Mizrahi, 177–78, 182 middle class: and consumption envy, 24–25, 36; Mapai’s need to court, 82, 95–96; movement of working class into, 135; political leanings in 1950 election season, 69; as vanguard of individualism, 97, 130–31, 195. See also General Zionist party Middle East, cultural intolerance for immigrants from. See disgust discourse concerning immigrants military threats, external, during national elections, 108 Miller, William, 141–42 Mizrahim: children and child care, 144, 163–66, 171–72; discrimination against, 72, 76; and hygiene ethos, 141, 145–49, 152, 164; infant mortality vs. other groups, 166–70; joining of General Zionist party, 117; living conditions,

Index 142–49, 153, 154–57, 162–63, 168–69, 179; marriage practices, 172–76; as working-class labor pool, xvii. See also disgust discourse concerning immigrants Mizrahi party, 222n2 moral dilemmas in austerity, 8, 35–38, 36, 48 moral principles: in austerity program, 5–6, 33, 35; in disgust discourse, 140, 141–42, 172–74; as foundation of rule of law, 39–40; frugality value, 5, 197; Mapai’s examination of, 82–83; moral education as solution to middle-class individualism, 97; public’s responsibility to immigrants, 6, 121–22, 124 moshavim (immigrant farming villages), 107, 114–15, 142, 155, 156 mothers, veterans’ criticism of immigrant, 163–65, 167–68. See also housewives municipal elections. See local elections (1950) Myerson (Meir), Golda, 34, 160–61 Nassau, Erich, 152 national elections (1951): competition for votes, 103, 110–12; corruption in, 112–16, 119; and democracy, 112–14, 116, 120–21; demographic voter groups, 100–107; England, comparison to, 119–20; fairness question, 90, 107, 112–15, 119, 120–21; ice shortage, 108–9; lessons, change processes, 130–36; parties involved, 94–98; party alliance shifts, 125–26; results, 117–19; security issue, 108, 111–12, 118–19, 121; selective immigration policy, 121–30; shortage of voters due to lack of processing, 219n1; situation analysis prior to, 93–94; volunteerism vs. mamlachtiyut, xvi, xvii, 98–100; women’s equal rights law, 109–10 national identity, rationing and, 4–7

251

national security, 108, 111–12, 118–19, 121, 123–24 nation building, austerity as support for, 6 Neumann, Emanuel, 101 North Africa, immigrants from, 129, 144–45, 150, 151, 176–77. See also disgust discourse concerning immigrants nutritional issues, 14–19, 20, 158–60 Ofer, Avraham, 80 Olshen, Yizchak, 50, 54–55, 56–57 order and cleanliness, relationship of, 140–41, 148–49, 188 Oriental/Sephardi Jews. See Mizrahim parenting practices, veteran vs. Mizrahim, 144, 163–66, 171–72 parliament, 52–62, 67, 85–86. See also national elections (1951) parties, political: alliance shifts after national elections, 125–26; competition for votes, 71–78; in national elections, 94–98; preparation for local elections, 68–71. See also individual parties Pesach, food rationing hardships during, 13–14 Picard, Avi, 128 pioneering ideal, 83, 99–100, 121 Pioneer Service for Israel (Shahal), 99 planned economy, Israel’s beginnings as, 4 politics: bureaucracy’s politicization, 46; collectivist rejection of liberal democratic, xviii; and judicial appointments, 60; and public opposition to austerity, 47; trumping of pioneerism, 100. See also local elections (1950); national elections (1951); parties, political Pollack, Irma, 31, 32, 33–34 poor, the, suffering under austerity, 19, 48 press: on austerity program inequities, 21–22, 48–50; on government/courts dispute over austerity, 58–62; government

252

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press (continued) denunciation of during austerity, 42–43; on local elections, 72, 79–80, 88–92; on national elections, 114–16; and negative impressions of immigrants, 144–48, 162–63, 174–78; on new consumer protection association for women, 31. See also individual publications price pressures, dealing with, 126 professionals, political leanings in local elections, 69 Progressive Party, 47, 117, 125 prostitution problem among Mizrahim in camps, 172 psychiatric disorders among immigrants, 151 psychological price of rationing, 9–10, 45–46 psychological reasons for selective immigration, 129 public, Israeli: black market as resource for, 4, 26–28; democratic power to change policy, 51, 197; election pressures on austerity regime, 65–66; and importance of public opinion in democracy, 59; loss of faith in government, 20, 45–48, 50, 60–62, 82, 121, 194, 195; moral responsibility to immigrants, 6, 121–22, 124; oppositional relationship to government, 82; response to austerity, 43, 44–51, 60–62; turnover of social responsibility to government, xv–xvi, 195, 198 public good vs. individual good, 97. See also collectivism; individualism Purim feasts during austerity, 13 Rafa’el, Yizchak, 122–23 Raptor, Beryl, 24 rationing. See austerity program reception camps (machanot), 142, 154–55, 157–58 redistribution of wealth, food rationing’s role in, 5 regime. See government

religiosity: and austerity justification, 5, 6–7; maintaining religious marriage and divorce laws, 110; religious law discourse, 39, 77 religious parties, 47, 77, 93, 117, 118 Right: on austerity regime, 6, 47; collectivist ideology of, xv, 195; in local elections, 72; opposition to selective immigration, 129. See also Herut party; religious parties rights discourse. See civil rights discourse Rokach, Israel, 124 Rosen, Pinhas, 47 Rosh HaAyin immigrant camp, 166 Rosh Hashanah during austerity, 14 Rotenstreich, Natan, 90–91 Rubinstein, Amnon, 58 rule of law and austerity, 39–51, 59, 61 rural communities: kibbutzim, 17, 49, 152, 167, 170–71; lighter burden of rationing on, 7–8, 20; moshavim, 107, 114–15, 142, 155, 156 Sabras, 134–35 Sahar, Yehezkel, 54 sanitation issue and immigrant camps, 141, 145–46, 153, 154–55, 156–57. See also hygiene ethos Schiff, Ze’ev, 147, 172–73 security, national, 108, 111–12, 118–19, 121, 123–24 selective immigration policy, 94, 101, 121–30 self-employed tradesmen and craftsmen in elections, 73, 74, 95–96 self-sacrifice during austerity, 16, 82 Sephardi/Oriental Jews. See Mizrahim Serlin, Yosef, 77–78, 124 sexual behavior of immigrants, 172–73 Shabbetai, K. (Shabbetai Klugman), 145, 167, 181–82 Shapira, Anita, 132 Shapira, Haim Moshe, 42, 126 Sharett (Shertok), Moshe, 93, 113

Index Sheba, Haim, 152, 154 Shelef, Leon, 39 shelter for immigrant children, 170–71 Shem-Or, Ora, 20–21 Shin Bet, 24–25, 47, 112–14 shopkeepers and other businessmen, austerity’s threat to, 47, 48 Silver, Rabbi Abba Hillel, 101, 102 Simon, Akiva Ernst, 187 Simon, Uriel, 148, 180–81, 182–83 skilled workers, political leanings election season, 69 Smoira, Moshe, 50, 53, 57 socialism, Israeli and Zionist, xv–xvi, 87 social status. See class, socioeconomic Solel Boneh, 48, 49 solidarity ethos, strains on, 135 Sprinzak, Yosef, 92, 215n57 state, the. See government storekeeper and craftsmen voters in national election, 105–6 Strauss, Walter, 141, 149 Supply and Rationing Ministry, 4, 12, 26, 31–32, 41, 45–46, 48–49, 65. See also Yosef, Dov supply issues during rationing, 8–9, 41 Supreme Court (High Court of Justice), 40 Suzayiv, Zalman, 113 Tchernovitz-Avidar, Yemima, 24 Tel Aviv, politics of, 70, 79–80, 117–18 transit camps: burden of rationing on, 7; fiefdom structure based on party, 106–7; living conditions in, 145–49, 153, 154, 155–56; nutrition (or lack thereof ) in, 158–59; origins of, 142; social service providers’ reluctance to work in, 124 Tzur, Yaron, 129 United Religious Front, 47, 77, 93 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 39 urban vs. rural burden of austerity, 7–8, 17, 20, 49

253

veterans/old-timers (vatikim), Israeli: children and child care, 144, 163–66, 171–72; civil rights discourse, 130; defined, xiv, 132–33; hygiene ethos, 167, 185–86; individualization of, xvi, 125; infant mortality, 166–70; as primary voters in local elections, 94; and Sabras, 134–35; selective immigration as relief from austerity, 128–29; standard of living vs. immigrants, 25; summary of veteran/immigrant relationship, 180–90, 192; tradition of avoiding law, 62; Western cultural influences on, 185–86, 191, 197–98. See also austerity program; disgust discourse concerning immigrants Voice of Israel, 42–43 voluntary vs. mamlachtiyut (state-mandated) collectivism, xvi, xvii, 98–100 vote tampering during elections, 107, 114, 115, 119, 120–21 voting. See local elections (1950); national elections (1951) voting rights, expansion of, 68 War of Independence, xiv, xvi, 134 Warshavsky, Yosef, 113 Weitz, Yechiam, 91, 133 Western cultural influences, 86–87, 172, 185–86, 190, 191, 197–98 women: consumer protection organization for, 11, 20, 27, 30–35; General Zionists’ accommodation of, 70–71, 74, 103–4; health price of rationing for, 16; political parties’ courting of, 74, 95; as primary victims of austerity, 28–29, 33, 37; relationship to government, 28–30, 32–34; voting clout of, 88–89, 103–4; voting rights for, 68. See also housewives women’s equal rights law, 109–10 Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), 23 working class: bourgeois aspirations of,

254

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working class (continued) 24–25, 86–87, 194–95; political leanings in election season, 69; veterans vs. new immigrants in, 133–34; voting clout of, 73, 95, 96, 106, 131 Yemenite immigrants, 144–45, 150–51, 155, 163–67, 173–76 Yishuv community, xiv, xv, xvii, 122, 124, 199. See also veterans/old-timers Yosef, Dov: Ben-Gurion’s criticism of, 66; defense of austerity, 5; enforcement of austerity policy, 41, 42, 43; and immigrant camp nutritional deficiencies, 158; in local election season, 72–73; prejudices about immigrants, 165;

transfer to transportation ministry, 33, 65; unpopularity of, 14; and unrealistic nutritional measures, 15–16; vs. judicial system, 53–54, 56, 57, 58 Yoseftal, Giora, 143–44, 223n20 Youth Aliya, 170 Zerubavel, Yaakov, 176 Zilber, Yitzhak, 88 Zionism: American movement, 101; and collectivism, xiii, 190; open immigration as basic moral principle, 121–22; selective immigration adoption by, 127; and socialism, xv–xvi, 87 Zionist Congress, elections to, 94 Ziv-Av, Yizhak, 162–63