Bitter reality of Israel's "labour movement"

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I AM a member of the Workers' League (Palestine), a Trotskyist group struggling for class organisation and national liberation, writing in my personal capacity.

I receive your paper from our comrades in Tel Aviv, and find it useful with the reports on the class struggle in Britain and the world.

I would like to use your paper in order to throw some light on some misunderstandings which exist in the international workers' movement about the basic facts of the class struggle in Palestine.

Zionist propaganda does not limit itself to the lies and slanders designed to hide the murderous oppression of the Palestinian people. It also hides the basic facts about the breaking of every workers' struggle in 'the only democracy in the Middle East' For that, they misuse all the names used by the workers' movement.

The biggest bourgeois party is called the Israeli Labour Party'. The biggest industrial concern is called a 'trade union' (the Histadrut). The second largest bank (with the lowest-paid workers) is called "The Workers' Bank' The institutions designed to out aw every Councilse and the pioneers of the expropriation of the Arab peasants and colonisation are called 'socialist communes' (kibbutzim).

I would like to give some examples of this system of lies by showing the reality.

Attacks on election meetings of Ma'arakh (Israeli Labour Party plus the 'United Workers' Party', which decided, last week, to buy an American bank) have been described as expressing Nazism.

It's important "Li!

tá " =-:= ....:

I: saried like mosi Reai= jo. on the horrifying is o: nuclęar war. Halt *=: ihrough. it starts to tell : i now you can manage to coire the war and why here i going to be one. Its -a17 theme was trust in C=s follow a few simple apractions and you will be *I the people would just eum to the Lord and repent o: their sins and ask for His torgiveness. He would lift the curse and remove the whole thing. but they won't.

So He has to let the war come and all the horrors of man that man is bringing Daily brutality against that the attackers were not members of the fascist 'Gush Emunim' or 'Kakh' movements, but people from slums and the working class (which generally hates the Ma'arakh).

It's true that racism exists in the slums and the workers' neighbourhoods, but from my experience its own difference from the racism of the petty bourgeoisie which emigrated from Europe (which votes for Ma'arakh) is that the Europeans are also racist against the Jewish working class, which is mostly Oriental - from Asia and Africa.

The Ma'arakh is not identified with the Arabs; the Israeli Communist Party is identified with them, and its meetings were not attacked.

Nor is Ma'arakh =: " "TE own iniquity. his own sin.

his own hand ... untold suffering and pain and and his refusal to receive the Lord, follow God or obey His word."

Sick

The leaflet ended with the most sick paragraph could imagine.

• Then even if you can't dodge the nukes or the kooks, He can protect you, for he cares for His own.

And if you do wind up a target for an H-Bomb, your ins trapped in racist state of Israel erate' party — all through the election campaign the Ma'arakh criticised the government from the right (opposing the retreat from Sinai, for example).

Illusions The last illusions, if anyone still had any, were broken by Mota Gurr, an ex chief of the general staff, when he shouted at some 'Oriental' people that disturbed a Ma'arakh election meeting, "We'll fuck you just as we fucked the Arabs...

Really, the Ma'arakh represents: 1. The 'European' authority. (Most of the bourgeoisie in Israel is European). This is the authority which brought Oriental Jews from their countries in *:: de over! You'll *_: • ∞er in the God today! God bleis and icep you!"

The reading of the leatler made me feel quite ill to think that anyone could believe in something quite so low and unbelievably stupid.

Throughout history religion has been used against the working class.

How people can say God stands for love and peace when more wars have been fought under his name than anything else I do not know.

This leaflet which is aimed at an average person order to create a Jewish worker class (to work after the expulsion of the Arabs). It dropped them in slums and in settlement areas called 'development towns' - urban settlements which were built artificially, without an economic or social base, near the borders, for 'defending the country' and near kibbutzim, to provide cheap labour power for their factories. These towns are 70% slums.

This authority is hated by most Jews, as it oppresses them as workers and as 'Orientals' 2. The Histadrut. It is second biggest employer in the country, after the state itself.

Its factories are not under any kind of workers' control. They are directed Writeback could just as well have been written by the government itself All it is saying is that Gel believes in the govern-e: jerence policy A - ... nearer God's in he dre The church has aways lived off the back of the working class. always taking money from the people.

In mediaeval times the church took a tenth of food from starving people in order to make itself rich.

All it told them was if they were good a place would be saved for them in heaven.

If anyone opposed the church, il murdered them, eg. burning at the stake, saying that they were trying to save the person's soul. But M. KAHiL 79 on a basis of competition -which means that the Histadrut is trying to get the biggest profit possible -the lowest pay to the workers.

These factories are in coownership with private local and foreign capital, with profits running to the capitalists' pockets, and not a cent to Histadrut members.

Membership in the Histadrut is not according to workplace. Histadrut membership includes workers, petty bourgeoisie, and factory owners.

Ironic

For example, Horovitz, the former minister of finance, an owner of investments here and in South America, and until a month ago owner of "Tene-Noga' the second dairy in Israel, is a member of the Histadrut, and led his private list in its elections last spring - a list with the ironic name, 'List of Israeli Workers'.

Everyone can be a Histadrut member if he pays taxes. The reason almost all the workers are Histadrut members is that it is the owner of the biggest health insurance scheme, (health insurance by the state does not exist), and not because they think it represents them. You can see it by the way people Writeback to Socialist Organiser 28, Middie Lane London N8 as in most things, if you have got money the problem can be solved. In earlier times if you were excommunicated a bag of gold would help God forgive you.

The church has always red on a bully tactic. I1 ::. 300: beieve in it. somerever nasty will happen io gou. but it you believe give it a lot of money you will go to a wonderful place called heaven.

The church, . like the capıtalıst system, 1s now talling to peces. Instead of believing in it whole-heartedly people are beginning to question it.

This leaflet was trying to sell God like a fall-out shelter. If the war came, neither would be much good. LINDA MOULSDALE talk and from the fact that less than 60% took part in the Histadrut elections. (It was a lower percentage among workers, as the government and Histadrut bureaucracy, the kibbutzim settlers, and the petty bourgeoisie, voted!)

The Histadrut elections are general elections every four years, to a general assembly, for political parties (as in the parliament), and are not based on workplaces.

The 'trade union' department takes less than one-tenth from the Histadrut budget and it is subject to the decisions of the generally elected executive committee' ', which is a direct representative of the bourgeoisie, built on the pattern of any bourgeois state.

The workers' committees in the factories (the only bodies elected by the workers themselves) are very limited - the elections are under the aegis of the Histadrut, which has the right to disperse them. Many times representatives of the management win the elections to the committees.

Many of the committees are afraid to do things against the orders of the Histadrut. (The law says that the union that includes most of the workers is the only legal representation - and most of the workers join just to get the health insurance).

At times of struggle, action committees are sometimes built against the Histadrut, and these are the only committees that really struggle. By law org state itseli takes an anisation tax' from most workers who refuse to join the Histadrut and gives the money to it.

Only the strikes that the Histadrut permits are legal.

•Gush Emunim Most of the strikes don't get this recognition, and even the few that get it, don't get strike money, although it is collected every month (part of the organisation tax).

Breaking

The Histadrut is not a trade union but a state-like institution (which preceded the Zionist state itself and played an important part in creating it). It specialises in breaking every attempt by the working class to organise itself independently to protect its rights.

3. The Ma'arakh depends to a certain extent on the 'kibbutzim', where it gets more than 90% of the votes. It is very proud of them.

The kibbutzim are only 7% of the Jewish population, but are subsidised more than any other part of the population (besides the rest of the bourgeoisie).

They got lands stolen from the Arabs, more than anyone else. They have the best education network here, and are not ready to accept children from 'development towns' ', where the schools are on a very low level, in the kibbutz schools, so as 'not to damage the level'.

In the kibbutz factories the work conditions are some of the worst in the country. All the foremen and privileged workers come from the top - from kibbutz members - and the workers cannot advance.

Profit

Besides, the foremen have a straight interest in the factory profit - so they oppress their workers more: than usual. From the other side, the Histadrut doesn't give them even the forged defence they give others.

The Ma'arakh isn't even a reactionary party of the Jewish working class, as it is sometimes described. In the slums and workers' neighbourhoods, there was a crushing majority for Likud. Ma'arakh is a bourgeois party, Likud's Siamese twin.

Anybody who wants to help and express solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian nation and of the Arab-Jewish working class should not defend one or other part of the Zionist bourgeoisie, or call for conciliation between the PLO and Zionism.

We have to fight for independent trade unions, and for a democratic workers' party of Arabs and Jews without any connection with Zionism. These things, unfortunately, do not exist even in embryo.

IRIS LEDEZ

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-Cuts policy debate cuts policy depate. Socialist Organiser, Thursday 5 November 1981 Page 1!

DON'T SWING

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starvation, sickness, savag- ery, all because of his sins

supposed tó be the local trade union, but it is the