THE JEWISH LABOR QUESTION IN PALESTINE
For some time past there has been a serious agitation with regard to the Labor Question in Palestine. This agitation was created by the Poal Hazoir, the official organ of the Laborers' Organization. It published a series of articles wherein it demonstrated how the Jewish laborers were exploited by the Colonists and how their work was being slighted in order to create a defence for preferring Arab labor to theirs.
The climax of this agitation was reached in its number 10, in an article which arroused the attention of Palestinian leaders. After several accusations and refutations they have finally come to the conclusion that something must be done to arbitrate between colonist and laborer, with the result that a special committee has been formed with the object of studying the question and of finding a solution for it.
I shall here produce some extracts of the controversy which I believe will be of interest to those Zionists who are studying this particular question.
The Poal Hazoir after dealing with Petach Tikvah and .the suggestions made by some committeemen of importing Egyptian labor and of building houses for the strangers outside the colony, continues thus:
"They forget entirely that in Palestine there are at present thousands of Yemen and Moroccan Jews, who according to their standard of living and scanty requisites, can well compete even with the Arab laborers. And when they proposed to erect cottages for the Arabs outside the colony and to teach them their work, not one of them thought of the poor Yemenites and Sephar-
dim who roam about from place to place in search of work. Had houses been built for these outcasts, then could they have been rescued from degradation and poverty. Not alone Petach Tikvah with its indifference to Nationalism, but all of us are committing the same injustice to our Eastern brethren. Even our National Institutions suffer the neglected state of affairs which is wasting away the flesh and spirit of thousands of our brethren dwelling in Palestine.
"For example, the Odessa Committee in erecting the Girl's School at Jaffa had given over its building into strange hands—a building that is being erected by the collected pennies of Jewish blood, and in a time when Jewish builders and masons are wandering through the streets of Jerusalem in search of employment.
"We hope that with the development of Jewish labor in Palestine, the dried bones of the immigrants of the Occident and Orient would unite and begin to breath a new life into them, evolving them into a productive organism of the general Hebrew body. We hoped that in the same degree as the conditions of labor would improve here, so would the possibilities arise for the everlasting wanderer to find in Palestine a place of refuge. And when we came here and found a prepared Goluth, because here too we were in the minority, we yet looked forward to that happy time when the improved economic position would open the gates of the country to Jewish immigration. Whereby our numbers would gradually become augmented, until we could create here a decisive majority, so that the land might finally become to us a real fatherland.