The Ashkenazi Revolution

147Jews to close off Jewish industry to the Arab worker. Sooner or later, thisworker would flow abundantly into Jewish industries and, at the same time,there was initially a Jewish flight to easier and more profitable livelihoods.Only a Jewish state and the expulsion of the Arabs could have ensured afulfillment of the great and shining goal of the Labor movement: Thecreation of a working Jewish People in the Land of Israel. Had the Labormovement been honest and upfront with itself on this decisive point, itwould have had to change its entire approach, and to take the path that waslater taken by the Revisionist undergrounds. However, the Labormovement was in denial about its goal. It was in total denial. Not only didit not fight for a state and for the expulsion of the Arabs, but it did not evenfight for increased Jewish immigration. The Revisionist Movement wasconfronted with a similar dilemma after the pogroms of 1929 afterdiplomatic approaches, by the Revisionists, were exhausted. At this pointthe Revisionists took alternate, underground, approaches, but the Labormovement, by fooling itself, committed a form of ideological Hara-kiri.Later, after the outbreak of the events of 1936, this movement committedHara-kiri a second time. It announced a policy of silence and denial overthe principle of effective self-defense. Of the two main principles of theLabor movement, the principle of a working people and the principle ofself-defense, there remained only shadows. During this period thedistinction between the Hebrew settlement in the Land of Israel and theDiaspora become blurred almost completely. This settlement had all thetypical characteristics of a Diaspora. There was hatred from the localpopulation, which comprised a majority, and from the government, andthere was running to the local British authorities to beg for aid; it was onlyJewish migration that distinguished between the Hebrew settlement in theLand of Israel and the Diaspora. The “White Book” of 1939 nullified eventhis distinction. After the White Book, the Hebrew settlement in the Landof Israel turned into a diaspora for all practical purposes, and only theHebrew words distinguished it from the other diasporas. The more thissettlement, the non-Revisionist part, descended in its ideologicalfaithfulness, the more it fell in love with itself. The Labor movement wasin love with itself, with its institutions, its economy, its industry, its debatesand its quarrels. The Hebrew settlement, in its current condition, was