The Gateway Chronicle 2020

18
With that said, how did it actually contribute
to the creation of the State of Israel in
1948?
To briefly recap, the State of Israel was declared
in 1948 following the approval of
the United Nations partition plan by the
General Assembly which had precipitated
a civil war in British Mandatory Palestine.
The Partition Plan itself was created at the
request of the British Government who
had concluded in 1937 that its Mandate of
Palestine was untenable due to the conflict
between Jews and Arabs in the region and
– after the Second World War – were
The First Prime
Minister of Israel, struggling to control Jewish revolt
David Ben-Gurion over the limits on Jewish migration
to Palestine (especially in the aftermath
of the Holocaust).
One impact of Labor Zionism was that the
radical ‘kibbutznik’ represented a large
group of Jews living in Palestine who
were willing to fight for a state. In fact, the
predecessor to the modern Israel Defence
Forces, the Jewish paramilitary ‘Haganah’
(literally, ‘the defence’) was linked to the
Labor Zionist movement; Haganah was
considered the largest armed force in the
region after the British Army. These paramilitary
groups smuggled weapons into
Palestine and were part of the armed revolts
which proved the British Mandate
untenable. These armed rebellions ultimately
forced the British out, but it is
equally likely that the British would have
been forced to leave anyway; there was an
appetite for self-determination among the
United Nations and the British especially
were not desperate to keep it in their Empire.
However, it is certainly true that the
military wing of the Labor Zionist movement
sped up the British withdrawal.
Nevertheless, the partition would never
have been considered without a viable alternative.
For
the Jewish
State at least,
this came
from the Labor
Zionists.
The Kibbutzim
– as well as
‘nomadic’
groups such
as G’dud
HaAvodah
(Labor Battalion)
– created
viable agriculture
and
manual labour
forces
for a future
state; G’dud
HaAvodah notably built roads and drained
swamps in the 1920s where the British had
not. Moreover, the associated labour unions
(mainly Histadrut, that of David Ben
Gurion) began to establish education,
health care and social services for the Jewish
population outside of the kibbutzim
themselves. This created the very beginnings
of the State: one which not only had
some sort of economic output but provided
for its citizens. Therefore, as a result
of the institutions of Labor Zionism (themselves
a result of the ideology), it was
possible both for the United Nations and
the British government to consider a Jewish
State in the region; after all, there