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COPYRIGHT 2001 Indiana University Press
THE UPROAR OVER THE EDUCATION of Yemenite children in the immigrant moshav [cooperative agricultural settlement] of Amka, in the north of Israel, is one of the most flagrant examples of the kind of absorption that met new immigrants from Islamic countries in the first years of Israel's independence. The group most active in absorption at the time was the Mapai [Labor Party]-dominated Moshav Movement. Amka was among the moshavim singled out by both the religious press and religious parliamentarians as proof of the violation of the 1949 Compulsory Education Law, which guaranteed parents the right to choose a particular educational system for their children. (1) Amka was pointed to as an example of anti-religious coercion perpetrated by the leading political parry, Mapai, and the Israeli Left. In this period, however, Mapai members, led by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, and the first two ministers of education, Zalman Shazar and David Remez, vehemently refuted this charge. They fulminated in both the media and Knesset that such claims were libelous and totally unsubstantiated.
In the years that have passed, confidential documents from the highest echelons of Mapai have been made public, revealing that, among the parry elite, it was common knowledge that the Moshav Movement was flouring the Compulsory Education Law and that anti-religious coercion was raking place at Amka. Moreover, a wealth of evidence shows that Mapai leaders were bitterly divided over the manner in which immigrants from Oriental backgrounds, including the Yemenites at Amka, should be assimilated into the country. On one hand, officials such as Shazar and Remez believed that anti-religious coercion must be avoided and that immigrant parents in all of the Moshav Movement's villages, like other parents throughout the country, should be allowed to choose their children's educational framework. On the other hand, leading figures in the Labor "system," such as Yaakov Halperin (Niv) (Head Supervisor), Yakov Sarid (a top official in Tel-Aviv), and the leaders of the Moshav Movement, especially Member of Knesset (MK) Ami Assaf, believed that their primary mission was to spread the Labor Movement gospel among as many pupils as possible. It was decided that, in every moshav affiliated with the Moshav Movement, only educational institutions associated with the Histadrut [the Labor Movement's trade union] would be permitted to operate. Aided by instructors and volunteers from veteran moshavim, public and Labor-affiliated organizations made full use of their power and compelled immigrant children to take their schooling in either the Labor or Religious-Labor system. Objecting parents were eventually expelled from the village.
It seems that Ben-Gurion was caught between the two sides. Publicly he defended the Labor system and asserted that everything was proceeding legally. But in closed-doors discussions with party leaders, he admitted that the Moshav Movement was in fact breaking the law, and that it was dangerous to lend it support. In one such meeting he was extremely outspoken on this point, declaring that "our" people were carrying out acts of "robbery in broad daylight" on the new immigrants and that the nation and the party would pay dearly for this in the future.
In retrospect, by failing to demand an immediate end to the infringement of the law and the accompanying anti-religious coercion, the Prime Minister and the cabinet, including ministers from the Religious Front (2) gave, in effect, their tacit sanction to illegal acts.
A BRIEF LOOK AT THE ABSORPTION OF YEMENITES (1948-1951)
Between 1948-1951, nearly 680,000 immigrants entered the State of Israel, half of whom arrived from Islamic countries. (3) One group of special distinction came from Yemen and Aden on an airlift operation known as the "Wings of Eagles." (4) The exodus began in December 1948 and was completed in less than two years, in September 1950. Altogether, 48,000 Jews landed in Israel from Yemen and Aden. (5) On arrival, all of the Yemenite immigrants were sent to transit camps, although many were transferred to work villages and moshavim after only a few weeks.
The Moshav Movement was the main organization involved in the absorption of new immigrants. The movement's leaders responded enthusiastically to Ben-Gurion's call in early 1949 for assistance and shouldered the daunting task of overcoming innumerable ideological and practical obstacles, vigorously taking the lead in the policy known as "from transit camp to village." (6) In 1948, prior to the massive influx of immigrants into the country, the Moshav Movement contained only 49 villages, comprising 3245 families. Within five years, an additional 135 moshavim were established that included 9547 families. In this short time, the Moshav Movement expanded into the dominant organization of labor settlement. (7)
Many Yemenite families, although religiously observant by tradition, were nevertheless sent to the secular Moshav Movement. Less than a third were placed on moshavim of the religious system; i.e., villages affiliated with the religious parties HaPoel HaMizrakhi or Agudat Israel. (8)
POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE ABSORPTION OF YEMENITE IMMIGRANTS
For the most part, the new immigrants from Islamic countries, including those arriving on "the Wings of Eagles" remained out-of-sight and out-of-mind for most of the Jewish community in Israel. (9)
Undeniably, the entire Labor Movement, with Mapai as its political arm, formed the organizational framework most actively involved in the absorption of Oriental immigrants, including the Yemenites. On the other hand, Mapai activists, more than any other group working in absorption, aspired to "re-educate" the Oriental Jews and speedily mold them into the image of the "new Israeli"--best summed up as an anti-religious, secular, pioneering tiller of the soil. As the dominant political party in the state, Mapai had all the resources at its command for pressuring, as well as attracting, the new immigrants. The party oversaw the state's major absorption bodies on which the new immigrants were dependent: the Jewish Agency, the Moshav Movement, workers councils, employment offices, the Jewish National Fund, HaMashbir HaMerkazi [nation-wide, all-inclusive department store chain], local mini-markets, neighborhood clinics, and the workers bank [Bank HaPoalim]. It should also be mentioned, however, that in the first years of Israel's statehood, Mapai fielded more active instructors for assisting the immigrants than any other political party, as well as more people who volunteered their time, energy, and experience in response to their movement's "call up" to aid in absorption. Mapai succeeded in enlisting more agricultural experts, teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, etc., than all the other groups in Israel combined. Thousands of Mapai party members contributed to the absorption of Oriental Jewry, which included the new immigrants from Yemen.
Compared to Mapai and the Israeli Left in general--Mapam (the Zionist-Socialist party), and especially the two kibbutz movements, Kibbutz Artzi (Mapam), and HaKibbutz HaMeuchad (associated with Mapam, with a small minority from Mapai. Broke away in 1952)--the political parties in the center and the right made almost no effort in immigrant absorption, and a number of them even hindered it. Furthermore, at the municipal level where the center and the right held sway--such as in Tel-Aviv under Mayor Israel Rokach and Ramat-Gan under Mayor Abraham Krinitzi--the immigrants were unwanted and pressured to evacuate the city limits. (10)
Even among religious Jews, there was a severe lack of workers dedicated to receiving and absorbing the immigrants, especially in the first months of statehood in 1948 and 1949. For the most part, the Religious Front turned its back on the people coming from Islamic countries and even discriminated against them. Evidence can be seen in its response to a request by the Chief Sephardi Rabbi, Rabbi Ben-Zion Uziel, who demanded that the party add a representative from Oriental background to a realistic spot on its list of candidates to the First Knesset. (11) The Front's leadership consented to a Sephardi representative, but only in the 25th place, knowing that it was considered highly unlikely it would win more than 18-20 mandates (it received only 16). (12) In this period, however, almost 200,000 Sephardi Jews dwelt in the country, the majority of whom were religiously observant, and who accounted for one quarter of the electorate.
THE BEGINNING OF THE "AMKA AFFAIR"
Yemenite settlement in the abandoned Arab village of Amka, 12 kilometers south of the Lebanese border, began in November 1949. The Moshav Movement ensured that absorption instructors from established labor settlements would be waiting for the new arrivals, according to the standard operating procedure. These advisors had a two-fold task: first, to introduce the immigrants to Western and Zionist culture, modern education, agriculture, economics, the bureaucratic system, health services, etc.; and second, to induct them into the "correct" ideology and "correct" political framework.
The chief instructor at Amka was Yosef Lukov (13) from the veteran moshav of Kfar Vitkin. There can be no doubt that he sacrificed a great deal of his family life in order to assist the Yemenites in the northern settlement. Lukov the "Mapainik" became in effect the village supervisor. Instructors and officials working in the village, as well as the Yemenites themselves, recognized his authority. As a loyal member of his movement and party, Lukov ascertained that the...
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