Imagine that your home will be given, without your consent, to a rich man who will do with it as he pleases and dump you into the street. What would you say then? This is a reality in Kfar Shalem and Givat Amal, two suburbs of Tel Aviv in Israel, where Jewish workers are being expelled from their homes to make room for Israeli bosses to build skyscrapers. These two suburbs were once Arab villages prior to the racist, Zionist expulsion of Arabs in 1948, and now it’s Jewish workers being expelled by the Israeli bosses, once again in the name of profit. The fate of Jewish working class families in Givat Amal and Kfar Shalem is no different from their Arab counterparts in the Palestinian villages of El Arakib, Dahamsh and various neighborhoods in East Jerusalem where Palestinian residents are evicted to make room for Zionist settlement projects.
Zionism – Dividing Arab and Jewish Workers since 1948
Under capitalism, the main motive of the bosses to constantly maximize profits. Despite Zionist claims to promote phony all-Jewish unity, the fate of Jewish workers does not interest the Israeli government or the billionaire boss who bought the land, Yitzhak Tshuva, any more than the fate of Palestinian workers expelled in 1948 or today.
In 1948, Givat Amal was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village, Jamasin, whose residents were expelled and Jewish working class families were brought in. Each Jewish family that moved there was given an apartment by the Israeli parliament, supported by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and mastermind behind the Palestinian genocide. When Tshuva was asked in an interview to comment on a famous speech by Ben-Gurion containing this empty promise, he replied, “[workers should] go look for Ben-Gurion in the desert.”
The cost of living for workers is very high, making the prospect of evacuation a poverty sentence. Tshuva has offered each family $150,000 to leave Givat Amal, while a two-bedroom apartment in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area costs somewhere between $5-600,000. For the lower amount, Jewish workers are forced to live 80 miles from Tel Aviv, forcing many workers to leave their jobs and uproot their entire families to a future of unemployment.
Same Enemy, Same Fight
The struggle of Givat Amal residents to save their homes is the same struggle of the expelled Palestinian residents over a half century ago, and is the same struggle of the Arab workers of El Arakib, Dahamsh and the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem now. Jewish and Arab workers have the same enemy — the capitalist class, which in Israel hide behind the genocidal Zionist mask of “Building the Jewish homeland.” As communists we must expose the fascist nature of this slogan just like the Nazi “Thousand Year Reich” or the U.S. “American Century” for what they are — attempts to lure workers into supporting local bosses against other workers.
Until both Arab and Jewish workers unite under the red flag of the Progressive Labor Party, both will live with boots on their necks — dead-end Palestinian nationalist groups for the Arab workers, and Zionism for the Jewish workers. The Progressive Labor Party in Palestine as well as elsewhere around the world organizes to unite all workers and to see the connection of their struggles. Only in a society where money is abolished can workers live and raise their families without fear of expulsion or genocide — and only a communist revolution led by the PLP can do it!