Hebrew labor

One of them refers to the ideal adopted by some Jews in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and later embraced by Zionism to favour hiring Jewish rather than non-Jewish workers.

[5][6] Shortly after his arrival in Palestine in 1906 David Ben-Gurion noted that a moshava, a private Jewish agricultural settlement, employed Arabs as guards.

[12] There were difficulties here, because Arabs were prepared to work long hours for very low wages, and most Jewish immigrants preferred to settle in the cities.

In this context occurred the development of the concept of the kibbutz, 'the co-operative settlement based on self-labour and motivated by Zionist ideals'.

[13] In a summary made in 1956, Ben-Gurion said the kibbutz movement was not started because of some socialist theory, but as an effective way to "guarantee Jewish labour".

[14] Ben Gurion said: We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers.

[21] In 1947 the UN Special Commission on Palestine summarized the situation: The economic life presents the complex phenomenon of two distinctive economies—one Jewish and one Arab, closely involved with one another and yet in essential features separate.

Government service, the Potash company and the oil refinery are almost the only places where Arab and Jews meet as co-workers in the same organization.

[b] In recent times there have been attempts at reviving the practice of hiring exclusively Jewish labor in Israel and the occupied territories, particularly after the Second Intifada.

[25] An example is the "Hebrew Job Board" (לוח עבודה עברית) website, which was encouraging "Hebrew labor" by publishing the list of "Jew-only" businesses and warning about security risks and danger of hitbolelut (Jewish assimilation) involved in hiring non-Jews, It was found to be engaged in discrimination and ordered to pay a fine.

[26][27] In an appeal, the organization claimed that their purpose was the historical tradition of tzedakah (charitable work) aimed at helping Jews with their livelihoods, and vouched to amend their online activities to comply with the law.

Ben-Gurion wrote about the settlers of the First Aliyah: "They introduced the idol of exile to the temple of national rebirth, and the creation of the new homeland was desecrated by avodah zara".