It was the topic of a conference at the distinguished Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem and the subject of the lead review in the weekly literary supplement of Ha’Aretz newspaper.
He cites Ben-Gurion, the head of the Histadrut, in December 1922, 'making a declaration of the intentions to which he adhered throughout the rest of his life': [...] The possibility of conquering the land is liable to slip out of our grasp.
[...] Without [such] a new Zionist movement that is entirely at our disposal, there is no future or hope for our activities[2]Similarly, Katznelson said in 1927 that the Histadrut existed 'to serve the cause of conquering the land'.
Thus the Zionist leadership saw the Ahdut HaAvoda party and the Histadrut as tools to reach their final goal of conquest of the land and creation of a Jewish state.
They went to Palestine when only a tiny minority of emigrating Jews went there, they suffered hardships, uncertainty and loneliness in the early years, but they also knew how to build a nation and were convinced that they had the right to dictate the path of those who came after them.
It included a labor exchange, workers' kitchens, a health service and an enterprise for building and construction, which later became the stock company Sollel Boneh.
[15] Ben-Gurion, as its head, opposed any desire of the majority to introduce more social aims, as he believed this would destroy the organisational unity of the labor movement.
This Aliyah was the last one considered to have a revolutionary potential, as after 1924 the U.S.A. had closed its borders to unlimited immigration, and ideological conviction became only a secondary reason for migration to Palestine.
In the process Ben-Gurion made use of a ruthless blockade of the Gdud's Tel Yosef kibbutz, including withholding medical aid, food supplies and other necessities.
Class warfare meant that the Jewish workers were organised and struggled for improvement in their working and living conditions and to gain power.
The labor movement followed a policy of collaboration with the middle classes in order to build the nation and protected the private sector in the Yishuv.
For example, Yosef Kitzis, the boss of the Tel Aviv branch of the Histadrut, made personal and political use of his power.
Despite a local vote of non-confidence in 1925, Ben-Gurion and Katznelson held him, "the symbol of corruption in public life", in his position for at least ten more years.
Sternhell says: "in our time Israel is undoubtedly the Western democracy with the weakest means of control in parliament and the strongest executive branch.
In a scholarly review Neil Caplan [32] is very critical: "Sternhell insists on viewing the history of Zionism as an unhappy one determined by wrong-headed 'conscious ideological choices' made by the labour-Zionist elites, and decidedly not 'due to any objective conditions' or to circumstances beyond the movement's control."
He mentions "overstatements", "sweeping generalizations", "oversimplification", "inappropriate comparisons", "simplistic dichotomies" and "the use of popular buzz-words [...] as value-laden denigrations rather than as neutral descriptive labels".
He also says Sternhell ignores that "the evolving discourse and practices of labor Zionism were profoundly shaped by the concrete circumstances in which would-be Jewish workers found themselves in early twentieth-century Palestine and, above all, by the 'Arab question', the inescapable reality that Arabs constituted the great majority of the country's population, dominated its labor market, and owned most of its arable land."
According to Walter Laqueur[35] "His book, while not incorrect inasmuch as the facts are concerned, leads to conclusions that are either obvious and have never been in dispute, or are curiously lopsided."
Laqueur says Sternhell's criticism is too harsh: "All this might be regrettable, but how could it be different in the case of a social democratic party in a small country still in the process of being built up?".
These actions are simply incompatible with the moral principles that Sternhell finds lacking among Israel's founders: universalism, humanitarianism, egalitarianism, and so on.
Sternhell's premises lead to the inexorable conclusion that the guiding ideology of Israel's founders forced an inhumane destiny on the Palestinian people, no less so in 1948 than in 1967.
According to Jerome Slater: "The demythologizing work of Sternhell and his fellow new historians is, finally, profoundly constructive-as they clearly intend it to be.
If Israel is at last to become a genuinely liberal, fully democratic, and just society, it can only be built on the solid foundation of historical truth and reconciliation with the Palestinians, who have been the victims of Zionist success.
Shalev's criticism focusses on Sternhell's assertion that the founding fathers made a “conscious ideological choice to sacrifice socialism on the altar of nationalism”.
“It is these circumstances, and the response to them, which explain the most fateful and important ideological choice of the labor movement’s founding fathers: their commitment to separatism as the guiding principle to, simultaneously, the economic and the national life of the Yishuv.” According to Shalev in contrast to the colonists of the First Aliyah, those of the Second Aliyah "lacked either the financial means to participate as purchasers in the land market, or the advantages enjoyed by indigenous workers in competing for jobs in the labor market."
Gorny[42] agrees with Sternhell that the period of the Second and Third Aliyah shaped the Jewish labor movement in Palestine and that it was ideology that fashioned this generation of immigrants to establish a nationalist society.
It is obvious that every event occurs in its own particular time and place, [... but ...] the historian’s craft is not identical with the stamp-collector’s" Sternhell argues that "constructive socialism" was indeed a "nationalist socialist" concept.
The Eretz Israeli version did not become totalitarian, but nevertheless remained distinct from democratic socialism.” Ira Sharkansky writes[44] that Sternhell fails to consider the matter of income equality in a comparative perspective.
He presents statistical data that shows that Israel's income equality in the 1990s is comparable to that of other countries with approximately the same Gross National Product per capita.
Sternhell cites the UN expert professor Philip Klein, who investigated the matter for two years at the end of the 1950s: "[It is not solely, or even] chiefly administrative action, that calls for revision; it is rather the spirit and objectives behind the administration and its guiding outlook and philosophy [...] The Welfare State is a State for the welfare of workers, producers, builders of an economy and of a national ideal."