The economic crisis that erupted over five years ago in summer 2007 in the United States has since expanded to additional continents, transforming globalization itself. It is now evidently clear that the crisis, which began at the heart of capitalism, is affecting its periphery as well. At the same time, not all peripheries have entered this circle. Are we witnessing a change in global power-relations from a unipolar to a multipolar world—a change that is the direct result of a deepening globalization, which began with the collapse of theSoviet Unionin the early 1990s? Is the “North Atlantic axis” of capitalist power losing its central place in favor of a new “Southern axis”, includingChina,India,South Africa, andBrazil?

In this article we shall try to answer the questions what is globalization and how it relates to us. We shall do this against the background of the cracks that emerged in global capitalism since the outbreak of the current economic crisis. If there is one central point that clearly emerges from an analysis of the social and political system that has formed since then, it is that the crisis carries with it severe spatial, economic, social, political, and even environmental consequences, which might prove to be a turning point in globalization.

First Question: Global Crisis and Capitalism

Does capitalism have a global dimension? Already in 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the following in the well-known Communist Manifesto:

“Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery ofAmericapaved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. […] The discovery ofAmerica, the rounding of theCape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. […] The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”

This analysis—written over than 160 years ago, and despite the many scholarly limitations of that time—already seems to provide a fairly accurate prognosis of what we nowadays call “globalization.”

Second Question: Globalization and Crisis

The age of globalization, which began with the collapse of theSoviet Unionin the 1990s was supposed to guarantee the spread of the global capitalist system towards new horizons and endless spaces. In this globalized world, everything becomes merchandise. In fact, if one follows the criteria set by the World Trade Organization, even health, welfare, education, housing, and water are now part of the global market. What is globalization? Here is the definition taught in the Israeli school system:

“A phenomena which includes a combination of economies, cultures, and political movements around the world. International firms manufacture products in different places around the world, so as to obtain the highest added value, while making optimal use of raw materials, wages, research and development centers, and geographical proximity. These goods or products are marketed worldwide for fairly similar prices and through the same marketing scheme.”

So far, the official definition of the education system. Yet contrary to this view, according to which the aim of globalization is “to obtain the highest added value,” its true aim is an increase in capital accumulation. The following is an excerpt from an interview published in the Israeli economic newspaper Calcalist (27.11.2012):

“Globalization, which the West tried to nurture in recent decades, and which has been the main pillar supporting the growth of world economy, is gradually developing side effects. According to Virginie Maisonneuve, head of international and global stock investments at Schroders, social changes, political problems, demographic transformations, global warming, and the media itself are all bringing about rifts in the global village. In a conference organized by Schroders, one of the world’s oldest and biggest investment firms, managing assets estimated at 324 billion dollars, Maisonneuve explained that the economic crisis was only the trigger for such rifts. ‘In order to increase their efficiency and come up with additional sources for growth, international corporations expanded their geographic foothold to emerging markets. This led to a situation in which, today, half the income of those firms comprising the world’s leading stock indexes comes from sales in emerging markets. Take the iPhone for example. Components developed by firms and by a workforce outside theUSare responsible for 94% of that device. The Apple brand is, in fact, the only American part in it.’”

The investment manager went on to say:

“The competitive nature of the costs offered by developing nations gave them much power, leading to a situation in which Western employees are on the one hand consumers, and on the other hand providers of goods and services coming from international markets. It is estimated that by 2050 emerging markets will have six consumers for every single Western consumer, leading to changes in global consumption and a rise in the trade deficit of the developed states. Already in early 2012, the growth rate of developing markets out of the global GDP will top the growth rate of developed states, and by 2050 theUSwill most likely be the only developed state among the world’s top five economies.”

She goes on to argue that one of the direct results of globalization is an increase in class inequalities:

“Over the years, inequality has constantly increased. In theUS, for example, the top percentile is responsible for one quarter of total household income. In comparison, in the early 1980s, the same percentile was only responsible for one eighth the accumulated income. There is a danger that more and more poor people will find it hard to achieve higher education, and will be forced to face unemployment. This problem is not new, but it is the main reason behind the waves of protest that incited the ‘Arab Spring’ and other social protests.”

Well-known economist and NYU professor Nouriel Roubini writes (Calcalist, 28.08.2011):

“Karl Marx was partially wrote when he argued globalization and financial intervention that went out of control would lead capitalism on a course of self-destruction. Firms are cutting down employment because there is not enough demand for products. And yet, job cuts reduce employee incomes, increase inequalities, and reduce demand.”

And what did Marx have to say about all this (as early as 1848)?

“It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.”

Third Question: Crisis and Periphery

As of today, the capitalist crisis that began five years ago is affecting the core states of globalization. Is this crisis destined to gradually spread across the world, similarly to that of the 1930s? It appears that some of the more peripheral states are dealing with this development differently, by tightening economic relations between them, and shifting the burden of industrial production to meet interior market consumption.

A statement published by the Chinese News Agency a few weeks ago (20.11.2012) reads:

“Following a decade of considerations, the free trade area ofChina,Japan, andSouth Koreaappears to be forming, contrary to the position of theUnited States. Foreign secretaries of the three states met during the South Asia Summit held inPhnom Penh,Cambodia, to launch talks regarding the free trade area. Seeing as the three countries constitute an indispensible part ofEast Asia’s economy and world trade in general, the idea of a free trade area between them receives much international attention. In 2011, the three economies combined amounted to no less than 14 trillion dollars, about a fifth of world economy, and their combined GDP constitutes about 70% of Asian GDP. Experts believe a China-Japan-Korea free trade area would greatly contribute to East Asia’s economic integration into the global market, and could even compete with theUSand the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership, which came up with a free trade agreement in 2005, and which includes theUSand several Pacific countries. Experts argue the three states’ economies are well-suited for cooperation. Over the past seven decades,Chinadeveloped numerous investment and trade relations withJapanandSouth Korea, and over time took the place of the latter two in production capacity, gradually becoming a world production center. Experts believeChinais now competing againstJapanandSouth Koreain the car, iron, steel, and petrochemical industries. However, each state stands at a different step on the industrial ladder:Chinaat the bottom,Koreain the middle one, andJapanat the top. The potential for cooperation and mutual investment between the three states is particularly fertile, especially in terms of finding new energy sources and reducing carbon dependency. A Chinese economic expert stated that the opening of the free trade area would also promote the internationalization of the Yuan, turning it into a viable currency in global trade. The expert noted the process has to begin from the edges, and that while the Yuan’s share of Asiatic trade is fairly large, the establishment of the China-Japan-South Korea trade area would further promote its regional standing, thereby making its increased global presence easier.”

In other words, the need to connect a state like Japan, which, while part of the capitalist core, is witnessing a two-decade long bust, with China and South Korea, two growing semi-peripheral states, poses a real challenge to the core axis of North Atlantic capitalism that is currently under crisis (Western Europe and the United States). Other semi-peripheral states have begun tightening their economic and political relations as part of the BRICS partnership:Brazil,Russia,India,China, andSouth Africa. Here we have a South-South axis with the addition ofRussia. This axis, in turn, is joined by two economic-political Latin American initiatives, ALBA and Mercosur (Portuguese: Mercosul)—South America’s common market—as well as the political initiative of CELAC (Community of Latin American andCaribbeanStates). ALBA consists ofVenezuela,Nicaragua,Bolivia,Cuba, andEcuador; Mercosur began withArgentina,Brazil,Uruguay, andParaguay, with the later addition ofVenezuelaand recentlyBolivia.Ecuador,Chile, andPerujoined the common market as associate members (also the status ofBoliviauntil recently), and are now considering becoming full members. For the first time in half a century CELAC also includes Cuba, though neither the US or Canada—contrary to the Organization of American States, founded by the US after the Second World War, which did not use to include Cuba.

Certain countries missing from these South-South associations are the peripheral African countries (with the exception ofSouth Africa) and the countries of the Middle East, who are dependent upon theUSand the Euro-bloc, and hence more prone to the rolling effects of the economic crisis. Is this also what the future holds? According to a November 2012 report by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) titled ” Looking to 2060: Long-term growth prospects for the world”,Chinais destined to take the place of theUSas the world’s largest economy within the next four years. The report also states that by 2030China’s share of the global GDP will soar by over 50% from the current figure of 17% to 28%, whereas theUnited States’ share will drop from 23% to 18%. The Euro-bloc too is expected to shrink from its current 17% share of the global GDP to 12% in 2030—assuming it survives the severe economic crisis of the present.

While the global GDP is expected to rise by an annual rate of 3% over the next 50 years, this figure will exhibit great variance across countries and regions. By 2025, the combined GDP of China and India will be greater than the combined GDP of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the US and Canada. Top OECD economist Åsa Johansson remarked that in the future we are expected to see a significant change in the global balance of economic power. India and China’s economies together are expected to be larger than all OECD-member economies combined (46% versus 43%); by 2060 the Euro-bloc will shrink by half its relative size to 9% of the global economy; the United States will continue its downward motion in a more moderate fashion, going from 16% today to 10%.

Fourth Question:Israeland Globalization

Recent years saw an accelerated rise in foodstuff prices of large Israeli food companies, the majority of which are under the partial or full ownership of multinational corporations. Part of the attempt by these corporations to compensate for declining profit rates following the global economic crisis includes raising product prices in the Israeli market. This was the case of the popular cottage cheese by dairy manufacturer Tnuva, which is owned by the British firm Apax.

Apax is a private, global equity firm with holdings of 72 billion Euros. Its investments include technology and communication, retail and consumer products, health and finance. In 2005 it acquired Israel’s privatized phone company, Bezeq, sold two years ago to investment Shaul Alovich for 7 billion Shekels. In 2008 it completed a deal for acquiring the dairy manufacturer Tnuva and in 2010 it acquired Israel’s major investment firm Psagot. This offers a small sample ofIsrael’s integration into global capitalism. Apax gradually increased the price of cottage cheese, which proved to be a goose laying golden eggs. However, Israeli consumers proved to be short on either patience or income (or both). This gave rise to the “cottage ban” of early 2011, which in turn led to a mass wave of social protests. The question is, will such bans and protests indeed lead to a fundamental change in the Israeli government’s neoliberal policy, which deepens its involvement in a crisis-ridden globalization.

Tel-AvivJaffa, January 2013

Dr. Efraim Davidi The Social Economic Academy,Ben-GurionUniversity, and TelAvivUniversity

Open urban public spaces (urban commons) are of paramount importance. They facilitate random contact between strangers, essential for building an urban society: they serve as arenas for social interaction, venues for the activities of marginalized groups, and places for direct, non-exclusionary encounters. These spaces facilitate encounters that do not involve a consumer experience or participation as passive ‘consumers’ and ‘observers’, and thus provide a platform for activities outside the city’s capitalistic consumer logic in which participants are active ‘citizens’ and ‘creators’.

In recent decades, urban public spaces have faced dangers of privatization, neglect, policing, and commercialization, and are at the center of social, cultural, and ideological struggles. The cost of adversely impacting public spaces – whether by selling them to private bodies, imposing restrictions on modes of behavior in such spaces, or due to their neglect – is both environmental and social.

Changes in the economic and social worldview that guides the urban establishment and shapes urban priorities have greatly influenced the way public space is managed. Studies show that under neoliberal government, public spaces that are available for civic activities – as arenas for realizing the right to the city and urban citizenship – are increasingly shrinking, and becoming a resource in short supply in the modern city.[1]

In light of these developments, it is particularly interesting to examine the spread of the community gardening phenomenon as an example of a different attitude towards public spaces. Community gardening is a social practice with clear spatial expression and environmental implications. Community gardens are civic spaces – gardens established in public spaces at the initiative of the city’s residents. Community gardens are communally and voluntarily planned and cultivated by groups of residents who generally assemble for weekly work meetings. This is in contrast with public city gardens, which are designed by planning institutions and cultivated by municipal workers or subcontractors. Like public gardens, community gardens facilitate interaction between residents, but unlike them, community gardens facilitate an ongoing encounter entailing joint endeavor, cultivating and operating the garden, and designing and adaptating it to local needs. Work in the gardens is subject to a system of authority and regulations jointly formulated and shaped by the members of each community garden.

The proprietary status of community gardens is unique: they express an intermediate situation – a public area that is jointly and communally managed as a Common by city residents. For local government institutions, which are only equipped both perceptually and legally, to handle and process conventional title deeds – private property and public property – this is a new and challenging situation.[2]

This brief article presents the community gardening phenomenon, its historical origins, and its manifestation in Israel, and attempts to position community gardening in the urban space as a form of reclaiming the urban commons.[3]

***

Although community gardening is a relatively new phenomenon inIsrael’s urban space, it has been prevalent in the Western world since the 1970s. In fact, the roots of community gardening were laid down as far back as the nineteenth century.

The origins of present-day community gardening can be traced back to the civic gardening projects that operated in the USand Europein the late nineteenth century. Practices of cultivating public space in general, and gardening in particular, became popular and widespread in times of social crisis and in the face of social problems that necessitated resolution,[4] from an environmental determinism approach – belief in the power of nature to influence man, and belief that making changes in the external environment would also promote internal changes within individuals and communities. By cultivating and tending the land, social reformers sought to instill values of labor, modesty, efficiency, good citizenship, and productivity in the poor, in immigrants, the unemployed, and in children and youth.[5]

Civic gardening projects, especially those that operated during the two world wars and in schools, were typified by ‘top-down’ organization. In general, they were hierarchical organizations with a philanthropic, educational, and temporary character. The land leased for these projects in times of economic crisis, was put back on the market and sold for construction when the crises were over. The leadership of the projects was external and consisted mainly of upper-middle class volunteers who wanted to help the needy during the crisis. Most of the gardening knowledge was in the hands of external experts, and no training was provided to project participants for the purpose of transferring the knowledge and skills they needed in order to continue growing food independently. Because the projects were viewed as a specific response to a passing crisis, there was no empowerment of activists, nor was a local leadership fostered. No social, planning, or legal mechanisms were created in the gardens to preserve them.

After World War Two, the immediate need for gardening and its produce subsided. Gardening was no longer considered necessary in an era of abundance and consumerism. Government support for community gardening ceased, and civic gardening projects vanished from the landscape. Many residents continued engaging in gardening as a hobby, but did so in their private gardens rather than in urban spaces. Cultivating private gardens became a status symbol, and the gardens were meticulously designed, in contrast with the esthetic of civic gardening in public spaces.

The Party - Florentine. Photo by: Florntine community garden activists

The gardens only reappeared in the urban landscape in the early 1970s, this time too in the wake of a social and economic crisis. However, this time the gardens – and parks – took on a completely different form.

In the early 1970s, manyUScities faced economic crisis. Thousands of urban lots were abandoned and became areas of neglect, crime, and pollution. InNew Yorkalone there were nearly 25,000 abandoned lots at the end of the 1970s. The economic crisis and neglect served as catalysts for spontaneous civic organization to reclaim urban spaces, and the neglected lots constituted spaces for action. This time, however, the gardens were not ‘top-down’ projects, but local ‘grassroots’ solutions for social and economic hardship. In the face of institutional neglect of urban public spaces, residents sought to offer alternative spaces that were safer and well cared for.

Groups of residents sought to save abandoned lots from the ‘tragedy of the commons’[6], and cultivate them communally as arenas of proactive community endeavor in their neighborhoods. Thus, the community gardens that began appearing in the US in the early 1970s were a local solution to social hardship. Rising interest in social and environmental issues in the late 1960s and early 1970s also contributed to renewed interest in community gardening. The growing discourse on racial and gender rights, heightened awareness of environmental crises, the strengthening of neoliberal capitalism that sanctifies market forces, the energy crisis, rising food prices and criticism leveled against agricultural industrialization, alongside growing recognition of the need for public spaces and of their importance as arenas for developing civic consciousness – all contributed to bringing urban gardening back into public consciousness, with new emphases: empowering community work, growing fresh produce close to home, actively addressing the global environmental crisis, and contending with local social challenges. According to a Gallup survey, in 1982 there were more than 10,000 community gardens in the US in which more than three million residents were active.[7]

In the 1970s, community gardens, whose roots originated in civic gardens grounded in philanthropic and institutional activity that influenced society from the top down and sought to advance social and national objectives, took on a new form as a ‘grassroots’ civic activity that seeks to leverage civic forces in the neighborhoods with the aim of promoting change and expressing protests as part of a broader ‘do it yourself’ subculture.

Unlike the civic logic of the early twentieth century, present-day community gardens no longer provide short-term solutions for specific crises, but endeavor to provide an ongoing alternative for the prevalent urban way of life, either explicitly or by the very fact of working communally in urban spaces. Due to its immediate and tangible products, even now community gardening is proposed by residents, and especially by third-sector organizations and institutional bodies, as an ‘almost instinctive’ solution for a variety of social and environmental problems. At the same time, we are also witnessing the utilization of community gardening and its attendant rhetoric in ‘top down’, ‘organized garden projects’[8] that emphasize personal empowerment and personal benefit from gardening for every participant, and place less emphasis on the community aspects of gardening, and especially on their importance as working communally in the urban commons. Although these projects, which operate in schools, prisons, and in work with immigrants and youth at risk, are called ‘community gardening’, they provide a social solution for individuals, corroding the community approach, and act within the boundaries of the neoliberal discourse as a kind of co-option of an activist practice.

***

In contrast with the thousands of gardens operating in North America (and thousands more in Europe), the scale inIsraelis much smaller. It is difficult to estimate how many community gardens operate in Israel today: the accepted estimate is that there are approximately 200 active community gardens in Israel, but since most are ‘grassroots’ projects, and in the absence of clear institutional or organizational responsibility on the national level that collects information about them or is involved in their activities, there is no official documentation concerning all the community gardens in Israel. Nor is there any information about the number of people active in these community gardens nor the total area over which they operate.

The first community gardens in Israelwere established in Jerusalem, most without municipal approval. They were initially established by residents, mostly Anglo-Saxons, who were familiar with community gardening in their countries of origin. The establishment of these gardens gave expression to the residents’ desire to respond to the neglect of the urban commons and to try and prevent development and construction plans in particular areas. Social and environmental organizations identified the advantages – tactical and strategic alike – inherent in community gardening, and gave their support to the community gardens in Jerusalemat an early stage. A document jointly published by the Jerusalem Urban Branch of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and the Department of Society and Youth at the Municipality of Jerusalem, which was the first municipal department to provide support for community gardens, emphasized their motivation for establishing and supporting the community gardens in the city – to preserve green open spaces, and find a quick solution for environmental neglect with limited resources.[9]

Early in the twenty-first century, the SPNI began regular activities in the area of community gardening. Entering this arena, initially by means of its Jerusalem Urban Branch, and then as part of its nationwide activity, helped heighten awareness and raise funds for community gardens, and strengthen ties with the municipal establishment.

Another municipal organization that initiated and promoted community gardens was Jerusalem’s network of community councils. These bodies were established to liaise between the municipality and residents, promote community democracy, the inclusion of residents in decision-making processes, and improve services at neighborhood level by identifying needs in the neighborhood and initiating action to improve its appearance. The councils were established as Non-Profit Organizations, but are budgeted by the Jerusalemmunicipality. Several community workers in the councils actively helped locate land for the gardens, enlist the community and donors, establish connections with the municipality, and provide instruction and help. It is worthy of note that promoting community gardening was not a function defined in their job description, but a task that each community worker chose to undertake. In fact, some community workers in the community councils worked counter to the municipality’s declared objectives – they played an active role in establishing facts on the ground and in protecting land against development and construction, which ran counter to plans that were already in place.[10]

community gardening activists meeting. Photo by: Tamar Neugarten

In the first decade of the twenty-first century dozens of community gardens were established inJerusalemand received budgetary support from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the community councils. The first community garden in Tel Aviv-Yafo was established in2005 inthe Florentin neighborhood, and the second in the Maoz Aviv neighborhood shortly afterwards. Close to twenty gardens are currently operating around Tel Aviv and are supported by the municipality. Over the past few years numerous community gardens have been established all over the country.

In recent years, the process of establishing community gardens has progressed in two parallel directions: gardens established at the residents’ initiative, and gardens established at the initiative of the authorities. In the former case, residents initiated the establishment of community gardens inspired by community gardening in other countries, or by the community gardens inJerusalem, and contacted their local authorities to receive the necessary permits and support. In the latter case, the initiative for establishing the gardens came from local or state authorities. Local authorities, NPOs and other organizations, or other establishment bodies, established community gardens for different motivations: to provide a solution for the needs of the population, a social solution for disadvantaged populations or neglected areas, a desire to propose an innovative approach, or because of the thinking, led initially by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, that transferring such areas to the community and encouraging their cultivation by the residents would contribute to savings in municipality funds.

A central component of encouraging the establishment of community gardens by the authorities was the commencement of Ministry of Environmental Protection activities in this sphere. The Ministry’s Urban Environment Unit recognized that the gardens constituted a tool for achieving several of its core objectives: promoting and cultivating open spaces close to home, preventing neglect, promoting environmental awareness in disadvantaged populations through gardening, making environmental content accessible to the public, providing tools for communities to influence their surroundings, and placing emphasis on the local authority’s role in creating accessibility to the environment and environmental quality in cities.[11]

***

Despite the ideal of creating public spaces that are cultivated by neighbors and residents living close by, managing community gardens is in practice complex and at times raises dilemmas regarding their communal management and the desired form of management. Establishing community gardens in urban public spaces and the need for resources like water and an irrigation infrastructure, poses a challenge for the local authority on the issue of providing assistance to garden members, willingness to relinquish management of the space, and dilemmas between customary gardening practices in cities, and garden members’ aesthetic perception of the garden.

Despite the growing popularity of community gardening in Israel, and the support provided by government ministries, municipalities, and organizations, community gardening is still not perceived as ‘mainstream’ in the urban space. Analysis of activities in the community gardens shows that they offer a different spatial practice to that which typifies hegemonic urban spaces. The gardens are heterotopic spaces: ‘counter spaces’[12] where human activity and interaction run counter to that which is prevalent in the surrounding urban environment. The gardens are the ‘other space’[13] in the city – commons in an environment where private property is central; well-tended environments where neglect prevailed; arenas for working communally in an environment typified by alienation; natural and somewhat wild plots of land in tended, cultivated surroundings; and sites for non-consumer, non-judgmental encounters in an environment governed by market forces.

The gardens meet the social, cultural, and environmental needs of the people who are active in them. Activities and interactions in the gardens create new communal resources, such as social capital, support networks, a sense of community and belonging resulting from working communally in the garden, developing participatory democracy, preserving cultural heritage, intercultural contact, knowledge generated and disseminated from one person to another in the garden, a sense of security in the public space, environmental justice, and local sustainability.

Experience in Israel and around the world shows that when citizens claim ownership of public spaces, plan them in accordance with their needs, and use them for their own benefit, this can contribute both to the city and neighborhood where neighbors seek to break down the barriers of alienation and fencing, to get to know one another and work together in a communal space. Community gardens enable city dwellers to create spaces for themselves communally and as individuals, and thus establish themselves as urban citizens and communities in the city, and realize their right to the city.

Natalia Gutkowski is a lecturer at the Social EconomicAcademy’s fellows program, Seminar HakibutzimCollege, and Tel Aviv Univesity
Tamar Neugarten is the Professional Supervisor – the Environmental Policy Clinic  at Tel Aviv University

0.

One of the material issues when social order is in discussion, is the Digital Divide, which is the connectivity of a specific population to the Internet. Such divide is used to show that social gaps are maintained through digital means. However, when every smart phone is a mean to access the internet, and when connectivity costs were reduced, and every corner has wireless internet connection, the question is not where someone has a right or ability to access the web, but a completely different one.

In my opinion, in this brief text, I shall claim that there are two problems: the first is digital literacy: meaning, the ability of a certain population to use the technology it holds (or is able to access) for social mobility, and the other is accessibility: meaning, the (in)ability of a certain population to use the web, even though it is accessible.

A digital divide, in brief, is like any other social divide, and deals with the difference between different populations to advances technologies such as internet access, presence of computers in homes and accessibility to electronic text books. The assumption is that access to such advanced technologies enables these groups access to digital content and use of the technology to acquire education and work. For example, the assumption is that when a person is connected to the internet in his home he can work from home, participate in video chats to the office and receive emails. In contrast, his disconnected friend cannot do so and shall be required to commute every day.

The assumption is that internet connectivity and the use of technological means can support social mobility: a person that could use his personal computer to author a book, for example, can also use the internet to sell the book or establish a small business in his home, and mobilize through social groups.

1.

In the beginning of the millennium, the Israeli parliament discussed the digital divide as a discussion on social gaps in general. The results were that the gap between “the top ten percentile and the lower ten percentile is three-fold (where the upgrading of computers and software was not checked) and in internet subscribers the gap was twenty-fold”. In 2006 the results were a bit less concerning, where the lower 10% moved from 2.5% to 15%. In 2010 the picture was brighter, where 38% of the homes in the lower 10% were already connected to the internet. Indeed, this is not the closing of gaps, but the issue of “Digital Divide” is near to bridged today. Meaning, if in the beginning of the decade the discussion was on how many people were connected, I shall claim that the question is wrong, and should be how people are connected.

I shall explain: indeed, a result of 40% connectivity in the lower percentiles is not a satisfactory result but it does not testify for a thing. Today, the model changed from end to end in light of the cellular revolution; moreover, more than 90% of the homes in the lower percentiles have cellular phones (one or more), where a cellular phone is used to a mobile apparatus to connect to the internet (for example, more than 50% of the traffic to Facebook is driven from mobile devices). Meaning, the accessibility to the internet exists at least in 90% of the homes in potential (and the question is whether it is used). Another application called WhatsApp allows sending billions of messages a day for free, and is also installed on mobile phones.

Now, the result is that the growth of connectivity results from different reasons: the price drops in the last decade, the changing of the web to a material part of our lives. There is not one specific variable that could explain the divide’s reduction, but there is one. The assumption is that a cellular phone that is constantly connected to the internet not only saves costs, but also increases the use and connectivity.

2.

For example, we can assume that every home today, even in the poorer homes, has the ability and technology to connect to the web. As for the financial ability? Well, this is a material expense (which might change in 2012 as a result of Moshe Cahlon’s cellular revolution): The monthly expense on communication and transportation was 13.5% in the lower classes. We can assume that the price changes during the last year may cause a reduction of the expense, but also an increase in their quality. Meaning, in theory, that the lower class’ ability to purchase communication services and access the web shall increase and the digital divide shall be reduced even further. Let’s commence with the trend: the lower classes multiplied their accessibility twenty-fold, and I expect that they shall be equal to the upper classes in the near future.

3.

In the meanwhile, many public entities act in order to make the internet more accessible through public places: the Tel-Aviv municipality shall soon allow free wireless access in parts of the city. The Israel rails will soon also do the same. In this case, the question we should ask is whether such accessibility comes solely to the wealthy, or do the lower classes also have what to gain from such connectivity? Does a person who cannot afford a laptop or smart phone even able to enjoy the shortcuts that the technology provide him?

For example, if to access the free wireless internet in the Israel Rail Service we need a laptop or a smart phone, that cost thousands of Shekels, what is the advantage that the lower classes obtain from such free access? Can a person enjoy this network in his own home, which is in the less established parts of Tel-Aviv if the wireless network only threads through the tourist section of the city? I assume not. Thererfore, it seems that at least in these cases, when the public authorities come to bless, they hurt the lower classes, that need internet access.

4.

But this is not the question, as an admired political leader said. The question is how do these parts of society use the internet and what is their digital literacy. Digital Literacy is exactly what is sounds like: the ability of a certain population to understand the technology and utilize it in a beneficent matter. As a person who purchases thousands of books cannot use them if he cannot read, so does technology: while the people race through who has the newest, biggest, thinnest, fastest phone with as much mega-pixel as possible, the question is what the heck do people do with the phone?

Meaning that if two children in the same school get the same tablet computer to use and read books, the question is what occurs in their homes: does the child use the computer to further educate himself and does he get instruction from his parents, or will he get home, put the computer down and play soccer (not that there’s anything wrong with that. The assumption is that those who cannot be instructed on how to use the technology, will find himself with a gentle brick.

5.

For example, do people use the power of the web to obtain information on how to reduce the home expenses by using price comparison or on-line stores, or is it used to contact relatives? We can find many surveys on the exposure to different websites, but none of these surveys are tiered by social groups and do not provide information on how they are used.

While we know that the upper classes are educated by the internet and know how to reduce their expenses more and more on communication or other things, and in contrast the lower classes get stuck with old technology.

6.

A distinct example is the Cord-Cutters. If we see the cable/satellite expenses, the monthly expense is around 250ILS per month. Now, if the same, educated person is willing to infringe copyright and download movies from the internet using file sharing technologies, then he can save this cost: 3,000 ILS each year to cut the cords. The lower classes, that do not use this technology, cannot harness it to its power and spends more. This is absurd, as he who has less pays more, because he doesn’t know how to play the game.

7.

In the same method text books may be a reduced expense. While electronic text books may soon be a part of the curriculum, where the cost will be at least 40% less (of the hundreds of Shekels paid each year). This means that if a person buys his child a tablet computer for a few hundred shekels, he can save the cost of the tablet by buying cheaper books. Now, the lower classes are unaware of this: it lives in a different conception, of living day-by-day, stasis and such a purchase is too expensive.

8.

In theory, a one-time installment of computing products and educating about them is efficient to the lower classes: if they can save up to one monthly salary each year for communication by cutting cords, and if they can save hundreds of more Shekels on text books, why won’t they do it? Well, the problem is digital literacy: not inaccessibility but lack of knowledge. Today, the technological alternatives to access are so cheap; apartment buildings cant use the same internet connection, families can share a few computers and tablets cost less than 500 ILS. But this is not enough. The use of technology is social mobility. This means it can be used wisely, where lower classes can harness it for mobility, information, cheaper services and development.

9.

Meaning, if we want real social mobility, a mobility that may allow us to use technological means to mobilize, we need technological education in schools: teach children to use technology, write Wikipedia entries, learn how to develop applications and how the market goes; the right way to do it is by the technology as a melting pot. Until we do it, the rich will keep on using the technology to spend less money and the poor will use it to pay more. It’s not a wonder that in Israel the poorest groups are too poor to use unlimited cellular plans, because they think of it as luxury, and not as a way for social mobility.

Jonathan J. Klinger is a Cyberlaw Attorney & Board Member of Eshnav: People for Wise Internet Use.

For the first time in history more people live in cities than any other type of settlement, and there is a need to make the city a place in which it is worth living. The ability to create this kind of city is closely linked to the ability of the individuals living in it to create community frameworks characterized by solidarity. Cooperative enterprises are a significant  tool for creating economic and social solidarity, because they are based on choosing association with other individuals, and jointly increasing the control citizens have over their economic and social life. Worldwide experience indicates that an effectively managed cooperative framework empowers the individual, builds community, and promotes social justice. Consequently, cooperative organization and action often constitute a meaningful element in the life of individuals, and a sustainable solution for the urban human challenge.

In a city the elements connecting individuals into a community seem arbitrary, with each individual living his own life; masses of people who meet at life’s intersections. The urban individual faces his destiny alone, surrounded by masses of people who are in the same situation and competing for limited resources. The city tends to bring about a decline in human contact, indifference, and the disintegration of social safety nets. Heterogeneity facilitates mobility and substitution, which create constant change, fluidity, and impermanence of relationships, and consequently make instability and insecurity the norm. Thus, personal relationships cease to constitute the basis for connection. Self-government is maintained by interest groups and remote mechanisms of representation, exposing  the individual to economic and political manipulation without protective safety nets in times of trouble.

Despite the difficulties, urban society is not rigid. A different way of living urban life can be created. City life is built on the joint and synchronized rhythm of residents of the city and its environs. Therefore, even in an era of uncertainty, and despite the disintegration of welfare state frameworks, community solidarity can be achieved in the city. In order to adapt city life to people’s needs, conditions have to be created that facilitate solidarity. Such conditions will enable people to maintain a collective framework out of choice, creating limited partnerships for social, cultural, economic, and political needs. Such communities will complete the structure of the city as a way to achieve self-fulfillment and meet needs that are contingent upon partnership with others.

The strength of a cooperative is that it acts in the economic domain, the heart of a city’s activity, in order to provide a solution for various human and social needs. The choice of the cooperative model provides the means for empowerment and renewal, and at the same time subverts the power relations of market forces. Metropolitan diversity enables people holding the same outlooks and aims to form syndicates, and helps to create new frameworks to replace the social frameworks that have vanished from the world. Cooperatives face the challenge of urban life and recreate the urban space for individuals as well as groups..

Collective life is often based on coincidence and opportunity. Conscious choice of collective life requires individuals who have developed abilities of self-organization for the purpose of solving complex problems and issues. For the cooperative business model to serve people’s interests, it has to be jointly owned and managed in a genuinely democratic way. Consequently, there is no substitute for the initiative of individuals and the emergence of a leadership which will strengthen the emerging community’s ability for self-organization; a leadership which knows how to mobilize the public to action, to lead and manage local business development processes, and which is sensitive to the uniqueness and variance of the individuals in the local cultural environment.

The cooperative model has proved itself as a significant tool that helps people to freely organize in order to serve their economic, social, and cultural interests by establishing a jointly-owned, democraticallymanaged business enterprise. It is no coincidence that in every developed country that maintains a welfare policy there is a strong cooperative movement. The cooperative is a fundamental tool for bringing about social change by means of economic and business tools, and is the backbone of social, environmental, and economic sustainability. Examples from around the world prove that cooperatives in the spheres of banking and insurance, housing, retailing, social services, and virtually every other sphere, enable workers and consumers to provide livelihoods, products, and social services in a profitable, just, and businesslike way.

The cooperative enterprise is a business venture that strives to create economic as well as social profits. Economic profit in a cooperative is a means designed to enable its members to attain greater control over their life, and to empower themselves and their community by pooling resources and creating economies of scale. Democratically-managed joint activity enables the individual to increase his ability, and influence factors that shape his life. This is the heart of the empowerment process. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world maintain varied and diverse cooperative systems: according to International Co-operative Alliance data, more than 800 million people worldwide are members of the cooperative movement in some 750,000 cooperatives. According to UN estimates, the activity of cooperatives around the world ensures the quality of life of approximately half the world’s inhabitants. One of every four US residents is a member of a cooperative, and in India there are 236 million cooperative members. The weight of cooperatives in national and world economy is considerable: they provide 100 million jobs worldwide, and in 2010 the aggregate business turnover of the world’s 300 biggest cooperatives exceeded 1.2 trillion dollars (equal to the world’s tenth largest economy).

The cooperative business model offers many advantages to individuals who choose to syndicate: small manufacturers overcome the disadvantages of small manufacturing units by means of joint purchasing and marketing; workers establish businesses in order to create employment and a livelihood for themselves; families join food cooperatives to assure themselves healthy food at affordable prices; people syndicate to provide financial services for themselves and a safe place for their savings, and so forth. In Italy, for example, there are some 250,000 worker-members in some 7,500 social cooperatives that provide community services in the spheres of education, health, welfare, and employment. Their business turnover is in excess of 6.5 billion euros per annum. This is an example of how a community can fulfill its needs in numerous areas, including integration of excluded populations, within the community and in a way that reinforces community solidarity.

Cooperative development focuses on people. A cooperative increases and expands democratic culture in the community from random participation to a lifestyle of active citizenship that goes beyond the cooperative’s activities as well. This kind of citizenship enables people to break free of reliance on state institutions, and encourages partnership between citizens and their representatives in government institutions. Voluntary organization that leads to achieving advantages and fulfilling needs is the basis for the empowerment of the individual and his community. Proximity, variance, and diversity enable the individual to find partners in the attempt to create frameworks for encounter, discourse, and endeavor in his close environment. The diversity of city residents enables the creation of a heterogeneous framework that receives ideas and abilities from its members. Encounters between individuals become regular and profound, increase direct communication, and enable the creation of mutual commitment. The sense of alienation and indifference toward oneself and others, and toward one’s living environment will gradually diminish, and an independent economic power will emerge that provides adaptive solutions to specific needs, as well as the possibility of appropriate representation and joint defence of rights.

The cooperative model is enjoying renewed growth in Israel too. Changes in the socio-economic discourse are creating a renewed platform for establishing collective and cooperative enterprises in a society that in recent decades has sanctified radical individualism and engaged in dismantling the welfare state’s mechanisms of solidarity, trade unions, and cooperative businesses. In their heyday in Israel, there were several hundred manufacturing, service, and financial cooperative societies (not including kibbutzim and moshavim). However, beginning in the 1960s many cooperatives were dismantled, and few new ones were established. Today there is a trend of establishing new cooperative organizations in numerous fields of activity: retailing, finance (credit, pension, and insurance syndicates), services, restaurants, daycare centers, sound equipment for events, fan-owned sports teams, renewable energy, and workers’ cooperatives in the field of alternative therapies and additional spheres.

A cooperative enables many people to create economies of scale and other advantages that would not be achieved if not for syndication. A locally-owned business that serves the needs of the community increases its total assets – financial, organizational, and cultural. Therein lays the uniqueness of the cooperative, which creates social power and develops the community’s economic power. Developing a cooperative enterprise on the basis of its members’ abilities and resources demonstrates to the members their ability to bring about change, to be part of a group, to fulfill their needs in general, and in a way that is suited to them in particular. A cooperative serves as an anchor for its members, and reduces the elements of mobility, fluidity, and impermanence. Permanent relationships will reduce the apprehension of transitory human contact, and increase primary relationships. A cooperative established for a specific need will thus serve as the foundation for a more inclusive solidary framework, an urban community, and a city in which it is worthwhile to live.

Rafi Goldman and Eran Buchaltzev are fromThe Cooperative Development Center at AJEEC – The Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development. 

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings(Franklin D. Roosevelt)

1.

What is happening in the world? We’re told that many countries cannot repay their debts and are in danger of bankruptcy. We’re told that Europe’s economy is collapsing, that unemployment around the world is higher than ever, and thatIsrael’s economy is at risk. Yet at the same time, tens of thousands of people are spending vast sums of money on travel and to purchase tickets for sport events, and spending their money on tourism and annual vacations, economic conferences and exhibitions are reporting full attendance, the restaurants in the big city centers are full, people are happy, and families are spending their money in shopping centers. And not only are the stock markets not collapsing, some of them are actually rising.

According to conventional wisdom, we’re in a deep economic crisis, or in a recession, or in danger of recession, yet we continue to behave as if we’re richer. According to conventional Israeli wisdom, we don’t have money for housing, health, and education, but the horn of plenty is always available for the Jewish settlements and the sectors whose support and votes the prime minister wishes to cultivate. How is this possible?

The answer is that inIsraeland the West there are, roughly divided, two populations: the ‘connected’ and the ‘disconnected’. The population that is protected from the crisis, and the one that has been or is likely to be adversely affected by it. The ‘connected’ who live the good life, and the ‘disconnected’ who live in constant hardship. The first are protected from economic crisis, and the latter live in its permanent shadow. The ‘disconnected’ do not have sufficient funds for housing, health, or education, but for the needs the government desires, for the connected, there are sufficient budgets.

Similarly, in the Great Depression of 1929 unemployment stood at approximately 25%, and that percentage of the population, according to the prevailing social-economic perception in theUSat the time, were condemned to starve or lose their homes. On the other hand, at the height of the crisis, all the rest, 75%, employees and self-employed people who worked had good incomes and lived well. To them must be added the wealthy and the top decile of self-employed people who have not only managed to protect their property from the crisis, but even enjoy and profit from it.

What happened and is still happening in Israel is the collapse of the ‘disconnected’; the first eight deciles, the impoverished, the middle class, junior employees, and small self-employed business owners. Guy Rolnik describes this articulately in an article entitled “Meet the Well-To-Do, the Connected, and the Disconnected”. Today, a ‘normative’ family in the first eight deciles is unable to pay for its children’s education, pay the rent or mortgage on its home, or receive adequate health services. In the not too distant past these were services we all received at an affordable price and took for granted. Today the government tells us there isn’t enough money to provide an appropriate education for our children, there isn’t enough money for health services, there isn’t enough money to pay employees a living wage, for a safety net for the poor, pensions for the elderly, and the list goes on. And only a small proportion of citizens, the wealthy, and the ‘connected’ can afford to receive and pay for these services.

2.

The past decade has witnessed a palpable decline inIsrael’s economy, the concentration of capital and revenues in the hands of a few, and a rapid increase in inequality.Israel’s economy has grown in recent years, but the overwhelming majority of the fruits of this growth has been raked in by a very small class, the top percentile, whereas the middle class has had to make do with crumbs, and the situation of the lower deciles has declined. As a result, the middle class is collapsing, and the welfare state has been destroyed. The decline of the middle class stems primarily from the increase in its expenses, from transferring the burden of paying for services the government no longer provides or has privatized, to households.

This has not always been the case. Thirty years ago, when the State of Israel was a welfare state, a single income was sufficient for a family to make a decent living. Today, high indirect taxation and unreasonable prices for housing, health, education, fuel, food, and water make it impossible to make a decent living even with two incomes. Middle class families in present-dayIsraelare hanging by a thread without a safety net, and their economic situation is far more unstable compared with the average family just one generation ago. Although we are ‘richer’ today, we live in constant economic instability.

Euphemistically speaking, what happened in Israel is the massive transfer of wealth to the top percentile, or in other words, organized government-sponsored robbery protected by law of national wealth in general, and that of the middle class in particular, by the top percentile. The result of this transfer of wealth is visible to all. The top percentile inIsraelnow holds a substantial proportion of the country’s wealth.

According to State Revenue Administration data for 2010, the top percentile, which comprises some 32,000 people whose average (standardized) monthly income was approximatelyNIS139,000, received 14.1% of the total gross revenues inIsrael. Within just five years, from 2005 to 2010, the top percentile’s share in national revenues grew by 43%, which constitutes a huge increase in the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the top percentile.

The transfer of wealth was effected by means of direct tax reliefs, especially for the top decile, significant corporate tax cuts, tax and other benefits for corporations, turning a blind eye to creative tax strategies, increasing indirect taxation, and imposing a constantly growing portion of payments for health and education on the country’s citizens. Perhaps what chiefly symbolizes the preferential treatment of the wealthy are the capital revenues and gains taxes, which are considerably lower than income tax. TheUSis possibly the most radical example, where there is a political party whose main agenda is not to tax the wealthy.

One of the graver outcomes of current economic policy is the picture of the economy in areas that have a long-term impact: decline in the quality of education, inability to fund higher education for children, and deterioration of the health services. Weakening the earning power of employees and the self-employed, and the subsequent decrease in their disposable income, have dire implications for the stability of the economy and the state. The writing is on the wall for all to see, but Netanyahu and his people in the Ministry of Finance aren’t reading it.

3.

Neoliberalism is the name of the social-economic outlook of the Right inIsrael, in theUS, and the world. The cornerstone of neoliberalism is the belief that the state’s and the government’s sole legitimate objective is to protect citizens’ security, freedom, and property, including extensive private property rights. This leads to the conclusion that any action taken by the government beyond this objective, such as providing assistance for the weak, is not permissible, and that the government’s activity should be minimal and drastically reduced.

Another characteristic of the neoliberal social-economic outlook is the belief that market mechanisms free from government interference are the optimal way to organize all exchanges of goods and services. This is supposed to  lead to greater welfare and more efficient allocation of resources. According to this outlook, citizens are responsible for the results of their freely made decisions and choices, and pronounced social inequality and injustice are not morally problematic. On the contrary, a person’s demands for the state to intervene and control the market, or compensate the weak and unfortunate, indicates that he is morally corrupt or undeveloped, and not much different from an advocate of a totalitarian state.

The neoliberal economic approach has become a belief, a theology, and the mantra of a market free from government interference is the prophet. Neoliberal economists blindly believe in privatization and a market free from government interference and control, and from public interest considerations. It is an approach that views government interference in the market as detrimental.

The leitmotif connecting all the Western democracies that have chosen a neoliberal economy is the disproportionate and corrupting influence of the top percentile.  Men of wealth, people with a vested interest, and corrupt politicians, have undemocratically taken over centers of power, and managed to penetrate the government sufficiently to make it protect them against competitors and the public. The new social elite of the wealthy lives its life in security, and has no idea how ordinary people live, or what their struggles and concerns are.

One of the terrible outcomes of this approach in Israelis that in some cases the government acts against its citizens. As Ori Ben-Dov wrote on the J14 movement website, “A state where the welfare authorities are collapsing, public housing has dried up, the Housing Ministry does not assist those who need help, and the legal system refuses to help those who have no money – this is a state that destroys its citizens”. If this seems harsh, we should remember the present government’s priorities on the issue of housing as they have emerged in the course of the past year:

Minister of Finance Steinitz allocates NIS 50-100 million to support Ariel College in its efforts to gain university status, but cannot find money for public housing. The prime minister finds huge budgets to build housing units for Ulpana settlers, but has no money for public housing. And the step that clearly symbolizes public housing policy is the sale in recent years of tens of thousands of public housing units to the tune ofNIS2.75 billion – and despite an explicit government decision to allocate the money to expanding the supply of housing units, nothing has been done. Nothing was allocated to public housing.

4.

Most of us want to believe that our opinions have been formed over time as a result of careful and rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that our decisions, which are grounded in these opinions, are sound and informed. But research reveals that we frequently base our opinions on our beliefs. Our beliefs can dictate the facts we have chosen to accept, and moreover, they can make us change the facts to better fit our prejudices and beliefs.

These studies can help explain why neoliberal economists are incapable of facing reality. They choose only the findings that chime with their belief in neoliberal economics, and ignore other, less convenient findings. These economists act as Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential candidate in the 1952 and 1956 US elections, said: “Here is the conclusion on which I will base my facts”.

Economists who teach the neoliberal approach in universities believe they are teaching an established and scientifically based school of thought, and fail to clarify that it is but one dimension in a multidimensional world. They fail to emphasize the importance of the premises on which the school of thought is founded, and which are required in order to draw the conclusions they are teaching, as well as the disparity between neoliberal ‘theory’ and what is going on in the real world. This lack of transparency is astonishing, and is a kind of ongoing deception of generations of students who believe they have learned some solid insights, when in fact all they have learned is one facet of a multifaceted story.

The real test of neoliberalism should be on the ground. And in this, despite its advocates’ claims, which are disseminated at every opportunity in the press, on the radio and television, the doctrine has failed miserably. Attempts around the world at an economy free from government interference have been unsuccessful to say the least, if not disastrous. Let us recall three cases. The Great Famine inIreland, the Great Depression in theUSthat began in 1929, and the failure of neoliberalism inSouth America.

* Approximately one million people, about an eighth ofIreland’s population, died in the Great Famine inIrelandbetween 1846 and 1851, more (relatively speaking) than most cases of famine in modern times. This happened right next door toBritain, which was the world’s wealthiest power at the time. The Great Famine began as a natural disaster – a potato blight that spread rapidly, but the impact of the disease was exacerbated tenfold by the deeds and misdeeds of the British government during those years. The British government’s deeds and misdeeds were primarily motivated by the free market approach and the laissez-faire doctrine (let  do, and by implication, don’t interfere). The free market doctrine prevented government intervention to stop food exports fromIrelandduring the famine. Even aid to the starving, in the form of soup kitchens, was terminated after six months. The idea of giving free food to a considerable proportion of the Irish population ran counter to the laissez-faire doctrine and the resultant perception of government and society functioning.

* The same free market principles shackled theUSgovernment when the stock market collapsed in 1929. The economists who were in power at the time, who believed in a free market economy, prevented the government from interfering in the market, and thus brought on and amplified the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was only after four years of deep crisis and unspeakable suffering – about one quarter of allUSresidents were unemployed – that Roosevelt was elected president and instigated massive government action, the New Deal, that enabled theUSto emerge from the crisis.

* In the course of twenty-five years (1980-2005), neoliberal reforms were implemented in a large number of South American countries. These reforms proved disastrous and an unprecedented economic failure. The results of the neoliberal ‘reforms’ in most of these countries were a dramatic decline in economic growth rate, and a drastic drop in per capita income. Before the neoliberal ‘reforms’ were introduced, between 1960 and 1980, per capita income rose by 82%, compared with a mere 1% rise in the five years from 2000 to 2005, and a 9% rise in the twenty years from 1980 to 2000 after the neoliberal policies were implemented. Other disastrous outcomes were increased inequality in the population, decline in the improvement of life expectancy, decline in the improvement rate of adult mortality, decline in progress of reducing infant mortality, decline in growth rate of public investment in education, and so forth. This is clearly the biggest long-term economic failure in modern South American history. The results were so severe that most of the Latin American countries renounced neoliberal economics and elected leaders who undertook to oppose this ineffectual policy.

5.

Significant technological revolutions are typified by three stages:

In the first stage we use the new products or services to do what we’ve done in the past, but with minor changes. In the second stage we use the new products or services to do things were weren’t able to do in the past. And in the third stage we change our way of life in order to take full advantage of the new possibilities the technological revolution has opened up to us.

For example, development of the automobile enabled us in the first stage to replace the horse and cart; in the second stage possibilities opened up for long distance travel, which weren’t available in the past; and in the third stage we changed our way of life, the suburbs developed to enable us to take advantage of the possibilities a car opened up to us.

In recent years we are witnessing the appearance of several revolutionary technological developments, which in my view will have a huge impact on world economy and human society. Of these I shall mention the development of technologies that resulted in the mobile internet, and the development of horizontal drilling and fracking technologies that enable economically viable production of gas and oil from deposits that weren’t economically feasible in the past.

The mobile internet revolution has only just begun, and it is interesting to see the change in human behavior it has already brought about. Ten years ago, a person talking to himself in the street and waving his arms would have been considered mad, yet today it is the common sight of a person using a mobile phone. Mobile internet enables virtually all the world’s inhabitants to plug into the world’s information system and enjoy its fruits, and the results cannot be predicted.

Extracting natural gas from shale with horizontal drilling and fracking technologies has already resulted in abundant supplies of cheap energy in theUS, and in a revolution in the global energy market. The most striking change is the reduction of natural gas prices in theUS, from a record $13 per million thermal units in July 2008, to about $2.75 in October 2012. This has led to an increase in use of gas (and a decrease in use of coal) to produce electricity, and a subsequent decrease in the amount of greenhouse gases in theUS. Alongside developments associated with gas, use of these technologies to extract oil from shale now enables the development of vast oil deposits that were not available in the US until now, and help reverse two decades of a downward trend in local crude oil production in the US to an upward trend.

I would note that supplying cheap, inexhaustible energy in the form of oil and coal drove the wheels of the Industrial Revolution and the massive growth in the West in the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries. It can be estimated that oil and gas production from shale will lead to dramatic changes in the coming years, and will have a huge impact on world geopolitics and the global energy market.

Amnon Portugaly is a researcher at the Social-EconomicAcademy, and at theYakovChazan Center for Social Justice at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.  Previously, Adjunct lecturer at the Graduate School of Business Administration,TelAvivUniversity’s Faculty of Management.  

This issue of Maarav is the product of a collaboration with The Social-Economic Academy as part of the “We’re Not Alone” exhibition currently showing at the Israeli Center for Digital Art.

“We’re Not Alone” presents examples of the possibilities and potential of art in the present era to lay the foundations and provide the tools for protesting against and contending with the sociopolitical reality in which we live, and not merely to create objects or similes. It reflects the desire to propose a reading and formulation of social practices in art by examining several case studies from different places around the world. This is based on the premise that if community art participates in a reality that is the product of global economic and political processes, it can also be relevant outside the community in which it was first made.

Writers selected by The Social-Economic Academy for inclusion in this issue include former and present lecturers in the Academy, and additional writers on diverse subjects from the socioeconomic sphere, to which this issue is dedicated, such as community gardening, globalization, and public housing.

The Social-Economic Academy (www.sea.org.il) is a non-profit institute of learning that encourages education and knowledge acquisition in economics and society from a critical perspective, and develops tools for social activism. The Academy was founded in 2004 in response to the absence of a comprehensive public debate in Israel on these subjects, which enabled powerful elements in society and government to manage Israel’s economic policy without transparency and civic involvement, consequently creating increasingly widening social gaps.

The Academy’s aim is to make critical knowledge on socioeconomic issues accessible to the general public, to provide an institute of learning for social activists at the beginning of their road, and anyone seeking to delve into these subjects, and to motivate its students to act for social change. Studies encompass diverse subjects in the socioeconomic sphere, such as economic policy in Israel and around the world, social outlooks in education, the welfare system, the health system, the state budget, environmental quality, and so forth.

“Knowledge is power” is an oft-repeated mantra. I have yet to encounter anyone who challenges this aphorism. The story of the Tree of Knowledge in the biblical sources can be interpreted in many ways, but it is eminently clear that knowledge created the worldly man, the man familiar to us, with his creative power, his instincts, and the suffering that attends knowing. When lyricist Tami Levy refers to ‘hidden things we will never know nor understand’,[1] she does not deny the power of knowledge, but reminds us that we will not always be able to know, and that sometimes it is also better not to know everything. Yet even in these words there is no attempt to challenge the assertion that knowledge is power.

Indeed, knowledge is power. But what knowledge? Is all knowledge power? Or does all knowledge become power? And what turns knowledge into power? It is customary to tell people that ‘knowledge is power’ to encourage them to study, to develop, to accumulate knowledge in their personal life and for their personal advancement; or, for example, in public life – to encourage a community to develop or accumulate knowledge in order to conduct a social struggle more efficiently. In most cases the suggestion to go and study underscores what that person lacks, what needs to be completed, in other words, formal or non-formal training for the purpose of transforming from a person who doesn’t know enough, into a person possessing knowledge, and consequently a stronger person.

I admit that frequently I, too, urge people around me to study, enroll in courses, take knowledge acquisition paths of one kind or another, open up to content worlds and inquiry approaches, and develop. I myself endeavor to study all my life, and persuade others to do so. So what’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with it, but rather a missed opportunity. When we encourage people to study we are perhaps addressing their potential for development, but we are also missing out on the knowledge inherent in them. The sin, in my view, is our failure to recognize the wealth of knowledge we and others already possess and which we do not define as knowledge. There is no person without knowledge. We all learn and know even if we aren’t aware of it, and even when we don’t call it knowledge. In our social life we accept the hierarchy of knowledge: the university graduate, the qualified professional, the doctor, the professor, the certified expert, the rabbi. They are all figures who possess knowledge and gain recognition because they have undergone formal training and qualification. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem becomes apparent in the continued disregard and disdain of popular knowledge, the wealth of accumulated knowledge every man and woman in our society possesses by their very existence. There is a lot of denied knowledge that comes from personal life experience, from word of mouth within families and circles of friends, from cumulative community experience. Non-recognition of this knowledge is nothing less than oppression, debilitation, and sometimes even resembles the amputation of a limb. There are a great many people who know a lot, and the dominant axiom in our society tells them that what they know is not considered knowledge. Even worse, it asks them to forget or conceal it, to repress it, and it tells them to go and study only authorized knowledge.

No disrespect to people with qualifications of one kind or another, but in many cases their qualification is primarily an expression of the social conditions that enabled them the time and money required for formal study. In contrast, many others who did not have that opportunity due to the social reality into which they were born, or grew into, live with the stigma of ostensible ignorance in spite of the fact that they know a great deal. On more than one occasion when listening to a smart, educated, twenty-something university student speaking in grammatically correct, high-register language, about some historical-social reality where people lived in poverty, I have asked myself, What is the knowledge this young student possesses on the subject she is speaking about? So she read the chapter I asked my students to read, and took two or three courses in which one aspect or another of social stratification was discussed. Does she know the experience of privation? Has she ever had an in-depth and personal conversation with someone experiencing privation? Has she ever observed people experiencing privation over several hours? Has she ever made a decision under pressure of extreme material privation? Has she ever refrained from purchasing medicines when ill? Has she ever sent a child to school in a torn shoe?

In contrast with my students at the university, I sometimes think about poor people I know, most of whom have only a high school education or even less. They may not know the theories studied in university about their life, and they may express themselves awkwardly, but they possess considerable knowledge about a great many things that my students only begin to understand toward the end of their studies. Their perspective, experience, and existential need to learn many things quickly, just for survival, make them people who possess a great deal of knowledge. That society does not recognize this is a great loss. Whenever I interview someone about their life as part of an oral history study, I discover vast knowledge. Every time I, the qualified, formally educated person give interviewees my acknowledgement of their knowledge, express my appreciation, a kind of change occurs in them, and then I understand that knowledge on its own is not necessarily social power, and that recognition of knowledge is the real source of power.

Anyone who wants real social change, anyone who is interested in revolutions that will extricate us from a predatory and oppressing society, would do well not to begin by disseminating social theories. Anyone who wants to undermine power relations and social classes would do well to begin by recognizing the knowledge and power inherent in those who are subjected to privation, exploitation, and oppression. This recognition has many implications. The first is that the most important action in advancing social change is listening to silenced and denied knowledge. This listening empowers, and is the first step in any struggle. Without listening and without turning the suffering people themselves into people who possess recognized knowledge, and consequently into leaders of the liberation and change processes, any struggle for social change will become one that results in the substitution of an existing elite for a new one composed of those who espouse revolutionary theories and authoritatively and hierarchically lead the suffering in order to become their new masters.

In Israel, recognition of popular knowledge also means challenging the dominant racist system and its cultural assumptions. This is a system that classifies everything European as positive, and condemns Arab culture and the Jewish-Eastern cultures to positions of inferiority. This is cultural oppression that has economic and social implications, as well as grave psychological ones. An entire authoritative cultural system that constantly conveys to millions of people that they are inferior, that their traditional knowledge is not worthy, that they have to adapt themselves to the culture of their whiter and more European neighbors. Here too, only by acknowledging the value of the culture and the knowledge inherent in it, by nurturing the free self-expression of the people themselves, will they be able to become free agents of their future and to allow all of us, members of the two nations and of all ethnic communities, to improve our connections as part of the Middle East in which we all live and the connections among us.

Dr. Gerardo Leibner is a history scholar and political-social activist in Tarabut – Hithabrut movement

“The Ma’abara will be a platform for organizing radical action which will move from the local struggles in East and West Jerusalem to the national level, from issues of public housing to all issues having to do with distributive justice and social equality, and out of the Israeli socio-economic periphery’s affinity to the Middle East and the struggle spreading throughout the entire world.” 

What does public housing mean? It is a policy that aims to provide housing for those who cannot obtain it through the market. In the reality of the Israeli housing market of 2012, few can provide housing for themselves.

In the past, most of the apartments in Israel were public. The 1950s saw a mass wave of immigration, with many public housing projects being built for immigrants who were moved out of their transit camps. It is estimated that around half the housing construction at that time was public. This was the case mostly in the periphery, while at the center of the country, building was mostly private. This historic detail explains how we reached the present condition.

It should be noted that such construction was not only for the benefit of “the needy.” One of the main considerations was the populating of underdeveloped areas. No apartments were built for the Arab public, only for Jewish immigrants. In Jerusalem, for example, many Mid-Eastern immigrants (Mizrahi Jews) were housed on the borderline with Jordan, serving as human shields. In 1967, with the occupation of the West Bank from Jordan, the houses were no longer on the border, their prices rose, and an attempt was made to evict the residents and settle them in the newly occupied territories.

But let us go back in time again. In the 1960s the notion of public housing began to change, and the term “private ownership” entered the stage. Public expenditure on housing was high, and the state, who wanted to reduce it, offered people incentives to buy their apartments. In this way, half of the public apartments were now privately held, with the rest being rented for half their market price, thereby turning Israel into one of the world’s leading countries in terms of private home ownership. The idea of owning one’s home became everyone’s dream, and yet large populations who were not granted land or building rights, right which could later be inherited by their children, were left with nothing more than a dream.

In the 1970s, the notion of private property was so widespread that public housing projects received a death blow and became synonymous with poverty. The chief policy was construction for the purpose of future selling, even for a low price, with the guiding principle being that people would be able to purchase their apartments. The wave of immigrants from former USSR countries required a significant housing policy and substantive public construction, but even then the goal was to sell those apartments, even if under certain benefits, rather than increasing the total share of public housing. The stock of public apartments was running low, and by the 1980s the economic policy of private purchase completely took over the discourse. Public construction came to a complete halt, whereas construction in the new settlements increased, with many people being transferred there quickly and cheaply. It should be noted that immigrants from Ethiopia were mostly left without any apartments at all.

Over the years, various social movements emerged in light of this housing distress. The Black Panthers movement, formed in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood in the early 1970s, placed the housing issue among its list of five demands. During the same years, in the Katamon neighborhood, people crowded in small apartments, together with their children and their children’s’ spouses. A social worker who visited the neighborhood published, in defiance of official regulations, a report stating she cannot do her job in light of the terrible distress and crowdedness. Little by little the Tent Movement was formed, with two of its dominant figures being Shlomo Vazana and Yamin Swisa. This movement initiated such actions as setting up tents across Jerusalem’s neighborhoods, occupying a new apartment building awaiting the arrival of non-local residents, building a “settlement” within Jerusalem in order to protest against the policy of transferring residents to cheaper houses in the occupied territories, and the demand to remain in their neighborhoods. In the early 1980s the “Dai” movement was formed in Musrara, following an attempt to cause residents to leave the neighborhood in light of its rising real-estate prices. Activists occupied a public shelter for a month until solutions were offered.

In the mid-1990s the public housing struggle received its strongest push. Shlomo Vazana, filmmaker, media figure, teacher, and, as mentioned, one of the leaders of the 1970s tent movement, went back to his mother’s public housing apartment in the Katamon neighborhood after her death. Vazana was surprised to discover that not only would the mortgaging firm not allow him to reside in his parents’ apartment, it also charged him for residing there despite his mother passing away. Vazana could not contain this injustice. On the other side were Kibbutz members who received land from the state, and whose children received building rights on that land. Vazana decided not to give up, and launched a public housing struggle, to which many others joined, including Meretz MP Ran Cohen, other Jerusalem activists, and the Kol Bashchunot movement.

The result was a law bill that included many clauses, among them one granting residents the right to purchase their home, with the money being used to build new public housing. While some of the apartments were sold, with the stock decreasing from 110,000 to 75,000, the money was not used for building or purchasing new public apartments. In reality, the law was practically put on hold over the last decade under the “Arrangements Law,” with the money disappearing into various government ministries and the Jewish Agency. Various agreements led to the following clear-cut reality: no new public housing construction, poor maintenance of existing apartments, an increasing list of those entitled for public housing, and worse of all, the entitlement criteria being so severe they are almost impossible to comply with. For example, a single mother is entitled to public housing only if she has three children, and even then might be on the waiting list for years. To complete the picture, there are currently about 400,000 families under the poverty line, with less then 75,000 public apartments. It doesn’t take more statistics to realize what the situation is.

As in the past, housing struggles continued into the 2000s. Haim Bar Yaacov formed the Movement for Dignified Living, which struggled against forced evacuations, following a year of living along with other homeless people in a tent in front of the government offices of Beer Sheva. Residents of Kfar Shalem, together with the Tarabut movement, struggled against their evacuation from houses they resided in for decades. Bedouins living in unrecognized villages that are never granted building permits continued to build homes for their children. In Sheikh Jarrah people are struggling against their evacuation from houses they have been living in for a long time. And the list goes on and on.

In 2011 the protest intensified. In Jerusalem, a group of single mothers from the Katamon neighborhood set up a protest tent in the Independence Park opposite the American Consul, in order to protest the state of public housing and demand a roof over their heads. They sought to explain in the clearest possible manner that a 3,000 Shekel monthly income is not enough in order to maintain an apartment and raise a child. They wanted to bring the struggle for public housing back into the discourse, even though most of them did not formally qualify for it. In the meantime, other similar struggles emerged elsewhere: Free Beer Sheva, The Periphery Forum, Tarabut, The Not-So Nice, Rabbis for Human Rights, Yoni Yohanan of Lifta, who is leading a struggle of non-contract residents, and numerous others, all struggling for public housing and against forced evacuations, using every means possible to promote these issues.

The group of single mothers grew into a group of homeless people, who then joined a group of social activists whose homes were also threatened. Together they formed the Ma’abara group, which seeks to deal with the housing problem, to promote the duty of providing a roof over everyone’s heads, to protest against injustices, and to generate alternative community coalitions on this basis. Following a two-month stay in an encampment set up in summer 2011, the group decided to occupy a dorm building on Stern street, Jerusalem, which stood empty for over five years. The group suggested that the university turn the place into a unique project including public housing, affordable housing, and community projects. This suggestion was met by police evacuation. Two months later the place was renovated, and this year some two hundred students, some of them with families, moved in. Subsequent house occupations proved that this is the only practice that can force empty building owners to put them into use—even though this policy-change emerged from the bottom up, by establishing facts on the ground. The occupation of empty buildings proved the most successful strategy for forcing the establishment to change its policy, and to demonstrate most clearly the terrible injustice of empty buildings on the one hand and homeless people on the other. Recently, the Ma’abara signed an agreement with the Na’amat women organization, after occupying one of their buildings that stood empty for three years instead of serving the public. The building will now once again serve the public, and we can thus say with certainty that the strategy of occupation does work. We can no longer be regarded as law-violating extremists, but as a group that seeks to make things more just. Even if what we achieved is but a drop in the ocean, it is nonetheless a step towards conveying a message about what law and justice are, and about the prospects of public struggles.

For us, members of the Ma’abara group, the decision to struggle for public housing signifies a wider worldview. Public housing or, alternatively, affordable housing (officially defined as housing for which one pays no more than 30% of their income, and which is intended for middle or lower-middle class populations) means that it is the clear role and duty of the state to provide housing, and to guarantee that anyone who cannot provide their own housing under the conditions of the private market would have a steady, long-term roof over their heads, without having to move their children around every day. We voiced the cry that the eligibility criteria for public housing are unreasonable and relate only to the existing stock of apartments, without regard to the fact that many of those deemed ineligible require public housing as a necessary mean for leading a dignified life in its most basic sense.

Courtesy of the Ma'abara group

How can all this be achieved? There is no shortage of solutions. What is lacking is the will, the values, and an economic system wholly unlike the existing one, in which the right of property would not precede the right for housing. What is lacking is determination on the part of the state to assume responsibility for the right for housing. The state of Israel would rather leave people in the streets while 40,000 apartments stand empty. We hear talk about a constant annual shortage of 50,000 apartments when a similar number of apartments are unoccupied. This unwillingness will not go unanswered. It must be met with constant action of as many activist groups as possible. The Ma’abara will continue to struggle, occupy empty buildings, demand the right for housing, prevent evacuations, establish facts on the ground, and assume actual responsibility for our reality rather than wait for others to provide.

The current issue of Ma’arav departs from the historic path and the forgotten story of the Territorialists and other groups that offered different solutions to the Jewish question. It passes through the means in which the state of Israel eliminates these narratives and generates itself as The Homeland, and returns to the imagination through different possibilities developed by artists, and through reflections about a different political existence at this time and place. The path from the ‘historic’ to the ‘imagined’ is not such a simple and well defined course for movement. The transition from the charge created by one to the potential freedom of the other is not all that clear. The historical story would have been desolate without the imagination that became possible decades ago, while today’s imagination can no longer detach itself from the concrete history of this place and of our life here.

Ma’arav special issue about “The Jewish question in history and the Jewish existence in this day and age” is published alongside the exhibition “Where to?”. The Exhibition is held at the Israeli Center for Digital Art, 28/4/2012 – 14/7/2012.

The preface was translated into English by Noa Shuval

In its simplest form, the Territorialist idea is the establishment of an autonomous entity or, alternatively, a state for the Jews in some territory other than the Land of Israel. This idea was born together with Zionist ideology. Ever since Pinsker, in his Auto-Emancipation, stated that “the goal of our present endeavors must be not the ‘Holy Land,’ but a land of our own,” there were those Jews who clung to the idea of “a land of our own,” aiming to establish either a state or some other kind of autonomous collective somewhere other than the Land of Israel.

Such settlement enterprises regularly came up in the history of the Jewish people. These were usually local, individual initiatives that disappeared as soon as they sprung up, without being followed by genuine activity. Starting with the second half of the seventeenth century up until the 1880s, various suggestions for Jewish settlement were constantly put on the table, including the Caribbean island of Curaçao; Suriname; Cayenne, French Guiana; Novorossiya; Crimea; Buffalo, New York; Texas; areas around the Tennessee, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers; Illinois, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, and Cypress. Not a single one of these initiatives had to do with the Territorialist ideology, which sprung out of the Zionist movement in the early twentieth century.

The Uganda Proposal, which Herzl brought before the Sixth Zionist Congress in August 1903, was the main reason for the establishment of The Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO) in the summer of 1905, and for the transformation of Territorialism into a central ideological branch of Jewish nationalism. The Proposal constituted a watershed in the history of the Zionist movement and the Jewish people, sharpening the differences within the Zionist Organization between political Zionists, who supported Herzl, and Palestine-“loyalists”: between those who sought to establish a Jewish state in any territory that would be granted to the Jewish people, and those who insisted that the Land of Israel is the only natural place for such a state.

The choice of Eretz Israel as a home of the Jewish people was not an obvious matter in the Zionist Organization up until the Uganda Proposal, and many Zionists deliberated between “the Holy Land” and “a land of our own.” Some considered joining the Am Olam movement, and to take part in establishing agrarian colonies in the US; and a decade later there were those who saw no contradiction between agrarian settlement in Argentina and in Israel. The book The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl that was published four years after Pinsker’s death was another central link that led to the consolidation of territorialist ideology and the strengthening of the conceptual trend within the Zionist movement that the Land of Israel was a possible but not necessary territory for it. Like Auto-Emancipation, The Jewish State also did not decide the territorial issue, and instead of “our land” and “our Holy Land,” Herzl wavered between the Land of Israel and Argentina.  His dilemma is especially interesting because, unlike Pinsker’s work, The Jewish State was written after 14years of the Zionist endeavor when there were already 20settlements in the Land of Israel. Yet, despite the achievements of the settlers and the changes that occurred in the Hibbat Zion movement, the Land of Israel was not perceived as the sole solution for the Jewish people. Herzl sharpened the issue even more when he tried to make diplomacy precede settlement, and precluded any possibility of pre-emptive and unplanned settlement in the Land of Israel.

Even the Basel Program of the First Zionist Congress, which stated that “Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine,” did not put an end to searches for a chance territory for the Jewish people. In 1902, a Zionist expedition set out to El Arish, Egypt, in order to explore whether the area was fit for Jewish settlement. The idea was ruled out, as the place was found to be too barren. In late 1905, Otto Warburg, a leading German Zionist figure, member of the executive committee and later president of the Zionist Organization, promoted Jewish settlement in Mesopotamia—another failed attempt that did not bear political results.

Territorialist ideology was fed by two social phenomena that were an inseparable part of the life of Eastern European Jewish society of the early twentieth century: pogroms and emigration. The pogroms served the Territorialists as proof that Jews have no future in Eastern Europe, and that if no territory would soon be found, whether in Israel or elsewhere, the results would be catastrophic. The emigration of some 1.5 million Jews during the first decade of the twentieth century was an expression of the physical existential distress they faced. The Territorialists expressed concern that this ongoing stream of emigrants would cause host countries to close their gates, with hundreds of thousands of Jews finding themselves trapped in their countries of residence. They hoped that once the appropriate territory would be found on which a Jewish state could be established, a great number of Jews would emigrate to it. While some would do so out of choice, for the vast majority of them this would be the only option, since no other state but the future Jewish one would be willing to accept any more of them.

The removal of the Uganda Proposal from the agenda of the Zionist Organization, and its ban on new settlement proposals outside the Land of Israel, shut the door for Herzl-following political Zionists, which led to a rift in the Zionist movement. The Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO) was founded in August 1905, on the last day of the Seventh Zionist Congress, by a group led by Israel Zangwill , who sought to establish an alternative body to the Zionist Organization. The ITO platform defined its goal in a plain and simple manner: “to obtain territory on an autonomous basis for those among the Jews who could not or would not remain in the countries in which they were living.”[1] The platform also stated that in order to achieve its aims, the ITO would strive to unite all Jews who support this cause, to negotiate with governments and with private and public bodies, and finally, to found financial and other necessary institutions.

“An autonomous territory,” as stated by the ITO, was one of the basic, most important principles of the Territorialist approach. It sought to follow Herzl’s version of Zionism by forming an autonomous Jewish government under the custody of one of the world’s superpowers. This is why they kept on warning against settlement in densely populated areas, where Jews would continue to be a persecuted minority within the social majority. It would be ridiculous, they argued, to reproduce in the country of destination the same problems Jews experienced in their countries of residence. This, for them, was a necessary condition for realizing their idea, and a goal to be strived for. They sought to base the territory in question on the immediate interests of one of the European states, and their reliance on the colonialism of these imperial powers was their main source of hope for attaining such a land.

Yet another element of Territorialist ideology was the time factor, which was regarded as crucial for the choice of territory. The claim was that the rise of Jewish distress is exponential whereas that of Zionist activity is linear: hence Zionism does not have sufficient time in order to establish a Jewish state in Israel. From the Territorialists’ perspective, this race against time was absolutely crucial for the Jewish people: The Zionist enterprise was slow-moving, 3,000 Jews were murdered between 1904–1906, and emigration reached levels never before seen. These were the reasons Herzl turned his gaze to East Africa, and his Territorialist followers—to the rest of the world.

The Territorialists’ basic position argued that Jewish distress can stand no delays: persecuted and bleeding Eastern European Jewry can no longer wait until Zionists would lay the foundations for a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Theirs was a view that rejected Eastern European Jewish existence, and sought to rescue it even at the cost of giving up on the dream of settling the Promised Land. Their sensitivity to the suffering and distress of Jews shaped their opsimism . On the one hand, they foresaw a grim future for the Jews of Eastern Europe, ruling out any possibility of them integrating into their surrounding societies. On the other hand, the Territorialists exhibited a great deal of optimism and faith that a suitable territory would soon be found in which a Jewish state could be established.

The novelist Yosef (Joseph) Haim Brenner who, for a brief period, held territorialist views, strongly expressed territorialist pessimism and the importance of finding a strip of land for the Jews. In “Letter to Russia,” which was written after he had lost his close friend HayaWolfson in the Bialystok pogrom, Brenner gave voice to the territorialist worldview: Land! Any land that can be obtained, any land that one can begin to build our home within it; a land not for today which has already been lost to us, but a land for tomorrow, for the generations to come, for the Nemirov orphans in twenty years’ time, in fifty years, in a hundred years. As a kind of apocalyptic vision that was realized 40 years after writing the article, when six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, Brenner formulated the fear of the Territorialists and explained clearly what caused them to forgo the Land of Israel.

The Territorialists did not object to the Land of Israel out of principle, but rather doubted the success of its settlement enterprise. One of the major obstacles Zangwill foresaw was the Arab population. Territorialists were first among the Zionist movement who regarded the Arab population of Palestine as a factor that places a question mark over the success of the Zionist project. Although it was Ahad Ha’am in his 1891 essay “A Truth from Eretz Yisrael” who was first to address this issue, he did so in a sideway manner. His claim that Jewish farmers in Palestine treated their Arab workers in a manner typical of slaves turned masters was not pursued in his later writings. As Hebrew teacher Yitzhak Epstein put it, the Arab question was the missing question of Zionist thinking, prior to the Balfour Declaration. Zangwill and the other Territorialists, on the other hand, recognized this issue: they were aware of the danger involved in the friction between Jews and Arabs, which caused them to be pessimistic about the prospects of Zionism in the Land of Israel.

In 1905, shortly after the Territorialists’ splitting, Zangwill argued that the Land of Israel is populated with Arabs, and that Jews would find it hard to become a majority there: “There is, however, a difficulty from which a Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants, the pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile. And not 25 per cent of them Jews; so we must be prepared either to drive out the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us.”[2]

Zangwill regarded not only the numerical relation between Jews and Arabs as a problem that Zionism would find hard to deal with, but also the Arab ownership of a vast portion of the land. “At present we are only 12 per cent of the population, and hold only 2 per cent of the land. A good deal of the holy soil is in the hands of private proprietors, and would not be ours even if we got the Charter, while the Crown lands, which belong to the Sultan, and might, therefore, be negotiated for as a whole, are, unfortunately, low and swampy and fever-haunted”.[3]

Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942) also addressed the question of the Arab population of Israel. Zeitlin, who grew up in a pious Hassidic family, was exposed at an early age to Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) literature, which took over him. He renounced his faith, and began to teach Hebrew, publishing articles on various topics in Jewish newspapers in Hebrew and Yiddish during the late nineteenth century. He was one of the keen supporters of Herzl’s political Zionism, and even served as a Zionist representative for the Gomel area in the 1901 Fifth Zionist Congress. Disappointed from the Uganda affair, he quit the Zionist Organization and joined the ITO, and in 1905 was appointed editor of Hazman (The Time)—then the main medium for Territorialist views.

In his article “The Crisis: Territorial Notes,” Zeitlin expressed his anxiety about the Jewish people after the resolutions that passed at the Congress: “I am not concerned about the division, nor am I concerned about the split, nor am I concerned about the ban, but it is about the destruction of the people that I am concerned.”[4] The reason for his anxiety was the Zionist position that regarded the Land of Israel as the exclusive territorial solution for the Jewish problem. One of his main arguments that testified to the failure in Zionist ideological thought was the Arab question and the illegitimacy of Zionists to claim the land: And who has given you Palestine or will give it to you? Or perhaps you are able to take Palestine? … What all the Palestinians forget either by accident or intentionally, is that Palestine is in the hands of others and is completely inhabited. I have as much right to dream about Palestine as I would have to dream about Paris or London.[5]

With the founding of the ITO, the Territorialists began searching for a land that would be suitable for Jewish settlement, and with the right conditions for the absorption of the great number of Jews who would wish to move there. Zangwill dedicated nine years to searching for the right territory, and never found one. He crossed lands and seas: Africa, Australia, America, Asia, negotiating with governments who kindled his hope yet bitterly disappointed him. The Territorialist claim, that some superpower is likely to be willing to grant Jews a piece of land in one of its colonies, was aligned with the imperialist trends of the early twentieth century. Zangwill and his followers believed that, due to the density of Britain’s population and the scarce population in its colonies, the empire would allow Jews to start their own settlements in those areas. The Territorialists also believed it would be possible to reach an agreement with European states, and to convince them, partly on moral grounds, to grant the Jews a piece of land, since no country has a right to hold territories it cannot settle, while other people have no place under the sun.

It appears that there was no place on earth whose advantages, disadvantages, and prospects for Jewish settlement were not considered. Several alternatives in North and South America were examined, including Canada (Ontario and Western Canada), the United States (Nevada, , Idaho, Galveston), Argentina, Bolivia, and Columbia; In Africa, Rhodesia, Libya, Angola, and East Africa were looked into; in Australia, the North-East Territory and the Kimberley area were under negotiation; and in Asia, the option of Iraq (Mesopotamia) came up. From among the suggestion that were brought up, Zangwill made diplomatic efforts only in East Africa, Canada Australia, and Angola. The rest of them were insignificant, and disappeared as soon as they came up.

As time went by the Territorialists realized that obtaining a territory is no trivial matter, finding it difficult to convince the negotiating states that a Jewish autonomous entity in one of their overseas colonies is a vital interest for their own preservation. Each time Zangwill seemed to be on the brink of a diplomatic breakthrough, the negotiations collapsed. The reasons were varied: hostile public opinion to the idea of mass Jewish immigration; fear that the ethnically segregating Jews would constitute a state within a state; finally, the colonial powers demanded the financial support of Jewish philanthropists as a precondition for the Territorialist settlement enterprise, whereas these philanthropists conditioned their support on the agreement in principle of these powers. Unable to escape this vicious cycle, Zangwill found he reached a deadlock in every negotiation he conducted.

The ITO disbanded in 1925, with most of its members returning to the Zionist movement. The outbreak of the First World War, the Balfour Declaration, the massive immigration to Palestine in the 1920s, and the tightening of the relations between the Zionist movement and the British government, all weakened the ITO, turning it irrelevant to the new world order. Yet it is precisely the reasons that led to the collapse of the ITO that best illustrate the reasons for its establishment. The first half of the 1920s was marked by great hope for the Zionist movement, contrary to the first decade of that century. The British opened the gates of Palestine for immigration, and were determined to implement the Balfour Declaration; the League of Nations ratified the British Mandate of Palestine, recognizing the historic connection of the Jews to the Land of Israel; new settlements were founded, and it appeared as if the establishment of a Jewish state is but a matter of time. Given these circumstances, the Territorialist approach no longer seemed necessary, whereas the Zionist solution in Palestine seemed promising. Territorialism emerged in periods of despair and a climate of existential threat, yet faded during periods of hope.

When the sky began to cloud during the late 1920s and early 30s, voices questioning the capacity of the Land of Israel to absorb thousands of future immigrants were once again heard. The Nazis rise to power, the deteriorating world order, the Jewish-Arab conflict, and Britain’s retreat from the Balfour Declaration led to the revival of old-new Territorialist ideas, and to the establishment of the Frayland League, led by Isaac Nachman Steinberg.

***

The attempt to get to the bottom of Territorialist thought reveals it to have been an essentially pragmatic worldview, whose advocates had a clear view of reality, and hence were looking for a quick, dramatic solution. The failure of their search for a land for the Jews might make them seem like utopian ideologists, out of touch with the reality of their people. Yet from the point of view of the early twentieth century, Zionism itself was no less utopian, driven by a dream or vision which was even less practical than the Territorialist one. The Land of Israel was as hard to obtain as any other land, including those considered by the Territorialists, and the Zionist movement too was not yet backed up by any superpower that took upon itself to promote the Jewish question. In this respect, the two rival movements had more in common than not. Both believed a territorial solution would solve the Eastern European Jewish problem, and both began their national endeavors against all odds and from a highly problematic and complex starting point.

But even if Territorialists and Zionists agreed on the diagnosis, they disagreed on the prognosis. Territorialists were pessimistic regarding the prospects of Jews in Eastern Europe, anticipating a bleak existential and economic future. Their biggest fear was that immigration-absorbing countries might close their gates, leaving Jews without any reasonable alternative. They would lead a life full of persecution, suffering, and economic hardship, sinking into a deep and long-lasting despair, with their fellow Jews unable to reach out and rescue them. A territorial sanctuary is therefore immediately required. On their other hand, following the Seventh Congress, the Zionists abandoned the approach of “catastrophic Zionism,” which characterized the era of Pinsker and Herzl, and modified their prognosis. Unlike the Territorialists, who believed that existing reality would only make matters worse for the Jews, the Zionists were convinced that the upcoming political transformations in the lives of Eastern European Jews would make things better for them and alleviate their distress.

Herein lies the essential difference between the Zionist Organization and the ITO. The Territorialists saw themselves first and foremost as a rescue organization (in the physical-existential sense), and therefore dedicated most of their time for searching after a territory suitable for immediate, mass settlement. Zionists, on the other hand—at least during the years prior to the First World War, and the first decade of the British Mandate—saw their movement primarily as a national one, centered around the Land of Israel, which was not simply regarded as a sanctuary for masses of Jews seeking an answer to their woes.

And yet the prognoses of both Territorialist and Zionists proved wrong. With respect to the Territorialists, not only did the catastrophe they feared from and warned against fail to take place in their time. They abandoned the “catastrophic ideology” after the Balfour declaration, joined the Zionist movement, and took active part in the nation-building effort in Israel. On the other hand, an opposite processes took place within the Zionist movement. In the early twentieth century, it was Zionists who abandoned the catastrophic, pessimistic approach, and yet in later years they adopted it: Once it became clear that a national disaster of unprecedented scale was threatening the Jewish people, Zionists began to regard European reality the way Territorialists did in the years following the Seventh Congress. It was only in the 1930s (and in the period following the Holocaust)—during which the Zionist movement first realized that the distress of European Jews is extreme, and that it had to strive for a fast solution in Palestine—that it began to make use of a terminology taken from the Territorialist ideology of the early twentieth century.

The Territorialists’ departure from the Zionist Organization in light of the essential debate regarding the time-frame the Jewish people had at their disposal for establishing a state, not only highlighted the difference between the two ideologies. In addition, it no longer allows the Zionist movement to associate itself with the idea that the concern for the wellbeing of the Jewish people and for its very existence in Europe was a central component of its ideology since its beginning. It seems that the Zionist rhetoric and self-image of a rescue movement hides more than it reveals. The claim that Zionism realized the existential danger to Europe’s Jews, and that from its early days it went to great lengths to found a sanctuary land for masses of Jews, was a retroactive attempt done in hindsight.

Yet despite their accurate diagnosis of the Jewish problem, and the sensitivity they exhibited to Jewish suffering, the political achievements of the Territorialists were few. Ten years of searching for a territory yielded no practical results, and the ITO came to the end of its road in the eve of the First World War. Five main reasons led to the decline of Territorialist ideology:

1. The Territorialist idea put down roots in Jewish society in times of crisis and despair: Pinsker published Auto-Emancipation following the 1881–82 pogroms; the Uganda Proposal was discussed in Zionist establishments against the background of the Kishinev pogrom; the negotiations held by the ITO took place against the background of vast emigration; and the Nazi rise to power with its Jewish persecutions during the 1930s led to the revival of Territorialism, and to the establishment of the Frayland League. In quiet and optimistic years, Territorialism lost its grip on Jewish society, and in the absence of concrete results, its activists found new political homes. The ITO began its way during a hard and miserable period for Eastern European Jewish society: a fact that brought it many supporters, turning it into a mass movement. Yet as the existential distress receded and became less threatening, and the Jewish question was perceived not in terms of life and death, the Territorialist idea weakened and lost its appeal. The Balfour Declaration and the early period of the British Mandate for Palestine were a time of hope, forming a reality that turned Territorialism irrelevant.

2. The Territorialists sought to utilize Eastern European Jewish emigration for furthering their political purposes. They regarded the tens of thousands emigrating each year from Russia, Galicia, and Romania as potential manpower, which they were hoping to turn into the demographic basis for establishing a Jewish state, by diverting the emigration current from Manhattan to a some other territory. They believed they had the power to interfere in the internal dynamics of this process, thereby bringing about the desired change. It appears, however, that in this respect, the Territorialists misinterpreted this emigration, and exaggerated their capacity to interfere with it. The decision of Jews to emigrate was driven primarily by economic distress, and the urge to change their present condition. The Americas (especially the US) gave these emigrants the opportunity to start a new life that was completely different from the ones they had in Eastern Europe. The Territorialist idea—like the Zionist one—was unable to compete with the United State’s image as the land of endless opportunities, and with the hope it sparked in the hearts of millions. The starving Jewish emigrants were not interested in partaking in any kind of ideological social experiment: their sole purpose was to feed their families. Another related issue is the Territorialist concern that liberal immigration policies might change, with more countries following in the footsteps of England by closing their gates. In that case, Eastern European Jewry would find itself trapped within a hostile, violent society, with no way out. This prediction only came true in 1924, once two million people had already migrated to every possible destination country, with England publically supporting the establishment of a Jewish national home in Israel. Once mass migration ceased, and the Zionist movement received a charter for the Land of Israel, in the form of the Balfour Declaration, the ITO found itself with no political agenda and no influence in the Jewish public.

3. The ITO’s main aim was “To obtain an autonomous territory for those Jews who cannot or will not remain in their countries of residence.” In order to achieve this, Zangwill began searching for suitable places, thinly populated, which could absorb masses of Jews. His diplomatic efforts reveal that there was almost no place on earth that was not carefully examined, which in some cases led to official contacts with various governments. Every negotiating state agreed to accept Jews as individuals but under no circumstances as a nation, rejecting any possibility for establishing a Jewish autonomy in the areas under their control. In the absence of land, the ITO had no means of executing its sole purpose, thereby losing its raison d’être. Territorialist diplomacy was also problematic to some extent. The Territorialists relied on colonial European powers, seeking to make use of their interests in the areas under their rule. This activity can be said to suffer form a moral flaw. Zangwill did not question the moral right of the European powers—especially England—to rule over vast overseas areas, and sought to utilize this in favor of Jewish interests. The First World War, which put an end to the colonial age, left Zangwill no hope of finding such a shared interest between the ITO and a European power.

4. The Territorialist movement had no pioneer elite who took upon itself the task of preparing the territory of destination for the absorption of mass waves of future immigrants. To prepare the land and establish a viable economic framework required a long period. The Zionist movement had at its disposal regiments of pioneers who visited Israel since the First Aliyah (immigration wave) up until the founding of the state. Like a relay race, in which a tired runner finishes his role by passing the baton onto the next one, who is fresh and ready, new pioneers took over veteran ones in continuing the task of Zionist activity. The Zionist locomotive kept rushing ahead, constantly increasing speed despite every hurdle. The ITO never had the kind of motivated and dedicated reservoir of pioneers that the Zionist movement had. Without a territory, the idealist quality group that every national movement requires in order to turn its ideas into practice never materialized.

5. Beyond the historical and rational reasons for the decline of the Territorialist movement, there was one other reason that was not essentially related to Jewish distress or to the geopolitical conditions of the early twentieth century. Territorialism analyzed reality in a stark manner and with open eyes: they saw the persecution of Jews as an existential danger, and regarded their rescue as their main motivation. Yet such a cold and calculated approach is not enough for fueling a national movement. The Territorialists disengaged the emotional aspect of their national activity, relying on the assumption that in times of need Jews would move to any territory whatsoever as long as it would save their lives and those of their loved ones. Yet it turned out that bleak prophesies were not enough, and that followers also had to be inspired by hope, and by a positive connection with national activity. In peaceful, more relaxed periods, Territorialism found it hard to pursue its activity and to persuade others of its importance. Just as fast as those Zionist activists moved to the Territorialist camp, they abandoned it in order to return to the bosom of Zionism. Zion proved inseparable from Zionism. The ITO’s lack of success testifies to the power of myths in national movements. Short of such a myth, the Territorialist Organization remained a small circle of intellectuals who, while indeed analyzing reality, and the grim prospects of Eastern European Jews, in a cold and calculated manner, did not have at its disposal the army that could execute their ideas when the day would come. Territorialist ideology thus suffered from a paradigmatic flaw. Whereas the Zionist movement was guided by a national approach with historical-mythical foundations, Territorialists were scientific, rational, and intellectual. Such tools and methods (surveys, statistics, choosing optimal alternatives) proved irrelevant for a national discourse whose heart and soul is mythical. This was the secret power of the Zionist movement, as well as the main source of weakness of the Territorialist one.

Historical perspective proved that the Zionist path finally led to the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, whereas the Territorialist attempts to find a suitable territory failed. At the same time, this paper refrained from using the terms “Zionist success” and “Territorialist failure.” First, since a historic study has no room for evaluative terms: Territorialist ideology has to be understood first and foremost from the point of view of its contemporaries, and not from ours. The 1903–1906 pogrom, the West-bound emigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews during the early twentieth century, the poverty of Eastern European Jewry, and the limited capacity of the Land of Israel to absorb masses of immigrants were the main reasons for the rise of Territorialism. The problems of the time were so urgent and consequential that some Jews believed that the Zionist schedule is not in alignment with Jewish distress—hence it was imperative to hurry, and to quickly establish a Jewish national home for the poor, the emigrants, and the survivors of pogroms in whatever place possible.

Second, 130 years of Zionist activism are no necessary guarantee for the success of its idea. Zionism indeed “won” over all its rivals—but the words must immediately be added: so far. The future of the Zionist project in Israel—like the future of any individual or group—is uncertain and foggy. Were Territorialist predictions to some day materialize, historical perspective would change with them: what is now regarded as a glorious victory might turn into a painful defeat. The Territorialist claim that six hundred thousand Arabs would not let the Jews settling in Israel live in peace, that the ensuing conflict would be irresolvable and last for many years, and that it would be unwise to put all the eggs in one basket, in the sense that the concentration of Jews in a single territory not only does not improve the Jewish condition but endangers it—might turn out to be a sober view of reality, and a prophecy that might fulfill itself.

The second half of the twentieth century was good to the Jewish people: it received new strength, and entered on a promising, successful course. In many respects, the State of Israel now constitutes the center of Jewish life and being, taking upon itself the right to defend the Jewish people from future catastrophes that might arrive. Should that be the case, and should the state of Israel find it hard to handle these catastrophes, we are likely to witness the rebirth of Territorialism (albeit probably in a somewhat different version), rising from the ashes like a Phoenix in times of distress and crisis.

Translated by Naveh Frumer

[2] See: Speeches, Articles and Letters of Israel Zangwill (ed Maurice Simon), in Israel Zangwill, ‘The East Africa Offer’, London 1937, p.  210

[3] Ibid,, 210.

[4] See: Zeitlin, ‘Ha-Mashber: Reshimot Teritoryali’, Ha-Zeman: Yarchon le-Inyanei ha-Chaimm ha-Sifrut, ha-Omanut, veha-Mada, Vol. 3 (July-September 1905): 259.

[5] Ibid., 264.