The Doctrine of Beitar

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wandering idle in the streets of Tel-Aviv and they do not want to go out to the Galilee, where they could find work. If so, the Binum found the cure. The conclusion: "In the first two years, the average immigrant must work wherever he is sent."

I know well that only a minority faction among our immigrants is afflicted with this view. I am sorry that I do not have a list of these average ones - I would have written their names on a sheet of paper and kept it above one of the walls in my room. And not only because they heeded the voice of the Binum, but out of their own decision, a kind of "law of distress," they developed something different and noble.

At first, I did not feel much of this development. And only with the publication of the protocols in Eretz-Israel did I begin to wonder: why are rumors of recruitment slogans arriving again? For the policy of the 'average ones,' in its Danzigian decision, was to turn to work—and therefore to wherever they would be sent—but when there is work in the vicinity of a place, there should be no "internal" interference; and for every immigrant liable for recruitment, a trial release should be permitted. Instead of this, we hear of hungry young men in the fields of the small settlements, yet about those they could have gotten rid of in Tel-Aviv. What explains this matter, who needs this, what is the reason for this pointless sacrifice?

Only little by little did I begin to understand. Although I am not yet sure if I fully recognize the matter, my eyes were opened somewhat, after one of the instructors on my ship was honest. After he returned to Prussia following a visit to Eretz-Israel, he told me: "You are mistaken."

"It is of no importance whether the slogans have a present, or they have no present. And if they have a future, firstly, because they are small and ephemeral, they are a tremendous addition from a moral perspective: perhaps this is the only thing for which our twenty and twenty-five-year-old citizens are zealous. And finally - although I cannot formulate it, I am sure that in the economic and social field, this recruitment is a guide for the future."

And now I too am of this opinion, convinced by the lack of connection to them. And therefore