The Doctrine of Beitar

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The economic life of the Yishuv: it believes that when an industrialist or a farmer hires workers, even under the very same conditions, who refuse to belong to the "Histadrut" and to submit to the authority of the labor bureaus that impose the duty [of hiring] "member" workers, it is self-evident that such a strike is not only not "sacred," but is a complete injustice, hostile, and brings damage to the vital interest of establishing the Hebrew state. Such a strike must not only be interfered with, but it is better to prevent it from the start, and we will not reconcile with it because of tasteless curses such as "strike breaking." Every unjust and state-damaging strike must be violated and broken without mercy, just like any other assault on the interests of the establishment of the Hebrew state, and it is the right and duty of Betar itself to decide which of the strikes are just and which are not, and to assist the former and violate the latter.

And also in another sense, the class war in Eretz Israel is nothing but a sheer lie; in the sense of the "union of the workers of all nations" in a common war against the bourgeois of all nations. Every Jewish worker in Eretz Israel knows full well that if the bitter day comes of an assault by Arab "proletarians," even on the hated "bourgeois" of Petah Tikva, he will go out as a barrier—if only he is armed—to defend the bourgeois property from his class "brothers"; because this property is first and foremost Jewish property, a factor in Hebrew colonization, a position upon which one can rely and which will also be used for the purpose of creating the Jewish majority.

And the meaning of all this is that a period of colonization has its own social laws, which differ fundamentally from those laws prevailing in countries or those that are "already perfected." Here are a few of our social laws, as Betar understands and even advocates for them:

a/ One hundred percent Hebrew labor in all Jewish enterprises: because these enterprises have no colonizing value if the labor in them is foreign, and the most severe of all national speculators in Eretz Israel is the boycott of Hebrew labor.