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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1989
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Two social workers named Dina — one an Arab, the other a Jew — play with and counsel Arab children from
troubled homes at the Arab Child Care Center in Old Jaffa, Tel Aviv, an outreach program funded by Los
Angeles Jews.
Intifada Result: Israelis Reduce
Dependence On Arab Workers
BARRY CHAMISH
Special to The Jewish News
I
n May 1988, the price of
tomatoes in Israel rose
drastically to five dollars
a kilo. There had been plenty
of rain that winter and a
bumper crop had resulted.
But much of the crop rotted in
the field because Arab
workers, responding to ter-
rorist threats went on strike
day after day and the boun-
tiful harvest went unpicked.
The construction and
manufacturing industries
have been hard hit by the
uprising. Exports dropped as
prices rose or product delivery
slowed. _.
When the strikes began, a
motion was introduced in the
Knesset to permit employers
to import foreign workers.
Originally, the idea was scoff-
ed at. Not today. A British
agency is supplying Israel
with 10,000 Portugese and
Philipino workers a month.
Israel is slowly phasing out
its Arab work force.
The dependence on Arab
labor strikes at the heart of
Zionist origins. The nation's
founding philosophy was a
Jewish rebirth through hard
labor. Until the Six-Day War,
no job was considered de-
meaning. However, the vast
labor pool of the captured ter-
ritories was too great a temp-
tation. Slowly Israel came to
rely on Arab workers for
back-breaking or menial jobs
just as Europe, at the same
time, was turning to Turkey
and Morocco for its underpaid
workers. In Israel much of the
work was previously handled
by Sephardic Jewss, who have
since risen dramatically into
the middle class as Arabs
replaced them at the bottom.
The effect on the kibbutz
was profound. Previously, the
hardworking kibbutznik prid-
ed himself on rising at 4:30
a.m. to do field work. Today,
most field work is done by
Arabs while the kibbutznik
tends to his new manufactur-
ing concerns.
Israelis are most uncom-
frotable with the new attitude
towards toil. This is reflected
in their humor. Dudu Topaz,
the country's leading standup
comic, has two particularly
popular jokes. The first con-
cerns a problem in a new
mathematics textbook: If
Ahmad lifts 10 tons of con-
crete and Fuad hauls sixty
feet of pipe, how much money
does Berkovitch make?
And then there's the child
walking with his grandfather
through Tel Aviv. "You see
this road?" asks the grand-
father with pride. "When I
got here this was sand. I built
this road. And you see that
building? That was a swamp
when I got here. I built that
building." The little boy is
astonished and asks, "Grand-
father? You used to be an
Arab?"
The most popular joke in
the country concerns a man
who goes to heaven and sees
Jesus, Buddha and Moses
seated around a table in a cof-
fee shop. He asks to join them,
is accepted and then says,
"Heaven is just like I
thought. Wise men discussing
heady issues together. But
I'm a bit confused. Isn't so-
meone missing? Where is
Mohammed?" Moses snaps
his fingers at the waiter and
says, "Mohammed. Bring us
some coffee."
Because Israel is determin-
ed to wean itself from Arab
labor, some changes are tak-
ing place. For years, the con-
try employed 50-year-old con-
struction methods that made
building slow and sloppy. It
was cheaper to hire Arabs
than to invest in new equip-
ment. Today, new equipment
is arriving.
Car washes until recently
consisted of a hose, a rag and
an Arab worker. In the past
year, real automatic systems
have replaced hand labor.
Not all Arabs are happy
about these changes. Visiting
a large textile mill in
Jerusalem, I met with Arab
workers who had missed
about five days' work in the
past month due to strikes.
The mill once employed 90
percent Arab labor. Now
about a quarter of the
workers are Portugese
imports.
"If a strike is called," says
the company driver, "it's too
dangerous to come to work."
What would happen if he
did? He lights a match and